Well, 2008 has already started with a bang (but, living in the past as I am, I’m still catching up with 2007…) with lots of conferences shooting ahead out of the starting blocks.  I’m speaking at three so far (maybe four) and attending many more so for all you London-based marketing folk, here is what’s up and on.

Technology For Marketing & Advertising 2008 – Feb 12 Earls Court Conference Centre London.  It’s free to attend and tends to be all about the stands with free sessions of limited value to those who know what they’re on about.  For those new to the industry, these sessions are great bite-sized free talks at a free industry event.

SES London – Feb 19 Business Design Center.  Be there or miss out completely on one of the best times.  Felt left out of all the fun at PubCon?  Why not get involved in SES London and create some networking magic!  SEO Chick Lisa D will be speaking there so you know you *have* to go.

Web 2.0 and Beyond: Applying Social and Collaborative Tools to Business Problems - 5-6 March 2008.  This conference has a great atmosphere with networking not just encouraged - it is enforced!  Practical advice, with the ability to implement immediately means anyone going to this will find something about it for back at the office.

Future of Web Design - London 17-18 April  Kensington Town Hall.  This is a fantastic conference really aimed at folk who already know what they are doing and want to push it further as well as seeing what’s coming up.  I highly recommend this event.

Social media for Business – Apr 24 Hotel Hesperia London Victoria.  I’m speaking at this event on “The Dark Side of Social Media” or how not to bugg3r it all up by learning from the mistakes of the past.  This was a fun conference last time so I highly recommend it.  But I would – I’m speaking at it!

Internet World - Apr 29 Earl’s Court.  This is another large, free event that is apparently bigger and better than last year.  Again more of a trade show event, it also has free seminars (like my online reputation management one) but is mainly aimed at those looking to source suppliers.  I’m speaking at this event too!

Search Engine Marketing Advanced Conference – June 12 Hotel Hesperia London Victoria.  I’m speaking at this on something (don’t know yet) so it should be a great time.  And lunch is always nummy and we all know a conference is rated by its lunch.

Online Marketing Show – Jun 24 Business Design Centre, Islington.  More of a trade show event, this is free to get in and has some great workshops though the main draw is the number of suppliers under one roof.  There is a fantastic Thai restaurant across the street – dinner anyone?  I’m probably speaking at this event too!

That’s the first half of the year so far.  I know that we have SMX London sometime between June and November and also ad:tech Sept 24-25 Future of Web Apps, London 1-3 October at ExCeL, Future of Mobile in London November 2008 (exact dates TBC), Virtual Worlds Congress and Expo in November 2008, Online Information is Dec 2-4 at Kensington Olympia plus more Social Media and Search Marketing conferences.

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 *****Editor’s update: Rand has pointed out that I misread the bit about NPR. See below for amendment. *****

Did you ever think that you’d need permission in order to deep link to a site? And for those of you who don’t know, deep linking is the practice of linking to a page on a site other than the home page. It’s what we’re basically supposed to do, to have the most relevant links for our readers.

Apparently this is wreaking absolute havoc with several online publications. The Dallas Morning News has claimed that this practice has contributed to their quick downward spiral into the bowels of hell by “violating copyrights, depriving them of ad dollars, redirecting traffic, and generally confusing Web surfers.” That’s freaking Texas for you. They should stick to trying to find better bands than Coldplay to appear on Austin City Limits. (Obviously I cannot link to their terms of service so that you sweet readers could check this out since I don’t want to have a ten gallon cowboy hat of whoop-arse unloaded on me…)

The paragraph about NPR disallowing deep linking has been removed. This was an error on my part, which was kindly pointed out by Rand. I was going to just strike it through so that everyone could point and laugh at me, but didn’t want to further my badmouthing of them, since it turns out that they actually changed their policy to ALLOW deep linking. Amazing how I get through life…

As someone who is highly concerned about the limitations continually being placed on freedom of speech, this type of thing seriously concerns me. Will I not be able to link to a relevant page on a web site because my doing so may confuse someone? I mean I understand that making threats or shouting bigoted remarks in a coffee house isn’t something that you really should be doing, but CONFUSING SOMEONE ON THE WEB? I confuse people on a daily basis, online and offline. Confusion is good for the soul. It’s also a good New Order song.

