3f Digital have completed stage one of an ambitious project involving Chinese Copyright Protection.

The web portal, for Dumfries company Maclean Veit Associates, MVA, involved many hours of complex negotiation with Chinese authorities in Bejing.

The site offers UK and international companies a tailored copyright protection service.

Maclean Veit Associates is the sole international cooperation partner for the International Copyright Exchange- Beijing.

MVA register copyright, on behalf of major companies, and enter it into the International Copyright Exchange,  a trading system linking thousands of potential rights buyers across China with sellers from China and abroad.

Managing Director of MVA, James Weatcroft said ” I cannot praise 3f Digital highly enough. At one stage we had to bring the project forward by three weeks. The fact that 3f were able to deliver on time is a testimate to the world class expertise of the company.”

China has vowed to crack down on video and audio makers that are involved in piracy during the Shanghai World Expo.

The National Copyright Administration (NCA) announced that many licensed video and audio companies were found to be involved in making or selling pirated publications in a recent crackdown beginning March 5. Many of the pirated publications are sold online.

The spokesperson of the NCA said any organization or individual involved would be severely punished.

Internet Service Providers are urged to shut down websites selling pirated publications.

About 3.07 million pirated audio and video products have been confiscated and 3,238 illegal sales outlets shut down during the crackdown so far.

The administration has started an emergency response system in an effort to protect the copyright of pavilion designs, mascots, anthems and logos during the upcoming Shanghai World Expo which runs from May 1 to October 31.

3f  has launched a new website Argyll Free Press. The site will feature news and views about Argyll, Scotland – from home and abroad. The site links to our ArgyllBook Social Network which has been attracting a lot of attention from America.

3f Director, David Farrell-Shaw, said ” This is a great opportunity for the people of Argyll to have something that belongs to them and not to publishers. Citizen journalism in on the increase and we will help focus the content and give it an international voice.”

The site will rely heavily on user submitted reports and video and is linked via several social media sectors.

Further information can be found at

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“If you can’t measure it you shouldn’t be doing it” – I always used to say. My opinion changed with the social media boom. There were, I felt, benefits to getting a brand onto the SM bandwagon that outweighed the need to measure the results too soon.

Companies want to see a RIO, often in their ‘own’ format rather than anything an analytics programme can provide. Too many established outfits, however, are not prepared to invest the time or resource in learning new analysis. Sadly ‘back of cigarette packets’ calculations still drive many SME businesses. They expect it to ‘just happen’. They don’t understand how things have changed.

Sure some take a stab at SM marketing, or web marketing, or email marketing but then panic when there isn’t an immediate result. I call this Wylie E Coyote marketing.

So what’s the solution? How do we provide real detail behind our gut feel for SM?

Amber Naslund has written an excellent article on SM measurement. She outlines some of the areas you should consider.

Revenue and Business Development: (benchmark before and after SM initiatives begin)

• Speed/length of sales cycle
• Number or % of Repeat customers
• % of Customer Retention
• Number of customer referrals (new business), net number of new leads
• Transaction value per customer
• Customer lifetime value
• Conversions from blog/email subs to leads or customers
• Website conversions for leads or sales
• Organic search rankings > converted leads
• % of Converted leads from online vs. offline sources

Potential Cost Savings:

• Shorter customer service/issue resolution time
• % of issues resolved via offline vs. online channels
• Number of support calls before/after outreach effort
• Recruiting costs through online presence (vs. recruiters)
• Training costs
• % of quarterly or annual customer/account turnover
• Overhead costs for communication (measure costs of online outreach vs. analog as compared to resolution ratios)
• Number/ ratio of viable community-driven product ideas
• Length of concept-to-development cycle (use of online community as testing/focus/idea development)

Value, Awareness, Influence

• Brand Loyalty
• Sentiment of posts online – advocates, detractors
• Share of conversation/voice
• Number and frequency of mentions in media (online or print)
• Net Promoter Score (likelihood of recommendation)
• Subscribers to blog/email/newsletter
• Comments/engagement on posted material, downloads of ebooks, etc. (interaction with content)
• Inbound links to site/blog (total as well as on-topic/relevant)
• Number of Tags, votes, social bookmarks
• Fans/followers/group members for social profiles (implication of a brand following)

I recommend reading the full article  from Altitude.

Could it get any more addictive? I keep trying to stay away from Facebook but get drawn in with the lure of  ‘just one more level’ of Mafia wars.

I’m not one of those who leads his life totally online. Sure, I have numerous memberships of  this that and Twother, but I see these as being more of a research exercise. What is everyone working on these days? Who is playing with what? Is there a business use of this tool?

