My little boy is four and a half now and is getting more and more into computer games and I seem to be getting a new lease of life on them too. My wife bought me Goldeneye Reloaded for the PS3 which can work with the PS3 Move stick. I have been playing it for most of the Christmas break and I have to say its a cracking game and really good fun. I am not a massive gamer these days but I do have a few that I play and I like to test out some of the latest games that come out but I wouldn’t say I devote my life to them like I used to when I was 20. I used to play the original on the N64 about 14 years ago and back then it was brilliant but it has had a major face lift and all the current actors and actresses have all played their part in making this game brilliant. You get scenes of Daniel Craig calling M (Judy Dench) and some of the action scenes are truly stunning and show you what a classic bond game should now be like.

What I really love about this game is the multi-player function, basically you can play with several players on split screen or over the internet and you are placed on a level with two weapons and you have a number of missions to complete. These usually include shooting your best friend before they shoot you and it is highly amusing albeit quite tense on the nerves because you are constantly searching for the opponent and by the time you have seen them you have been shot.

So I have be training myself to kill quicker and enjoy myself. I am currently stuck on a section in the snow using a sniper rifle which is brilliant. Anyway, I have included a video which showcases the game. For me its the best game I have played in a very long time – so it gets an 9 out of ten and is well worth sticking your hand in your pocket for.

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Dozens of customers are using the website’s increasing power to try and get free upgrades or refunds despite nothing wrong with their accommodation.

Industry experts have said that a bad rating or review on the popular ratings site can be costly, sometimes to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds in lost bookings.

To be honest I didn’t find this story that shocking because I understand the power of a good and bad review because this is what I help my clients with everyday. Most of what I do in my day job is to get people to test products or services out and tell me and the world what they think of them. Sometimes they are positive and sometimes they aren’t.

I had a product earlier this year that was a great budget product but not a fantastic product when compared to far more expensive gadgets which is perfectly understandable. So when it started to review reasonably but not excellently – I advised the client that we should lead from the front with a flagship product. I saw it better to be outreaching a product which was still very reasonably priced but that also stood up against the competition in terms of features.

In fact, we did this recently with another of our clients Storage Options. The marketing team and us have developed a product which stands out in its class as being the best tablet PC under a certain price point (£300) and consequently, we got the product on The Gadget Show and it won best in class which we are all very proud of. The product in question was the Scroll Excel which has now completely sold out – in fact it sold out so much that I don’t even have my own version  yet but I have played around with the prototypes.

When I went on holiday this year to Cyprus the hotel manager sat us down and asked us how they could make the hotel better. He was asking us what we would do and it was very refreshing to see. He spent more than an hour with us and he reiterated how important a positive review was and said he felt some competitors even left fake negative reviews and this was very hard to combat against.

I think that should be looked at but overall I think the customer review situation has made hotels better places with higher standards and looking to improve their service. How can this be a bad thing?

I am all for power to the customer – we all need to be heard and if a hotel has terrible service then the world should know about it. The hotel then has to act and look to improve itself. I would advise the hotel to then invite the person back to see for themselves free of charge as that would convince me anyway. They should also think of some kind of incentive for giving reviews of the hotel as that could make people think of them more proactively.

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I am also a huge dance music fan and used to professionally DJ in clubs when I worked in London and I did manage to become a semi-finalist at the British DJ championships in 2002. Recently I have got back into it and have started playing in a couple of places in my home town of Harrogate. So I was particularly interested in heading over to the Pioneer stand where I had a long chat with the head of marketing and had a demo from a DJ who was there to show off some of the latest equipment. I tried out the new CDJ2000s which have been out a little while.

One of the things I have been truly blown away by is the sheer difference digital music has made to the DJ space. The technology is now so good you can make all kinds of things happen behind the decks. The CDJ2000s allow a DJ to walk into a club with just  a USB Stick and from that he can put it into one of the decks and click link and link all of the turntables together. The features you can now use totally surpass what you could do with vinyl which means a modern DJ can spend his time making the music sound personal and different.

I also tested out a brand new USB controller from Pioneer – this had the auto sync feature on it so you don’t even have to know how to beat match. In my opinion that is a bridge too far but I have been interested in USB technology and have been using the Traktor S4 which retails at around £760 which sounds a lot but the Pioneers costs £1,600 each which means you need almost £6,000 just to have a set-up. The difference between the two types of technology is that the Pioneers have managed to become the industry standard turntables like the Technics SL1210 turntable was for Vinyl. Technics have now discontinued that model which I think is pretty sad but it shows that the days of vinyl are sadly going.

The TraktorS4 is a truly amazing piece of kit too that allows you to manipulate its proprietary software with your MP3s and drive one of 4 different music channels. It has an amazing loop recorder and sample deck which acts as a fifth DJ channel and automatically catch the last beat so it is all in time. It’s really well put together and the extra flexibility and creativity you can have over your music is pretty much unparalleled. The intuitive nature of the Traktor software means you don’t really need to touch a laptop and you spend the majority of your time playing with the EQ levels and other features and on screen the software makes it all happen instantly. I love the S4 and would give it a strong eight out of ten. One piece of advice I would give is if you are buying it to play in clubs and pubs is buy the flight case that you can get for it although its not cheap at £150 it is worth it as it protects your kit much better and gives you a better DJing experience as it doubles up as a holder for your laptop. I have included a demo video of the S4 in this post check it out and let me know what you think of it.