Many people don’t take freedom of speech as seriously as they should, especially Americans in their comfort zone. If our online freedoms continue to be restricted in truly ridiculous ways such as not being allowed to link to a page that is relevant to what you’re talking about, what’s next? Will you not be able to use certain big words because most people won’t immediately know their definition? Will you be prevented from having an orange background because lots of people don’t like the color orange? Will Lisa have to stop all the Viking cursing on this blog? Will chocolate companies forbid Judith to mention their truffles? Will Adam Ant sue me for saying that I’m off him after seeing him cry in the “Wonderful” video? We’re all heading straight for hell you know.

Free speech isn’t the only issue with this either. Think about this for a minute (yes, just a minute): will Google be allowed to list results other than the home page of a publication that has these policies? Those are links, right? If the home page isn’t relevant for a certain term, then they’re gonna get screwed aren’t they? If you have a large site and you rank for 10,000 long tailed phrases that are relevant to all of your pages, if Google gets skittish and thinks they might get sued for violating your terms of service, because we all know how they love the terms of service, they could technically pull all results for your pages and your number of ranking phrases falls to 10. Google is currently still showing the dreaded deep links (their site links) for Dallas Morning News, by the way…so are they violating the terms of service here? I can’t be bothered to actually READ their terms of service to find out, honestly. Maybe they haven’t changed them, or maybe Google’s money and power was enough to get them to sign the permission slip. (Editor’s note: parts of this were amended after an error on my part.)

By turning off deep linking, you can decrease the overall link popularity of your site, too. Isn’t this shooting yourself in the foot? What about pissing off the people who don’t want to go and search for a story from the home page? If your search functionality sucks a duck’s arse on the site, you’re going to be seriously irritating these people. And really, if this is mostly about money, why can’t these people properly monetize the entire site and not just their home page?

As you can see, this situation is as fraught with peril as a trip to buy toilet paper and milk right before it snows in the South. We tend to take freedom of speech quite lightly, which is unfortunate. When you think about the greater implications of the continued clampdown on our online freedom, maybe you’ll realize just how critical it is to stay on top of issues such as this one and we won’t have anyone sporting a “Kill Your Deep Links” t-shirt in the checkout line at Wal-Mart.

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Search Engine Strategies – Feb 2008
Wohoo I’m a speaker at Search Engine Strategies London this year , pretty cool, especially considering my first ever conference was SES London this time last year. SES London is on from 19th – 21st February at the Business Design Centre in Islington, London.

I’m on the panel “Search Term Research & Targeting” with amongst other Christine Churchill and Maxim Grandchamp

If you are going to SES London, make sure you come and see me speak on Wednesday 20th Feb, 11:45-12:45, I’m going to be nervous as hell, so any support will be very much appreciated No heckling please, unless it’s “Lisa you rock”…

LondonSEO party Thursday 21st Feb
As usual the search engines are rubbish at organizing ANY parties during search conferences in the UK, so LondonSEO are again organizing a big piss up for the last day of SES London.

This time I have high jacked the LondonSEO site and I’m organizing the party. It took some convincing Rob and Mike to let me do it. But I’m not one for giving up =)

The party is being held at the Camden Head in Islington, only 2 min from the Business Design Centre. We are estimating around 100 thirsty search marketers coming to the party, the lovely Dave Davis from RedFly Marketing and Ciaran Norris from Altogether Digital are sponsoring the party. Thanks guys!

It should be a good laugh, for more info about the party visit LondonSEO I have also started a LondonSEO Facebook Group for anyone that wants to join (you have to be logged into facebook to follow the link!)

See you there?!!

