Researchers at Cardiff University have developed a computer algorithm based on the behavior of honeybees that can help businesses optimize their processes. The first thing that struck me about that idea is that these brilliant researchers are at the cutting edge of computer science, and they are getting there by studying something that everyone else ignores, or abhors… bees.

“Experimental results show that the algorithm succeeds in finding the absolute optimal result in all cases. That is, it always finds the location in n-space that produces the tallest local maximum of the optimization parameter without becoming trapped in a less optimal local maximum.” - Manufacturing.net

What? N-Space? Optimization whatnow? I know, I know. It’s pretty heady stuff, but there’s a simpler way to explain what they found.

Scout bees search randomly for the best flower patches to find nectar, then report back to the hive. The hive then deploys the MOST worker bees to the BEST flower patches, and sends the scouts out to search near THAT flower patch. However, they never stop randomly searching either, in case they’ll find BETTER patches. In the meantime, the worker bees report on the amount of nectar left in their assigned flower patch every time they report back to the hive. As soon as a different flower patch is “better” than the one they’re currently working on, resources are re-routed to that patch. Through a simple pattern, the hive makes sure that it’s always doing 3 things:

1. The scouts are always looking for the best place to find nectar.
2. There are always MORE workers deployed to the BEST spots to find nectar.
3. The scouts and workers are continuously re-routed as the environment changes.

For anyone involved in manufacturing or other complex business processes, you can see how implementing this kind of algorithm can drastically improve nearly any process. In case studies, they’ve shown that the algorithm can find the optimal result in scenarios with as many as 3,000 variables!

If you’re a smaller business, you’re probably not ready to use bee algorithms, but it does go to show that you can find solutions to problems in unconventional places if you’re willing to look and learn.

Manufacturing.net article about the algorithm:
http://www.manufacturing.net/ctl/article/CA6370343.html?spacedesc=latestNews

Video presentation from Cardiff University:
http://conference.iproms.org/the_bees_algorithm_a_novel_tool_for_complex_optimisation_problems

I came across an article a while back that I bookmarked so I could write about it when I got a chance. And here’s my chance! I’ve written before about how more and more traditional marketers are moving into the SEO and SEM fields, and this trend is obviously gathering steam.

The article was in the San Diego Business Journal and it was primarily about how TV currently dominates the marketing world. It’s where the most advertising dollars are spent. However, some interesting statistics show that this domination is changing.

• A McKinsey & Co. study found that TV audiences are HALF what they were in 1990, DESPITE a 40% increase in prime time marketing dollars.

• Forrester Research says that 16% of people ages 18 to 26 are spending more time online than watching TV. In addition, this so-called “Gen Y” adopts new technology faster than any previous generation.

The big Madison Avenue Marketers are paying attention to this and adapting accordingly. A survey conducted through the Association of National Advertisers showed that 78% of the respondants felt that traditional avenues of advertising had become less effective in the past two years. As a result, they intend to spend less on TV, and more on digital advertising.

However, rather than just throw money at a different advertising channel, more successful firms are leveraging Consumer Generated Marketing by doing things with viral video, for example. Companies are beginning to interact directly with the consumer more than ever before.

The benefit for the consumer is obvious. When you’re relying on the consumer to generate your marketing for you, it means that it’s now impossible to market a crappy product. For the marketer, the challenge is in keeping control in such a chaotic environment. Once you put something out there, if the response is not what you hoped for, there’s no way to take it back.

How will this shift in spending affect the web at large? I’m not sure, but with all the money that will get thrown at web publishers over the next few years, I expect to see a lot more advertising channels open up. Embedded video advertising and paid blogging are already a reality, and innovation will develop this “brought to you by” environment even more.

The article is here:
http://www.sdbj.com/industry_article.asp?aID=8625973.5270914.1361958.3961848.2590585.697&aID2=104757

Have you guys heard of Boardtracker? It’s a search engine for forums, but they have a couple of features going for them that can make them a great tool for marketing research.

1. A lot of smaller topic-based forum sites have to disable their search functions to conserve bandwith and server resources. If you own a forum, boardtracker will let you use their engine on your site in exchange for crawling your forum.

2. They track changes and posts in near real-time.

3. They allow people with accounts to set up keyword alerts, similar to Google News alerts. When anyone makes a post using your keywords on the 30K+ boards indexed by Boardtracker, you get a notification and a link in your email.

The possibilities for this are pretty exciting to me. Are people talking about your company or product? Do they have the kinds of problems that your product can solve? This is a great tool not only for market research, but it’s also a great for PR and marketing.

I’ve only begun to scratch the surface with this site, but I’m definitely going to spend some time with it to see what’s possible.

Boardtracker is here:
http://www.boardtracker.com/

I’ve seen this pop up a couple of places on the internet now and it looks like it will be an interesting event. Google is putting on a seminar on September 18 at Catholic University in Washington DC entitled “Optimizing Your Websites for Google Search”.

Here are the good parts:

• Taught by Adam Lasnik, “Google’s first Search Evangelist, dedicated to building stronger relationships between Google and Webmasters.”
• Registration is only $30.

The bad parts:

• Though the seminar is open to anyone, priority is given to government employees over everyone else.
• Limited spots available.

