#retro context accuracy

[sheepytina]

I need to talk about these QuByte Classics releases on the Switch eShop

I've probably made it no secret that commercial emulation is something of a special interest of mine. My stance however is generally that commercial releases of classic games should offer something to justify its existence over free community efforts. Sometimes that's simply being on Switch, more usually I'd say it's enhancements and bonus material that really adds value. Something like the more recent Mega Man Legacy Collections or what Digital Eclipse is currently doing with their Gold Master series.

I played one of the QuByte Classics releases recently, specifically The Humans, and it embodies pretty much everything that could go wrong with jumping on the retro trend without really understanding retro games.

In short, it's probably the worst example of commercial emulation I've played in recent times.

(Please note: This isn't a proper review, just first impressions, as I only played it for a few minutes.)

For context, QuByte Interactive are an indie studio and publisher based in Brazil. They're one of the more prominent names in the budget digital game space. And they are a totally legit and respected company too, they just put out games of real inconsistent quality.

QuByte Classics is a collaboration with Piko Interactive, or at least so far it's been. So these releases are all of Piko's 8-bit and 16-bit catalogue, games like The Immortal and Jim Power, and cult classics like Zero Tolerance and Gourmet Warriors.

I picked The Humans since it's a game I have some familiarity with and the collection features Super NES, Game Boy and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive versions, allowing me to easily test all of those platforms at once. — The Humans, for those unaware, is a puzzle game in a similar vein to Lemmings though presented as more of a puzzle platformer, where the goal is to help the first humans survive and thrive by completing each challenge while keeping as many of your humans alive as possible.

This is less a review about the specific game however, and more about the quality of this series of releases as whole.

These releases don't tend to offer any bonus material either. Zero Tolerance does include a prototype game, but the rest of these releases are just one or two games, or multiple versions of one game, and that's it. Not even a digital owners manual.

Speaking personally, the value proposition here is already somewhat lacking for us since my partner and I already have a lot of these games in other forms, be it as Piko's Steam releases, the original cartridges (in the case of the The Humans) or brand new cartridge releases.

Whether it's enough to just simply be a way to play the games on your preferred system of choice, I'd say no. It's plainly evident that QuByte Interactive has simply jumped on the retro trend and haven't really given these games the attention they deserve.

Here's a few issues I noticed:

There's plenty of scaling options but none of them work quite right, nor do they account for the lower resolution Switch handheld screen; it seems to just target 1080p displays, so no matter what you choose, the visual presentation is pretty poor. You either get blur or you get shimmering.

There's a CRT filter that doesn't line up with the pixel grid of the games. It's also just incredibly ugly looking.

This is the big one: The performance of the various emulation engines are downright terrible, with often with highly noticeable screen tearing.

The Super NES emulation is particularly shocking. The SNES games have constant skipping and slowdown when running on Switch. It runs a bit better on other platforms but it doesn't get around all the rest of the issues.

Game Boy was also not well presented, with screen tearing and some of the typical audio accuracy issues that Game Boy emulation can have.

Sega Genesis/Mega Drive weirdly seemed to fare a lot better in that nothing in particular stood out to me. (I'd be curious to run that one through MDFourier if I had the equipment to do it.)

NES I haven't tried yet as that's not represented in the release I tried out.

The whole package is made in Unity, which I've gone on record as saying isn't bad in of itself and it can be done right, but from precedent it feels like that approach goes wrong more often than not.

I should also note that SNES and NES are presented with the wrong aspect ratio, showing as square pixels with seemingly no aspect-corrected 4:3 option.

(Technically Mega Drive shouldn't have square pixels either, with the NTSC 320-wide mode having slightly skinny pixels, but it's generally less noticeable when it's wrong.)

I haven't put input lag to the test so I have nothing to say on that front, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's also not great.

In summary, with these kind of critical issues bringing the experience down, I wouldn't say any of these QuByte classics are worth it, not even on sale. Not unless you really love the games on offer or want them on your Nintendo Switch system that badly. Or on Xbox One or PS4. But the downsides, particularly the performance on Nintendo Switch, are really not acceptable at all.

—

So I know it isn't entirely fair for me to say this about something I only played for a couple of minutes. If I were making this blog post into a video or something I'd do my due diligence to properly test these things. And I would play more than just The Humans, which due to its slow pace might not show these issues as obviously in a video.

However I think I'd like to actually use it to illustrate a more broad point about how to do these modern retro re-releases right, instead of simply bashing QuByte Interactive without anything constructive to say.

What I would have done differently is a story of its own. Maybe that warrants its own blog post another time.

[gertlushgaming]

Game Boy Classic Trip World, Set for A Re-release on PlayStation, PC and Nintendo Switch

For the Game Boy Classic Trip World re-release new we learn of the collaboration with Sunsoft and original Trip World director and producer Yuichi Ueda, Trip World DX expertly reproduces the legendary, highly sought-after platformer, releasing for the first time worldwide. The Carbon Engine allows for supreme accuracy in retro game emulation and gorgeous modern presentation to create a brand-new experience for timeless classics. One of Sunsoft’s finest original titles, Trip World marks the peak of the company’s illustrious 8-bit legacy. In the classic Trip World, you take part in a globetrotting adventure through Trip World, a land filled with endearing creatures and mythical beings, as the bunny-like hero Yakopoo. A showstopper on its original handheld hardware, Trip World features some of the finest graphics and music ever heard in a video game in this form factor. The quality of its presentation is matched perfectly by the spot-on game mechanics and atmospheric level design that encourages the player to take part and enjoy the many sights of Trip World rather than rush through and beat it.

Complimenting this fantastic re-release, Trip World DX includes a variety of features that provide never-before-seen content and context to what makes this game such an incredible release of its time, including a music player with remastered audio and arrangements, original design documents, cameo appearance designs, and video interviews. Trip World DX is not just a name; it also signals the most exciting aspect of this incredible re-release. Alongside original director Yuichi Ueda, the Carbon Engine team sought to realize a long-term dream for the director by developing a brand new colorized version of Trip World! Trip World DX is not just smoke and mirrors, nor simulated. This is a ground-up port of the game to spec for the Color handheld, with full compatibility on original hardware! What was once only in the planning stages in the 1990s is now fully realized and available thanks to the combined efforts of Sunsoft, Limited Run Games, and the Carbon Engine.

This incredible package includes the following: - The original handheld version of Trip World - A brand new color version: Trip World DX! - Museum mode contains never-before-seen design documents, video interviews with the original developer, music videos, box scans, and much more. - Music player featuring original remastered audio tracks, brand new arrangements, and a surprise track from another cult Sunsoft classic title! - Sleek new presentation and art - Developed and designed alongside classic Sunsoft director Yuichi Ueda Related Post: Terra Nil Review (Steam) (gertlushgaming.co.uk) About the Physical Editions: Ahead of Trip World DX’s digital release, Limited Run Games will take pre-orders for the physical and Collector’s Editions from April 28th until June 11th, 2023. These bespoke physical releases were made with fans of the original Trip World and the title's legacy in mind. Whether they want to play on original Game Boy hardware or their newest console, fans will have the following options when revisiting Yakopoo’s grand adventure.