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“Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered.” Oscar Wilde

My alternate title for this piece was “Page View Syndrome” but then I thought that sounded like something you’d catch by using the computer terminal at an Indonesian whorehouse. Oh, and that is the title of the article that prompted all this…

There’s a thought-provoking piece that PC Mag did that details the dangers involved in basing what we see on the web on popularity. In the case detailed in the article, the author likens our internet future to a Max Headroom-style situation (look it up you crazy youngsters) and discusses a writer being fired from a publication because his articles weren’t popular enough. This popularity contest is a seriously scary thing to consider and here’s why…

First of all, if you ever went to high school and you aren’t Mystery Guest, you may have suffered a bit. Popularity isn’t always pretty. Mystery Guest IS always pretty, however. ANYWAY, popular kids weren’t always popular because they were the ones who’d go on to save the children, end poverty, make clean water available to everyone, and become a lean-to in the forest. At the risk of this turning into a blog post about me crying and watching Pretty in Pink again (why didn’t Andy just want Duckie Dale?), I do think that we should all consider the dangers of anything that’s popular with the masses.

I’d like to say that yes, in some cases I think that mainstream popularity can be good. Ben and Jerry’s for example, is pretty popular and I have absolutely no issues with it other than that I feel weird paying 5 bucks for a milkshake that I’ll slurp down in 5 minutes. The same thing holds true for my beloved and much-maligned Starbucks. Many things are popular because they ARE as close to perfection as you can get, like Cherry Garcia. You just can’t fall into the trap of letting popular opinion constantly tell you how to think. Lots of people have STDs…you sure don’t want to go and contract one just to be a part of something do you?

It’s just as bad to like something for being liked by everyone as it is to hate something because it’s liked by everyone. However, you have to think of everything in the world that’s caused a stir, and how that benefits society. These people and things aren’t always popular but they’re sure as hell important. Caravaggio caught some flack for painting using corpses as models. J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye was banned. Trite examples, perhaps, but this isn’t the place for a lesson on all the people in the world who were once seen as being of no relevance, and who ended up being tremendously important. This is a lesson in not using a black and white measurement in order to determine what gets put out there for the public’s consumption, and unfortunately, popularity tends to be determined BY a black and white measurement.

The main issue here is that if popularity of page views, for example, ever becomes a standard for who publishes and what gets published, we’re in for serious trouble. You simply cannot gauge true importance by large numbers. If I may again draw an analogy to the arts, think of all the films and albums and paintings that were never popular but that enjoyed massive critical aclaim; online content is really not that much different.

Getting caught up in numbers for the simple fact that they are a discrete measurement may have made sense at one point, but it doesn’t today. It’s difficult to explain nuances, though, so while you may realize that there’s more to an SEO campaign than the number of new visitors in a month, it’s very tricky to explain this to a client, or your boss, without sounding like you’re simply trying to get out of something. It’s also easy to fall into the extreme of this, and justify poor numbers in one area by making a crazy interpretation of what another number means.

So without launching into a day’s worth of data interpretation and doubletalk for the people who care about your sites, how will you let them know what’s truly going on? Can you use ANY numbers to accurately reflect success or failure? If you think that you can, what are those numbers, and how can you justify their importance? It really isn’t very clearcut right now.

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Since writing a few blog posts about the benefits of using Facebook for marketing, I have been asked; “Well, how do you do it?” There are no secrets to using Facebook, unless you are running illegal scripts. Depending on the reasons and types of markets you might be dealing with on Facebook, it’s really quite simple to utilize the social network as a marketing tool.

“Don’t hate on Facebook.” Give it a chance before you decide to curse it to hell as an annoying social site that is a waste of time. If you STILL aren’t using Facebook for yourself, you won’t be able to understand how to use it for anyone else.

Create your “internet marketer” profile. I prefer when people give it their own personal touch. Add some (and only some) albums of cool pictures for me to see what you are like. Myself among many others are dying to judge you. This sounds a lot worse than it actually is.