In contrast, when I tried to get my buddy Russell Simpson to join UNYK he declined. Russell doesn’t like to leave a digital footprint and hasn’t signed up for any of the social networks. That’s all good and well, but I just ‘know’ that he would relish the challenge of Mafia Wars,  like me, however, he would hate the amount of trivia that ends up on Facebook.

I think, now that the Bebo generation have joined the Facebook bandwagon, it’s time to move on.

Then Mafia Wars makes me an offer I can’t refuse – and I’m dragged back in again.

Flicker, Twitter, Diggit, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube – toowit twooo – I don’t know about you, but trying to keep up with it all has my head rotating further than your average owl.

No one can claim to be an expert in all the social networking tools, there are just too many. Every day seems to herald a new tool for the marketer’s bulging toolbox. Take twitter for instance how many additional tools does it have. Here’s a few:

TweetDeck, SeesMic, Statuzer, HootSuite,  coTweet, Twaitter and Tweetvisor

For a more complete list see 30 Twitter Tools for Business – which will probably be 50 tools by the time you read it.

So let’s cut through the confusion with 3 easy steps.

• Blog – use a blogging tool regularly. Choose from among the big guns WordPress, Blogger, Typepad or all 3. Don’t duplicate content. Try not to write the same thing on every blog. Vary what you say and how you say it. Different words for different audiences. Keep your content short, no long rambling monologues-please!
• Links- tie your main website to your blog and everything to Twitter.
• Share – don’t lock your content away. Allow people to re-post or quote your articles. Make it easy for them to do so by adding functionality to tweet etc.

So there’s a start.

Let me know how you get on.

By Shiv Singh

Well worth a read.

Learn how easy it is for your market to get your message

Nowadays, if you’re not tweeting, Facebooking, or blogging, what are you doing? Everyone has a Twitter account, a Facebook page, or a blog—even celebrities! With the popularity of social networking comes the need to learn about social media marketing. Social media marketing is a cheaper and highly effective way to spread up–to–the–minute news; an easy, inexpensive way to enlarge your audience, customers, and business.

Social Media Marketing For Dummies provides an indispensable resource for small businesses and start–ups looking for low–cost online marketing strategies, as well as for marketers in larger companies who want to be more involved with social media. Learn which social media site best fits you and your business and how to:

• Use Twitter, blogs, Facebook, and other social media outlets to full advantage
• Create your own online spokesperson for your brand
• Identify social media sites that appeal to your target audience
• Tell which social platform works for which objectives
• Develop a unique, Google–able voice in social media
• Optimize your page to attract clicks and customers
• Set up a program to assess your success and measure your results

Cucusoft are offering 50% off  their YouTube Mate (Downloader + Player + Converter, all in one) A free YouTube Download and playback software.
Using the coupon CUCU-M0CA-WUSH  grab your discount now.

According to the company, Cucusoft YouTube Mate – is the most powerful YouTube assistant on the planet. It is free for downloading videos any playback.
YouTube Mate helps you download, convert, play and manage your favorite YouTube videos… and it’s very easy to use. If you’re a YouTube fan, you’ll love YouTube Mate!
YouTube Mate easily:
* downloads YouTube videos
* supports unlimited simultaneous downloads (a real time saver!)
* automatically names the downloaded video the same as the YouTube title
* converts YouTube videos to various video formats, including avi, DivX, XviD, rm, rmvb, MOV, MPEG, and WMV (Only full version includes this feature.)
With YouTube Mate you can also convert downloaded YouTube videos to a format compatible with your favorite portable device; including – iPod Video, iPod Touch, iPod Nano, iPhone, Zune, PSP, as well as video capable MP3 players, video capable mobile phones, and Pocket PC.
And finally… YouTube Mate’s embedded player will allow you to watch all your favorite YouTube videos off-line. So now you can enjoy any .flv and .swf videos anytime!

This would be funny if it wasn’t true. A great little story from The Oatmeal.

Full story

by Drew McLellan

We’re all familiar with specifying colours in CSS using by defining the mix of red, green and blue light required to achieve our tone. This is fine and dandy, but whatever values we specify have one thing in common — the colours are all solid, flat, and well, a bit boring.

Flat RGB colours

Full article.

This article should be on your must read list. It’s by Meagan Fisher. She discusses web design without Photoshop.

“I used to think the best place to design a website was in an image editor. I’d create a pixel-perfect PSD filled with generic content, send it off to the client, go through several rounds of revisions, and eventually create the markup.

Does this process sound familiar? You’re not alone. In a very scientific and official survey I conducted, close to 90% of respondents said they design in Photoshop before the browser.”

Full article