Applecore is currently accepting resumes for a Senior Web Developer position in its Technical Department. We are always interested in connecting with creative, technical and strategic minds. Forward your résumé and portfolio to careers@applecore.ca.
Applecore's vision has always been to be a great place to work and a great place to do business. Want to be a part of it? Click here for the Senior Web Developer job description.
Tourism: A Social Media Butterfly?
Social media – it’s a phrase that people are beginning to recognize! In fact, many people use social media every day, though they may not call it that. Social media is an umbrella term for all the technologies that allow social interaction online. In other words, it’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs, and it may just be the best way to talk to consumers.
Social media has been an area of marketing many businesses have been more reluctant to adopt, for lots of reasons: they worry about losing control, about getting caught up, about taking on too much too fast. But it’s getting easier and more essential than ever to get involved. Otherwise, as consumers demand that companies engage in more direct interaction, we risk being left behind. A new business model is developing that gives more power to the consumer.
But it’s nothing to be afraid of! For industries like Tourism, which is not only the world’s largest industry but also a top online sector, learning how to have these conversations with travellers is crucial. The statistics are compelling: 3,000,000 messages are sent over Twitter every day, Facebook is used in over 170 countries, blogs have 346,000,000 daily readers and YouTube boasts over 100,000,000 videos. In most cases, start-up costs are minimal. With all this potential for consumer/company interaction, social media is becoming the natural, low cost platform for marketing a destination in a way that is honest, informative and transparent.
NewfoundlandLabrador.com is a great example of a tourism destination using social media. The province’s online tourism destination marketing has grown to include social media distribution channels like a YouTube channel, a Facebook page with almost 5,000 fans, a custom Twitter account, Travel Blog, a Virtual Scrapbook that features user-uploaded photos and comments/ratings.
Think of how far a good review can go when it comes to social media and trip planning! Online features like user reviews, peer to peer communication and fan comments hold a powerful influence over the average traveller. For example, a Jupiter Research study says 58% of potential travellers trust content from users, like consumer ratings or traveller reviews, for trip planning. The same study also said 36% named this user content as an influence in the final decision-making process, ahead of factors like brand awareness (21%) or even a friend’s recommendation (14%).
Beware of the “island effect”—or, letting social media platforms stand on their own with no interaction. Using social media right means connecting each channel – embedding your uploaded YouTube videos into your Facebook page, posting links to your blog on Twitter, redirecting from YouTube to your website. Each bridge you build between your “islands” makes it easier for the user to experience all your business has to offer.
So dive in—just take your social media in steps. You don’t have to master every platform at once. When it comes to social media, getting started is the hard part— riding the learning curve is fun and exciting. Remember--social media is a powerful marketing engine, but one that needs regular fuel and a willingness to learn.
Originally published in the St. John's Board of Trade's Business News Magazine, June 2009. All rights reserved.
We all make mistakes running our websites. However, the nature of those mistakes varies depending on the size of your company. As your organization grows, the mistakes change. This post addresses common mistakes among large organizations.
Among the other interesting things that have cropped up is [sic] many things from businesses, from marketing and communications and predictable things to an insanely popular Korean barbecue taco truck that drives around L.A. and Twitters where it stops causing a line to form around the block.
Just another adventure for Applecore’s longtime friend TA Loeffler. Starting at 12 noon on June 24th (which just happens to be her birthday) TA Loeffler will be climbing Signal Hill 10 times to raise funds for prostate cancer research. In addition to spreading awareness, this is also the final preparation for TA's forthcoming effort to summit Mount Elbrus (Europe's highest peak) an adventure that will be beginning in July. You can read all about that particular adventure at TA’s website.
If there’s one thing Applecore can get behind, it’s a good cause, so the entire office will be joining her on the last leg of her climb. We’re excited to play even a tiny part in such a useful, awareness-building cause… and we’ll definitely be snapping a few pictures after we’ve finished the climb!
TA is inviting us to join her for a leg of the walk or two (which takes about 20-25 minutes) and wear sky blue (the awareness colour of prostate cancer). TA is also asking well-wishers to consider making a donation to the Canadian Prostate Cancer Network in lieu of a gift or card.
As extra incentive, birthday cake is waiting at the top. Check back here for the wrap-up!
At ten o'clock this morning, our own Deborah Bourden will be kicking off the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation Tour for the Cure on the steps of the Newfoundland House of Assembly in St. John’s. Joining her will be the Hon. Danny Williams, Hon. Ross Wiseman (Minister of Health and Community Services), Nancy Margeson (CEO, Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation – Atlantic Region) and emcee Betty Ann Vater.
