“Powered by” in Spanish

The Problem:

When it comes to properly mean “powered by” in Spanish web pages, a lot of spanish-speaking users don’t seem to agree on how to properly mean that, as can be seen from the following links:

http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/144054/how-do-you-say-powered-by-in-espanol

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=329580

Not even Google and Microsoft seem to find a sounded way of meaning the above:

http://es.bab.la/diccionario/ingles-espanol/powered-by

I realized that this is an even worse problem among those hispanics and second generation latinos in the U.S. that are too “americanized” (if that is a valid term).

The Solution:

When we have problems finding terms from different languages with equivalent meanings, the best that we can do is to stop forcing translations and start describing what we want to say. This is a kind of a descriptive strategy.

For instance, according to http://arl-shipzine.com/issue-2-powered-by , “powered by” implies the notion of a service being “provided by”.

So, following the descriptive strategy, “provisto por” is a more appropriate option than ”impulsado por”, “potenciado por”, “generado por”, “auspiciado por”, “producido por” and other expressions that sound a bit ridiculous for the context in question. Of course, that’s just my opinion and you don’t have to agree with me.

“Impulsado por”…really? Are you launching a rocket?

“Potenciado por”…really? Are you a battery or power supply?

“Generado por”…really? Are you an electric generator?

“Auspiciado por”…really? Are you sponsoring something?

“Producido por”…really? Are you in a production business?

I know, I know. I’m being sarcastic. Me bad.

What is important to point out is that the above alternatives are subject to misinterpretations, while to imply “a product or service provided by”, o “un producto o servicio provisto por” has only one meaning: a product or service provided by someone, in a b2c (business-to-consumer) or b2b (business-to-business) context. 

At first glance, the above seems trivial, but is not. You would be surprised to see the faces of those latinos that read web content and creatives translated by SEO companies with no knowledge about Spanish or that use automatic translators. Bad translations can ruin any marketing, press release, or link-building campaign.

The Images Crawler

The Images Crawler has arrived at Mi Islita.com. An easy way to view images from Web documents. Use it to view images from newspapers, forums, social networks, etc. Enjoy it!

Who can benefit from this tool?

• Webmasters and designers that want to check for broken images and their resolutions across browsers.
• Site owners checking if other sites are infringing on their images, pictures, banners, logos, or icons.
• Users looking for an easy way to find images from newspapers, forums, social networks, or any site.
• Marketing researchers, psychologists, and others interested in studying the power of images.

Tracking Users: An Email Crawler on Steroids

We have added to our email crawler

(http://www.miislita.com/email-crawler/email-crawler.php)

the following features:

1. A User Tracking Session (just find the link and click on it) to view current user data.

2. Search for user email addresses in the top search engines and social networks

Give it a try.

We plan to add the tracking session feature to all our pages. This feature is now visible to gives you an idea of how it works, but can be invisible to users. Geo and search data can be added in a snap.

Why pay monthly fees when you can have your own tracking service, customized to your needs?

The Email Crawler: A Tool for Gathering Emails

The Email Crawler, a tool for retrieving email addresses from all over the Web, is now available at http://www.miislita.com

The Binary Similarity Calculator

We have just launched The Binary Similarity Calculator. This is a new tool for computing binary-based similarity measures that is available now.

What it is

The Binary Similarity Calculator (BSC) can be used to compare binary sets, groups consisting of only two types of items or states. These are item sets that can be represented as sequences of 1′s and 0′s.

Who can benefit from it

• Marketing analysts that need to examine Yes/No-type questionnaires about products and services.

• Teachers and examiners that must score Yes/No-type exams or assess plagiarism cases.

• Engineers, mathematicians, and physicists that must evaluate On/Off-type records.

• Statisticians, bioanalysts, and others involved with sequencing analysis.

• To sum up, anyone that uses binary sets.

From Harlem Shake to Link Shake: The Qualified Links Shake

As part of the renovation process at Mi Islita (http://www.miislita.com), we are introducing a link game called Qualified Links. The idea is simple.

An editor or owner of a page (in this case, us) end a page with what we call a “Qualified Links” section. A topic to follow is specified. Interested users submit a link to complete a sentence. Then the editor or owner of the page and at its sole discretion decides whether a submission is on topic. If so, the link is promoted to a list of Qualified Links on that page.

The result: the current page becomes more on-topic centered while submitters have a chance to gain more link building real estate. Only quality links are considered using our own criteria. Sure there will be some pros and cons down the road, but at least is an interesting start. Monetization can sure follow the shake.

From the Harlem Shake to the Link Shake: Here it comes the Qualified Links Shake .

