All posts by MyOrbit-Team

Automotive, Innovation, Market News

Eurostar Goodbye Waterloo, Hello St Pancras

Eurostar in the UK is going to get High Speed rail soon! And that’s very interesting for any frequent intra-Europe traveller. From November 14, 2007 (mark the date please), its going to be faster travel, and at least 30 to 60 minutes shaved-off your UK-Continental Europe train travel times. The 186mph high-speed line from St Pancras International in London to the Channel Tunnel means that the UK will become part of the high-speed rail network that covers much of Europe. Check out their website for more information: http://fortomorrow.eurostar.com/

Eurostar St Pancras London

In fact, Eurostar is joining Europe’s other leading high-speed rail operators to form Railteam, to make your journey even easier. Railteam is being brought to you by a group of rail companies – along with Eurostar they are: Deutsche Bahn (Germany), SNCF (France), NSHispeed (Netherlands), ÖBB (Austria), SBB (Switzerland) and SNCB (Belgium), as well as two of their high-speed subsidiaries Thalys and Lyria. Railteam covers any journey that starts and ends in a Railteam country (see the map on the right), at least part of which involves a high-speed rail journey with a Railteam partner.

Richard Brown, Eurostar CEO, sums it up best: “Railteam will reduce barriers between countries and build confidence in the quality and reliability of international services. It will provide travellers with an integrated network with connections as good as or better than airports, and make high-speed rail a really attractive and effective alternative to the more environmentally damaging, short-haul airlines.”

Eurostar Railway Tracks
Photo by Michael Walter/Troika

Advertising, Artificial Intelligence, Business Development, Innovation, Mobile & Telecom, MyOrbit Blogs, New Media, Online Marketing, Sales & Marketing

Phone Calls = Page Views?

Scott Hamilton, president and CEO of VoodooVox believes: “Phone calls are the new page views, and VoodooVox’s In-Call Network is the next breakthrough advertising channel. We strongly believe that most telephony services that consumers currently pay for can be delivered profitably and for less with advertising support. Our In-Call Media represents the new standard by which all voice-based marketing will be gauged.”

The idea is interesting and we will wait and see how consumers react to voice ads, while they are waiting on hold to speak with their bank or pay the utility bills. Meanwhile, Voodoovox has closed $8.1M Financing Round led By Softbank Capital.

Steve Murray, partner, Softbank Capital feels: “The potential for ad-supported telephony extends far beyond directory assistance applications….Over time, we expect VoodooVox to help drive new applications, improve customer experiences, and decrease pricing for consumer telephony services of all kinds while raising profitability for the call publishers that provide these services.” The full news release is on their website.

So what’s the takeaway for you? There are more and more options of advertising, and reach audience at the most suitable time and space. Following the Internet, the telephone services got online, and in a few years, we can have “personalized” digital TV channels (more about that sometime later). So for any product or service that you want to market, consider all possible alternatives – they are increasing all the time.

Advertising, Business Development, Market News, Mobile & Telecom, MyOrbit Blogs, New Media, Online Marketing, Sales & Marketing

Google Mobile Search Ads Go-Live

After about a year of trials, Google has announced it will begin including AdWords advertisements within Google Mobile Search results. In an email shared with advertising partners on Tuesday, Google wrote: “We are happy to announce a new feature that will allow you to easily reach additional qualified customers who are searching Google from their mobile phones.

n the next few days, your search ads will be eligible to run on Google Mobile Search pages (like they currently do on Google.com). We are offering this feature – and any resulting clicks – for free through November 18, so you can experiment with the rapidly growing mobile platform while still reaching qualified customers.” For more info on this, read this Search Engine Land article.

Google Mobile Ads

Now, Mobile advertising has been predicted to be a big market, and while some businesses have taken their positions, others are still discussing over their white boards, and still others are making power point presentations that may not turn into action for another year.

One thing is for sure: mobile advertising is going to benefit from all the wide screen devices that we have been getting, including this Treo (one of our favourites!) You can receive text and images, like menu cards, driving directions, hotel room pricing lists, and more.

So how can you benefit as a business?

As you can expect, there will be a high demand for services while a person is on the move — related to transport, food, medicines, hotels, finance, etc. If you can deliver a reliable service, then there is an opportunity to advertise on the mobile platform, and sell at a better profit margin because the consumer is usually looking for immediate response, delivery, or action. For these services, he or she most probably won’t sit down to prepare a detailed comparison table, and you can get the order if you can deliver in the short time-frames.

But if you can’t you will have more than your share of irate customers!

Automotive, Innovation

Paris-London High Speed Run by EuroStar

On September 4, Eurostar made history and broke the record for the fastest-ever train journey between Paris and London. For the first time in history, a Eurostar passenger train travelled from Gare du Nord, Paris to St Pancras International, London on the new High Speed 1 line. The average speed all along was 300kmph. Watch this great video that captures this historical journey that was made just a week back!

Contracts & Legal, MyOrbit Blogs, New Media

Tricky Internet Video Copyright Case

Here’s an interesting story reported by WebProNews. See how North Carolina native, Chris Knight, is accused of copyright infringement for posting a YouTube video that Viacom International, Inc. made by infringing upon his own copyright in the first place. Chris told WebProNews he is shocked at this turn of events. You will also hear comments by Attorney Clarke Walton on the legal side of the story.