By now, you probably already know over 100 people on Facebook. Whether they are your actually friends, or authors of the blogs you read. The #1 Simple Step of Social Media Success is to connect with these people, according to Chris Winfield. Facebook makes it really easy for you, and separates these people into networks, and clubs. You already know who you should be conversing with. In most cases, networking professionals will accept your friend request.

Some of these people, you might not have gotten a chance to talk to at the latest convention and now you are looking at mobile uploads of their children. This really is a wonderful tool.

Here are 10 reasons why you should STILL be using Facebook as a Marketing Professional:

1. Join all the groups that relate to you & add connections: Start conversations with people you look up to in the industry. Possibly gain a friend request or two hundred.
2. Promote your blog or other blogs you are promoting on your profile, using BlogFriends. You spent hours perfecting the perfect blog post, now everyone knows.
3. Draw attention to yourself quickly: Upload a new album, post a note, poke people (occasionally), comment on everyone’s stuff. Being popular on Facebook can easily transfer over to real life.
4. Set up real life connections: Introduce yourself to your Facebook friends. Start a relationship. These people are also voters on Social News sites, and blog writers, and good people to know.
5. Research information for clients & Gain Knowledge: Dive head first into groups and read what people are saying about your clients. Excellent for those who are practicing Reputation Management. Read forums, participate, research, and get to work!
6. Network before big events: With SMX West coming up, there are tons of groups to join. See who will be there. Set up a meeting with these people by sending them a message on Facebook, or just simply join the group so people will know you will be there as well. Look at their profile, if they have recent news, you will have a conversation starter at the convention.
7. Update your Status: I hate to say it but those people who tie in their Twitter with their Facebook status are super helpful. If you become a regular status updater, people will always take interest in whatever your doing. It’s like reality TV. *Congratulations to Glen Allsopp who just PASSED HIS DRIVING TEST! 38m ago*
8. Applications Help: It’s true that many applications are annoying. But the Stumble Upon application is awesome! It shows on your profile and news feed what you are Stumbling, so this way everyone else knows, and will also stumble if they are interested.
9. Facebook is Improving: The ever changing controls are sometimes annoying but helpful. You can edit your preferences in the news feeds and see what you want to see. You can also control what people see about you with privacy and security settings.
10. Facebook Profiles Rank- If clients are looking you up, they might like the fact that your profile comes up (but they might not). In this case, it works the same as LinkedIn. So make sure to keep it as Professional as the business you run. *For example: While hiring, I did a search and found a possible employee Facebook page and lets just say they weren’t hired based on the profile picture alone. This could have totally worked in their favor, if I saw a nice clean page with nice comments from Coworkers, friends, a link to their blog, etc.

So… Why Not? It’s totally up to you how you want to use it. If you choose not to use Facebook, then don’t. If you just want to use to it watch what everyone else is doing, that is fine too. You don’t have to add every application, or give drinks to your Top Friends. You can totally make what you want of it.
I hope that this post helps people who are still “Hating” and helps them find success with Facebook conversations, like I have in many ways.

If you have any other reasons or ideas why Marketing Professionals should STILL be using Facebook, please let me know!

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… uhmm I mean mind?

No, I haven’t hit my head on a sharp object and lost all speaking sense - on the contrary - I feel I have discovered something, so I thought I’d share :o)

I am a chronic thinker by nature. I think while cooking (stop sniggering-I DO cook). I think while browsing the net. I think while in the shower, bath tub, while exercising, working…..aaaaggghhh! I even think while I’m thinking.

I know I’m not alone in this - most people do it. And what’s worse, most people don’t realise that they do! All the time. Some think this is the way it’s supposed to be, and if your mind is not busy conceptualising some new idea, or business model, you’ve become complacent.

Most of us, when we are lucky enough to experience a ‘blank’ moment, we panic. Poop! I must have gone stupid - I have no thoughts!!

But it is a well known fact that a cluttered or tired mind produces rotten fruit. OK, enough of the analogies - but in today’s over worked, fast-paced business environment its easy to become too thoughtful.