The Color Miner – A Tool for Mining Colors

The Color Miner, is a tool for mining colors from Web documents.

The traditional way of presenting color palettes to users is by rendering these as static arrays of colors. This limits users to staring at color squares to make color-color comparisons instead of engaging them in data mining and critical thinking, activities that promotes discovery and learning—in a research or school setting.

When we developed The Color Miner, we did so with a fractal design strategy in mind. As a result, we developed a tool capable of generating what we call fractalettes or palettes within palettes. That is, each cell of a generated palette behaves as a smaller palette, containing color space information and relationships for the current color.

We could iterate the individual cells for ever, but in practice we found that a one-level iteration was a good start to encourage users to investigate color-color, space-space, and color-space relationships, to find basic trends and information patterns. In general, this architecture can be iterated to organize additional attributes and relational data.

Harris Interactive Poll: Amazon is on Top

Here are the results: http://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/2013%20RQ%20Summary%20Report%20FINAL.pdf

Interesting Amazon-Google Comparison for the last 3 years:

Amazon: #1 in 2013, #4 in 2012, and #8 in 2011.

Google: #4 in 2013, #2 in 2012, and #1 in 2011.

Teleporting, Marketing, and Teleportnication

Here in Puerto Rico we usually run behind the rest of the Nation, in implementing technology advances and good ideas, by about 5 to 7 years. Just this month and due to the elections, a local TV channel just started experimenting with teleportation. Few years ago that was tested in the USA. It is a catchy marketing technology.

Back then my SEO and marketing friends immediately started to see the next “future” for marketing and, of course, porn: teleportation for meetings, events, and SEO Conferences.

Keep these terms in mind: Teleportnication, Teleportnography => Teleportnicación, Teleportnografía

PS: Mobile apps for that, too? Probably there are some out there now or in the near future (with the right equipment in place) Portnography, anyone?

Why time spent on a site is so important?

That is a recurrent question being asked by some of my readers. Here is my answer.

Back in 1995, I wrote in the Dedication section of my doctoral thesis:

“If I have a theory, but no experimental results, I may have nothing. And if I have a theory without practical applications, I may have an artifact.”

So, don’t give your visitors hearsays, half-lies, or misrepresentation of facts found across the Web, but things that they can really test, use, and that solve a real or urgent problem for them. Don’t waste your time repeating interesting -perhaps catchy concepts-, but that at the end of the day are just useless.

In addition to textual and audiovisual content of good quality, give them TOOLS. However, provide tools that make them interact more time with your site and that authoritative pages will recommend or link to.

This is important because the amount of time spent by users in a site is directly correlated to several web metrics/analytics like:

• frequency cap – restriction on the amount of time a specific visitor is shown a particular advertisement.
• stickiness – the amount of time spent at a site over a given time period.
• underdelivery – delivery of less impressions, visitors, or conversions than contracted for a specified period of time.
• unique visitors – individuals who have visited a site (or network) at least once during a fixed time frame.
• bandwidth – how much data (e.g., content, ads, creatives) can be transmitted in a time period over a communication channel, often expressed in kilobits per second (kbps). Data is any alphanumeric content. This includes parameters, variables or any text/pixel-based creative.

Other time-based metrics inherited from traditional media (TV, radio) and that are based on the time spent by users viewing a communication channel can be applied to web channels and sites; among others:

• average audience – the average number of people who tuned into the given time selected and expressed in thousands or as a percentage (also known as a Rating) of thetotal potential audience of the demographic selected. It is also known as a T.A.R.P -Targeted Audience Rating Point.
• channel share – the share one channel has of all viewing for a particular time period. The share, expressed as a percentage, is calculated by dividing the channel’s average audience by the average audience of all channels (PUTs) (It is held in higher esteem by networks than media buyers on a day to day basis and is only referred to by the latter group when apportioning budgets and evaluating a programme for sponsorship).
• cummulative audience or reach – the total number of different people within the selected demographic who tuned into the selected time period for 8 minutes or more (i.e., reached at least once by a specific schedule or advertisement).
• frequency – the average number of times that a person within the target audience has had the opportunity to see an advertisement over the campaign period.
• time spent viewing or TVS – how many minutes/hours an audience has viewed a particular channel.

[Sources: WebSiteMagazine, WebMediaSolutions, NielsenMedia].

So, any tool that helps your visitors to wisely improve their time spent on your site -in an effective manner, of course- cannot hurt you. For this to be true, however, the tool provided must be engaging, useful, effortless, and with a minimum learning curve; otherwise the user experience of your visitors can be frustrating and a waste of time.