The Tour for the Cure hopes to spread awareness about that and wants to have 85 percent of eligible women in Atlantic Canada screened regularly for breast cancer by 2010. Head down if you get a chance, or even just check out the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation website to see how you can make a difference.
Best of luck to a wonderful cause!
"One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear."
Fitzgerald said one of his University College Dublin classes was exploring how quickly information was transmitted around the globe. His private concern was that, under pressure to produce news instantly, media outlets were increasingly relying on Internet sources — none more ubiquitous than the publicly edited Wikipedia.When he saw British 24-hour news channels reporting the death of the triple Oscar-winning composer, Fitzgerald sensed what he called "a golden opportunity" for an experiment on media use of Wikipedia.
[...]
If anything, Fitzgerald said, he expected newspapers to avoid his quote because it had no link to a source — and even might trigger alarms as "too good to be true." But many blogs and several newspapers used the quotes at the start or finish of their obituaries.
Wikipedia spokesman Jay Walsh said he appreciated the Dublin student's point, and said he agreed it was "distressing so see how quickly journalists would descend on that information without double-checking it."
by J. Butler, Content Development Specialist
As of this year, Birmingham City University will be offering a one-year Master's program priced at about £4,400 ($7838.87 in Canadian dollars).
The subject matter? Social Media.
It's no joke. Students will be able to perfect their netiquette in exchange for university credits. Arguably, most students spend a generous portion of time they should be studying on Facebook or YouTube, so it seems like a time-saver to simply surf the web for the sake of academics (ha ha). Students enlisted in the program will be taught the ins and outs of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Bebo, as well as how to maintain a blog and produce podcasts and other media projects.
Course convener Jon Hickman calls the courseload "very relevant and very scholarly," exploring "the techniques of social media, consider the development and direction of social media as a creative industry, and will contribute new research and knowledge to the field."Social media will be studied through an intensely academic eye, with a focus on scholarly research and critical analysis. Hickman feels the course holds a great deal of appeal for students, particularly those intent on entering fields like journalism or PR.
While many already in the industry have lauded the course for focusing on the scholarly aspects of social media (without any limited focus on results or metrics), the question remains: is it worth putting in that much time, money and effort for the program, especially when you consider the practical experience you lose by being in school? As Dan Thornton from Way of the Web so succinctly points out:
Certainly anyone already established in a social media role at a managerial level should be able to tick pretty much all the boxes the MA aims to deliver - and are those roles going to be offered to those graduating the course, or people more like myself who spent time in journalism and publishing, gaining additional experience in marketing and social media, before making the switch?
In addition, some students have complained the coursework is too basic, as many of those enrolled have been self-taught for years. Some critics derisively call the programs a "Master's in Facebook." But, I've heard of plenty of new, experimental college courses in my time, and enrolled in even more of them (including one on comic books, one on the philosophy of modern horror films and a course in circus stunts) and more often than not, they get off to a wobbly start. Usually all these wobbly starts levels out and the course either works, or it doesn't. If the course is truly a worthwhile "academic exploration of communication," as Hickman says, then it will surely survive the criticism once it finds its stride.
See It Here: The Birmingham City University MA in Social Media
A hummingbird’s neck is structured like a bucket holding liquids that slosh back and forth to stabilize its head. Because it evolved this way, the bird has an adaptive advantage to find flowers and food that other animals can’t reach.This accidental discovery was observed not by human eyes, but through the lens of a super high-speed camera. It’s just one example of interesting phenomena revealed when video is played back in extreme slow motion. The hummingbird clip appeared in an episode of Time Warp, a show whose premise is to make the ordinary extraordinary with one trick: slowing it down.“We’ve evolved for 5 billion years just to do what we needed to do to be alive … and we can see 30 to 50 things a second,” said Jeff Lieberman, co-host of Time Warp. “With high-speed cameras we can see a million things a second, and we’re looking at everyday things and seeing an entire world that exists underneath.”Typically costing upward of $100,000, high-speed cameras are capable of shooting at amazingly high frame rates, stretching a single second into minutes of super slow-motion playback. In order to achieve this feat, each of these cameras draws its powers from a unique, highly advanced complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) — or, in simpler terms, an extremely beefed-up pixel sensor. The cameras were designed for military testing, scientific research and other industry applications.
A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time. The goats are herded with the help of Jen, a border collie. It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers.
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