OK, I realise most of you have never thought of this, and I am using really big words all at once, but take a second and think about what I just said…

DO YOU EVER ‘SWITCH OFF’?

Is your mind in charge of you, or are in charge of your mind?

The other day I finished another book - the main concept of it is to practice mind control and to learn to have a few ‘mind-free’ moments a few times a day. Just like house keeping.

If you clean your mind from clutter and give it a break a few times a day, you will experience an even better, and by that I mean more productive, thinking time.

Pure creativity comes out of moments when your mind is not in charge - a ‘moment of clarity’ we usually call it!

You should test this:

Find a quite place - the toilet usually works wonders for that - LOL. Close your eyes, and try and think about ‘nothing’. If you focus on your breathing, and perhaps the temperature around you this should bring you to focus on your stillness.

Now stop thinking!!!

At first it’s very hard, as you’ll see - you even slip into thinking about not thinking… but after a few attempts you should be able to experience at least a few seconds of ‘mind-free’ time.

“What’s the point? I like my obsessive thinking - it keeps me company.” I hear you say.

It helps clear the slate of the mind. It gives you a few moments of peace, when you can almost take a step back and see different angles of your everyday life.

At the end of the day - I can’t force you to do it. And for some of you this will sound completely mad - and that’s ok. But for some of you this will make a lot of sense. You know who you are ;o)

And once you try it and see the extreme clarity and peace of mind it brings, you’ll want to do it 2, 3 times a day.

So try it - you have nothing to lose…

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As universal search begins to dominate results and previous above-the-fold results get pushed below the fold, leveraging all channels possible is becoming essential.  Image search optimization offers several advantages not just limited to simple rankings or just image search.

One definite benefit for anyone involved in e-commerce is the possibility of free product promotion within organic results without looking spammy. Product images in search results can seriously boost click-throughs and conversions.

With image search, you’ve got more optimisation opportunities than organic search alone.  The name of the image, along with the tag and associated words will all factor in to ranking an image.  This gives you opportunities to optimise differently or capture searchers where organic is not doing as well.

At the moment, for those involved in e-commerce, not as many retailers are paying attention to the possibilities of image search and universal search when compared to PPC or SEO.  This means as Universal search becomes more prevalent, those in early will probably get better rankings.

So… what can you do?  Lots!  And most of it can also be done through many CMS systems so never say can’t, never say die, never say never… blah blah blah.

Why not try a bit of alt tag (attribute - I know!) text optimization? When I add an image to a page, I can ad descriptive words for the image.  Make these descriptions specific and include the keyword that you want the image found for.  Don’t be spammy – by being focused you’ll get more relevant traffic.

How about putting the images in separate HTML files named after the keyword (linking to the image with your keyword, using “keyword.html” as the file name)?  Try putting the keyword in the title as well as in your H1 tags on the keyword-named page where the image appears.  Again, keep it specific and focused and remember semantically related text and “buy me” button!

Give your image the name of the keyword you want it to be found for.  So if it is a picture of a box of Chocolate Society champagne truffles, call the image “champagne-chocolate-truffles” and not “1276394”.  Remember that alt tag text of “Chocolate Champagne Truffles”!

Never forget that semantic relativity!  Ensure you are keeping a careful eye on the on-page text.  An image of chocolate covered almonds on a page about white chocolate with strawberries won’t do as well as an image of coca dusted almonds (with the right name) on a page talking about chocolate and almonds.

Remember that to optimize your images for more than a single word, you should use dashes and not underscore.  Matt Cutts has an old but brilliant blog post about how Google sees a dash and why.

Finally, quality is king.  Have high quality images with sharp, clear contrast showing the product with little clutter.  As Google does shrink the image in the results, you will need to ensure you capture interest with not just words but pictures.

Search is changing and we all need to change with it.  It isn’t just text SEO that needs changing though – all elements of our pages can be optimised for search.  Always remember – just say no to spam.

