Your Google products will still look and work the same. The privacy update supports the evolution towards a fully integrated suite of Google products that all share your information with the end goal of offering a simple, intuitive experience to users.

The main change will be for Google Accounts. If you’re signed into one Google account, Google will be able to access information from that product and use it to fill in the gaps for another product.

This policy shift is no big surprise as we’ve been noticing a trend towards simpler, more transparent policies globally.

What does this mean for you?

This change promises more personalized search results from a variety of sources. For example, if you search for Thai food in Minneapolis, you’ll not only get results from the web but you’ll also see relevant Google+ posts and photos. So, if someone from one of your circles posted a picture of Pad Thai while they were at Roat Osha, Google will add that photo to your search results.

Google is also suggesting that sharing your information between Google products allows them to offer more helpful feedback. Feedback unique and relevant to you. For example, if you’re taking a trip to Mexico, by sharing more information within Google products, you’ll probably see ads about traveling to Mexico. Google will also be able to auto correct misspelled names or even notify you if you’re going to be late to pick up your kids based on your calendar, your location and what traffic is like. Wow, that’s powerful! Keep in mind you still need to drive your car (at least until the autonomous car is here).

What isn’t changing?

Google is still committed to data liberation and they will not sell your personal information. You still have the ability to turn off certain types of ads and set privacy information within Google+ circles. Whew!

For more information, watch this quick video.

Official Google Privacy Policy

A growing list of internet powerhouses including WikiPedia, Reddit, Craigslist, Mozilla, and WordPress, are coordinating an online protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act. Thousands of sites are already displaying an alert bulletin about SOPA and PROTECT IP, and starting at midnight on January 18th, many sites will display a message about the bills in lieu of their regular content.

SOPA and PROTECT IP are United States legislation designed to give the Department of Justice the ability to pursue and shut down websites that are believed to be involved in illegal activities. Opponents say that the overreaching nature of the bills will place an unreasonable burden on legitimate websites, inhibit free speech, and cripple innovation, all while failing to impact the illegal activity it was designed to prevent. Search engines would be forced to block rogue sites when notified of potentially illegal content, and could also be punished for unknowingly linking to illegal content. Hosting providers, social networks, and content aggregators would be required to constantly review the data their users place on their sites and servers, or face being charged as an accessory to piracy. As Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing wrote,

“Making one link would require checking millions (even tens of millions) of pages. … If we failed to take this precaution, our finances could be frozen, our ad broker forced to pull ads from our site, and depending on which version of the bill goes to the vote, our domains confiscated, and, because our server is in Canada, our IP address would be added to a US-wide blacklist that every ISP in the country would be required to censor.”

After weeks of pressure from tech giants like Microsoft and Google, the White House has indicated it will not the support the bills as they are currently written. However, most sites involved in the protest say the fight is far from over. Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the WikiMedia Foundation, hopes that their blackout will raise awareness of a larger issue. Gardner states,

“The reality is that we don’t think SOPA is going away, and PIPA is still quite active. Moreover, SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem. All around the world, we’re seeing the development of legislation intended to fight online piracy, and regulate the internet in other ways, that hurt online freedoms. Our concern extends beyond SOPA and PIPA: they are just part of the problem. We want the internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone.”

For a complete list of sites going dark on January 18th, visit SOPA Strike.

The new Facebook Timeline profile is now available to anyone who wants it. So, to update? Or not to update? That’s probably your question. To make your decision a little easier, I’ve updated my own profile to learn the ins and outs of Facebook’s newest creation.

I’ll admit, I was feeling daunted by the new profile. It just looks complicated. And, for those of us who don’t spend our every waking hour on Facebook, I was concerned that it was going to take too much of my time to update it. However, after clicking the button to apply the new profile, I was pleasantly surprised. Not only does Facebook give you the option to not publish your new profile for a couple days while you work on it, but the only thing you really have to do to make it look complete is choose a “Cover”. Which, if you’re not too picky, is pretty darn easy. Just select a picture that’s already uploaded to your Facebook or computer, and simply drag it around to fix the positioning.

