Nick has posted his analysis on Google’s First Click Free . This free service allows the content providers to participate into it and promote their content by making the first click free when users discover the content via Google and subsequently enforce registration or subscription for the rest of the content.

I think this is a great idea! I am personally against the walled garden approach and do not believe in registrations and subscriptions just because content providers haven’t managed to convince me so far to register or subscribe to for their content. This is a great opportunity for the publishers to showcase their content by making the first link free, demonstrate the value proposition, and drive traffic towards the paid content.

The discussion on the service has so far centered around:

• Google making other search engine’s users second-class citizens and not sticking to an unmediated role.
• Users’ ability to trick the content providers to get access to all the pages by acting as if the request is coming from a Google bot

I do not buy into the criticism around Google’s unmediated role. No one is stopping the other search engines to build a similar service and work with the content providers. Though I would expect Google to somehow differentiate the first click free content from the always free content on the search results so that users don’t feel that they are being tricked.

I also do not buy into the argument that users can trick the content providers by faking the request as if it is coming from a Google bot. Google can very easily solve this technological challenge to ensure that only the Google bot and no one else gets access to all the free content.

As much as I appreciate and value this service I suspect that the many publishers won’t get it. I hope publishers don’t ask Google to pay for the traffic instead of being happy that Google is sending them the traffic. I also see a challenge and an opportunity for the publishers to redesign their website to convert the first free click into a registration, subscription, or a future visit.

With the current turmoil plaguing our economic markets, companies are increasingly looking for effective ways to cut costs and increase revenue. What type of strategies will enable companies to survive today and allow companies to prosper tomorrow?

As the economy continues to suffer, many people try to adjust for the times by cutting back on their own spending. This poses problems for companies looking to expand and reach out to more customers. The worsening economy causes people to reel in their spending and cut down on their expenses. Businesses must recognize this trend and adapt to the changing consumer market. Companies who dedicate a major portion of their expenditures towards attracting and advertising to new customers will probably not be very successful in the current economic conditions.

The most successful companies in economic turmoil are those who adopt the right strategy. Maintaining and building up existing customer relationships leads to a solid customer base and much more stable revenue. This could not only help your company survive now, but also helps your company prosper in the future. Building up existing customer relationships lead to more loyal customers that can be pivotal in the growth of your company in the future. How a company chooses to manage their customer relationships is key to determining how successful the company will be not only now, but in the future as well.

It is much cheaper to maintain a customer relationship rather than try to build a new one. Keeping existing customers is much more cost effective than it is to attract newer customers. But, what can companies do now to maintain these existing customer relationships?

CRM Software aids companies by providing the tools necessary to effectively maintaining existing customer relationships. Although companies may choose to cut back on expenditures during this tough period, it may be wise to re-look at your existing CRM strategy. Is the current CRM solution doing the job? How are customers reacting to their customer experience now? What other features do you feel are missing from your current CRM Software?

Investing in the right CRM solution can be the difference between keeping and losing customers. There are many advantages to having the right CRM solution available for your company. Some of the benefits your company can enjoy by choosing the right CRM solution are:

- Streamlined Business Processes
- Improved Customer Service leading to strong Customer Relationships
- Improved Accuracy and Efficiency of employees
- Reporting Tools to help better gauge company performance.

Technorati Tags: , CRM Strategy, Economic Survival Tips, SMB Strategy

IT is now an integral part of any business and can be aligned with a business’ success.

This success is not necessarily in sales terms, although a system offering competitive advantage to a client relationship could create just that, but generally more in efficiency and support.

The opposite is also true in that an IT disaster could bring down a business.

All this establishes that IT is important to the business – but does everybody in your organisation understand and support that? Do people in the business know where IT is going?

We as CIOs and IT leaders need to find a way to let the business know what IT is doing and why.

From an IT point of view it is often difficult selling this ‘vision’. In particular it can be hard to overcome the language barrier when communicating with the business so conversations can be held at the right level to engage colleagues across the organisation.

With this in mind and struggling myself to find a solution, I carried out a survey with a few colleagues to get some advice about what has worked for them.

