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Almost a beacon of the success of the internet and especially the sharing web, TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a global set of conferences owned and organised by US based non-profit organisation Sapling Foundation. Formed to disseminate “ideas worth spreading” in 1984 it was originally a one-off event. The rise of the internet however, made that concept much in demand across the glob. An annual conference began in 1990 with the early emphasis on technology and design, it was after all founded in the Silicon Valley.

Now TED talks are a global phenomena that cover a full range of topics, many of which are like gold-dust to the would be entrepreneur or want to be business person. Since June 2006, TED talks have been free to view online and the ever expanding database of short presentations have been watched over one billion times worldwide to a truly global audience. There are hundreds even thousands that will inspire and motivate those looking to be a success in business but here’s six of the best we have come across covering a range of topics, from self-improvement, to proven strategies and even what may be the next big thing.

Rachel Botsman: The currency of the new economy is trust

Reputation is your most valuable asset in the modern world says author and innovation consultant. Building your start-up, using the social web is all about using the power of technology to develop trust between strangers. In the age of social sharing we are likely to become more connected and aware of each others feelings, actions and judgments, basing our own decisions on them – empowering people to make meaningful connections.
Filmed June 2012.

Richard St. John: 8 secrets of success

Why do people succeed? Analyst Richard St. John condenses 7 Years and 500 interviews into a 3-minute slideshow on the real secrets of success that while over 8 years old now, still rings true today.
Filmed February 2005

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

Simon Sinek released the book “Start With Why” in 2009 and later that year filmed this TedTalk explaining the ‘Golden Circle’ – the What, How and Why you do what you do. Inspired leaders he says begin their communication from the inside out: beginning with Why. As a successful business “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”.
Filmed September 2009

Robert Neuwirth: The power of the informal economy

As research for his new book, “Stealth of Nations,” Robert Neuwirth spent four years going across the globe and living among street vendors, smugglers and “informal” import/export firms. The scavengers earn far less than any minimum wage and are frowned upon by the majority of the developed world, but, says Neuwirth, the challenge for the global economy is to engage and empower those who live and work in them, we can learn much from them
Filmed June 2012

Dan Pink: The puzzle of motivation

Once a speech writer to former US Vice President Al Gore, now a career analyst and a failed lawyer, Dan Pink believes the traditional corporate belief of rewards like bonuses and commissions improving an individuals performance, are flawed.
Filmed July 2009

Amy Cuddy – Your body language shapes who you are

Even if you operate online, there will come a time when you need to speak face to face, yet even when speaking on the phone, your posture influences the way you speak. It’s not just nonverbal communication that can affect how other people, author and social psychologist Amy Cuddy believes it is more than just a factor affecting transaction with others, it also affects how you think and feel about yourself.
Filmed June 2012
That’s just six. Do you have your own favourites? Let us know.

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Trending on YouTube is becoming something of a goal for brands and individuals alike. The celebrity craving in the modern era is beaten only by corporate ad teams striving to prove their worth and have a little fun alongside it.

This week saw the latest of these with Three Mobile releasing their TV campaign of a dancing Shetland Pony coupled with Fleetwood Mac’s song Everywhere. The promoted tweet hashtag #DancePonyDance trended on Twitter and the video
trended on YouTube almost immediately and thousands flocked to the ‘make your own’ micro-site and shared their own versions of the dancing pony. People certainly know about the campaign – although how many actually know the precise brand it is related to will be much in debate. Maybe it was an oversight or perhaps a double bluff but the lyrics of the well known song used in the ad include#; “Can you hear me calling out your name?” not exactly a great message for a mobile service. The lyrics also go on to repeat the catchy line “I wanna be with you everywhere”. A strange choice for mobile operator Three, when their nearest rivals recently re-branded to Everything Everywhere. So perhaps brand awareness / brand association isn’t as important as many of us think. Virality is the key and from there, you get more hits, more backlinks, better SEO and hopefully better paying traffic too.

So making a viral video is the thing to do, but how do you do it and what works? Here’s 6 styles of viral videos that seem to get results.

