On the official Gmail blog (aka Google’s Email service), Dave Cohen announced yesterday the release of colored labels for email. While labels have been around since the beginnings of Gmail, the introduction of colored labels simply adds a visual context to an already useful technique of getting your digital files organized. Below is a quick synopsis of labels and why you should start using them

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What are labels and where are they used?

Labels are essentially another term for a relevant tag or a keyword. A label can be applied to any piece of information, such as an email, bookmark or photo, in the same way that you would put a label on a manila folder.

They are commonly found on Web 2.0 sites, including:

• Blogs, such as WordPress or Blogger
• Online bookmarking services (recently reviewed by our own Nalini Humphrey)
• Photo sharing services, such as Flickr

Why are labels important?
Besides the fact that labels are now commonly used feature of sites today, they are also a means of helping us be more productive. As I think about the way that I managed emails, I used to create folders with either a person or project name (like “Emails from Boss” or “EDS Website Redesign”) and add relevant emails in those folders for reference. Unfortunately, I would end up with emails that could go in more than one place so I would have to pick a single folder (which was annoying). This would present an even bigger problem when I would need to fetch a specific email but couldn’t find it in that one folder as it was hiding in another folder.

Enter labels! With labels, I am able to get around this issue by applying one or more keywords to the same message. This way, the message appears in all of the right places. And further, with colored labels I can add a red color to my to-do label so it sticks out.

Where else can I use labels?

Since labels are not limited to email, you can apply them to other items that you need to organize, like your photos or bookmarks. For photos, you can simply tag who’s in the picture and what occasion it was taken and with bookmarks I tag them with several related. This system actually helps me find the “needle in the haystack,” especially when I have to locate a bookmark for a CSS hack regardless of whether I’m looking under “code samples” or “designing websites” (I know that Wade, our Creative Director, cringes whenever I say that!).

VW celebrates its anniversary in style.

It may be a Dutch website, but they have the same great taste in music (less the awkward skew towards the still popular Journey, Asia and Air Supply). The microsite showcases 5 generations of VWs alongside the music of their era. The gaming portion of the site quizzes the user to pick which VW and era belongs with the song and the results are an engaging advergame that delivers some great music and memories.

So what were my findings?

1. VW sure has changed from the 5os, and still has yet to bring back the Karmann Ghia.
2. Quiz shows and advergames mix very well.
3. I have an odd skew towards 50s and 80s music.

Take the quiz and see how VW has changed over 60 years. Just click on “speel het spel” and enjoy the music. (It takes a while to load, please be patient!)

In Behavioral Research, we do a lot of interviews - and virtual worlds are no exception.

“In-world” interviews are an amazing way to uncover avatar needs, preferences, and expectations in virtual worlds. In the last few months, we’ve used this method to produce some really intriguing findings.

Take a quick look at what an in-world interview looks like:

I chose this morning to start combing through the many magazines that I have let pile up on my desk for the past few weeks. OMMA, B2B, Fortune, Business 2.0 (before it died), Inc., and on and on. I typically use Google Reader to keep up with news and trends but there’s just something about these printed mags that I still enjoy reading. When I have time, that is.

In the course of reading through one of them I came upon a new term: the Innernet. It was an article (and apologies to whichever magazine and author it was that mentioned it, but there’s no way I’m digging through my now overflowing trash can to find it again) that talked about the impact that social networking has had on how we use the Internet.

We’ve kind of gone in this circular phase of initially being bound to a network such as Netscape or AOL, then the web was opened up and we all abandoned any company that tried to control our experience, and now we’re almost back full circle to wanting to form an inner connection of our friends and family and spend most of our time in this new “innernet”. And I say “we” but of course this doesn’t apply to everyone, as I’m sure TS will have a comment about how I’m in love with Facebook and not everyone is a college kid looking to increase his/her friend count status.

Earlier this week I was on a panel at the eMarketing Association event in Atlanta and a decent portion of the discussion revolved around social networking and what it means to marketers. This topic continues to be hot as more and more people flock to MySpace, Facebook or other networks (oh, and Orkut, I have to mention Orkut because I have a sneaking suspicion that Google might index this post a little better the more I mention Orkut), and our experiences day-to-day are confined within these networks.