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OK, so it’s another one of those days, when you get to read my post about marketing… hey - it don’t happen often so I guess you could handle it.

Anyway, as I was leafing (virtually) through my feeds today, I came across another very short, and very subtle, but as usual, very profound post by marketing know-all Seth. It is an unusually long post for him, although in my books, he hasn’t even done an intro…

Mr Godin makes a brilliant point - that consumers are so focused on seeing how and where businesses fail (due to their raised awareness and expectations), that they would not spot a ‘perfect’ service or a business if it walked up to them and politely asked for their coat. And if they do spot one, the expectations rocket even further, so almost no word-of-mouth happens, and no recommendations.

Unfair - but very true. I won’t regurgitate the original blog post (you can read it here if you wish), but this is an important point to ponder on if you have your own business.

So many people hold off a launch of new product/business or service because it’s not perfect yet. And some of them never get to the start line at all.

There’s something about ‘perfection’… It’s hard to achieve in the first place and it’s so subjective that it might not even be possible to achieve in some markets. The worst part I think, is the fact that you have to maintain the level of perfection once you’ve set the mark so high - and there are just too many external factors playing at your reputation, holding their foot out…

But, there’s nothing wrong with striving for perfection in your business, marketing, customer service and so on. Just be aware and don’t get despondent when the occasional hick-up occurs.

So what’s the solution?

Well, Seth has a suggestion. It may be that it is more important in today’s business and marketing climate to be ‘interesting’ rather than ‘perfect’.

Phew! Sighs of relief all round…

So if you make sure that you have character (as a business), if you have something unique and interesting to say, show and do with people, then they will be more likely to talk about your business - more word-of-mouth. I guess it’s not such a new concept - it goes back to the need for a ‘purple cow’.

The bottom line is, that it will probably be better for your business and marketing efforts if you strive to deliver something interesting and unique, rather than something perfect, but standard…

And one last thought… Perfection in service is not so common yet - so could you choose ‘perfection’ for your ‘purple cow’?

Perfect blog post? Hahaha…

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Matt Davies, faithful reader of this blog (or stalker) and SEO/music guru brought up a really good point in a comment about one of my posts…where does the responsibility of an SEO begin and end?

I’ve had as many bad customer service experiences as anyone else, although to hear me talk about them, you’d think that I never received anything even remotely resembling good service. I do enjoy hyperbole. Anyway, a well known women’s unmentionables company whose name I shan’t mention (although the initials are the same as the 2 first initials of a famous writer born in Trinidad to parents of Northern Indian ancestry) almost seriously shafted me on some really nice knickers, and I am not one bit happy with the way this was handled. Thankfully, in the end (HA!!! I mean come on that was a good one…) I did indeed receive them, but it cost me quite a bit of aggravation.

Now, admittedly, I did not use any sort of search engine ANYTHING to find the aforementioned knickers, but here’s my rationale for discussing this…the site is quite visible in the SERPs, the usability seemed just lovely, and the ordering process was nice and painfree. It was only after these idiots somehow managed to lose my order and fail to provide me with my customer number (needed to login to check order status, which strangely enough did not allow me to actually see anything other than that, indeed, my order had shipped.) And, worst of all, there was no actual tracking on the shipment on their website. In this day and age, that’s simply quite unacceptable.

Obviously you don’t see this kind of issue until you’ve placed your order and attempted to track it. I’d had one horrendous experience ordering boots from a well-known site that also didn’t provide order tracking functionality, and I have never ordered from them again. I certainly will never order from the knickers site again, even if I CAN get 3 pairs for $25. SEO couldn’t have saved this, you see. And the responsibility of an SEO most likely would have ended well before these issues occurred.