Now, let’s move on to the stories area. This is where things can get a little tricky, as a lot of time can be spent here. Basically, Facebook has made it easier for you (and your profile viewers) to look back at your entire Facebook history. It even offers yearly highlights: pictures that were posted that year, status updates that received lots of comments, popular shared links, etc. It even gives you a space to upload a picture of you to highlight your birth (feeling uneasy yet?). If you want to add more life events to your profile, such as trips, times you moved, or relationship beginnings/endings, you can click the “Life Events” button that appears in the top right corner when you’ve scrolled down to your stories.

The good news here is that you can pick and choose which kinds of things appear on your timeline. Just click the “Activity Log” button on the top right of your page. From there, you can prevent certain kinds of stories from appearing on your timeline,  and you can delete any of what Facebook deems “Events” from your past Facebook activity.

Now, for those of us who have been on Facebook for many years (6 for me), that’s a lot of stuff to wade through. It also makes me feel a little uncomfortable. If there’s someone creeping on my Facebook profile that I don’t know about, that person can now easily access anything I’ve put on Facebook for the past 6 years. So, here’s my advice:

1. Don’t publish your Facebook Timeline immediately after activating it. First, make sure that any incriminating things from your past that you’ve forgotten about don’t show up in your stories, and choose which kinds of stories you don’t want appearing in general.
2. Check out your security settings. Make sure that your settings are the way you want them to be. In my opinion, only people you’ve authorized as friends should be able to view your entire Timeline.
3. If you’ve chosen the option that only friends can view your stuff, do a friend cleanse. Hey, random person I met 5 years ago and haven’t talked to since then…sorry, but you’re being unfriended.
4. Play around with it! There are lots of things I haven’t mentioned, including “Apps”. Check them out! Perhaps there’s a new fun time-waster just waiting to be discovered.

For more Timeline viewpoints and news, check out Mashable and USA Today. If you’re looking for some inspiration for your Cover, look these examples.

A good infographic can increase traffic to your website.
Since 2008 the number of searches for the term “infographics” has increased exponentially. Infographics can help your company with its social success online. Making your infographic embeddable allows people to share and re-post the image to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. It is also helpful to create social sharing buttons in your infographic that will allow your visitors to easily Tweet or share a link to your site.

Infographics are a great way to build brand identity. As more and more people view and share your infographic they will be sure to notice the brand logo you have appropriately placed within the design. It is also best to use relevant data in your infographic, making it more accessible within search engines.

Lastly, a successful infographic creates alot of links by being shared or adopted by other users. It is easier and more engaging to share an infographic rather than a blog post full of text. It is the propensity to be shared that makes the infographic such a powerful SEO and marketing tool and its visual appeal makes it that much more fun to share. We are, after all, visual creatures.

Brothers and sisters the infographic is not dead! Viva la infographic!


Check out Arcstone’s infographic work!

Infographics for Barrett Moving and Storage, Meshbesher & Spence, and Gassen.

The biggest complaint I hear from my professional and personal networks regarding social media is that it is not news to have had a Coke today or to be enjoying the sunshine. I have to agree most Social Media items are not newsworthy (unless you didn’t know it was sunny out).

In our current society, it seems as though individuals have lost the ability to self edit (to know when not to share). It is important that your business knows how to do this and does it well. Want to lose your followers on Facebook or Twitter, stop editing yourself or edit yourself too much and stop having anything to say at all. Your audience wants clear, concise, pertinent information that is meaningful to them. Your followers want to hear from you or they will stop being your followers. Balance is essential.

Before posting anything on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube (well, maybe not YouTube) ask yourself a few simple questions about the content. Who are you writing for (who cares)? What is the point? How does it effect who cares? When is it going to effect those who care? If you can’t come up with a compelling answer for any of these questions, consider not posting until you do have the answers or direction.

I have contemplated whether or not to toss my old Journalism text books because the industry has changed so much they don’t have the same value. But the more I think about it the arguments from my text books are still just as compelling. The big difference is Twitter and Facebook have a character limitation.

What do web design & marketing have in common with yummy sandwiches? Quite a bit as it turns out.

Last month the Arcstone employees banded together, some more reluctant than others, with a vision to create an informative and entertaining company services video. I never thought I would be getting paid to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but a day working at Arcstone is never uninteresting.While some were getting ready for their acting debut, others continued business as usual amid numerous laughing fits and flashy dance poses that would give Swayze a run for his money.

In the end, those of us who weren’t sold on the original idea were convinced and all agreed the video communicated a clear message to potential clients and would make them hungry for more.