And now Microsoft just bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million. This values Facebook at roughly $15 billion. So I’m no rocket scientist but I have a feeling these social networks are only going to get more popular as time goes on. And the trick will be figuring out where marketing fits within them, if it even does.

Did I mention Orkut?

Thinking back to the days of taking the SAT (did you hear they allow calculators now?!), I remember the analogy questions and I could imagine seeing this one:

Cat is to Dog as
Interactive is to…

a) Digital
b) Online
c) Print
d) Al Gore

The obvious answer would be c), right?  Not so fast.  I just read about a company called Structural Graphics that creates what they call “interactive print”.  In an article by Mediaweek, the author writes about pitches that Structural Graphics has recently made on the concept of print ads with animation, sound and video to Time Inc. and other major publishers.  The printed page would even have a coin-sized battery!

Although they say the product is about two years away from execution, you have to start thinking that we’re not too far off from having conversion-enabled (I just made that word up) print ads that connect to the web, possibly through bluetooth on your phone or a wireless network.  Or I could see ads change based on when a person is reading that magazine (i.e. if there is an NFL ad for an upcoming game and you read the magazine two weeks later, the ad could refresh to the game that weekend).

This kind of technology leads me to believe that soon all marketing will be “interactive”.  I was at a dinner the other night and someone high up on the interactive side at one of the largest companies in town made the comment that interactive marketing is now traditional marketing.  And I think she’s right.

Google has been taking market share from Yahoo!, the second most popular search engine according to Nielsen NetRatings (PDF format), so Yahoo! has fired their first salvo at Google. This week, Yahoo! introduced a new search utility, called the Search Assistant, to help guide visitors through a search (see image below). In essence, the Search Assistant is a drop-down menu that appears below the search bar on the Yahoo! home page whenever a user types in search terms (aka search query). The purpose of this utility is to improve the search results by either:

• Adding words to the search query. This functionality narrows the search results into a more targeted set.

• Suggesting alternate search terms. This functionality shifts the search results to related terms that may be lesser known, yet more relevant to the search query.

This tool could potentially have a significant impact on the search engine world. Why?

1. The Search Assistant will increase searches to well targeted sites. Most search queries are composed of only two to three terms. By adding terms to the existing query, the results will shift to sites that match more terms and are more focused.

2. The Search Assistant will improve the quality of search results. Since search engines are often used as the starting point to conduct online research on a specific topic, users may not be aware of industry-related terms. By introducing the user to related terms, the utility improves the quality of the results.

3. The Search Assistant will “level” the search engine marketing field. Webmasters are often focused on improving results for terms that receive significant traffic. By displaying results for lesser known terms, the search engine traffic will “shift” to lesser known sites, and in turn it will force webmasters of sites that have more generic terms to also optimize for more targeted terms.

4. The Search Assistant will eventually attract more visitors. Google beat out Yahoo! because of their clean search results page AND more relevant search results. Since search results pages virtually follow the same design, the improved search results will renew interest in Yahoo!.

Conclusion

According to internal tests, Yahoo! has discovered that 61% of users were more successful in their search when they used the Search Assistant. While that’s impressive by any measure, Yahoo! still lags in developing a competitive search engine spider (or, program that the search engine sends to collect information about each website). Google has one of the best spiders around, so if Yahoo! wants to regain market share it will have to focus their developers on that effort next.

Behavioral Research gets to work on some pretty exciting projects. Here’s a sneak peak of our in-world User Experience testing.

1. We study how users search for islands …

Click:

2. We test what users think they can do…

Click:

3. We test user expectations…

Click:

We’ve discovered some amazing things. Marketing in world is not just about design. It’s about optimization with your target audience in mind.

