Can someone please think outside the box?

A partial casualty of the recent Hillsborough County budget cuts is our public access station, known also as Speak Up Tampa Bay or the Tampa Bay Community Network.

When I read the St Pete Times article, "Group sues as TV fund is cut" in early October I was very aggravated by the complete lack of innovation our growing government is enabling by funding some non-profits.

My commentary on the article that day:

With outlets today such as YouTube and the numerous other places to post video for free online there is no longer a need for the government to underwrite public access. Private industry has done so on its own and in a far better way.

A good topic can go a lot further on YouTube then a fixed programming schedule on subscriber based cable. Public access is a dinosaur of technology and TBCN should try to innovate rather then sue.

TBCN's take of course is that this is censorship of the community's public access. This is completely untrue however, as many of us know that the blogoshere in Tampa Bay went nuts during the recent EPC uproar and a certain YouTube video got more views then any recent TBTN broadcast.

So tell me again is the public being denied access to get a message out?

No, TBCN is just another non-profit too used to government funding and unwilling to innovate.

Did you know that if a citizen had an issue today it could take a month or more for them to get that message out via TBCN? While uploading and emailing a video on YouTube is free and instant.

Please don't give me the "put its not free" talk because I could work at WalMart less hours for pay and an employee discount to buy my own camera, then the volunteer hours TBCN would require to get my message out. Unless of course they agreed with me then it would be instant.

SEO Practices: Flash Websites

A discussion I regularly have with clients, potential clients and other website designers is how they can make their site(s) better with Flash.

Especially on the client side because they would love to have an intro movie that really highlighted their company before bringing the visitor to the actual website home page.

By default I suggest not creating a complete Flash website or even a Flash intro. Instead I suggest they use Flash sparing as on-page accents.

Supporting Points

Complete Flash websites are very cumbersome to design, difficult to update and extremely expensive to have developed if quality is one of your concerns. Flash websites are also make SEO more difficult and expensive as well, usually requiring a complete HTML website also to be built. They are best suited for the websites of movies and pop stars that have the budgets to support site creation and mass media advertising to drive traffic directly.

Flash Intros are short movie type presentations that highlight the great points of a company visually before bringing you to the regular HTML website. Problems posed by intros are long load times and customer dissatisfaction proven through the high use of the "skip flash intro" button that should accommodate any site with an intro.

This article from Idaho State University, Office of Web Communications gives some good supporting arguments to the above points.

My typical suggestion of using Flash as on-page accents is well supported by this Google Webmaster Central Blog.

Try to use Flash only where it is needed. Many rich media sites such as Google's YouTube use Flash for rich media but rely on HTML for content and navigation. You can too, by limiting Flash to on-page accents and rich media, not content and navigation. In addition to making your site Googlebot-friendly, this makes you site accessible to a larger audience, including, for example, blind people using screen readers, users of old or non-standard browsers, and those on limited low-bandwidth connections such as on a cell phone or PDA. As a bonus, your visitors can use bookmarks effectively, and can email links to your pages to their friends.

SEO & Flash Sites/Intros

In addition to all of the above arguments when considering the creation of an all Flash site or even just an intro you must consider that even if you get the site to rank well for desired keywords, that in doing so the site visitors that you get would never see the Flash site or intro.

So the visitors you are seeking will completely miss all of the time, energy and money that was spent on the Flash work.

Why is this so?

When someone searches to find something the search engine results do not direct the visitor to the home page (in the case of a site using an intro) or the Flash version (in the case of a full Flash site).

Take this Google search for, Constant Contact Tampa. In the results Dynamic Creations shows up (at the time of writing) on the first page with a link.

Notice however that the link directs people to the Internet Marketing page and not my homepage.

Had I had a Flash intro this visitor would never see it. Had the site been completely Flash the visitor would have not only have missed the Flash site, but would have been directed to the HTML site which likely would not have received the same design attention as the Flash version.

The nightmare Sprint's business customers will face next week...

I've been anticipating the news and got my first bite this morning courtesy of an Associated Press article, New Sprint Ads To Highlight Clients' Need For Speed about Sprint Nextel's new spot coming out this Friday in theaters and then begin airing Sunday on television.

The article continues with Michelle Emerson, vice president of brand for Reston, Va.-based Sprint Nextel Corp., stating "the initial ads will get consumers to see speed as important, and subsequent ads will show how Sprint Nextel's network and devices can make that speed work for them in terms of music and movie downloads and instantaneous Internet browsing."

Now the paragraph just before this changing the consumer's priority statement by Emerson highlights surveys by David Chamberlain, wireless analyst for In-Stat, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based research group.

'If your most compelling feature is measured in bits per second, it's not
very compelling,' said Chamberlain, 'I think if you're looking at the consumer
market, speed doesn't have much to offer. I've done surveys, and 60 percent of
the population say they just want a phone.'

Based on the initial article this morning I had a feeling that my previous posts on the subject might be on target.