Retro Editions - Trip World for the Game Boy ($39.99) - Trip World DX for the Game Boy Color ($39.99) Fans can also bundle a Yakopoo plush with their copy for $64.99 Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5 Editions - Standard Edition ($34.99) - Includes a physical copy of Trip World DX on the chosen platform - Collector’s Edition ($74.99) - Includes a physical copy of Trip World DX on the selected platform - Yakopoo plush - Retro cart keychain - Trip World DX official soundtrack on CD - Double-sided poster - Premium collector’s box PC Edition - Standard Edition ($34.99) - Includes a digital copy of Trip World DX on a USB - Premium storage box The complete Trip World DX Collection is available to preview at LimitedRunGames.com Read the full article

[hydralisk98]

My first real Ko-Fi goal explained

Hey comrades, I thought it was finally time to explain what my exact plans were and are for the (early) 90s vintage (computer) build revamp as to get you all on-board.

Some of you may know I love studying, researching and tinkering old tech in all the directions. So I got that old ass home workstation from my maternal grand parents (grand ma owned it last but she never really used it much compared to my deceased grand pa) several months back. I cannot run new advanced diagnostics (like looking drivers and all) as of now as far as I can't login to the current OS that is Windows 2000 Professional goes (Windows 2000 Professionnal is quite too heavy for the early Pentium S 166MHz CPU to run properly much so that's why I would reinstall MS-DOS 6.22 and then the Windows 3.1x I got on local floppies)

My core issues comes back to the CMOS chip local battery of the machine being dead and 'modernCableFormat'-SCSI adapter cable absolutely is needed for rewriting the hard drive back to Windows 3.1 as intended as to avoid the CMOS battery issue on the motherboard.

I do have a proper (color?) dot matrix printer , speakers, CD-ROM 24x drive, a few floppy drives (one is already installed but I got one or two more laying around), a desktop microphone, a 800x600p CRT... but in order to take advantage of such I need the computer to reach a operational enough level and that just is not what is the case right now thanks to my terrible password memory & the bottleneck of the system.

Ideally I would also get some two portable floppy drives (backup and parallel usage reasons too), make a new appropriate ethernet cable, get some more floppy/CD-ROM software for it and much other tweaks (coming down to using Windows 3.1x seriously, getting a partition of properly expanded Microsoft BOB, animation software, software development challenges, better web browser install than IE, Unicode support, hardware optimizations and other endavours in order to take full advantage of the old hardware) before the end of the year so please come donate to me at https://ko-fi.com/hydralisk98 .

See you all as soon as when the goal is reached or just overall progress is made on the subject. Take care comrades ^*^

[thewritershelpers]

Let’s Get Dressed (FULL)

A long, long time ago (2013, to be exact), H from TheWritersHelpers and C from WriteWorld (inactive) got together for a collaboration on how to write and describe clothing. This is the fruits of their labor.**

Anonymous asked: Any tips on describing clothing?

The Writer’s Helpers and WriteWorld have teamed up to create a series on clothing and fashion. These articles were primarily written in the context of how to write about clothing. 

Clothing is a term that is used to describe items worn by humans (and recently other animals, like tiny dogs), either for practical reasons or for reasons of style. Since humans have been wearing clothing for tens of thousands of years, it’s probably best to narrow down the timeframe for the clothing you’re describing to a particular era, year, season, etc. With that in mind, let’s talk about fashion!

Fashion (n): A popular trend, esp. in styles of dress, ornament, or behavior.

We’ll be discussing the dress and ornament portion of this definition. Now, there are a few ways that fashion might affect your description of clothing: Your character might be fashionable, ahead of the times, behind the times, or apart from fashion entirely. All of this is going to make a difference not only in what the clothing actually is, but also in what there is to describe about said clothing. Let’s have a look at these different positions for your character on the fashion scale:

1. Fashionable. Fashionable characters are insiders. They are usually very in tune with what is hip with the kids. Fashionable characters (for an example, read the booksThe Devil Wears Prada,,The Princess Diaries, and Confessions of a Shopaholic) can usually have a backstory where they once were not fashionable- perhaps the unpopular nerd- and with a little help or luck, improve their fashion sense. Magazines such as Vogue, Seventeen, or GQ can act as guides for your fashionista characters in present day. For more on eras, check out the “Links to Look At” section at the end of this article. If you’re writing a fashionable character, you might use clothing labels to describe your character’s clothes as opposed to just describing the color, size, etc. You might also want to thread themes through the character’s style, such as the season or a trademark for the character (think always wears yellow or channels Audrey Hepburn on the red carpet). Materials vary often in fashion, but fashionable characters are more likely to wear expensive fabrics and jewelry. After all, they have a reputation to uphold. 

2. Ahead of the times. These are the trendsetters, the fashion pioneers, the people who pave the way for others and push the boundaries in all the right ways. Trends come and go, but the fashion forward never look back. Characters wearing forward-thinking fashion (or couture) might find themselves in fur and duct tape and think nothing of it. Descriptions of their clothing might tend toward the bizarre and using eclectic words may help drive home the eccentricities of their style.  For example: Her aluminum coat sparked like Tesla coils in the firelight. Weird descriptors aren’t a problem for fashion-forward characters. The weirder, the better.

3. Behind the times. There are those unfortunate souls who do not keep up with the fashion popular at the time your story takes place. Whether it’s the 1580’s or the 1980’s, not all fashions are universal. Styles come and go, but if your character’s whole wardrobe was procured twenty years before the story begins, they’re probably not up with the latest fashions. This might arise from monetary constraints or because of isolation, but the simple fact is: not everything is retro-chic.

Retro-Chic (adj): pertaining to the fashionableness of the nostalgic revival of a style.

Characters who are behind the times might have old clothes that aren’t in the best condition. They may not have the vocabulary to describe the clothes they wear or that others wear with any degree of accuracy. This most especially applies to clothing labels or technical terms for the design of clothes as the character is not up on the popular designers and the newest fashions.

Apart from fashion altogether. There are many reasons why a character might be apart from fashion. Fashion is essentially self-expression, and some people don’t care. Take into consideration religious preferences (monk attire is pretty standard), strict parental figures (if your character is a youngster), or time travel (we’re lookin’ at you, Doctor Who). Characters who stand apart from fashion may also be unaware of the terminology to accurately describe clothing popular at the time and in the place of your story. These characters might not, for example, know the word “silk” and so must describe around the word. They might not have any concept for manufactured material and therefore have trouble describing nylon or faux leather.