Check out the video for yourself!

1. Grow your business by attracting new customers
2. Give existing customers tools that will keep them as your customers
3. Attract new talent to your company

The question needs to be asked, is your website working for you? Most answers aren’t cut and dry as they relate back to these three core principles. Including website initiatives should be part of your internal review of procedures and products annually. But what is a website initiative? It should be any planned enhancement to your site, whether that be a new page, color scheme, form or an entirely new site all together. How do you determine if you need to spruce up your existing site or start over? Take this website inventory.

1. Do you feel the colors and design are attractive? Yes / No
2. Is the menu and page system easy to navigate? Yes / No
3. Does each page have its own URL? (Meaning is xyzdomain.com/pagename unique.) Yes / No
4. Does your website work, as intended, on each of the modern browsers (Firefox 3-6, Internet Explorer 7-9 and Safari)? Yes / No
5. Your photos: Are they in focus? Do you see a finger? Can you see your images load on the page? Yes / No
6. Is there background music? Yes / No
7. Do you have a website visitor counter in the public areas of the site? Yes / No
8. Is the copyright date in the footer show this year’s date? Yes / No
9. Do you have an unused or underused blog? Has there been less than 1 post a month in the last 3 months? Yes / No

Answers (1.yes, 2.yes, 3.yes, 4.yes, 5.no, no, no, 6.no, 7.no, 8.yes, 9.no)

If you answered no to questions 1-4 it might be easier to start over with a website design. If you answered Yes to only a few of Questions 5-7 and 9, or No to Question 8 then you probably can do with a decent amount of web-sprucing. Congratulations if you answered the questions according to the key. Congrats, your website is modern and easy to use!

There are other things to consider when talking about rework and redesigning your website. Everyone touts social media (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn) integration, but that doesn’t make sense for every situation. Think about your organization and your potential customers and act accordingly.

How do you update or plan to update your website? Adding a content editor is the easiest way to ensure you (or virtually anyone with computer skills) can keep website content up to date. When adding a content editor, like WordPress, scheduling a redesign to correspond is most cost effective effective in the long run. Plan for content updates quarterly, at the very least. Inaccurate or old content will alienate potential customers.

The most important rule is to always keep your website up to date. Your website is a reflection of your company. How do you want to be portrayed?

Sounds a little like email, right?

I get about 200 messages per day to roll back up the hill. If you know it’s going to go on forever, you may as well get good at it.

For ArcStone’s weekly staff meeting, I assembled a few tricks that I’ve been using to help me roll-up my inbox. Here are the eight tactics I shared to help ease the pain of email purgatory…

1. Adopt a habit of “Inbox Zero”. Inbox Zero is an email practice of reducing your inbox to zero messages on a regular (read daily) basis. The main set of tactics are to immediately to: do it, delegate it, defer it, delete it, or file it. The strategy is simple – but the practice takes practice. A cool new plug-in (if you use gmail) is the email game – it teaches good email habits in a fun, funny way. Also check out David Allen’s Getting Things Done for his inbox clearing strategies. 
2. Only check your email at designated times with full awareness. Once or twice per day if you can get away with it. Hourly if you must. But don’t do it all the time and fracture your focus.
3. Use a to-do list for your tasks – not your email inbox. There will be fewer dropped balls and less clutter in your inbox.
4. Use the subject line smartly. Start informational emails with FYI: (Subject) and actionable items with Action: (Subject).
5. Be concise. Three lines max if possible. Email is meant to convey short messages. Think about the long six or seven paragraph emails you get versus the short ones – which do you actually thoroughly read? Save your readers’ time – go for concise, punchy messages.
6. List actions first and also number them. Don’t put a big block of text first and then put the tasks at the bottom – put the actionable stuff up top. Don’t assume people with 200 + messages per day are going to scroll down, they’re gonna be scanning.
7. Don’t “Reply All” unless everyone needs to truly see it. This will save your team members a lot of time and insure that they read your messages when you send them.
8. Never, ever send emails with a lot of emotional content. No angry, contentious or hurt emails – ever, ever. Emotionally fraught emails tend to create additional rounds of long, angry, hurtful, legally damaging, time sucking email. Seriously, don’t send emotional emails unless you like to painfully waste your time.

Any other tips? Please comment!