Yesterday, Google announced a new look and updated features for its email service, Gmail. We at Oniracom are major fans of Gmail so we’re interested in the experience this redesign will bring.

Watch the video below of Google’s User Experience Designer Jason Cornwell explaining the new Gmail and check out their Official Blog for more:

What started as the first successful online marketplace selling music and related media, has recently been focused on establishing new pop-icons, leveraging their traffic with co-branded promotions. iTunes is still the titan of online media, but while the Apple-run marketplace has been focused on film and television sales, new media technology platforms have been innovating and perfecting music release campaigning. Musicians use sites like Justin.tv and Ustream.com to host CD Release, and private listening parties prior to releasing their albums to market. These and similar techniques have been very successful for artists, generating plenty of social buzz and blog coverage, surrounding their album release….

Marketing over social networks used to be easy. You would create a MySpace page, upload a few songs and a picture or two and let millions of users do the rest by virtually spreading the word. Fast forward to now – boy, has that changed. With a seemingly ever-expanding plethora of social networking sites all trying to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, marketing yourself over these platforms has moved from hobby to chore to nearly a full time job. The typical artist must manage and keep up-to-date their Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, website, and any other social media platforms they’ve chosen to market themselves over. Most artists will confess that constantly updating each and every one of their online marketing platforms takes much longer than they’d prefer. The process is arduous at best, and any artist will acknowledge their true desire to use that time creating music. Yet, in the modern age it’s an integral portion of anyone’s marketing strategy.

Enter Musedash, a new online application that lets musicians manage all their social network profiles from one main dashboard. From this dashboard, you can post content (be it status updates, links, news, or photos and videos) and choose to which networks you’d like the content to appear on. So you could simultaneously post a news article on your Facebook profile, your Facebook page, your Twitter, your MySpace, and any other applicable network – all with just one click. Musedash sets itself apart from competing services like Hootsuite and Ping.fm by catering specifically to musicians. And, recognizing that most musicians are not computer geeks in their spare time, creator Hilke Ros and the rest of the Musedash team have made user-friendliness a top priority. The result is a clean, simple and straightforward application designed to make social networking easier, not more complicated. Potentially, using Musedash to manage multiple social networks simultaneously could save valuable time and frustration, and would eliminate the possibility of mistakes or inconsistent information on different networks.

Late last month, the unveiling of Google+ prompted the world over reconsider the future of social media and online networking, and many began to wonder if The Goog’s latest product would boast enough innovative features to dethrone Facebook, king of the social networking realm. Speculation has run rampant as the search giant’s latest foray into new media gains momentum, much of which attempts to size up Google+ against Facebook. Many in the tech world are projecting whether or not + will be successful both in stealing existing social network users and attracting new ones. But here at Oniracom, my compadres and I have been interested in how Google+ will integrate into the larger scheme of social media marketing and brand growth strategies. While wishful thinking would allow Google+, Facebook and others to harmoniously coincide with each other in the virtual world, it is becoming ever-more clear (as is obvious with Facebook’s Skype contract retaliation) that there really may only be room for one. It’s impossible to know which network, if any, will prevail, but Google+ is making a strong attempt by promising features and upgrades not available on Facebook or other social networking sites.

We’re stoked about the launch of NelsonCheng.com!

Nelson Cheng is a man of many mediums.  From comedic acting roles to his sports podcast to a producing a documentary about magicians or his role advising startup companies, Nelson is a true renaissance man. 

In order for us (Oniracom) to make sense of Nelson’s vast content types, we created a nice projects area in our ExpressionEngine CMS, encouraging Nelson to showcase his multi-facited talents.  Along with social network connectivity and rich media players,  NelsonCheng.com is a beautifully designed portfolio site encouraging his fans to continuously check in on all the happenings in the life of Nelson Cheng.

Check it out!

This infographic is quite staggering!  A huge thanks to Mashable and @Sasha_em for creating this graphic.

Likester is “the global popularity engine,” here to help you understand what people like on Facebook. This includes anyone from your best friends to people you have never met that live across the world. The site is broken up into five major sections: My Likes, Friends, Everyone, Trending and Like List. With these tabs, you are able to sort through popular likes on Facebook in comparison to your own personal likes. Likester is potentially a great tool for social marketing; it can help any Facebook page increase their fan base!

“My Likes” provides an interface to easily view the items you personally like. Here you can sort you likes as entertainment, people, places and things. Likester displays how many of your friends like the same things as you, and how many total Facebook users like the same pages. When comparing your likes to others, you have the option of browsing according to the location of users. Additionally, you can manage your likes through Likester.