1. Celebrity

If your budget can stretch to it, just like in a glossy print ad, having a known-name – preferably with their own big social media following – either presenting or just appearing as a cameo in your video is a sure fire win to see it become highly shareable. At the turn of the year David & Victoria Beckham – no strangers to being the celebrities in a viral video themselves – saw their 10-year-old son Romeo enter the viral charts as the star of this ad for Burberry.

2. Gadgets and technology

We all remember the Honday car advert “The Cog” from TV with the chain reaction of the car parts. Well the longer online version of that machinery domino effect still racks up regular new hits in YouTube too. Maybe it is just a male thing, or perhaps the geeks who drive the internet forward, but engineering, gadgets and demonstration of technology are regular winners in the viral video world. Frequently shared with simple one sentence comments such as “Amazing”, “OMG” and “Love this”, bits of metal turning and whirring is a proven crowd-pleaser, like this Oreo separator machine video.

3. Surprise

Not necessarily for the viewer but for the people in the video. Using real people as the stars, T-mobile have pretty much owned the flash-mob video in recent years – train stations, airport arrivals lounges etc. The art of using actors and a scripted scene but in a public place where the surprise on those not in on the concept is a sure-fire way to engage with your audience and grab those watching it. Coca-Cola did a similar candid-camera style viral with this Happiness Machine.

4. Cute and heart-warming

Dogs, cats and now tiny horses appear to be able to do no wrong. While the old adage in entertainment is never to work with children or animals, you only have to flick through viral video charts, YouTube listings or even watch TV to see that the reverse is true in the advertising world. Bottled water manufacturers Evian gave us dancing babies a couple of years ago and cute kids, or tots being mischevious are a regular engagement tool both online and in the traditional media. The Three Mobile #danceponydance video campaign is not the first and surely won’t be last of cute animals and CGI technology being blended to push a brand.

5. The story

This approach is nothing new to advertising. The OXO family and the Nescafe Gold Blend ads on TV, outlived some real soap operas. Heineken’s “The Candidate” is already well past 2.4 million views in just under two weeks and while it has relevance to the brand’s sponsorship of the UEFA Champions League, it’s appeal is more comedy and the story of living your dreams than the sale of beer. It has no doubt had a big impact on brand awareness and association of this brand with one of football’s biggest competitions too, so as a return on investment it has probably more than done its job.

6. Piggy-backing a trend / Meme

The concept of the Meme also is not new. The idea that a behavior or style can spread from person to person within a culture was previously used mainly as a reference to religion, then came the viral internet. Now internet memes are cultural phenomena that spread beyond even the online world. The YouTube sensation to re-create Harlem Shake has done more for Trap Music than any TV appearance ever could, sparking over 100,000 imitations, totalling a billion views – all inside a single month. New York DJ Baauer’s song Harlem Shake has reached audiences he could never have expected. Memes take virality a step further, than just liking or sharing, they need actual creation of an imitating product (such as a video, picture, song, etc). While a few touched on Psy’s Gangnam Style, Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe and Gotye’s Somebody I Used to Know last year, in 2013 Harlem Shake has gripped a wider cross-section of people and begun impacting on the corporate world too. The ability to copy the concept quickly and simply has helped, with Manchester City FC even launching their own version.

Have you tried to create a viral video? How do you create a viral success? Let us know.

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We’ve highlighted the SEO value in YouTube before, as the second largest search engine in the world, you are fool not to be featuring your brand, but it appears few people know about a YouTube feature that not only expands your reach but can also improve your SEO.

For every video uploaded you have probably optimised the description and Keywords fields but have you used every tool available?

YouTube has a helpful transcription facility designed to help you reach out to the hearing-impaired audience but which also acts a great SEO tool too. YouTube’s closed captioning service can literally put words to the pictures as they appear in the video.

The machine transcription system effectively works via voice recognition and actually is not one of the most accurate of its ilk but even the experts appear to have been stumped at creating total accuracy in this field. However, the automated processing can be easily overridden and edited, so spending a few extra minutes can make your transcription word perfect and the effort will bring a big boost to your organic search.

Here’s how to use the tool:

1. Upload and save your video to your YouTube channel

Remember to include an engaging headline, relevant keywords and a full description of what your video is about

2. Use YouTube’s Machine Transcription

Once your video uploads select it from your list of videos and click click the edit link. Next click on the Captions and Subtitles tab. You should now be presented with “Available Caption Tracks” with a checkbox beside “English: Machine Transcription”. Click the download button and let the system work it’s magic.

