Are you interested in the social-media-sphere?  New Breed Marketing is recruiting a team of  interns to join our agency.You will be working with agency professionals on a new social media campaign.

Want to learn about:

• Blogging
• Twitter
• Google Analytics
• Search Engine Optimization
• Facebook
• Social Media Strategy
• Radian Six
• Web Development
• Market Research
• Graphic Design

Think outside of the box, but you only have 140 characters to explain to us why we should choose you!

Tweet your pitch to @GobiTheJerboa

(No longer accepting tweets, Check back for future openings) Updated  11/05/09

Looking for Interns! (No Longer Acepting tweets, Check back for future openings) - Permalink
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Yahoo and Microsoft recently announced their ad-revenue sharing model. Microsoft’s new search engine Bing will power Yahoo search. Yahoo (currently number two in the search game) will receive .88 cents per dollar of search revenue (for the first five years of the ten year deal), and Bing, in turn, will be powering Yahoo’s and Microsoft’s online searches – a 28% market share.

What does this all mean?

For starters, powering 28% of online searches could teach Bing a few things about search behavior that it currently doesn’t know. The sheer number of searches could help refine its algorithms, help focus search results on what searchers want, and could make Bing a formidable competitor. ‘Could’ being the operative word because Microsoft has never been very good at looking at and reacting to user data. They seem to be driven by engineering – which is fine for the back-end of the things – but the front end needs to be human-driven. Something Google (and Apple) are very good at.

User experience should be paramount if you want lots of users.

In brief, Microsoft has never been too groovy. Google’s starkness along with the “I’m feeling lucky” button on its home page and their playfulness with their logo, has always given Google the human edge.

But with the number of searches Bing will be pulling, it could teach itself a thing or two about human (and search) behavior. Will it? I don’t know– but the potential is there.

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Secondly, a well-optimized site has always done well across the boards on all search engines. While many people take the time to submit specifically to Google, they don’t take the time for ‘the others’. Now that ‘the others’ are joining forces, that might change. Will it? Again – I don’t know. I am guessing a 28% market share will make people pay attention.

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But proper optimization is proper optimization. Bing’s technique of pulling out reviews for shopping related results could drive e-ecommerce sites towards more compliant code – which is a good thing– but there is no ‘game changer’ in optimizing that I can see.

Sure – there are certain tricks for Bing – just like there are certain tricks for Google. But those ‘refinements’ in page code are small. And usually the personal white hat ‘tricks’ of the SEO’s.

Thirdly, Google is still number one. With a 65% market share it is just not logical to put more the 35% of your energy into thinking about engines other then Google. With Google-voice, Google-docs, the up and coming Android platform, the new Google OS,  the rise and popularity of social media and its impact on the public, one could considerably not think about the other engines at all and still market their services to a great number of people.

So–do we as SEO and Web Marketing Experts need to react to Yahoo and Microsoft deal. The answer is yes.

Arguably we’ve been paying attention to them all along! We might not have recommended ad-spend on their networks due to the relatively low market share, but optimizing for those engines and knowing how they work has been part of our existence since… well… since they were in existence.

What this deal means is that now there is a greater possibility that a higher number of other people are going to be paying attention too.

And reacting to that fact needs to be incorporated into current strategies and future game plans!

posted by M. Nedell 9-3-09

There’s nothing quite like learning on the job. My first day as an intern at New Breed Marketing had me tagging along to a client visit where I not only saw some of the finished work that New Breed produces, but also their collaborative work process both within the firm and with their clients. As a recent college grad and student entering an MBA program in the fall, I applied for a summer internship with New Breed hoping to learn about how a boutique marketing firm works, and also to expose myself to the variety of tasks that encompass marketing. By the end of the summer, I’ll have a better idea if this’ll be a good field for me to continue to pursue!

When I returned to the office after the visit, and many days since, I’ve gotten a better understanding of the atmosphere at New Breed. The staff here has been outgoing and friendly, the office comfortable (with some construction rumbling in the distance,) the teamwork uplifting and the atmosphere laid back, creative and productive. My goal is to absorb as much knowledge and experience this summer as I can!

New Breed Marketing is also home to a few other summer interns squatting on the office conference tables: ???? ????????????? ???? ??????
Sabrina DeRose, born and raised in New York City, decided to pursue an internship at NBM because “there was this vibe surrounding New Breed that reminded me of home.” She added that she likes New Breed because “Because of the collaborative atmosphere, I really feel like I’m a part of the team.”

At New Breed DeRose has a few different tasks, one of which was contacting publications companies in Montreal. “I really enjoyed learning more about Montreal’s largest newspapers and magazines,” she said. “My only wish was that I knew French!” In the future, DeRose said her dream is to own a New England bed and breakfast someday, but added that she’d “love to work in a public relations firm or in the event planning industry.”