Links to Look At:

“Why Do We Wear Clothes?” by vsauce

Glossary of Clothing Terms by allwords.com

Your Guide to Clothing Terms by EBay

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Let’s look at detail. What sort of descriptors could you use, how could you use them, and why?

Try not to go overboard with the description, but make your descriptive words count. Let’s look at an example of a simple description of the two largest articles of clothing on an example character:

She wore a top and a skirt. 

That’s pretty basic. “Top”, for example, isn’t very descriptive. After all, women’s fashion is complicated! So, let’s use specific terminology: 

She wore a blouse and a skirt. 

You might add color: 

She wore a black blouse and a gray skirt. 

You might add fabric descriptions (Remember, the color describes the fabric now, so it goes before the descriptive word for whatever material the clothing is made of):

She wore a black silk blouse and a gray tweed skirt. 

There are other descriptors worth mentioning such as how the clothing drapes or hangs, its age and general condition, its size and length, and the overall feeling toward it from the narrator. 

How it drapes: The dress was slinky; it clung to her curves and pooled like water at her feet.

Its age/condition: His jeans were faded and ratty at the seams, especially on the back pockets where there were inch-wide holes.

Its size/length: Her boyfriend’s XXL shirt nearly swallowed her up and fell to her knees like a shapeless potato sack.

Narrator feeling: It was an ugly gray uniform. 

With all of these descriptors around, the business of relaying useful information to the the reader about a character’s clothing can get pretty muddled. No one wants to read a description like:

She wore a boring black silk blouse that was over-large, a few years old, and hung blandly from the crest of her breasts. Her shin-length gray tweed pencil skirt was also old and too small for her hips. 

There is just way too much going on there. Too many descriptors. Cut out the adjectives and adverbs that aren’t absolutely necessary, the ones that don’t really add anything essential to character or the look and feel of the scene. You may think that the above example is so obviously bloated that it’s too easy for me to state offhand that you must hack away at its descriptors and leave only the bare essentials. Well, I agree, but it is possible to have a decent bit of description and still overshare. For instance, it might be way too detailed to embroider the blouse and skirt example thusly:

She wore a black silk blouse that shone in the flourescent light of the waiting room. It had loose sleeves that gathered at the crook of her elbows with a little bow and buttons covered in the same sleek material as the blouse. Her skirt was made of gray tweed and slightly out of fashion. The waist cut uncomfortably into her stomach just below her navel and the hem rode up past her knees when she sat. She couldn’t cross her legs in the skirt; it was too tight. 

Now, if the “loose sleeves that gathered at her elbows” are described for a purpose--maybe she has an injury or blemish she’s trying to conceal or she’s very modest--then details of this kind are great to have. Unless the details of the clothes are important to develop the character or the plot or the setting, you need not distract the reader with unnecessary description. 

There are a few methods to consider when describing clothing. 

Blocks. Block style moves from the biggest, most noticeable articles of clothing to the smallest. It describes in a similar order to what the eye sees. Since the largest piece of clothing at around eye-level will be covering the upper body, block style usually starts there with a shirt or jacket or the bodice of a dress. Layers in an outfit are described from the outermost clothing item to the innermost item, then go back to catch the accent items. 

For example: He wears a jacket, vest, and crisp white shirt with a checkered tie and matching blue pocket handkerchief. 

Another fun tip: If items match, you only need to describe one with the corresponding details. Notice that I was able to omit the color of the tie because I said the blue handkerchief matched it and that I didn’t mention the pattern on the handkerchief because we knew that it at least looked good with a checkered tie. 

In the instance of a dress, however, it is more likely that block style will point out the most noticeable (i.e. largest) part of the dress first. If the dress has a poofy skirt, you can bet block style will point that out. Regardless, if the article of clothing covering the upper body is separate from the article covering the lower body, block style usually describes the top first then moves to the bottom then to details like shoes, belts, and jewelry.

Colors. A large part of clothing is color. The color of what a person wears often depicts their mood without them realizing. It has a lot to do with color psychology (x), which describes how different colors affect a person’s mood. The human eye is also attracted to bright colors (some of which even cause headaches and irritation, such as bright yellow or red), though the average eye can see around seven million colors. For more information on color theory, click here. 

More likely than not, a person wearing orange might be noticed before a person wearing gray. The eye is drawn to the orange because it is bright and demanding. Weather also affects what colors a character would wear. For example, in winter months, many people wear darker colors such as black, navy, grays, and browns (termed neutrals) because the lack of Vitamin-D in the human body doesn’t allow for endorphins to be produced as largely, causing a decline in mood. It is commonly believed that darker colors represent darker or depressing moods. And in summer months, your character might be wearing brighter colors such as yellows, pinks, and greens because sunlight elevates a person’s mood.

It is also important to remember the cultures of your characters. Say a character is getting married and is of Irish descent. Assuming she’s traditional, she would wear a blue wedding dress because in ancient times, blue represented purity and was the prefered color for brides. In many cultures, such as in Sweden and China, the color white represents mourning or death. It is essential to research the culture of your characters. Otherwise, you may end up with a white wedding that feels like a heck-of-a-lot more like a funeral. For more on what brides wear around the world, click here. For more on color symbolism, try here and here.

Describing colors can be difficult and you don’t want to be put into the category of really cliche fan fiction descriptions. His green orbs watered and he blinked to keep the tears from spilling over... Not happening here. Generally, you’ll need another word to help describe the color of something (for a list, click here). For example:

His shirt was pastel blue.

Placing “pastel” in front of “blue” indicates that the blue that he was wearing was lighter, or closer to a neutral color than if he were to be wearing a dark blue shirt. 

Her jeans were covered in patches fabric with flamboyant pink bunnies.

What do you think when you see the word flamboyant? You think bright; you think colorful; you think brightly colored and decorated. It adds more than just saying “Her jeans had patches in them”. Don’t be afraid to dip into the Crayola Crayon color dictionary and use names of colors like “Mac n’ Cheese Orange” or “Sahara Desert”. Used in the right context, these colors can add another dimension to your regular oranges and browns. Though these fun words are great alternatives to your average colors, be careful not to overuse them. No one wants to read one incredibly-detailed clothing item after another. 

Fun fact: If you put a group of women in a room, those who are wearing red are most likely on their period. 

Reverse Order of Dress. This is a weird one. When in doubt, describe in the order that you put on your clothes--backwards. Obviously, you’d want to start with the visible items and work your way closer and closer to the body. So, if you put on your shirt then your pants then your cardigan then your shoes, describe in that order. 

** This is not to say that H will not continue this series later on. However, this is the extent of their collaboration. 

[antiques-for-geeks]

LCD Golf Games

Somebody, somewhere has to review these things?!