Oniracom is proud to announce the new website for Ron “Tater Salad” White, the popular stand up comedian who is a charter member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour.  Ron has been nominated twice for the Grammy Awards and is RIAA certified 10x Platinum for CD/DVD sales of over 10 million.

Don’t forget his famous slogan…. “You can’t fix stupid.”

Oniracom is gearing up to work on more projects with Ron’s management who has been an incredibly savvy and wonderful team.

Skype is planning to shift its gears towards the business perspective of video chatting, and is teaming up with Citrix, a worldwide company who offers online meetings with GoToMeeting. The new feature is expected to be available near the end of the year, and Skype hopes for this partnership to “help expand Skype’s business offerings by providing powerful collaboration features for businesses of all sizes to set up and hold meetings” (Skype, 2011). Along with video calls and conferencing, the new service will also include audio features with voice calling, as well as instant messaging, file sharing, and group video calling, which is a brand new element that Skype launched with their latest version, Skype 5.0.

The new conference calling product is a little different from their current free conference calling service. The free conference calling that Skype already offers only allows two users to video call online, instant message, file share, etc., while the new product is a paid version that is extended through Skype’s business service. Skype and Citrix are excited to bring this product to life and explain that, “Web and audio conferencing has been among the top requested features by our business users. This represents a significant step towards broadening our enterprise offerings, while adding features that will enable business people to collaborate even more efficiently and effectively.” (Skype, 2011). This new conference calling service makes it simpler for corporate businesses to hold meetings with one another and are able to connect anywhere and anytime, which increases productivity. Citrix also claims that GoToMeeting is extremely user-friendly, therefore prior training or knowledge of the program is not necessary. The exact price of how much the conference call feature is going to cost has not been established yet, and Skype plans to let users know of all costs closer to the release of the service.

Travel costs and difficult meeting arrangements are out the window with this brand new product. Collaborating with other businesses also becomes much more flexible and easy with this new technology. This was just a little preview, stay tuned for more news with Skype and their new conference calling product later this year!

We are excited to announce a new iPhone app (WindowSeat) developed by our good friend which tracks your flight in mid-air without being connected to a wifi or cell phone network!

How does it work?

WindowSeat’s patent-pending technology predicts the location of all commercial flights in the contiguous U.S. based on historical flight path data between your departure and arrival airports. With this highly interactive application, you can track your flight, recalculate your remaining flight time and flight position, and learn more about key landmarks and geographic areas you’re flying over.

An in-flight map in the palm of your hands

Enter your departure and arrival cities either prior to or after takeoff, then enter your actual wheel-up time to begin tracking. During your flight, update your flight time and flight position based on points- of-interest you observe, or information that the pilot or onboard staff share.

Long gone are the days of records, tapes, and compact discs. But what is in store for music storage? Music streaming services are surfacing, making it possible to not only listen to music on computers, but also in cars, on TVs, throughout home sound systems, and on mobile devices. Countless services allow users to access thousands of albums and millions of songs instantly on the device of their choice. Users can create libraries of their favorite songs, listen to pre-made or personally created playlists, share songs with friends, purchase songs and so much more. While these services allow users to sync their created libraries and playlists, many music fanatics are looking for what’s next.

We are super excited to be the technology providers of FanManager’s Street Team platform.  Here’s an excerpt from FanMail’s blog post:

Our clients are awesome and every one has interesting stories to tell.  Some of them, like FanManager, are really pushing the innovation needle to drive their business and communicate with their fans.

FanManager is about as cool as it gets: They offer creative, full-service solutions to artists and festivals. They manage musician’s on and off-line street teams, as well as work exchange programs for events.  FanManager hosts a very large community of street team members who accrue points for completing marketing tasks for their favorite artists. With these points, street-teamers can purchase merchandise, tickets and get VIP access.

The case study below is what happens when 3 great companies get together: Oniracom, FanManager and FanMail. Partnering, we help FanManger manage over 90,000 online and offline street team members, keep their data clean and actionable, provide custom profiles for each member and deep analytics for each FanManager client.

Super Geeky Goodness!

Have you seen Apple’s new “Find iPhone” feature?  It’s free, and no, you don’t need a paid MobileMe account (I hate MobileMe).

I highly recommend you go get the free “Find iPhone” app [AppStore link] and login with your Apple ID (which would probably be better referred to as: iTunes Username & Password).

NOTE: Your iPhone software needs to be up to date!

