2011 February 01 | Mapsys.info (2) Mapsys.info

Churchill on Ramping Down

“This is no time for ease and comfort.
It is the time to dare and endure.”

–Winston Churchill (1874–1965)
British prime minister during WWII

Sales revolution…

Too many people will lose today’s productivity in anticipation of the weekend.

On Monday, too many people will complain about the start of the week (search Twitter for the word “Mondays” at 8 am for proof).

Could you spark a little positive revolution and help someone else break out of the TGIF mentality (or yourself if it applies)? Could you help inspire a “let’s kick some @$$” Monday morning start to the week (luksa… it’s Polish for “let’s kick some @$$”… okay, it’s an acronym we made up… get a printable reminder here)?

Wouldn’t both be more fun (and profitable)? How about just starting it at home?

If you’ve not seen it, here’s 1-minute from Nike that always gets to me (in a very, very good way).

(tbif: too bad it’s Friday… the last sales day of the week)

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How did Belgrade get such great 3D models?

If you’ve visited Belgrade in Google Earth lately, you may have been surprised by the quality of the 3D buildings there. Belgrade is not available in Building Maker, and it’s not a city that’s had some auto-generated buildings from Google placed there, but yet there are a ton of models in the city. Beyond that, these buildings are good. Notice the 3D bushes on the balcony of this building, and the 3D trees (which aren’t the new “Version 6” trees) below:

The idea to model Belgrade came from Zeljko Zdravkovic, who himself has modeled well over 500 buildings that you’ll find in Google Earth. In fact, the “Lets build digital Belgrade” collection in the 3D Warehouse has well over 800 models in it!

Zeljiko recently gave a presentation in the council building of New Belgrade, where he was able to show what he’s accomplished, discuss how the process works, and share future plans for 3D buildings in other local areas.

To see Belgrade for yourself, you can fly there using this KML file. Great work Zeljiko!

Big G vs. The Trip Advisor – Smackdown Continues in The Review Ring

Ah yes, the rancor in the review industry does continue and in fact it seems to be turnin’ into a wrestlin’ match. The ~~actors~~ ~~players competitors~~ wrestlers have staked out their corners and the taunting has begun for the match later this evening.

Google has been throwing reviews around like ring side chairs. Reviews from tripadvisor.com have been coming and going from Places Pages faster than an Elbow Drop off the Top. Google seems to be attempting to not show them as much, per TA’s request but in their stead we are often seeing the very same reviews form Tripadvisor.ca or .ie. In some cases, we are even seeing the TA reviews on the Places Page from actual owner website via the TA review widget. (Thanks to Steve King from SimPartners)

The real winner in this match appears to be a site called TravelPod.com. They are a site that synidicates TripAdvisor reviews and in a quick survey of hotel Places Pages for major cities, they are showing prominently on the main SERP and the Places Page for sites that had TripAdvisor reviews. Their review totals often match TA’s exactly. Clearly, TA’s efforts to block Google from summarizing content from their review corpus is not going to be a successful tactic.

One then has to ask why TA has gone on their very public PR tear. Posting at their blog and across twitter via the #AskSteve hashtag, their CEO continues to answer (albeit at a trickle) questions about the tiff.

I found TA’s answer to a question that I asked interesting:

Q: @mblumenthal – How does the hotel benefit by TripAdvisor pulling their reviews from Google?

A: For hotels to thrive on any site, consumers must have a great user experience. We’ve pulled our reviews because Google Places doesn’t offer a good consumer experience.

Now where have we heard that refrain before? It seems that Steve pulled a play from Google’s playbook when answering that one.

Effluent always seems to run down hill. And it seems that wherever an SMB might stand in this current match is by definition, down hill.