Tyler Vock joined New Breed after winning a contest earlier this spring.
He said he took the internship for many reasons, including as a way to “to test the ‘business waters’ and see what there was available for a business major. Marketing has always been an interest to me so I wanted to see also which part of marketing, (business or creative) I liked more.” Vock says “its awesome working here because I immediately felt involved and included.” He added that after one week on the job he has already been involved in many projects and said that so far his favorite is designing logos, “It’s an awesome way to be creative and have to think from different perspectives.” Vock said he plans to attend UVM’s Business School in the future, but is unsure of what specialization he might pursue. He added, “This internship has definitely helped me realize that marketing is a great time and has been a great experience.”

Carly Schwer, a junior at UVM and local Vermonter, also applied for the internship as a way to get a better understanding of Marketing as a career path. She said she has been working with NBM on one major account since joining the team, but added that her “favorite task is researching and finding new ways to market because social media is constantly changing.” Schwer said she enjoys working at NBM “primarily because I love the work atmosphere. Everyone is very friendly, helpful, and laid back, yet still hard working, motivated, and passionate about their job.

I also support the firm’s values, having a more local, “Vermont” feel as opposed to being a giant, profit-driven business.” Schwer will return to UVM in the fall in pursuit of a Communication major and a Business minor. In the future she said she hopes to pursue a career in marketing, particularly environmentally or non-profit based.

A few days ago, I was listening to podcast about Google’s newest service “Google Voice”. Google Voice is designed to link customer’s phone numbers together.

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The idea is to have your smart phone, cell phone, work phone and home phone all linked to the same number. When people call in, you can choose which phone’s they ring to. For example, let’s say your boss calls you on your work phone, but you’re out of the office, which could have had a problem in the past. Now with Google Voice you could setup your call settings so when you’re boss calls your Google number, it rings to your office phone, work cell, and your personal cell simultaneously.

Google Voice has many other features that are changing how phone calls are received, including free calls and texting, online call screening, conference calling, and many others. Personally, I am most excited for the transcribed voicemails, which will allow you to read your voicemail online and get SMS message or e-mail sent to you.

As of now you still need to be invited to Google Voice.  You can go to www.google.com/voice to request an invite.  I requested an invite yesterday, so far still nothing from Google, but I will be checking my Gmail often in anticipation for my invite.

posted by Patrick Biddiscombe 6-1-09
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We love the Smart is Sexy campaign from the UVM Room- Check out this Mission Statement

“Smart is Sexy” celebrates the inner beauty and confidence that comes with the pursuit of knowledge. We feel that there’s nothing more beautiful than recognizing your potential. We define a student as anyone who takes learning into their own hands. The idea of intelligence as being sexy came from three college students who wanted to spread the word that being smart is something to be proud of.

Here is a link to the facebook group.

And here is a link to another blog entry about Smart is Sexy.

I am all about the pink shirt too. Personally, I think they should have had a pocket so I could show off my pocket protector with style.

posted by M. Nedell 7-22-08

I spend a bit of my brainpower figuring out the design challenges that lay ahead for me. For me, web languages are like building blocks, and the challenges that come with making dynamic and fluid websites becomes a matter of weaving and joining these languages together in seamless interaction to reach the goal – all while working within a set of semi-flexible and changing parameters.

The other part of my brainpower is spent thinking about making structural art forms for my various artistic hobbies .

The long and short of this is – people send me links to various awesome design projects. These are the two that have me enthusiastic this week. Shouts out to Colleen and Steve!

This is Theo Jansen’’s “Strandbeest” – or “Beach Beast”. He wants to build many of these and have them ”living” on the beaches.

How awesome is that!

Next is the Cardboard design innovation of Bloxes. These things are interlocking cardboard fun. Mega-Legos for the office set.

These different ideas do have something in common. The Beach Beast is built of many parts, but the many parts are similar. The bloxes too are built that way – six sides, but only one “shape” of cardboard makes the intricate blox. This design philosophy is similar to the recent thoughts I have been having with different programming languages. Now… with all this awesome design integrating into my thoughts… back to building the internet!

posted by M. Nedell 3-13-08

We strive towards having a green office. We talk about how we can reduce, reuse, recycle. We suggest (and use) recycled paper for our print work. We are housed in a re-purposed building with southern-facing windows. Many of us ride bikes when we can. I am not sure having plants is ”green” or not, but we do have a few plants and they do add quite a nice feeling to the office.

Chris had set up all our machines to make use of the XP power settings and we wanted to share those with the green-striving world. I am including the OSX settings as well. Even though we are a mostly pc environment, Tom and I are not giving up our Macbooks any time soon. Both OS X and XP offer a variety of features to reduce power consumption and save energy. Power consumption is not only important because it saves power, but it can prolong the life of your hardware as well. For laptop owners, power consumption helps to prolong battery life. Both operating systems support putting the computer to sleep and waking on network activity. They also support uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and can display estimated capacity. For the networked world this is becoming increasingly essential. In the event of a power loss, the UPS kicks in to supply the computer with power for enough time to shut down. Some can even supply the computer with a few hours of power.