Now your iPhone is synced with your Apple ID, so if your phone ever gets lost or stolen, it’s not a complete goner.  Once your phone is missing, from someone else’s iPhone you can login with your Apple ID to their Find iPhone app, and it locates exactly where your phone is (if it’s turned on) on a Google Map.  If it’s turned off, it will tell you the location last detected, and how long ago that was.

Then you have the following options:

Former Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes has designed the site to “let users find, follow and support the causes important to them.”

We have compiled a list of what we find to be the most interesting and informative music blogs on the web. The list amounts to 21 music blogs, but is divided into four categories; Music Blogs (general reviews of up-and-coming music), International Blogs (reviews up-and-coming music from specific countries and around the world), Entertainment Blogs (covers news and reviews of a variety of art forms), and Music Industry Blogs (covers the latest happenings of what is moving and shaking in the music industry).

Direct-to-Fan (D2F) marketing is essentially creating a relationship with your fans through a marketing outlet, fans help you and in return you help them. D2F marketing is a creative business model that allows artists to eliminate the need for a middle man by delivering music directly to fans.  Which means, artists keep a higher percentage of their own sales, compared to the current business model where major labels, distributors or even iTunes take 30% or more away from the artist! D2F is most easily identified by free content give-aways in exchange for a tweet, Facebook shout-out, or e-mail sign up, reference MattCosta.com.

However, D2F marketing is evolving to include custom storefronts and marketing analytics that enable you to better grasp your audience and sell directly from your website and various social profiles. After researching the following sites; Bandbox, Nimbit and Topspin, I have outlined a detailed explanation of the costs, benefits, similarities, and differences between each platform. 

Read More…

I’ll be honest. When I see the ubiquitous PowerPoint title page start off a presentation, I groan inwardly. And I’m guessing you do too.
Despite becoming a staple of the business and scholastic world, Microsoft’s presentation application hasn’t evolved beyond its linear bulleted slide formating since its release over twenty years ago.

Enter Prezi.

Prezi is an online presentation tool that does away with the slide-by-slide approach of Powerpoint entirely. Instead, it utilizes a visual map with embedded words, links, images and videos. Users can navigate this visual map by zooming in and out, resulting in an interactive and visually stimulating product.
Perhaps Prezi is best explained by watching a sample project. I wasn’t completely sold on the idea until I saw a demonstration on their site. Check out the video below:

The pliable interface of Prezi means that every presentation is unique to its creator. And it’s FREE. Best of all, it’s web-based, which means that Prezi presentations can be created and shown on any computer with internet access. No more emailing presentations to yourself, hoping desperately that the computer you’re presenting on will have the necessary OS and software. Users are also provided with an offline player in case you’re presenting somewhere without access to the internet.

Prezi offers three different levels of pricing: Free, Enjoy & Pro. Every version grants users access to the editing software and an offline player and the ability to download & embed presentations into websites and blogs, as well as the abiliy to import images, videos, PDFs, & Flash files. The free version allots you 100MB worth of file storage but ensures that all your presentations will be public. For $59 a year, users can quadruple their file storage and are given the option of making their presentations private. Pro, at $159 a year, lets premium users download a desktop application of the editing software so they may work offline.
Prezi.com also has a forum component, in which you can view the works of others, comment and perhaps choose to “pat them on the back” for a job well done.

One of my favorites is the Prezi that accompanied the lecture “Mixing Mind & Metaphor,” at TED Global 2009 given by James Geary. Check it out here.

I’ll admit at first it takes a little while to get used to the interface, especially if you’ve been brought up on Powerpoint. But Prezi is relatively intuitive and the site contains many helpful tutorial videos to assist with the basics and offer tips and tricks. Once you get the hang of it, the entire process is strangely liberating.

What do you think? Will you be using Prezi for your next presentation?

What makes a good website? How do you start building a website? Learn all this and more this week on Jeremy’s Desktop.

Join Jeremy and the guys from Oniracom to find out what you need to make your website a smashing success. Oniracom is the company responsible for the websites of Jack Johnson, John Legend, Matt Costa and countless other music sensations. We’ll get the scoop from them on how they go about creating these works of art – from the story board to content dissemination. See what these experts say are the 3 things every website must have.

About Oniracom

What makes a good website? How do you start building a website? Join Jeremy and the guys from Oniracom to learn what you need to make your website a smashing success. Oniracom is the company responsible for the websites of Jack Johnson, John Legend, Matt Costa and countless other music sensations. We’ll get the scoop from them on how they go about creating these works of art – from the story board to content dissemination. See what these experts say are the 3 things every website must have.