Keeping up on the pace of the ever-evolving Internet is no small task, so I wanted to do my part by sharing a few new tagging sites that I’ve recently learned about. I’m sure most of you know about del.icio.us (bookmark URLs; write tags; other people can browse through your bookmarks) and Digg (bookmark URLs; other other people can browse through your bookmarks and ‘digg’ it too; bookmarks are sorted by topic). Here’s some others that are starting to get popular:
= Furl.net (not .com)- described as ‘An easier way to save and share your online discoveries’. It’s like another Digg or del.icio.us but the homepage is very bland, which puts me off some but the site is a part of Looksmart.com, so it’s understandable.

= Simpy.com – yet another site tagging/bookmarking app but looking through their customer reviews. It seems that they could be serious competition for del.icio.us because of the other features being offering.

= reddit.com – similar to Furl.net and others where you get to post what’s new and popular, but different in the way that, based on user votes, items get dropped or raised on the list of ‘cool’.

= MyWeb.Yahoo.com – Yahoo!’s beta version of site tagging. For me, not very interesting and isn’t at all different than what the other sites are doing. As a Yahoo! fan, I’m disappointed.

= Blogmemes.com – offering the Hispanic community a way to promote and share links, stories, videos and other ways to share culture. In other words, a Spanish version of site tagging which I think is an interesting spin on things.

= ma.gnolia.com – tries to differentiate itself but is really just another site tagging app – although it is prettier than some I’ve seen.

= Stumbleupon.com – keeps track of your preferences as you search the internet, recommending similar sites to the one that you’re on. In other words, they use the search display advertising algorithm for web browsing.

= Technorati.com – Scours the web for blog posts and entries about social media items. It’s like getting your water cooler gossip fix without leaving your desk.

= Newsvine.com – An instant reflection of what the world is talking about at any given moment. It is people actively submitting articles from online news sites about the things that they are reading/interested in/ talking about/etc. Like Technorati, but with real articles instead of blogs.

Now that you’ve been brought up to speed on tags, try out the services and tell us what you think!

For almost every native New Yorker who was around when 9/11 occurred (and the aftermath) there is an unspoken bond of anguish and immense sorrow that never seems to diminish somehow as the years pass.

I’m one of those native New Yorkers. Every year I find myself tearing up when the TV specials come on and have the change the channel. I still can’t find the courage to see any of the films that have come out since because I don’t think I can sit and watch it happen all over again. The one thought that I keep coming back to is – there are thousands of people that I will never meet, never smile at and never get to know now, gone in the blink of an eye.

This year, I ran across an article about a Second Life event that commemorates that fateful day and was curious enough to overcome my aversions (at least for a little while) and check it out. According to the article, the sim opened at the time when the first plane struck. I logged in and teleported.

Names of those lost from each of the buildings and planes, as well as the service men and women who lost their lives, are etched on a wall, which is surrounded by water on three sides. Pictures of those lost (at least I’m hoping that’s what it is) are collaged and displayed in a separate area.

No buildings are shown, which I think makes it even more significant. People came in and out; some returning for a second or third visit. Flowers, signs of ‘We will not forget’ and more are scattered around the base. No one talked very much. And periodically, a soft rain would fall.

It was beautiful in the ways that only Second Life can be.

Remembering 9/11, we will never forget.

For the CSI fans out there – good news, now you can become a part of the CSI intrigue by gathering clues and solving mysteries, in Second Life that is! That’s right – the makers of CSI: New York will be developing a storyline, in the fall, where a murderer escapes into Second Life where you, the general public and obsessed fans can take part in the investigation and help to solve the mystery.

This is a great way, I think, for the show to use an emerging media to include their audience in an amazing interactive experience. It seems that ideas like this are one of many ways that marketers are creatively capturing the imagination and eyeballs.

Take for example the ingenious marketing of several TV shows (Heroes, Lost, etc.) where a trail of clues to random websites that lead to other websites, emails, and even text messages are left for the fans that are loyal and brilliant enough to figure them out. They uncover hidden storylines, plots and much more.

And the same is being done for movies, check out for instance this interesting post on mentalfloss.com that talks about the upcoming movie by J.J. Abrams that has no name – but yet is being advertised. This is the type of immersive marketing that I can see as the next wave of the future. It’s not just a combination of website, email, direct mail, and (does this even exist anymore?) telemarketing. It is a full on experience and I for one cannot wait to ride that wave.