The future as we stereotypically imagine it is rapidly approaching. From papyrus to iPads, telephones to Facebook, what could possibly be next? As a digital strategist, I wish I could say I have the answers, but IBM beat me to it, of course.

The following are IBM’s recently released “Next Five in Five,” a list of life-changing innovations predicted to make a debut within the next few years. Looks pretty promising, although it is sans flying cars.

• Interactive holograms and real time 3-D interface from digital devices
• Batteries recharged by air, static electricity or kinetic energy, lasting 10 times longer than they do now.
• Invaluable info collected from sensors in everyday devices and social media will be collected by scientists to formulate data sets for research.
• Insightful computers feeding information to you to optimize your daily commute and soft-pedal traffic jams.
• Systems that recycle thermal energy inadvertently emitted by computers and data centers.

It’s about time, I say. My mind is teeming with the possibilities these technologies hold. Considering the likely immensely positive impact of these innovations, let’s hope IBM is right.

Now if only teleportation were on the map.

The Law Offices of Kaufman, Englett and Lynd (KEL), a widely recognized, national law firm, approached Purple, Rock, Scissors to market their law services and enhance their digital presence. To coincide with KEL’s website’s new redesign, Purple will increase online traffic by performing a search engine optimization overhaul and rejuvenating their current PPC campaign.

KEL Attorneys is a prevalent law firm in Central Florida, with a primary emphasis on housing foreclosures. Improving performance in search engines, organically and with advertising, is critical in producing leads for the competitive industry. Purple’s efforts toward enhancing KEL’s search rankings and paid search position aim to increase traffic and brand awareness, ultimately driving substantial, qualified leads.

With KEL’s office building towering over downtown Orlando, KEL Attorneys is visible to the surrounding city, but with the help of Purple, Rock, Scissors, KEL will soon enjoy an even greater online visibility and ensuing success.

Purple, Rock, Scissors has been working under the hood of mobile electronics giant Metra Electronics, and is excited to announce the launch of the revamped MetraOnline.com as well as the release of Metra’s first iPhone application.

MetraOnline.com

The website undertaking involved a full redesign, re-planning, and restructuring, all contributing to a greatly improved online presence. Purple established an extensive Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign, with more than 1,000 new and unique product pages and – more importantly – proper website build for Search Engine indexing.

The content, aesthetics, and usability now aptly tie in MetraOnline.com with other Metra subsidiaries including Installer Institute, Metra’s school for audio installers, and MetraDealer.com, Metra’s online ordering platform for distributors. The improved News and Events publishing system will continually draw users back for updates and create easy workflow for Metra’s content publishers.

Other components of the online reboot include a full PPC campaign as well as a social strategy that incorporates Facebook and YouTube.

Metra Mobile Application

Purple added a new facet to Metra’s digital strategy: a Smartphone Application. The app, currently in the iPhone and Android markets, allows dealers and customers to look up Metra parts by vehicle make, model, and year with ease. Also included are videos, a stream of the newest Metra products, and information about individual Metra brands such as Tsunami, Raptor, Axxess, and Ethereal. The app also includes Customer Support information for easy reference.

The Metra site relaunch and integration of smartphone technology will improve the brand as well as its conduction of business. Continuing to service Metra with ongoing optimization and traffic acquisition support, Purple, Rock, Scissors is proud to fuel Metra’s engine and spark success!

Purple, Rock, Scissors is partnering with Valencia Community College to improve the user experience on their existing news website, ValenciaCC-News.com. Purple will provide digital consultation, design, and development services to make quality recommendations and streamline the content publishing process.

Onsite engagement is our focus, so we will look for ways to increase the website’s returning users, the time users stay on the site, and the awareness of Valencia News through an increase in social sharing by existing users.

Our process is rolling and we expect advantageous results for the Valencia brand and its social circle. Be sure to “like” them on Facebook and check out our homework!