Fast-Forward 17 minutes…

The dominance of the web has changed the way people work, live and stay informed. For now, I’m going to leave aside a discussion about what the internet has done to the average person’s experience of life and the way people relate to others (though they are certainly worthy subjects for reflection and consideration).

What I want to share with you today are the tools we at Oniracom use to help us stay on top of the rapid shifts and changes which we encounter daily.  As a company that works primarily on websites and social media, every new application, every new site, every new contribution to the field of design, development and social networking has the potential to rearrange the way we go about business.  This means that it is a necessity to stay flexible, because you will encounter challenges and you will be expected understand the new developments and rise to the occasion (or risk being met by a client asking, “well they did that over their; are you not as capable?”).

So with all these changes and rapid sharing of information, what is the trick to staying on top without driving yourself crazy?

The solution is finding good tools that bring you the most relevant information and allow you to communicate easily and work efficiently.

Click Read More to See The Tools We Use on a Daily Basis and leave a comment about the tools that you use!

The music industry is in a pit.  The future is uncertain, and people just aren’t paying for music anymore.  Thats what the RIAA will tell you as they sue, sue, sue in full panic mode.  The industry is scrambling for a way to make money off album sales, something they say is vital to the future of music.  How and why would record labels produce albums if they don’t sell?  How can bands create music if there aren’t any labels around?

We recently launched the new Jack Johnson Music for his upcoming “En Concert” release.  The launch includes a brand new website layout, updated online store complete with digital downloads (integrated with physical merchandise shipments) and a social media campaign to promote the products.  Billboard.biz covered our Twitter widget:

Jack Johnson is harnessing the power of his Twitter followers to promote his new live album. Users send a form letter (form tweet?) to their followers and in return will get a free MP3. Nice. It’s simple, probably cost next to nothing, and will most likely be very effective. Oniracom, the company that runs Johnson’s website, offers a case study on its efforts to increase Matisyahu’s Twitter following and improve his Twittering. (For example, Matisyahu generated buzz by inviting five Twitter followers to his band rehearsal). (Mashable)

Read the Billboard Article

MySpace has launched their sync service to many of their users world wide.  Right now you can sync your MySpace status update with your Twitter. 

The beta service was originally only available to celebrities and musicians like Oniracom clients Lenny Kravitz, John Legend, and Matisyahu.

The service is another great way for musicians to be able to update once and publish to several sites much like several third party Facebook apps that publish your Twitter updates to your profile wall.

We have been able to keep fans updated about new tours, album launches, and special opportunities through Myspace Sync. (Sizlocore)

We recently launched the new www.jackjohnsonmusic.com for his upcoming “En Concert” release.  The launch includes a brand new website layout, updated online store complete with digital downloads (integrated with physical merchandise shipments) and a social media campaign to promote the products.  Mashable.com covered our Twitter widget:

It’s really simple: just head on to twitter.jackjohnsonmusic.com. There’s a premade Twitter message there (you can add 24 more characters if you like) that promotes the new album, titled En Concert, and all you need to do is login into your Twitter account and send it. The download of the promised tune (it’s a 192 kbps MP3) will start automatically.

Read the Mashable Article

Apple is exploring a new interactive album format code named “Cocktail” that could potentially bring new life to the Album AND the Music Industry. An executive involved in the plan is quoted by the Financial Times as saying it’s “all about re-creating the heyday of the album when you would sit around with your friends looking at the artwork, while you listened to the music.”

That’s all well and good but it seems as though the current state of the music industry has arrived to where it’s at because of a reason - progression. This new format is supposedly all about “re-creating the heyday of the album” but what can we classify this as - progression, nostalgia, retro, all of the above or none of the above?

I realize that this new format is being created to give fans more for their money and encourage them to buy the whole album versus single tracks. However, in order for this “Cocktail” to work it will have to overcome the way of thinking that most music consumers have these days - that albums only have 2 or 3 good songs that are worth the money and the rest is usually filler.  Let’s just dream for a second and imagine if “Cocktail” really takes off.  Perhaps this is what is needed to motivate artists to create albums with less filler. 

Of course, for the die hard fans I think this concept will work. Fans are always willing and wanting to get new content from their favorite artists. The question, though, is what “exclusive content” will be offered and will it be something unique OR will it be something you can find on-line within a few minutes of searching? 

I’m glad to see that the big names in the music industry are working on new ways to entice fans into buying music. It’s a sad, true fact but “just music” isn’t really cutting it these days. I personally think the “Cocktail” is a progression and a good idea, but it needs to be done right.  And who better to lead this initiative than Apple.

Click here to read the article in the New York Times

Click here to read the article in Financial Times