News, opinions and advice on marketing and the rapidly evolving media landscape.
I admit to not understanding many of the intricacies of high finance. After all, I studied Arts at university (and even began a PhD in US presidential history, before escaping with a pulse). They don’t tend to teach futures trading and shorting 101 between civil war battles and Nietzsche. Now, with the advent of online…
A few months back I wrote about FreeRice.com, an online word definition game run by the UN’s World Food Programme, which donates 20 grains of rice to needy people around the globe for every word correctly defined by users. Since then, several people have told me that they made FreeRice their homepage and spend the…
With the recent boom in online viral marketing through sites such as YouTube and Facebook, many people seem to have forgotten that word-of-mouth is actually the oldest form of marketing. Sure, cavemen weren’t able to upload videos of themselves vanquishing upstart rivals at the point of a club, but you can bet your last Pterodactyl…
“Hey, I can see my house from here!” Google Maps, already one of my favourite web services, today became even more useful for Australian users with the introduction of the Street View feature. Great swathes of this vast continent, previously only visible on Google Maps from satellite imagery, can now be viewed at street level…
“Hey, I can see my house from here!” Google Maps, already one of my favourite web services, today became even more useful for Australian users with the introduction of the Street View feature. Great swathes of this vast continent, previously only visible on Google Maps from satellite imagery, can now be viewed at street level…
Whether you seek answers to the meaning of life or hourly updates on Angelina Jolie’s weight, the right information in this digital age is never more than a few clicks away. Until very recently, most of us had to settle for an education within reach – a local school, a municipal library, perhaps a fortunate…
It’s the new disruptive business model. And it’s coming to a business near you… faster than a speeding bullet! Caveat Emptor. Buyer beware. Customers are taught to be sceptical at an early age. Every purchase requires a decision, a conscientious choice, even when the purchase price is less than pocket change. But what happens if…
Are you looking for instant customer feedback and ideas to improve your product or service? What about a free focus group with a targeted set of customers? Do you want to increase positive customer referrals? Do you want to lead the online discussion in your industry? If the answer is ‘yes’, then it’s time to…
So you’re pretty sure your website or blog is free of spelling errors. Wait, don’t tell me… you got an A in spelling from your grade seven English teacher, right? Australian digital marketing company Melon Media is betting that even the most polished websites contain at least a few spelling groaners.
Sick of sitting through tedious events (oh, I don’t know, say, ones where the speakers repeatedly define “innovation”) and then wishing there was some way to claw back those lost hours, even days? The sixth instalment of The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference, held in late May, was about as close as…
The digital world has made it both easier and more difficult to track new innovation. Easier because almost everyone has the ability to broadcast their genius to a global audience. More difficult because this creates quite a din. Part of Anthill‘s mission is to perform some of the filtering for you, largely for the Australian…
You might have already contributed to our ongoing Magazine 2.0 experiment, where we are inviting readers to nominate insightful tips for starting a business (the best will be published in each issue of Anthill). To complement these “168 start-up tips”, this week we are featuring a terrifically useful blog post by Jason Nazar containing links…
Something a bit different this week. At Anthill, we’re keen advocates of great design as a gateway to untapped creativity. We place immense emphasis on the design of our finished product (something Australian business magazines traditionally have not prioritised) and it’s something we take time to appreciate in the work of others. So it was…
So you’re worried that your new product name might prove to be commercial Kryptonite? Or perhaps you just want to share your genius for naming products and earn some extra cash. A new web service harnesses the wisdom of crowds to suggest and rate product/business names for you. It’s 48-hour pre-market research with a US$99…
For developers of new products and services, accurate feedback is worth its weight in gold. That’s why corporations spend billions of dollars on market testing and feedback channels. Now, a new web-based service allows any business or organisation to simply and effectively solicit feedback from customers, track which requests are most popular and implement those…
It’s been a tough ride for the online crowd, but things are finally moving again, thanks to broadband uptake, new technologies and a bootstrapping ethos that never really died. We chatted to four of our leading internet entrepreneurs about the state of web 2.0 in Australia.
It’s been a tough ride for the online crowd, but things are finally moving again, thanks to broadband uptake, new technologies and a bootstrapping ethos that never really died. We chatted to four of our leading internet entrepreneurs about the state of web 2.0 in Australia.
While mainstream print media circulation figures decline, niche publications continue to sprout from nowhere like mushrooms in a sodden field. As long as there is an audience, publishers will keep churning out the content. We asked three independent publishing entrepreneurs how they seized their patch of turf.
It was an outrage. In March, celebrity US blogger Arrianna Huffington caused a squall of controversy when she cobbled together quotes criticising the Iraq war from various articles and interviews with George Clooney, gained approval from Clooney’s publicist and ran the post on thehuffingtonpost.com under Clooney’s name, with a few of her own words tossed in for good measure. It was perceived as an assault on the central tenets of journalistic professionalism and drew fire from many quarters (leading to her qualified apology when the great man arced up). But The Huffington Post is a blog, not a newspaper of record, and Ms Huffington had as many defenders as accusers during the affair.
It was an outrage. In March, celebrity US blogger Arrianna Huffington caused a squall of controversy when she cobbled together quotes criticising the Iraq war from various articles and interviews with George Clooney, gained approval from Clooney’s publicist and ran the post on thehuffingtonpost.com under Clooney’s name, with a few of her own words tossed in for good measure. It was perceived as an assault on the central tenets of journalistic professionalism and drew fire from many quarters (leading to her qualified apology when the great man arced up). But The Huffington Post is a blog, not a newspaper of record, and Ms Huffington had as many defenders as accusers during the affair.
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