A late evening check of Adweek gave me confirmation... Telco Tries to 'Sprint Ahead' With Goodby's 1st Work. You can view the ad directly here.

Tim Kelly, Sprint's CMO, stated "This advertising taps in to how customers wants to experience service and brings emotion much more into it than we had in past."

The written description of the first spot highlights the biggest issue I feel the company has as a brand.

In "Dreams," a series of artists creates simple artistic images, such as jump
ropes and stars, out of flashlights on a darkened street. As a narrator talks
about a magic screen holding your favorite music, pictures and stories,
additional images made of light continue to play across the screen. It ends with
the tagline, "Sprint ahead."

There is not one benefit or feature directed to the majority of Sprint's customer base that were Nextel business customers and most likely a large portion last months first quarter report stating a loss of 220,000 high-quality customers who pay their bills at the end of the month and typically spend more.

The ads will be out and so will the jury on this one, but my prediction is there is no "dream" in store for Sprint's business customers.

I'm just too busy to do anything for the community...

So its another Monday almost exactly a month later and I read another article pointing out how apathetic (or maybe just plain pathetic) my generation has handled volunteering.

Today's Tampa Tribune article, Longtime Service Club Calling It Quits, sites "Many younger men don't want the commitment of weekly meetings" according to Kiwanis Club of Palma Ceia-Westshore club President Dan Moore, 73. The club is down to six members now.

Of course maybe there are additional reasons that this particular club has not been able to recruit young members but the overall trend of non-involvement certainly contributes to the problem.

The case can be made that we all have busier lives with more hectic jobs and far more personal commitments than in years past but that does not mean that we don't have any time. I personally know of too many people in my generation who commit absolutely ZERO time and energy to anything relating to the community.

Many of us will work through lunch day after day for no measurable bonus but rather just because it is the "norm" now instead of taking that hour and applying it to something useful...

UPDATE 5/30/07:
I highly doubt the Tampa Tribune is using my blog for editorial suggestions (yet) but I found today's opinion, Trading Kiwanis For 'American Idol', on the subject to be right on track.

Sprint Ahead... of a fast sinking ship?

An Advertising Age article today, Sprint Nextel CMO Mark Schweitzer Resigns, does not come as a surprise. However I find it odd that they give absolutely no reason for Schweitzer's departure.

Could it be he is jumping ship before new ad campaigns by Goodby prove to be entertaining but not convincing enough to help the brand?

I'm getting a Realty Check, Tampa Bay!

I received in the mail this week the official Participant Guidebook for the Realty Check Tampa Bay exercise I am participating in next Friday the Tampa Convention Center.

The guide book is a step by step how to for the event with a great deal of background information on the exercise as well as Tampa Bay's growth projections as compared to other cities.

The exercise will basically produce Lego enhanced zoning maps that show the Tampa Bay region's future population and job distribution as decided by the team of 8-10 people assembled at each table.

The teams will use red Lego's (commercial) and yellow Lego's (residential) to "build out" the Tampa Bay region. The height of the stacks of Lego's will designate the density of any one square mile on the map.

Interestingly Reality Check's exercise occurring just after the State Legislature's creation of the Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority.

Ironically though Tampa Bay was defined differently by the two with Reality Check leaving out Citrus and including Polk counties while TBARTA included Citrus County with Polk County voluntarily opting out of the group.

Part of the Reality Check exercise is to designate new and/or improved transit and roadway corridors through the region which means the map does not equally match what the new authority will be overseeing.

Personally I don't think it will be much of an issue though. In all reality considering the proximity to Orlando and Tampa Bay the post likely plan for Polk County will be to build whatever future required link between the two metropolitans is needed, (most likely in the I-4 corridor).

The variable will be in weather or not Tampa Bay and Orlando build systems that can be linked... i.e. we build light rail they build tri-rail.

What is Sprint Nextel thinking?

Here's a follow up on my favorite brand mis-match. Today in my AAF SmartBrief, I notice a banner ad for Sprint together with NEXTEL.

So following up on my mention from last month, I guess that Mark Schweitzer, Sprint's chief marketing officer has so much confidence in Goodby that the company now plans to chase customers away with targeted advertising.

There is a quote in the CNET News.com article Advertising seeps into the cell phone from Lowell McAdam, chief operating officer of Verizon Wireless that Sprint Nextel, who according to the article "will be the first of the four major U.S. carriers to move in this direction", should heed as a warning.

"We are being careful about jumping into advertising," Lowell McAdam, chief operating officer of Verizon Wireless, said during a panel at the CTIA show. "People view their cell phones as their personal space, more so than their PC. If they get an ad they don't want to view, that is a violation."

Why in the world would Sprint Nextel think that this might be a even a slightly good idea?

The company is consistently losing market share, has no brand identity, zero customer loyalty and are just plain fun to beat up on as a brand and company. Being the first in the industry to show ads to its subscribers is certainly not an area of business they should be focusing on.