Windows XP

Energy settings for XP are found in the Control Panel under “Power Options.”

Under the “Power Schemes” tab, you can select, create, modify, or delete power schemes. The following default schemes are available: * Home/Office * Portable/Laptop * Presentation * Always On * Minimal Power Management * Max Battery “Portable/Laptop” is available on all computers — including desktops. This is in case you want to take your desktop on the road. I am kidding. You can create and save multiple power schemes.

Create multiple power schemes for different situations Users can set when to turn off the monitor, hard disks, or standby/hibernate the system. These options are pre-defined, however; the user cannot set custom amounts of time for these events. If you have a laptop, you can set separate times for battery and AC power for turning off the monitor, hard disks, system standby, and hibernation. The Advanced tab gives the user options on whether to show the power icon in the taskbar (useful to show battery life), prompt for a password when the computer resumes from standby (although it only does so if fast user switching is disabled — otherwise, it displays the Welcome screen), and what to do when power buttons on the computer or keyboard are pressed (Shutdown, Standby, Restart, Hibernate, Do Nothing).

Configure advanced power options for your XP machine The “Hibernate” tab allows the user to enable XP’’s zero-power mode, called “hibernation.” Hibernating will save the state of everything currently open, and then shut down the computer. When returning from hibernation, XP will return to the state it was in previously, with all open windows and programs available as they were. Hibernate functions essentially the same way as sleep or standby; the difference is that it fully shuts the computer down instead of just putting it into a low-power state. Since the computer is literally turned off in this state, you can unplug it, move it to another location, and turn it back on without having to boot up again.

The UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) tab allows you to monitor your UPS status and configure its settings. XP can be set up to communicate and execute commands with the UPS.

Click “Configure” (if you have a serial connection to the UPS) to set up these options. You can configure XP to notify the user, execute an application, or shut down the computer when the UPS switches to battery power or the internal battery is getting low. You can even set up a convenient optional delay, so if the UPS kicks in for only a few seconds and then returns to AC power, your configured actions will not run.

Here are the short-cuts for the power settings

Shut Down (prompts to save documents) Control-Option-Command-Eject Power key, or press Windows key-U-U Restart (prompts to save documents) Control-Command-Eject Windows key-U-R Sleep Command-Option-Eject Windows key-U-S Hibernate Not Supported Windows key-U-Shift+H Dialog to choose Shut down, Restart, Sleep, or Cancel Control-Eject Alt-F4 or Power key (if you modify that key) Windows XP , with its superior UPS power options and ability to hibernate in addition to sleep, rocks pretty hard. Mac OS X, however, does directly support scheduled start up and shut down times, which XP users will need to configure through their computer’’s BIOS (if it is supported) — not nearly as elegant – which is the age-old Windows/Mac issue. These issues start to cross over into hardware, so let’s not get into that here.

Mac OS X

Mac OS X’’s Energy Saver pane of System Preferences contains two tabs: Sleep and Options.

The “Sleep” tab allows you to place the computer, display, and hard disk into a low power mode to conserve energy. Drag the sliders to configure when the computer/display enter sleep mode. Cleverly, OS X will notify you if your display is set to sleep sooner than when your screensaver would activate (which would negate the point of having a screensaver). The “Options” tab contains more advanced power settings for your computer, such as waking from sleep for network administration; restarting after a power failure; or adjusting CPU performance. Clicking the “Schedule” button in the lower right-hand corner of the preference pane lets you schedule automatic start up and shut down times for your computer.

T

urn your computer off and on automatically

If your computer has more than one power source (power adapter, battery, or UPS), you will see a “Settings for” menu that will allow you to customize your energy settings (sleep, CPU performance, etc.) for each source. This lets you specify, for example, different energy settings for when your laptop is plugged into its power adapter versus when it is running off its battery.

Customize your energy settings for each power source If your computer has a data connection to a UPS, the Settings For menu will display a “UPS” item. Choosing this option allows you to configure power options specifically for your UPS device.

At the bottom of the window is a checkbox labeled “Show UPS status in the menu bar”. If this is checked, a small icon will appear on the right end of the menu bar at the top of the screen indicating the amount of charge remaining in the UPS (this menu item will combine with the battery menu item if both are set to display). This laptop’’s battery has 96% of its charge remaining, while the UPS is at 100% Laptops get an additional menu option in the Energy Saver panel: Optimize Energy Settings. These are energy profiles you can quickly switch between depending on the circumstance: Optimize Energy Settings menu

We hope this helps with your green efforts!

posted by M. Nedell 12-9-07