However, personally, if I had the money I would buy the CDJ 2000s because they are an amazing piece of kit but they are more for the professional DJ than the bedroom DJ. In fact, even the guy at IFA2011 that was demonstrating them said he didn’t have a pair at home he just used them when he DJed in clubs. It made me think how can you can you practice samples and looping and the clever stuff for your sets but he seemed to really enjoy and could use them brilliantly.

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I asked him how important he now felt social media was now on search. I told him that in the PR industry we have known for a long time that blogging and other online PR tactics do help with a sites overall SEO. He then replied with something rather interesting. He said:

”If I am honest I have never really been interested in social media as all I am interested in is making my site comes out high in its search rankings. However, I went to a senior SEO conference in the states in May and 70% of the conference was on the effect social media votes have on search rankings within Google. They went through case study after case study showing the evidence that Google was now including social media signals.”

Now I didn’t find that too surprising as I have suspected for a while that this was the case but then he went further with the comment:

“In fact, it’s not about content and articles anymore, it’s far more important to have engaging content that is shared, liked and RTed as the statistics are now showing that Google is using these as key indicators of how influential a source actually is.”

So Google is now using social media signals (or in effect us) as a barometer for how influential or how well ranked a site should be. When these signals are higher it gives the site a boost and this sends it further up the page rankings. Google’s algortryhm changed around four times in 2010 and it has changed more than 100 times already this year and this is mostly down to the effect of social media adjustments.

Indeed, another SEO expert John Doherty recently echoed this by saying in his article:

When new articles are tweeted, they are discovered and indexed quickly. When they are not tweeted, it takes the search engine bots more time to find and index them. This leads me to believe that search engines are watching Twitter feeds for indexation purposes, and when tweeters or retweeters are influential, they are using that information for ranking the articles.

The number of tweets and the number of tweeters, however, seems to make a difference for ranking. Articles that were just tweeted one time have reached a maximum of result #8. The two that were tweeted more times have ranked and are ranking higher. From this I think we can assume safely that the more times a new article or page gets tweeted, the better chance the target URL has of ranking well.

I think this is a positive step forward, and as you know, I believe in engaging content and always have. A client’s content needs to be interesting, not just keyword heavy that works for the search robots. I am glad campaigns are now going to be focussed on clever enaging stuff rather than just publishing things in the right places.

I also think this is a massive opportunity for all of us in the online PR space to show the marketing world that we can create clever, well executed campaigns that drive traffic, fans and now SEO. How is that for ROI Mr budget holder?

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We have some truly brilliant minds in this country and this proves it. Tweetdeck, is a brilliant platform which has been developed by people in this country. It is a great tool that allows heavy Twitter users like me to update more than 20 different Twitter accounts regularly.

As I have developed my own Twitter management application I know the challenges that this presents but Iain Dodsworth and his team have done a brilliant job with moving with the times and keeping this application fresh and current.

I have seen a lot of conversation asking how does Tweetdeck make its money well does it need a business model if you have millions of users and you have two parties fighting to buy you out?

I remember when the platform was first launched, and I like many, found it a little tricky to get used to but these days after years of development it has become the Twitter desktop client of choice and Twitter would be wise to buy the number one application.

However, Caroline McCarthy of CNET reports:

It’s true that Twitter has aggressively pursued an acquisition strategy in building up a suite of applications–buying Tweetie and turning it into Twitter for iPhone, or buying Summize and turning it into Twitter Search–and that it does not yet own or operate a desktop-based Twitter client. (UPDATE: Actually, it does, sort of. When Twitter acquired Tweetie, it also acquired Tweetie for Mac, which has been turned into Twitter for Mac. But it’s a desktop app for casual users who do more reading than tweeting, not the "power users" drawn to TweetDeck.) So it would, one could surmise, want to buy TweetDeck independently of any competition from UberMedia. It’s a sensible fit for Twitter to own the client of choice among its most dedicated (dare we say obsessed?) users, and these "advanced talks" may have been going on for far longer than we think.

So I would personally like to wish Iain and the Tweetdeck guys good luck with the sale. It’s good to see British Entrepreneurs and developers mixing it with those in the US. I hope we see much more of this over the next few years and I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw something similar for Peer Index in the next three years or so.

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I have to say Carlsberg have done some pretty clever executions over the last couple of years but this is up there with some of the best.

Enjoy.

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Firstly, I would like to point out that Facebook is brilliant at what it offers to a page admin because you can share a wider range of content with your likes/followers and you can get statistics from a page through its insights section. Add this to the recent upgrades for commenting on pages and the offer is much better than it once was.