Bono’s Bar-B-Q has returned to Purple, Rock, Scissors to help market its new Willie Jewell’s restaurant branch. Willie Jewell’s Old School Bar-B-Q is looking to turn its website into a resource that attracts and informs prospective franchise owners.

Our recent success in launching Bono’s new Bistro microsite proves the importance of design and content in attracting visitors online. As part of the fast casual dining segment, Willie Jewell’s has plenty of potential for growth across the southeast US and beyond.

Purple, Rock, Scissors will be broadening and embellishing the restaurant’s existing website to target and convert more franchise leads by showing what Willie Jewell’s has to offer!

According to Josh Martino at Willie Jewell’s, you can get one of these restaurants up and running for “next to nothing” compared to other franchise start-ups. With this great selling point, along with Willie’s quirky, fun-loving attitude, we’re confident in growing this new start-up chain.

Stay tuned for updates on the launch of the new Willie Jewell’s site!

22 Squared, a Tampa-based agency that works with the likes of Baskin Robbins & Toyota, recently called upon Purple, Rock, Scissors to work on a new national campaign for Publix Super Markets.

Publix Sunday Dinners is an extension of the family-friendly togetherness with which the brand is synonymous. Sunday Dinners uses the Web to reach out to the African American demographic, an audience that typically celebrates Sunday meals with the family.

Purple and 22 Squared collaborated on planning, production design, and all development aspects of this extensive project. At the foundation is the microsite, SundayDinners.Publix.com, chock full of fun, helpful features such as print-friendly formatting for recipes and shopping lists.

Facebook Connect allows for convenient bookmarking, sharing, and event creation systems to make the meal deliciously social. Users can create their own Sunday Dinner by building a menu using recipes from the site, then inviting friends and family with a Facebook event using their connected accounts.

The digital strategy of this campaign includes an upfront SEO campaign of over 200 unique on-site recipes and articles. Having conducted in-depth keyword research for dishes and ingredients of the recipes, Purple, Rock, Scissors ensured that the Sunday Dinners site would be easily accessed and highly ranked in top search engines.

The partnership between the two agencies produced an attractive campaign and a recipe for success. Purple encourages you to give it a taste!

Bad news for spammers and link farmers.

It’s our job as marketers to monitor the changing search engine optimization trends so we can apply them for our clients to keep them front and center. One development that is gaining momentum is the importance of social links when it comes to search engine rankings.

Bruce Clay, renowned search engine optimization pundit, recently said at this year’s PubCon conference, “Likes are the new links.” Just what does this mean, and more importantly, how does it affect business’s search engine ranking?

Internet search engines began with good intentions and methodology. The more links you have, indicating that your website’s content was relevant, the better your rankings in organic results. Over time, people have gradually been abusing this algorithm, striving for quantity of links and letting quality suffer. There became many roads and doorways to websites that simply did not deserve the attention of users.

Links bias search results, and the trust score of links are dropping. Link farmers and brokers will gladly sell you links, but doing that can hurt your ranking because they are not trusted, not organic and most likely not relevant.

Well the tides are turning, as netizens catch on to these spammy tactics. Social sites such as Facebook and Twitter have been in cahoots with search engines Bing, Google and Yahoo in order to improve the search experience for web-goers. These social media outlets have fostered the growth and importance of site “likes”, recommendations and referrals. This form of sharing is far more valuable than unknown sources linking to you, and the community (along with search engines) is likely to trust and reward these links over any other.

It’s said that within the next 6 months to a year, the “like” information and tweets will be heavily integrated into search engine algorithms. This will guarantee sites with the most social interaction, a higher position on the search results page. Ultimately, this means that SEO will no longer be about who can buy the most links but rather who can earn them. The way nature intended it to be.

Learning about your online traffic patterns lends itself to higher conversions, higher search engine rankings, increased ROI as well as an overall better experience for visitors on your site.