Some of the stuff that will be covered seems like it’s pretty basic if you’ve been in the SEO business, but at the same time, this is one of the few times a class like this is actually set up and run by Google.

According to the signup site, the curriculum includes:

• Understanding search engines and search engine results (25 minutes)
• Building crawlable, indexable, and well-ranked sites (45 minutes)
• Tools, tricks and troubleshooting (35 minutes)
• Break (10 minutes)
• Webspam –what it is, how to avoid it, how to report it, etc. (10 minutes)
• Live site evaluations (45 minutes)
• Questions & Answers (45 minutes)”

Here are a couple of different articles about the event:
http://www.searchnewz.com/latestsearch/senews/sn-4-20060905LearnSEOfromGoogle.html
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20060905GoogleTeachingSEOToFeds.html

Here is where you can read about the seminar and register, as well as get directions to Catholic University in DC.
http://www.firstgov.gov/webcontent/resources/training/university/seminars/search_engine.shtml

It’s official!

John Reese will be joining me in China October 24-31, 2006. As usual, I’ll be taking a group of serious internet entrepreneurs who want to learn the importing business to Guangzhou, China for the Canton Fair.

You can watch or listen to John Reese’s video interview about internet marketing, China, and the importing business here:

ChinaFieldTrip.com

For details about the trip, go here. But don’t miss the video interview. (Space is filling fast, but there are still seats available if you hurry.)

John Reese, as most of you know, is most famous for setting the record for info product sales on launch day. On August 17, 2004, he sold more than $1 million of Traffic Secrets on the very first day.

Almost like the four minute mile, other internet marketers have been launching other information courses about internet marketing and selling even more. Now, there are a ton of people who want to learn internet marketing. But John was the one who really set the bar.

Though he’s known for Traffic Secrets, John actually makes most of his money in his very successful online businesses, not teaching internet marketing. That’s what great about hearing from him when he does teach. Hearing his latest ideas and just hanging out and talking about marketing with him could be worth millions, quite literally, to those few who are able to make it on the trip with us.

Last month, I visited his house for a brainstorming session in his War Room (a conference room in his house entirely covered with whiteboard material). After he gave us a demo of his home theatre (you kind of had to see it to believe it), we talked marketing strategy for most of the day. When it comes to internet marketing, John is really as good as it gets. The guy is good.

And you’re invited to come to China with us and see for yourself. John will be teaching his latest internet marketing strategies on this week long trip to China. Many of us in internet marketing would pay a fortune just to hang out with him for a week and hear what he’s been doing online in the last two years. He rarely speaks at conferences, and he hasn’t taught a live seminar in over two years.

So it’s a very rare treat that John will be teaching at this year’s China Trip. This year’s participants will not only learn the highly lucrative business of importing products directly from China, but they’ll be learning internet marketing from John Reese at the same time. Talk about a recipe for online business success.

If you’re interested in more information, click here to watch John’s video interview.

And click here for the details about the trip.

I came across this article on CNNMoney about the “10 dumbest business ideas” that I thought was hilarious. The reporter approached a few different venture capitalists about some of the worst pitches they’ve gotten. If you have an idea you’re working on, but you have some doubts about its practicality or profitability, just think back to the mechanical thoroughbred horse (Everybody LOVES robots) or the used pet toy website (Ewww).

The link to that article is here:
http://money.cnn.com/2006/08/30/smbusiness/worst_ideas/index.htm

I followed a link from that page to another article about how a team of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs have gotten together a list of 20 businesses that they’d love to see get off the ground. If you’re a person who can put these things together and make them happen, they’ve scraped together $100 million in funding for you. The list of business ideas is really interesting all by itself. Just develop a prototype for a projection based display for automobiles or put together a demo for GPS-based coupons delivered via cell phone and today could be your big break.

Read the full list of funded ideas here:
http://money.cnn.com/2006/08/21/technology/100milliongiveaway.biz2/index.htm

P.S. Hope everyone had a great Labor Day Weekend too!

MyWeddingFavors and I both got a fantastic writeup today in CRM Magazine. The article is about our success in using the Dynamic Targeting Solution from Kefta to increase our conversion rates by targeting users of organic search. We got some really remarkable results with their tools.

Read the article on Destination CRM here:
http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6254

If you want to see the actual tests we ran, along with the results, Andy Jenkins and I made a video that includes the actual creatives that were used. You can watch it free here.

Here’s something really cool . So cool that I wish I’d thought of it myself. In fact, I might — see below.

PayPerPost is a site where advertisers and bloggers can get together and help each other get paid. Advertisers set the price they will pay per post, and the topic and requirements. Bloggers can log on and find the topics that interest them, write a post that meets the requirements and get paid. Easy as pie. This gives advertisers easy access to what the makers of PayPerPost refer to as “Consumer Generated Advertising”. Every post is unique, and you get to see your topics and links splashed all over the internet, and syndicated through various feeds.

Now bloggers have just one more way to monetize their sites, and since the topic is provided by the advertiser, you have an easy way to get ideas for topics too.

Another REALLY cool thing is that the site has a blog, where the makers have been chronicling their progress since launch this past June, and it’s a really interesting read in its own right. It’s like blogging about blogging about blogging!

PayPerPost is here:
http://payperpost.com/

PayPerPost blog is here:
http://blog.payperpost.com/