With that in mind, really, what IS the responsibility of an SEO on a site that offers something tangible to a searcher? Years ago, as I’ve mentioned, I (perhaps erroneously) assumed that my job was to get the user to the site. I had nothing whatsoever to do with what happened after the click occurred in the SERPs. That was kind of nice, actually, since I could easily relieve myself of the responsibility of converting the user. Now, however, I think that it’s definitely a part of my job to lead the user to the most relevant landing page, make all the buttons and links visible and user-friendly, and work my arse off when paid ads don’t have a good ROI. Well, I should say that this is what I do when I’m well-paid…otherwise, I really do nothing but lead the horse to water but that’s a funding issue. You get what you pay for you know.

It’s now my job to pore over the web analytics, too, to figure out what information is useful to help me make the site owner more and more money. Usability is a major concern, and I’ll definitely keep the main principles in mind when doing my work. However, when your customer service sucks or you don’t provide a basic service AFTER the fact, how is that my problem? It should be my problem, since if this is happening with great frequency, it’s going to lead to fewer return sales unless your site sells something designed specifically for hardcore masochists. However, honestly, is something that occurs after a conversion an SEO’s responsibility? Is brand reputation now mine as well?

I think it is, sadly. While I’d love to say that no, it’s not, I think that I’d be remiss not to worry about things like this. I could be alone in my constant desire to find something to bitch about, but based simply on the people that I encounter daily, I don’t think that I am. When I told a few friends about my horrendous knicker debacle, after inquiring about exactly what type I bought, most said simply “blog about it” and here you go…that edict is springing from the lips (and fingers) of everyone these days.

Obviously I’m a seriously classy and high end type of woman, or else I’d be calling these people out on their shoddy system publicly without resorting to literary references. Oh, and remember that the products DID eventually show up, which softened the blow a bit. Still, it was a dreadful experience waiting, with baited breath, every day by the window, for the postal worker to show up empty-handed. The Country Curtains catalog just wasn’t enough for me.

With all this being said, and quite lengthily, for which I apologize, what do you think IS your realm of responsibility with regards to SEO? Where does it end, do you see its circle continue to widen, and what effect will this type of thing have as we move farther away from actual on-page factors?

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So I got myself one of these small Samsung U3 music players that looks like a simple flash stick.  Small, cute, black, and complete with earphones, an earphone reel and software, I thought this the perfect little music player.  To steal a phrase and mangle it, I’m not totally lovin’ it.

It is a cute player barely bigger than a standard USB stick.  The connector retracts into the player (breakage protection) and the small but slick display screen has easily read sections.  It was fun to explore and no manual is required as it is so intuitive.

Getting my CDs on it proved a hurdle.  The provided software does not work and I had to beg use of husband’s program for his Creative Zen player.  I knew without the native software I probably could not use the “mood” functionality but wanted my music.  No worries – worked a charm.

Obscure Japanese animation music locked and loaded (BGC 2, Escaflone (all), Lodoss Wars (1,2,3) ), I tried to get the earphones in to my ears and had some trouble.  I have to admit I am more used to the soft earphones from my Sony Erikson phone so these hard sticks were more of a challenge.

Playing with the new toy, I explored all the different sections it offered and got the radio working both in the US and in the UK.  I found ways to change how I selected my music tracks and the settings for the stick to sleep and the like.

The battery lasted at least 10 hours though I believe Samsung says it should last for 15.  I was asleep for some of that playback time ;)  The touch sensitive controls were too sensitive and I found myself moving around menus needlessly.  Still, they aren’t buttons which is a huge plus.

You can record voice messages, get it to sleep after a period of time, preset radio stations, select music by album or artist or theme and lots more.  What I haven’t figured out how to do is stop the music without turning the player off.

I have lived with this and while I can lock it, the buttons make “beep” noises when it is in my pocket for a minute until it sleeps.  I can’t hook it on anywhere so can’t take it to the gym.  The USB connector keeps popping out.  The flashing blue light is a bit distracting.  But hey – it’s small and cute!

Overall it has many positives and negatives.  A big plus is the cuteness factor – I’m overlooking a lot because of it.  Maybe I’ll buy those Swarovski earphones.  But in summary, would I use it?  Every day - it lives in my handbag!

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