I mean Youtube movies that are actually functioning websites, in their own right.

These movies are based upon a multi-level website architecture, just like a normal website.

The front-end design (otherwise known as ‘the movie’)  is embedded with navigational elements, just like a normal website.  For example, “About Us” and “Contact Us” buttons are built into the movie itself, which link to other ‘pages’ within the YouTube-based website (these ‘pages’ are actually other movies uploaded to YouTube).

And the end result, is that you can watch, an interact with the YouTube movie, just like a normal website!

If you’re still a little confused, as I was, check out the new YouTube-based ‘website’ for online marketing agency Boone Oakley at the end of this post. Yes, this movie as actually what appears when you key their domain, booneoakley.com, into your browser.

The benefits of using YouTube based websites to communicate your marketing message?

1. Free web-hosting – Uploading movies to YouTube is free

2. Alternative source of  high-quality traffic – YouTube is considered the second biggest search engine…second of course, to Google…however the ‘type’ of traffic on YouTube is generally more engaged than your typical Google web surfer

3. Viral potential – People are more  likely to embed YouTube movie links into their online social portals, such as their Facebook profiles, their Twitter accounts,  and blogs

4. Optimisation and streaming - In comparison to other animated website techniques (such as Flash animations), YouTube movies are optimised during upload to stream as efficiently as possible, so that the end viewer has a pleasant viewing experience

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The other vital consideration you must make, to optimise your website for Google rankings, is to ensure that your content is original. Google does not take kindly to ‘duplicate content’ on the internet (in fact, Google may even penalise your website if it discovers that you are hosting content that is  already wholly or partially displayed on another website).

The question is, with billions upon billions of pages of content now forming the tangled web of information we know as the internet, where do you even start when attempting to determine if your website contains duplicate content?

I’ve recently come across a fantastic tool which can greatly assist, by the name of Copyscape.  Copyscape is an online tool which essentially runs real-time plagiarism tests on your website’s textual content. It will identify and websites who have unlawfully copied content, as well as those websites who have quoted you.

To give you an example of how Copyscape can be used – I recently undertook an experimental project, a website targetted at a holiday niche in California about Laguna Beach hotels.  Copyscape has been incredibly useful for me during the course of this project, as I have been hiring the services of professional copy-writers to write original content for my website.  Since the copy writers are located across the globe, unfortunately there is no possible way of ensuring that they are not literally copying and pasting the content they are supplying me from other websites.  But this is not a problem now that Copyscape is in the picture – all I need to do is upload the content to my site, run the URL through Copyscape’s online duplicate content checker, and any duplicate content issues will be revealed.

Search Engine Optimisation is becoming a vital long term strategy for all business who have a web presence.  The sooner you undertake the analysis of your existing website content, to check for duplicate content within your site and on external websites, the better!   Have a play with Copyscape now.

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…..except that I’ve not actually seen the end product anywhere. Please share your story if you’ve downloaded and/or seen the Doritos application in use.

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Wikipedia has been on my horizon for investigation for quite a while. Quite a few of my digital clients have requested inclusion into Wikipedia, which I concur is a great idea for two reasons:

i) It’s ideal for search engine optimisation, due to its Pagerank and status as a reputable website from a search engine point of view

ii) Wikipedia is increasingly becoming THE reference point for accurate and unbiased information (rather than relying on the opinions of yet another $2 blog)

If you’ve still no idea what a Wiki actually is, the definition on Wikipedia (which I suppose always subject to change according to the rules of a wik)i is:

A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language.^[1][2] Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites.

So you can see why the definition is subject to change, as updating the definitions and information used to describe with a particular word or phrase is the very essence of a wiki.  It is an ever-changing online information portal kept up to date by a community.

I’m currently investigating opensource software solutions to create my own online wiki.  For ease of installation through my web hosting provider, I was going to cut a few corners and select whatever Fantastico had to offer.  The problem is, two options were presented, TikiWiki and phpWiki.  And whenever options are present, trouble looms. Time for what I love most….some research on Google!

My Google search for ‘comparison of wiki software’ actually yielded an ironic result. One of the best comparison matrices I could find on the topic of wiki software comparisons, was on…oh, you just won’t believe it….Wikipedia!   So if you’re interested, this is the Wikipedia comparison of wiki software applications I am referring to.

It’s a matrix, with distastefully bad colour coding, and numbers like ‘v2.4′. I am warning you, it’s nerdy, so don’t take the plunge if you’re eyes aren’t of the square variety.

I’ll continue my investigation into Wiki software and report back with my findings soon. If you have had any experience in with Wiki applications, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Well fear not, My Cool Button is an online web 2.0-style button generator. Just choose your colours, text, size and shape of the button, click “Generate” and you instantly have a web 2.0 button which you can download immediately for use.

Here’s an example of MyCoolButton.com’s capabilities, used on one of my own websites:

The search Australian surfbreaks button from www.shackn.com, created by MyCoolButton.com

If this trend continues, local software on PCs will be a thing of the past.  Already Google has it’s suite of online office application, with various other software providers also following the trend.   Maybe the continual investments in increasing hard-drive capacity will one day be futile, as it seems that we are trending towards an online world that will soon negate the need for us to store software locally!

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