You may be presented with the following message “Machine Transcription is available for the videos in this Channel. To enable Machine Transcription for this video, please ‘Request Processing’. We will try our best to get some results in a few days.”. In which case click the “Request processing” button and allow the system time to try to carry out  the transcription.

3. Edit your transcription

Once you have transcription you can download the same and edit it in any text editor. You can amend any errors and typos and event arrange the correct words with the correct video sections. Be careful to ensure the time coding is kept intact and is accurate to the location of that text in the video. You will see the formatting is fairly logical but this is usually the part that creates problems for people.

4. Upload your captions

Once you are happy with the transcript simply upload it to the video under “Add a Caption Track”. Before you set the video live check the captions are in sync and correct by watching the video through. Click the cc symbol on the bottom right of the video screen to kick the captions in. If there are any errors you can easily correct any errors by repeating the process above. If it works send the video along with the captions live.

Now sit back and watch the traffic roll in. As well as providing vital subtitles to the hard of hearing your captions will now provide a transcript for search engines to trawl. It effectviely provides them with a complete catalogue of every word used in the video including any vital keywords. To add extra value download the completed transciption file and save it to your computer. On this version strip out the timecoding references and then use the text to create a blog article to support a page you might embed the video on.

Have you used YouTube captions to good effect?

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If you read our blog of yesterday you will know that we attended the very successful MumpreneurUK annual Conference and Awards over the weekend.

While we were there, we caught up with co-founder Laura Rigney and asked her what MumpreneurUK is all about, why mumpreneurs are overcoming the current economic crisis and what it takes to be a successful mumpreneur.

Don’t forget to check out the other videos on the 123-reg YouTube channel too.

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Regular readers might remember that we’ve mentioned Microsoft’s impressive new games controller, Kinect, before – and might even recall that we gave one away in last year’s Christmas competition.

If you haven’t run into it previously, Kinect differs from other games controllers in that you don’t actually need to hold anything to use it. Using a clever camera and sensor set up, Kinect follows your movements so you can control games with your whole body.

Not just for consoles

Kinect is an advanced piece of kit. And as it has a standard USB connector on the end, it was only a matter of time before someone worked out how to make it work with a standard computer. (The $3,000 bounty that one firm put up can’t have hurt either.)

So, the creation of open source drivers for the Kinect means that if you’re technically-minded, you can buy the kit for a little over £100, plug it in to your computer, then start playing. And that’s where things get really interesting.

The best Kinect hacks

Since those open source drivers were announced, enthusiastic geeks all over the world have been experimenting with Kinect. The results, at times, have been astonishing.

Remember Minority Report, the Tom Cruise film which featured an outlandish ‘wave your hands and it works’ computer interface you’d swear was years away? Well Kinect actually makes this a reality – just check out this video. The bottom of the film shows what Kinect sees – the top shows how the movements translate onto the screen:

(Watch on YouTube instead.)

That’s not all, of course. A quick poke around on YouTube reveals lots of other interesting, clever and quirky hacks. Take this New Scientist video – it includes an unusual glove puppet and a man wearing a virtual bra (well, we did say ‘quirky’):

(Watch on YouTube instead.)

If that’s not satisfied your curiosity, how about a virtual foot-operated piano, like in the classic Tom Hanks film ‘Big’? Or an air guitar, a light sabre, or some lights that you can control by waving your arms like the conductor of an orchestra?

Once you’ve seen a few of these hacks in action, you start to realise that Kinect could have an impact in all sorts of fields – not just gaming. And all the stuff we’ve mentioned here has happened in the few months since November, when Kinect launched.

We can’t wait to see what happens in the months ahead as people start to really push the capabilities of the device. And we wouldn’t be surprised to see Kinect – or its successor – popping up in offices as it proves itself a viable controller for ‘serious’ stuff as well as games.

Have you seen any Kinect hack used for business purposes yet? Let us know

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You’ve probably noticed that this is a particularly sport-filled June. Not only is the football in full-swing, but the annual strawberries-and-creamathon that is Wimbledon has opened its doors too.