OK, first a little context. While my wife was in hospital waiting for the arrival of our daughter my brain desperately looked for some sort of worry release valve in the long hours between hospital visits. I did what any normal man would in this situation. I set about trying to put together the best damn collection of handheld LCD golf games the world has ever seen! They were mysterious! (nobody was interested enough to discuss them). They were plentiful! (as unwanted gifts often are). They were super cheap! (the sellers could barely give them away). Now, a couple of years later I have a happy and healthy daughter but also, crucially, a box full of assorted unplayed handheld golf games.

…and I’m going to tell you lucky people all about them!

Outside of the Nintendo’s Game and Watch series, LCD handheld games are often disregarded in the world of retro gaming. In a lot of cases this is fully justified; they lack the appealing mini-arcade aesthetic and bright colours of the larger tabletop VFD games, and there’s so much low quality landfill to be found, especially in some of the later licensed efforts from companies like Acclaim and Tiger. Let’s be honest - we only ever played them for want of something better.

Despite this I still find something fascinating about the attempt to create engaging gameplay using such limited technology. LCD games can only display their images in a series of fixed positions, so that’s a pretty severe limitation. This goes doubly for something like showing an 18 hole golf course with a variety of hazards like bunkers and lakes. Yet here are a handful of games that attempt to do just that - recreating your favourite ruined walk with what amounts to a slightly beefed up watch display.

Pro Golf 

Bandai / 1985

The first, and earliest of my collection is this effort from Bandai, a well respected and prolific handheld game maker back in the 80’s. Many of these golf games were aimed squarely at the bored executive market, and were therefore often found in plastic-leather slip cases. This one has a nice little ring bound course guide attached, filling in the details that an LCD display can’t. This is definitely the simplest of these games; your only input is to select your club and time the swing. There are no complications like shot positioning, wind direction or the camber of the green to contend with. The courses do have a selection of water hazards and bunkers to avoid. This simplicity really works in the game’s advantage, because there’s a pretty clear relation between what you think should happen and what gets shown on the screen.

All these games seem very similar when it comes to taking a shot, with a single action button. You press the button, you see your little LCD golfer take his swing, you press again (or maybe release) at the end of the up swing to select power, then again when the downswing reaches the ball for accuracy. Between this and club selection there’s enough going on to make this 100 times more engaging than what the majority of arcade style handhelds could offer at the time. It’s also worth noting that all these golf games have a two player mode where each player alternates their shot, adding to the longevity. In a twisted sort of way golf is the perfect subject for the humble handheld!

Despite this I would like to see you have tried to make me choose this over my Astro Wars tabletop back in 1985.

Summing up, there’s enough variety for this to have been a decent time waste on a long train journey (assuming you didn’t hate golf) and the graphics are nice and clear. The sound is just beeps and a crappy tune, but you can switch if off to avoid a riot in the quiet coach. A thumbs up!

World Challenge Golf 2 

Bandai / 1991

Here’s another effort from Bandai, and this one is quite a bit more involved. It’s stored in another leatherette slip case …but this time there’s a set of laminated cards provided, with the hole numbers written on each side. One end of each card has a background for the course, with the par and length to the pin, as well as a small map. The other end has the layout of the green, with some arrows showing which way it runs. Before playing each hole you slide these cards into a slot so they show behind the LCD screen, providing scenery ‘graphics’. This is exactly the kind of thing I find very cool about old tech - an ingenious solution to get around the inherent limitations of the LCD handheld. Ignore the fact that the classic Gameboy had already been released by this point and Nintendo’s Golf kicks all of these dedicated handhelds right into the gutter… using laminated cards as the background is awesome, and should be applauded.

Anyway, back to the game, you can now select shot direction, though in a very limited way. You can also see where you ball lies on the small course map, though the 3D view of the course and the swinging golfer are smaller and less detailed than the earlier game. Once you get to the green, you can see the ball position in a top-down view against the background card, and need to adjust for the camber.

Despite my admiration for the sheer ingenuity shown by this game, I have mixed feelings about it. It feels like the designers have bitten off more than they can chew. It is playable, but in trying to provide all the features of a fully fledged computer golf game it only highlights the fact that you’re not playing something better. It’s also significantly less easy to pick up and play than before.

Despite my misgivings, I like this one a lot as a collectible curiosity and it does come the closest to feeling like you’re actually in control of where the ball is going on the course. The sound is still beeps and a crappy tune which can be turned off.

Championship Golf 2

Radio Shack / Tandy / Late 1980’s?

I’ve seen various different re-branded versions of Radio Shack’s Championship Golf, but this one is a larger two screen effort, with individual buttons for club selection. No slip case this time, but it does have a built in screen protector with the course maps in a pouch on the underside. It’s less pocketable than the Bandai games but on the upside it takes AAA batteries, and it feels robust and well built. This one has 2 different 18 hole courses - apparently these are Japan and the USA. You can’t see storks dipping in ornamental koi ponds in Japan or try to nail Trump with a wayward drive in the USA, but the course layouts do change. The left screen shows a top-view of the course, while the right shows the traditional behind-the-golfer view.

You can’t select the shot direction, though your shot can wander into the rough if you mistime your button press on the down stroke. Though the golfer view is slightly lacking in detail, you’re shown exactly where your ball is on the overhead map screen, and this really adds to the playability. There is a wind indicator, but it’s only ever toward you, behind you or calm.

This is a really nice effort, with most of the simplicity of the earlier Bandai game, but with sensible additions to add some extra depth.

The sound is still beeps and a crappy tune which can be turned off.

Tournament Golf 

Radica / 1999

This Radica unit has a nice big screen, with lots of detail on the golfer and the course, though I don’t like the plasticy case much - I miss the fake leather and solidity of the earlier games! The swing button is shaped like a golf ball, and is fairly satisfying to press. There are 4 different courses to play though, which is very generous.

The representation of the golfer’s swing is the best yet here, with a large and very clear meter prominent in the bottom right of the screen. This shows power, indicates fade and draw (your shot veering left and right) and gives a power indicator for putting. This game features a really detailed wind effect, with direction and strength. The wind even changes as you wait to take your shot for extra realism. Choosing power and correcting left and right for the effect of the wind should a lot to this game, but the limitations of that LCD display spoil the effect for me. Because there’s no overhead course view it’s quite hard to reconcile what you can see on the screen with what’s happening in the game, and that really matters when you’ve got so many game variables to deal with. It’s also a pig to time a shot when you’re close to the pin without pinging out the other side.

One excellent feature of this game is the sleep mode. There’s no off button, but if you leave it alone for a minute the screen turns off, and you can pick up your game at a later time. This is perfect for gaming on the go.

I’m perhaps being unduly harsh, but this is probably my least favorite so far. Despite the clear graphics and greater complexity it lacks the charm of some of the earlier efforts.