Highlighted are a few key items offered with this helpful tool. Learning the whole system requires much dedication and exploration, so we will convince you here in a nutshell of its utility.

Advertising ROI

Google Analytics allows for integration with Google’s PPC search platform AdWords and Microsoft’s AdCenter, complete with an array of other tracking capabilities. Track sales, conversions and visitors, as well as trace transactions back to ad campaigns, as specific as particular banner ads or keywords. This allows us to identify the best sources of revenue and capitalize on those elements.

Mobile tracking

Search and website activity are increasingly stemming from mobile devices, and this trend will only continue to rocket. Google Analytics offers tracking not only to these devices, but also specifically shows traffic patterns from individual devices, like iPhones, Androids, iPads, Blackberrys and more. You will realize the how important mobile websites and mobile application development are to your marketing strategy.

Customized reporting

With all the collected data, our marketing team compiles it into decipherable reports, customized with the information that our clients care about. These reports aid in the investigation, diagnosis and cure of any web issues, all with numbers to support it.

Visualize data

With easy-to-read graphs and the new In-page Analytics, you are able to visualize reports and numbers in the context of a webpage. This means you can view your website within the window of Analytics and get an interactive, illustrated representation of the click statistics and more.

Considering all of these benefits, there is no reason not to utilize this exceptional tool. Here at Purple, Rock, Scissors – we live and breath numbers for our clients. It’s how we are able to keep our clients happy and truly prove the value of our marketing services.

Last year, Starbucks rolled out a new smartphone app allowing customers to pay for their coffee with a digital barcode. This movement began on the west coast in select cities, and then moved into the Starbucks locations inside Target stores.

The application is brilliant marketing in a nutshell. With store location, hours, directions and direct calling, as well as nutritional info, customized drinks, “Invite a Friend” and of course, the Starbucks Card bar code, this digital purse of information and convenience has become a new interactive standard. Not to mention, it is free.

The most forward-thinking aspect is the payment option. With the app, customers can register Starbucks cards, check balances, and reload with a credit card. Blackberry and iPhone users scan a 2-D barcode on a countertop device, making transactions quick and easy. This saves time for the avid coffee drinkers and pastry munchers and saves money for Starbucks in the long run.

Customers responded favorably to this mobile paying option. Brady Brewer (how perfect a name), a vice president at Starbucks, made the following comment in a news release:

“Mobile technology is part of our customers’ daily routine and with the expansion of mobile payment in our test cities, we’re seeing more and more customers using their smartphones as their mobile wallets,” said Brewer. “We’ve heard from our customers on My Starbucks Idea that they want a faster, more convenient way to pay.”

This week, the coffee company expanded the mobile app use to about 300 locations in New York City and Long Island. It may not seem very meaningful or large-scale, but it does mark the progression of a new era: The digital wallet.

While some smartphone users may already be experiencing app overload, I think the market will only grow with this new scanning technology. People will just have to stop downloading so many useless Paper Toss games and make room to utilize this undeniable technology.

I hope that more store chains and companies adopt the mobile bar code. Those New Yorkers must feel like special high-tech guinea pigs. In the mean time, I’ll sit here in Florida with my 10-pound wallet.

Image from gumption on Flickr.

From your 91 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 343 items, clicked 49 items, starred 6 items, shared 1 items, and emailed 0 items. Since May 19, 2008 you have read a total of 3,656 items.

Obviously, this is quite the occasion, as those statistics say I horde my knowledge all to myself and never share. I’ll post my top ten blogs, which is a mixed bag with varying degrees of nerd.

• Jason Kottke
• Zend Developer Zone
• High Scalability
• Jay Paroline
• Alan Storm
• GitHub Blog (because I’m a fanboy)
• J.D. Meier
• Marco Arment
• wtfjs
• Reddit

Okay. I cheated. Reddit isn’t a blog, but its sub-reddits on programming, technology, and economics are all awesome, just to name a few.