Secondly, in Facebook you can also build up a relationship and encourage your community to get involved and help create something exciting around a particular topic. This has proved really successful for campaigns that need profile such as missing people etc. However, that said I still feel that Twitter is better for spreading news quickly. Why?

Twitter is completely focussed on being completely focussed. In other words its users post short tit bits of news and links that followers can then share quickly and efficiently.

Twitter users can share several updates during a day without annoying their followers. In fact, many people prefer it, Facebook Pages on the other hand should only really be updated around once or twice a day, depending on how you are managing the community. If you update a page too much you could find yourself losing likes. Worse still, your likes/fans (what do we call them these days?) could just hide your posts from their newsfeeds altogether because they see them as being too regular and intrusive. Because they see Facebook as a pleasure not business. So you feel like you are engaging with a huge wider audience when actually you are only communicating to yourself – sound familiar?

Now Facebook has a much bigger global audience, we all know that but I would ask “Are these users news hounds like those on Twitter?” because I don’t think they are. I think a lot of people on Facebook are on their to stay in touch with their families etc not to hear what’s happening in the mainstream news.

The Facebook page in question does have almost 40,000 likes, at the time of writing, so people do (pardon the pun) like it but do I see a time when people will get their news first from a page like this? Not really – the only way I think Facebook can do this is by widening how people can find this news and make it easier to receive regular news from pages without it being intrusive – possibly a new algorithm for the newsfeed for people like us newshounds. Another way to improve would be to create an easy to use application especially for journalists to use for news to get and share news.

I think these two channels have two very different audiences and are used for two very different purposes. What do you think? Can Twitter become the number one resource for news? I welcome your views.

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So I have completed a review of each of the club’s Facebook pages and sorted them by the amount of likes they have. The first thing that struck me was most of them were very professional but some were not great and given the budgets they have that is disappointing. Many of our well established clubs are missing some of the easiest best practice points and that surprised me as Facebook is perfect for football fans.

Another suprising point is these sites aren’t that well sign-posted by the clubs either. For some of them I really had to hunt around and that just doesn’t make any sense to me. Surely you want your fans to engage with you more and follow your every move don’t you?

According to my research the least liked football club on Facebook (at the time of writing) is Bolton Wanderers – this surprised me too as this year they are playing some really good football this year and many people have been saying they are a club on the rise.

The most shocking element for me was the difference between the old “top four”, as they once were, and then the gap between them and Man City and Tottenham. The gap is around 4,000,000 likes which is huge. So does this tell us that if you are in the Champion’s League you are likely to have more Facebook fans? How can that be true as Tottenham have been in it all season and playing brilliantly and they still haven’t secured more than 1,000,000 fans?

Another surprise for me was Newcastle FC, as they have a really proud following and some of the highest gate numbers in the UK, but on Facebook it only makes tenth position.

The team with the biggest difference from the league position was West Ham which is the 8th most liked club on Facebook. So it clearly has a very strong fan base and maybe this bodes well for the new stadium. If I am honest, I think that our football clubs are still missing a real trick here, if they utilised the power of Facebook to its full potential they could find they have sold out stadiums week in week out and their fans could be much better informed and not feel as detached as some complain they do these days.

What do you think our football clubs using Facebook? What would you do or change if you were them? I am looking for suggestions here – Thanks.

I will be sharing more on Premier League Clubs and their use of social media next week.

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This has prompted Venessa Miemis to create “The Future of Facebook” project which is basically a campaign to gather enough money together to interview a huge amount of big hitters and ask the big question “What is the future of Facebook?” Let’s hope it’s better than that of Friends Reunited.

For the record my view on the future of Facebook is that it will become a mobile hub that allows us to buy, interact, share and post wherever we are without us needing our credit cards. I also believe that to do this the ongoing battle with Google will be resolved eventually and the garden walls will be removed and we ‘the users’ will be able to share our content wherever and whenever we want.

I think this is quite a clever way to get the funding to do a video which is going to be watched by millions – so it gets a tick from me. They need to raise $5,000 and they have 42 days left on their deadline having already received $3,356. Let’s hope the video is worth it and doesn’t go on for too long when it is finished.

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We ran a social media audit and workshop for them and created an online strategy which included launching the alternative Christmas track competition, which has been a lot of fun to run and organise albeit very busy.

In the last few months we have received a huge number of musical entries from all across the world varying in quality and genre. The original aim of the campaign was to seek out fun and vibrant alternatives to Christmas carols and songs and help people to get creative. We launched it using the brand’s Facebook and Twitter channels and a social media news release. Entrants each had to submit their video entries via YouTube but for doing so they received a free pair of headphones for their user generated content.

The competition wasn’t restricted to any particular type of music so bands, DJs or music producers from any genre had the opportunity to show off their talent. The entries have been judged by Grammy & Brit award-winning record producer Steve Levine.

You can vote for your favourite video by visiting this online poll.

The winning entry will be announced on Thursday 23rd December. Here are all of the eligible entries from its YouTube playlist.

The lucky winner receives £500 worth of Audio-Technica equipment and the five runners-up will scoop prizes of £100 worth of equipment each.

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