On the up side, this one at least has a digitised swoosh when you hit the ball. You’ll still want to turn it off though…

Talking Golf Master

Systema  /1997

On to the final of our selection of games, this effort is from Systema, a well known maker of really average LCD games. This one has a plastic flip cover, with course maps and club distances on the inside. It doesn’t exactly feel premium, sharing that cheap plasticy feel with the Radica game. Worse, the action buttons are recessed little behind the cover, making it slightly awkward and uncomfortable to press them. I figure LCD game designers had given up trying to impress anyone by the mid 90’s.

The game itself is largely OK, with a very basic direction control and simple wind conditions, but the graphics are about as basic as the two screen Radio Shack game, without the benefits that the overhead course screen brought. The sound seems to be a real selling point for Systema, but it’s irritating beyond belief, with constant super loud bleeps punctuating your play. There are some sound samples; a brief compressed second of bird song or occasional encouragement from your caddy. You’re sure to love the attention you get on the bus as he waxes lyrical about how good your hole was.

You can turn it off, and you’ll want to. I’d give this one a miss.

The 19th Hole

At last we’ve come to the end of our review! Back to the clubhouse for a steak pie... I feel like a complete golf casualty now. The games can lie safely in their boxes for another few years. My daughter is sure to love LCD golf time with daddy, no?

[j21-bcu]

4/2 ‘Too Cute’ and ‘Leonardo Da Vinci’ exhibitions at BMAG

Too Cute

Overall, a pretty horrifying experience. The message was that we often use cute items to mask the stress of our daily lives, such as deadlines, rent, adult responsibilities etc. 

All of the items and paintings on display were extremely sinister, but also ‘cute’. I found this part the hardest to understand.

This particular image is a pretty good way to summarise the overall experience. Rachel Maclean, the artist and director of the exhibition, acted as a furry creature explaining the main themes of the exhibition and how the word cuteness is used and can be understood. As the short video continues, it gets increasingly tenser and bizarre.

(Excuse the extremely high quality photos)

This was the main centre display, demonstrating a wide range of seemingly cute but sinister items. A lot of the exhibition featured retro children’s toys and art. After reading the guide provided, the context behind each piece made the items and paintings a lot more interesting as they provided some insight. 

I would say Rachel Maclean did a really good job of making a bunch of cute items super unsettling. 

Leonardo Da Vinci

BMAG is also exhibiting some of Leonardo Da Vinci’s personal studies and life drawings. 

I didn’t bother to take many photos as the low lighting made it extremely difficult, but the drawings were astounding. I’m personally so used to seeing the same three paintings that I suppose I never truly appreciated his talent - it was only upon seeing the true detail and accuracy of his sketches that it truly dawned on me. 

It blew my mind even more that some of his most beautiful and detailed sketches were done in chalk. I don’t know how he drew to that level of accuracy, particularly with that medium, and I also don’t know how the artwork has been so well preserved.

I’m really glad I went, and was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed seeing his work.

[translationservice2]

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[fedorasaurus]

I haven’t had a chance to research the accuracy of this comment, but it is super interesting (here’s a link to the thread for full context, basically Retro Studios wanted to have a bounty-hunting element in Prime 3 but the folks at Nintendo were like “but Samus doesn’t do jobs for money.”).

I too have wondered how much “bounty” she actually makes from her missions, and was about to make a joke about her looking at the Federation’s request to kill all the Metroids on SR388 and thinking to herself, “Eliminating an entire species from a planet’s ecosystem in an attempt to keep them from falling into the wrong hands is probably an abysmally bad idea that will lead to dire consequences in the future, but the rent ain’t gonna pay itself so I better get on this!”

The punchline being that Samus Aran is a millennial icon. But it turns out she’s actually a noble/badass Space Warrior whose heart was in the right place and honestly we don’t deserve someone so pure protecting the galaxy.

As a sidenote, r/Metroid is pretty good about spoilers, but I’ve seen a few slip through, so I advise caution while seeking threads for fun meta and other discussion.

[literature-islit]

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

So, I’ve been reading a lot of books about artificial intelligence recently. 

The dominating sentiment is, paraphrased: it’s here, it’s already being put to use, it’s going to improve our lives, and to question its value is to stand in the way of progress itself! 

it is true that opposition to new technology throughout history has frequently been short-sighted and, in hindsight, unwarranted

But.... hear me out. Right now, we live pretty comfortable lives, right? We can say we struggle - but we have phones in our pocket, technology, movies on demand. HOWEVER... by many metrics our lives are getting worse. Rich people are getting richer, but middle and lower class incomes are stagnating. To me, income inequality is the greatest problem of our time.

Now, my skills are in the humanities. I’m no economist. But ... I see how there could maybe be a correlation between a) companies seeking to “lean out” operations and “restructure” in pursuit of increased profits b) increased casualisation of the workforce leading to income insecurity and c) the aforementioned increase in income inequality. Like I said - I’m no expert in the field. But it would stand to reason that these three phenomena are interrelated.

To me, desirable technical advances would address this problem. I mean, we already know that we produce enough food to feed the world one and a half times over each year. Scarcity is an illusion. Technical advances should address this problem, not compound it - right? 

Well, not so much. 

Some contention on the accuracy of the context of this quote with what Einstein meant but... it’s oft-quoted so I’ll quote it again. 

I read the following books on artificial intelligence and they sure make clear advertising pitches about how they’ll help businesses increase their profits. The problem with the bias is that they make it sound inevitable. They make it sound like anyone who wants technological innovation to be matched by regulation that safeguards human rights in the face of such change, is a Luddite standing in the way of progress. 

But economics and science without humanities can never tell the full story of what’s important in human life. One author freely acknowledges that, before a cancer diagnosis, he would have not even thought twice about putting his work before his family and the birth of his child. The other problematically asserts that, without science: “A few million humans would live in savannahs and forests, eking out a hunter-gatherer existence, without writing or history or mathematics or an appreciation of the intricacies of their own universe and their own inner workings” (which is exactly the kind of colonialist thinking we are trying to dismantle in 2020 - as if indigenous cultures didn't have as much of, or possibly even more of an understanding about the universe, the environment and humanity than our Western culture!)

The point I’m making (perhaps unpopular) is that science or economics without humanities has huge blindspots, first and foremost in the idea underpinning the so-called AI revolution, which is that greater productivity = progress. That this greater productivity is always and without exception a good thing.

Says Lee on the world post-AI: People will face the prospect of being permanently excluded from the functioning of the economy. They will watch as algorithms and robots easily outperform them at tasks and skills they spent their whole lives mastering.

In this future, while productivity = profit for business owners, the people are utterly excluded from the system of economics that supposedly without exception is a marker and champion of democracy. 