From that research the following key considerations in creating an IT vision came out:

• Base the decisions for what is included in the IT vision on hard business facts and metrics
• Understand the challenges the business faces and link the IT vision to them
• Involve the business in the creation of the IT vision
• Get business sponsorship of the vision as early as possible
• Avoid discussion of technology and concentrate on business outcomes and events
• Keep the timeframe within a 12-36 month period
• Quantify the impact of adoption of particular programmes or technologies in terms of cost, risk and benefit
• Avoid terminology in explaining the vision
• Consider a range of options and communicate these
• Summarise with a high level road map for IT

These considerations told me the creation of the vision is the important part, in which the business must be fully engaged and which must reflect the business position. It confirms what many people have been talking about – I guess we have known for ages that IT must be aligned to the business if it is to be successful.

Following these considerations gives us an aligned vision with business involvement, support and sponsorship and therefore a solid foundation. But it is important the vision is communicated to the many not just the few.

Here are some areas for consideration in communicating the vision across your organisation.

For the content of your communication:

• Create an elevator speech
• Create a business-like presentation using Flash (not just PowerPoint) to make it interesting and interactive
• Remember the points from creation (avoid terminology/ concentrate on outcomes)

For delivering the vision:

• Involve a business sponsor in the delivery to show support
• Go on road shows
• Hold one-to-one meetings with key players – keep your pitch succinct
• Speak at departmental meetings
• Send out emails with your presentation
• Create a web 2.0 portal for your colleagues to view
• Start a poster campaign around the office
• Set up an ‘IT vision booth’ in a common area such as the office cafe or canteen

Whichever path is chosen we need to remember that the IT vision is a living programme and not a one-off delivery – and therefore needs regular communication to let people know how it is going. It should also be reviewed at least annually.

One final point in having done all this is: did it work?

To find out, you could ask colleagues to relate the vision back to you. But I think you will know if it’s working. When the general credibility of IT rises and the business starts getting involved in strategic discussions at an early stage, you will know you have arrived.

It’s almost Nov 4th and we have record voter turnout for early voting. While all of this is fine and dandy, I wonder if there is auditing in place on voters, when and where they voted etc, and are there checks and balances in place on ensuring no voter fraud occurs. If not, the next president will need to make that a US Government CIO’s task to be implemented. We being a largely advanced nation in terms of technology cannot afford to be ignorant about this.

This election as such is historic enough already and we do not want additional attractions added to the same. The rest of the world is watching us.

Windows 7 Pre-Beta Release – Pic From Gizmodo

Yesterday at their Professional Developer Conference 2008 event, Microsoft gave users and journalists a first public look at Windows 7, their next operating system following the much-maligned Vista.

Rather than try to talk about an operating system I haven’t used yet – ahem, Microsoft Press Division … over here [waves] – here’s a round up of comments from other websites in a ever-so-handy single place:

Wilson Rothman at Gizmodo published a load of pictures as well as start-up and shut-down comparison videos between Vista and W7. Wilson’s review? Optimistic.

For now, we should just be happy that Windows 7 appears to be on the right track. You can almost look at consumer-level Windows—that is, 95, 98, Me, XP, Vista and Win 7—like the first six Star Trek movies: They pretty reliably alternate between crap and quality. All I can say is, screw the Final Frontier, and hellloooo, Undiscovered Country.

ActiveWin has posted 40 screenshots as well as a 25 page extremely comprehensive review. Their conclusion?

It’s safe to say I am overwhelmed, overjoyed and most of all excited about Windows 7. This is the release of Windows everybody has been waiting for, it’s what Vista was meant to be and beyond that. Windows 7 puts the user first; it’s about going back to the fundamentals of what an operating system must do.

Ed Bott over at ZDnet.com has posted his review of Windows 7, although he writes after seeing a demo of W7 the previous Sunday, not at the PDC.

This interesting titbit Ed wrote caught my eye (bolded for emphasis) …

At the end of the day, they loaned me a sleek new Lenovo X300 notebook running a recent build of the OS so that I could test Windows 7 for myself.

I’m using that loaner PC to compose this post, but I can’t use several of the key Windows 7 features that I saw over the weekend. The problem? My test machine is running the M3 release of Windows 7, build 6801, which was locked down more than six weeks ago in preparation for distribution at PDC. The demos I saw on Sunday were using more recent builds (6926 and 6933, according to ID tags on the desktop), which contain some significant revisions to core Windows features.

So, was the version Ed saw the same as the one Microsoft revealed at PDC2008?

Hmm … anyway,you can also get more information and read the keynotes from the source, at Microsoft’s PDC website here: http://www.microsoftpdc.com

That lot should keep you busy for a little while. Gourge yourself, my friend.