Where there’s a big sporting event, you’ll usually find big technology. And Wimbledon has tech in spades. From Hawk-Eye‘s computerised assistance for close line calls to the 41 miles of cable the BBC installs, technology is key to the tournament’s success.

Get Wimbledon on your phone

As you might expect, the organisers of Wimbledon haven’t been slow to jump on the mobile phone bandwagon. Last year they released an application called IBM Seer that allowed people attending the tournament to point their phone’s camera at the match they were watching, and superimpose information onto the screen.

That could be anything from statistics about the players to the location of the nearest bar. Well, you can’t expect a Wimbledon-goer to manage without a glass of Pimms for long, right?

This year’s version takes things further. Apparently, if you’re wandering around the tennis club and hear cheering, you can see video of what’s going on by pointing your phone in the direction of the noise. And you can check queue sizes without leaving your seat.

This video shows the new Wimbledon app in action:

Many people seem to think this sort of augmented reality is the next big thing for mobile phones. And we have to admit, the way it combines what you’re seeing in the real world with information from the internet is pretty cool.

However, we do have two reservations:

• There isn’t much for people who don’t attend the tournament. Yet in our experience, when you’re actually there, watching an exciting sporting event, the last thing you want to do is keep your eyes on a small mobile phone screen.
• It’s going to need a good connection. As football fans will know, the crowds at big events can make it hard to even send and receive text messages, never mind get a connection to watch streaming video. That could make the app a serious source of frustration.

Still, we’ll reserve judgement till we’ve seen it in action.

The IBM Seer app is free. It’s available for iPhones and mobile phones running the Android operating system – you can find it by searching for “IBM Seer” in the iPhone app store or Android Marketplace.

If you’re off to Wimbledon and have a compatible phone, please leave a comment. We’d love to hear how well this works in practice.

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Previously, we looked at how to write good copy for the web. In the latest of our videos, I’ve ventured in front of the camera to give you a quick run-down on writing sales copy. That’s right: how to encourage people to buy from your online shop.

It’s not all about the hard sell: by being honest and offering genuine value to your customers, you can boost sales so you’re happy – and so are they.

Further information:

• We’ve got more advice on writing sales copy and other ways to improve your online shop.
• Copyblogger has a good rundown of the ten timeless persuasive writing techniques.

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Last week we grabbed the camera, balanced it on a chair (really) and filmed a couple more short videos for our series. If you haven’t caught them before, the idea is to give you an introduction to a subject.

In this one, Matt talks about how to build a horizontal navigation bar for your website using lists and CSS instead of tables. Take a look and please leave a comment to let us know what you think. There are some links to more information beneath the video too.

[Edit: Its been brought to my attention I am describing the <li> tag as a "line". <li> in fact means 'list item', oh well.... (Matt)]

The HTML described above:
Create a div area for your navigation and type in your content

<div id = "nav">
<ul>
<li>Home</li>
<li>Blog</li>
<li>Store</li>
</ul>
</div>

In your CSS file create the rules for the “nav” div <li> tags

#nav li {
text-decoration: none;
display: inline;
margin: 5pt;
padding: 1pt;
text-align: center;
color; blue;
background-color: green;
}

#nav li a:hover {
background-color: red;
}
Read the rest of this entry »

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For the second in our series of videos, we’ve filmed a quick introduction to the basic elements the Google robot spiders when it arrives at a website.

Essentially, it explains how search engines find and index your website. Once you’ve watched the video, you can delve deeper with some further reading provided below.

Further reading

• Read about search engine ranking factors on SEOmoz
• Check out the searchenginewatch.com beginners’ guide

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Welcome to the first in a new regular series on our blog… video guides! We’ll try to keep them short and to the point, and more often than not, they’ll be an introduction to a topic providing top level information. The idea is to help get you started and give you some links to find more information about the subject.

The first video is our copywriter, John, providing some insight into writing effective web copy. Please take a quick look, and please do use the comments to let us know what you think. It’s the first time we’ve tried this, so it’s a bit of an experiment for us too!

Further reading:

• Jakob Nielsen has plenty of interesting information about how to write for the way people read online.
• Brian Clark’s Copyblogger blog and Bad Language both have lots of hints and tips.
• Information on web writing from About.com.

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