Man, I’m getting a little serious here - lemme cool down.

mfw mac gets on the bridge of perfecto like: Just play it cool, baby, just play it cool... you know, cool

Anyway, to get back on the topic, even though it’s been out for OVER FIFTY YEARS, i still think Kubrick’s depiction of AI in 2001: A Space Odyssey remains the definitive depiction of the pitfalls we are opening ourselves up to experiencing with the more automated we make our lives. 

2001: A Space Odyssey is a very slow-moving movie that takes you on a journey through the whole of humanity’s lifetime, from the very emergence of homo sapiens, to our predicted end at the hands of advanced technology and also advanced lifeforms. 

a little bit chilling.

Kubrick whips his way from thousands of years in the past to thousands of years in the future in an instant, so slick you don’t even get whiplash. We find ourselves on this retro-futuristic spaceship

special effects so good ppl thought he faked the moon landings

bound for Jupiter on a mission so secret that half the crew is suspended asleep, and the true purpose won’t be revealed until they reach their destination. BUT things go wrong

As they often do in movies.

Hal doesn't take very kindly to the humans trying to shut him down. 

Without spoiling too much, it culminates in psychedelic visual sequence that takes us through time and space and place which has (imo) not been equalled in cinema since. 

tfw the aliens abduct u and try 2 make u feel comfortable

ITS AN EPIC MOVIE. Go watch it. And... let’s heed the knowledge gathered in the past in approaching the tricky technological conundrums of the future, yeah? We don’t wanna end up like the astronaut in the pod, cast out adrift to a certain death in space, if you know what I mean? 

pic related. 

[games18plus]

🛸 Alien Invaders

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🛸 Alien Invaders

#AlienInvaders Alien Invaders is a classic Space Invaders game. Shoot the aliens from outer space, they’ve come to enslave the human race. Only your accuracy can stop these invaders. More shoot’em up games Galaga Special Edition or Galaxy Retro. Have fun!

Move with the arrow keys and shoot with the space bar. On mobile: drag to move and tap to shoot.

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[thetapelessworld]

Impact Soundworks is proud to announce availability of SUPER AUDIO CART PC

Impact Soundworks is proud to announce availability of SUPER AUDIO CART PC

Impact Soundworks is proud to announce availability of SUPER AUDIO CART PC — a virtual instrument including over 1,100 authentic sounds from eight classic computer sound chips, capturing the tones of yesteryear’s beautiful, blocky machines, making them accessible to today’s AAX-, AU-, and VST-compatible production setups via Native Instruments’ industry-standard KONTAKT platform with a powerful four-layer synth engine and 64-slot modulation matrix to create the most complete set of retro computer samples ever — as of August 31…

Impact Soundworks has previously given a selection of legendary sounds from classic video game consoles and handheld systems the sampling treatment with SUPER AUDIO CART, yet only sampled a single (Commodore 64) personal computer in the process — despite the fact that millions of people have been using computers to play games since the Seventies. So, as implied by its RETRO PC SAMPLES subtitling, SUPER AUDIO CART PC sees the company working with OverClocked ReMix — a video game music community with tons of fan-made remixes and information on video game music — to turn their collective talents to capturing over 1,100 sounds from eight classic computer sound chips. Why? Well, the goal with this project — even more so than with SUPER AUDIO CART — is just as much about preservation of the classic sounds involved. Indeed, computer systems from decades past are notoriously unreliable, making it almost impossible to integrate them into a modern music production setup. SUPER AUDIO CART PC, however, allows access to all those classic sounds in AAX, AU, and VST formats as a powerful four-layer synth and modulation engine — just like with the original SUPER AUDIO CART. The stories behind those classic-sounding computer chips make for fascinating reading, really helping to put SUPER AUDIO CART PC into its rightful context from both a preservation perspective and auditory analysis. Alphabetically, then, there is so much more to SUPER AUDIO CART PC than first meets the ear…

Released in 1979, the 400/800 series was Atari’s early line of 8-bit home computers. With a then-blazing 1.79 MHz CPU, its primary competitor was the Commodore 64, and it became a bestselling computer of the 8-bit era. Powering its sound capabilities was the Pokey sound chip, sampled by Impact Soundworks, and offering a thick sound, characterised by a detuning of individual sound channels in the system, as well as having multiple forms of distortion available for processing.

Adlib was one of the first standards for the digital music scene. The Canadian sound card is powered by Yamaha’s YM3812 sound chip, which used FM (Frequency Modulation) synthesis to produce multitimbral instruments and sound effects. After the King’s Quest VI game broke the card out of obscurity with highly-praised music and sound effects, it gained popularity due to its versatility and ease of use, finding its way into most retail stores by 1990.

The Aegis Sonix software synth for the Commodore Amiga was a one-time cutting-edge digital replication of a hardware synth with various capabilities that were fairly new for the time. It sports one oscillator and one LFO (Low Frequency Oscillator), offering users an ability to draw custom oscillator and LFO waveforms, alongside an adjustable ADSR (Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release) envelope and lowpass filter, and an ability to add 2nd and 3rd order harmonics to those waveforms, with gritty phase distortion also on offer.

The spiritual successor to the Commodore 64, the Amiga 500 was released in 1987. Although it was popular with hobbyists due to its low price tag, it was most commonly used for gaming, with high-end graphics and audio capabilities for its time. It was eventually discontinued in 1992, replaced by the Amiga 600 and 1200, but neither product proved as popular as the 500 as the market shifted away from typical home computer models. The Amiga 500 itself uses the OSC (Original Chip Set) that was found in many late-Eighties Amiga models, using four hardware-mixed channels of 8-bit PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) audio, up to a sample rate of 28 kHz. It also shipped with a software-controllable lowpass filter.

The Commodore 64 was one of the most widely-used computers of the Eighties — the most popular single computer model ever released, in fact. The C64 was especially ubiquitous in Europe, with a huge range of games and other software available. Audio-wise, it is driven by the famous MOS 6581 SID chip, capable of a wide range of tones. Three independent oscillators, four waveforms, volume envelopes, ring modulation, oscillator sync, and a multimode filter meant that it was blessed with many capabilities not even found in dedicated synthesizers of comparable price at the time.

As the starting point of many successful Eastern video game franchises, such as Metal Gear and Bomberman, Microsoft’s MSX was very popular in Japan as well as Europe, but never gained much traction in North America. Saying that, the sound chip in the MSX is the AY-3-8910, a three-voice PSG (Programmable Sound Generator) developed in 1978 by General Instrument that produced square wave tones. It is commonly used in various arcade games, gaming consoles, and a plethora of home computers, including the MSX. The PSG generates base frequencies of up to 125 kHz, enabling high resolution and pitch accuracy not found on many sound chips of the era. The MSX could accommodate additional sound chips via expansion cartridges, such as the MSX-Audio (Y8950) and MSX-Music (YM2413) chips, offering traditional FM synthesis timbres. These were also sampled for the SUPER AUDIO CART PC project.

A custom collaboration between Komani and Yamaha, the SCC (Sound Creative Chip) is a wavetable sound chip with 128 bytes of wave samples. It was used to expand the capabilities of the MSX, which only generated square waves, as the wave samples in the SCC could be used to build much more complex waveforms than anything the PSG could accomplish.

A late-Eighties Amiga tracker — which was the first platform for which trackers were developed — was also sampled by the intrepid Impact Soundworks team. The term was coined by the first tracker program, Ultimate Soundtracker, featuring a number-based interface that allows the user to program audio playback by entering codes into specific parts of a grid of time slots. Step sequenced audio sampling software only otherwise existed on the second-mortgage-inducing Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument) workstation at that time. Those early trackers featured four pitch- and volume-modulated channels of 8-bit PCM samples, using the 8SVX (8-bit Sampled Voice) format.

Developed by Hiroki Nakayama in 1995, WinGROOVE was a PC application that enabled higher-quality playback of MIDI files. It came complete with its own set of WAV samples, rather than using synthesis, and although the software has not been officially distributed for a long time — nor is it supported by modern versions of Windows, Impact Soundworks worked with its creator to retrieve the source files and loop data to provide an authentic sound set in SUPER AUDIO CART PC!

Put it this way: with access to such classic-sounding computer chips and software developers, SUPER AUDIO CART PC faithfully reproduces a wide range of tones, and all such sounds can be used ‘dry’ to create authentic chiptune music or layered in Impact Soundworks’ powerful four-part synth engine for endless tweaking, inspiration, and sound design! Do what you will with them, though the company kindly created a bank of 150-plus modern and reimagined sounds to help jumpstart creativity, as well as including five custom FX (EQ, COMPRESSOR, BITCRUSHER, SCREAM, and DELAY) racks — one for each layer, and one for the global insert bus — and even throw the standalone SNESVerb (AU/VST) plug-in into the fully NKS (NATIVE KONTROL STANDARD) supporting musical mix… for free!

SUPER AUDIO CART PC can be purchased and digitally downloaded (as an authentic-sounding library totalling 8,000-plus samples) directly from Impact Soundworks for $99.00 USD from here: https://impactsoundworks.com/product/super-audio-cart-pc/#purchase (Owners of SUPER AUDIO CART can crossgrade for $79.00 USD.)

Note that SUPER AUDIO CART PC requires the full version of Native Instruments KONTAKT or KONTAKT PLAYER (5.5.2 or higher).

For more in-depth information, including several superb-sounding audio demos, please visit the dedicated

SUPER AUDIO CART PC webpage here: https://impactsoundworks.com/product/super-audio-cart-pc/

Watch Impact Soundworks Lead Developer Andrew Aversa’s walkthrough and overview of SUPER AUDIO CART PC here: https://youtu.be/s3yh7jsN6IU

[seekeasyonlinemarketing-blog]

Why All 4 of Google's Micro-Moments Are Actually Local

Posted by MiriamEllis

When America's first star TV chef, Julia Child, demonstrated the use of a wire whisk on her 1960's cooking show, the city of Pittsburgh sold out of them. Pennsylvanians may well have owned a few of these implements prior to the show's air date, but probably didn't spend a lot of time thinking about them. After the show, however, wire whisks were on everyone's mind and they simply had to have one. Call it a retro micro-moment, and imagine consumers jamming the lines of rotary phones or hoofing it around town in quest of this gleaming gadget … then zoom up to the present and see us all on our mobile devices.

I like this anecdote from the pages of culinary history because it encapsulates all four of Google's stated core micro-moments:

I want to know - Consumers were watching a local broadcast of this show in Pittsburgh because they wanted to know how to make an omelet.

I want to go - Consumers then scoured the city in search of the proper whisk.

I want to buy - Consumers then purchased the implement at a chosen retailer.

I want to do - And finally, consumers either referred to the notes they had taken during the show (no DVRs back then) or might have turned to Julia Child's cookbook to actually beat up their first-ever omelet.

Not only does the wire whisk story foreshadow the modern micro-moment, it also provides a roadmap for tying each of the 4 stages to local SEO via current technology. I've seen other bloggers pointing to the 'I want to go' phase as inherently local, but in this post, I want to demonstrate how your local business can decisively claim all four of these micro-moments as your own, and claim the desirable transactions resulting thereby!

Understanding Google's definition of micro-moments

Google whisked up some excitement of their own with the publication of Micro-Moments: Your Guide to Winning the Shift to Mobile. Some of the statistics in the piece are stunning:

65% of smartphone users look for the most relevant information on their devices regardless of what company provides that information,

90% of them aren't certain what brand they want to purchase when they begin their Internet search,

82% consult their smartphones even after they are inside a chosen store,

and 'how-to' searches on YouTube are growing 70% year-over-year.

Google defines micro-moments as “critical touch points within today's consumer journey, and when added together, they ultimately determine how that journey ends,” and goes on to identify mobile as the great facilitator of all this activity. It's simple to think of micro-moments as a series of points in time that culminate in a consumer arriving at a transactional decision. For local business owners and their marketers, the goal is to 'be there' for the consumer at each of these critical points with the resources you have developed on the web.

Let's reverse-engineer the famous tale of the wire whisk and put it into a modern technological context, demonstrating how a hypothetical cooking supply store in Pittsburgh, PA could become a major micro-moments winner in 2017.

A variable recipe for local micro-moments success

I want to be sure to preface this with one very important proviso about the order in which micro-moments happen: it varies.

For example, a consumer might decide she wants to patch cracks in her ceiling so she watches a video on YouTube demoing this >>> looks up the name of the putty the YouTube personality was using >>> looks up where to buy that putty locally >>> buys it. Or, the consumer could already be inside a home improvement store, see putty, realize she'd like to patch cracks, then look up reviews of various putty brands, look at a video to see how difficult the task is, and finally, purchase.

There is no set order in which micro-moments occur, and though there may be patterns specific to auto body shops or insurance firms, the idea is to be present at every possible moment in time so that the consumer is assisted, regardless of the order in which they discover and act. What I'm presenting here is just one possible path.

In quest of the fluffier omelet

Image courtesy of Prayitno on Flickr

Our consumer is a 30-year-old man named Walter who loves the fluffy omelets served at a fancy bistro in Pittsburgh. One morning while at the restaurant, Walter asks himself,

“I wonder why I can't make omelets as fluffy as these at home. I'm not a bad cook. There must be some secret to it. Hey - I challenge myself to find out what that secret is!”

I want to know

While walking back to his car, Walter pulls out his smartphone and begins his micro-moment journey with his I-want-to-know query: how to make a fluffier omelet.

Across town, Patricia, the owner of a franchise location of Soup's On Cooking Supply has anticipated Walter's defining moment because she has been studying her website analytics, studying question research tools like Answer The Public, watching Google Trends, and looking at Q&A sites like this one where people are already searching for answers to the secret of fluffy omelets. She also has her staff actively cataloging common in-store questions. The data gathered has convinced her to make these efforts:

Film a non-salesy 1.16-minute video in the store's test kitchen demonstrating the use of a quality wire whisk and a quality pan (both of which her store carries) for ideal omelet results.

Write an article/blog post on the website with great photos, a recipe, and instructions revealing the secrets of fluffy omelets.

Include the video in the article. Share both the article and video socially, including publishing the video on the company's YouTube channel (*interesting fact, it might one day show up inside the company's Google Knowledge Panel).

Answer some questions (electric vs. balloon whisk, cast iron vs. non-stick pan for omelet success) that are coming up for this query on popular Q&A-style sites.

Try to capture a Google Answer Box or two.

Walking down the street, Walter discovers and watches the video on YouTube. He notices the Soup's On Cooking Supply branding on the video, even though there was no hard-sell in its content - just really good tips for omelet fluffiness.

I want to go

“Soup's On near me,” Walter asks his mobile phone, not 100% sure this chain has an outlet in Pittsburgh. He's having his I-Want-To-Go moment.

Again, Patricia has anticipated this need and prevented customer loss by:

Ensuring the company website clearly lists out the name, address, and phone number of her franchise location.

Providing excellent driving directions for getting there from all points of origin.

Either using a free tool like Moz Check Listing to get a health check on the accuracy of her citations on the most important local business listing platforms, or complying with the top-down directive for all 550 of the brand's locations to be actively managed via a paid service like Moz Local.

Walter keys the ignition.

I want to buy

Walter arrives safely at the retail location. You'd think he might put his phone away, but being like 87% of millennials, he keeps it at his side day and night and, like 91% of his compadres, he turns it on mid-task. The store clerk has shown him where the wire whisks and pans are stocked, but Walter is not convinced that he can trust what the video claimed about their quality. He'd like to see a comparison.

Fortunately, Patricia is a Moz Whiteboard Friday fan and took Rand's advice about comprehensive content and 10x content to heart. Her website's product comparison charts go to great lengths, weighing USA-made kitchen products against German ones, Lodgeware vs. Le Creuset, in terms of price, performance for specific cooking tasks, and quality. They're ranking very well.

Walter is feeling more informed now, while being kept inside of the company's own website, but the I-Want-To-Buy micro-moment is cemented when he sees:

A unique page on the site for each product sold

Consumer reviews on each of these pages, providing unbiased opinion

Clearly delineated purchasing and payment options, including support of digital wallets, Bitcoin, and any available alternatives like home delivery or curbside pickup. Walter may be in the store right now, but he's glad to learn that, should he branch out into soup kettles in future, he has a variety of ways to purchase and receive merchandise.

I want to do

The next day, Walter is ready to make his first fluffier omelet. Because he's already been exposed to Patricia's article on the Soup's On Cooking Supply website, he can easily return to it now to re-watch the video and follow the recipe provided. Even in the I-want-to-do phase, Walter is being assisted by the brand, and this multi-part experience he's now had with the company should go far towards cementing it in his memory as a go-to resource for all of his future culinary needs.

It would be excellent if the website's page on fluffy omelets also challenged Walter to use his new whisk for creating other dishes - perhaps soufflés (for which he'll need a ceramic ramekin) or chantilly cream (a nice glass bowl set over ice water helps). Walter may find himself wanting to do all kinds of new things, and he now knows exactly where he can find helpful tutorials and purchase the necessary equipment.

More micro-moment variables

As we've seen, it's completely possible for a local business to own all four of Google's attested micro-moments. What I can't cover with a single scenario is all of the variables that might apply to a given geography or industry, but I do want to at least make mention of these three points that should be applicable to most local businesses:

1. Understanding how Micro-Moments Begin

The origins of both I-want-to-do and I-want-to-know moments are incredibly varied. A consumer need can arise from something really practical, as in, it's winter again and I need to buy snow tires. Or, there can be public/cultural happenings (like Julia Child's cooking program) to which consumers' ultimate transactions can be directly traced. To discover the sparks that ignite your specific customers' micro-moments fires, I recommend delving further into the topic of barnacle local SEO - the process of latching onto existing influences in your community in order to speak to existing wishes and needs.

2. Investing in mobile UX

Google states that 29% of smartphone users will immediately navigate away from any website or app that doesn't satisfy them. 70% of these cite slow loading and 67% cite too many steps to reach information or purchase as reasons for dissatisfaction. On November 4, 2016, Google announced its major shift toward mobile-first indexing, signaling to all website publishers that Google sees mobile, rather than desktop, as the primary platform now.

Google's statistics and policies make it irrefutable that every competitive local business which hasn't yet done so must now devote appropriate funds to creating the best possible mobile user experience. Failure to do so risks reputation, rankings, and revenue.

3. Investing in in-store UX

Though my story of Walter touches briefly on the resources Patricia had built for his in-store experience, I didn't delve into the skyrocketing technology constantly being pioneered around this micro-moment phase. This would include beacons, though they have so far failed to live up to earlier hype in some ways. It could involve the development of in-store apps. And, at the highest echelons of commerce, it could include kiosks, augmented, and virtual reality.

From shoestring to big-time, micro-moments aren't so new

Image courtesy of Glenn Dettwiler on Flickr

KFC may strive to master I-want-to-buy moments with chicken-serving robots, Amazon Go may see micro-moments in checkout-free shopping, and Google Home's giant, listening ear may be turning whole lives into a series of documented micro-moments, but what makes sense for your local business?

The answer to this is going to be dictated by the competitiveness of your industry and the needs of your consumer base. Does a rural, independently owned hardware store really need a 6-foot-high in-store touch screen enabling customers to virtually paint their houses? Probably not, but a well-written comparison of non-toxic paint brands the shop carries and why they're desirable for health reasons could transform a small town's decorating habits. Meanwhile, in more competitive markets, each local brand would be wise to invest in new technology only where it really makes proven sense, and not just because it's the next big thing.

Our industry loves new technology to a degree that can verge on the overwhelming for striving local business owners, and while it can genuinely be a bit daunting to sink your teeth into all of the variables of winning the micro-moment journey, take heart. Julia Child sold Pittsburgh out of wire whisks with a shoestring, black-and-white PBS program on which she frequently dropped implements on the floor and sent egg beaters flying across rooms.

With our modern capabilities of surveying and mining consumers needs and presenting useful solutions via the instant medium of the web, what can't you do? The steps in the micro-moments funnel are as old as commerce itself. Simply seize the current available technology ... and get cooking!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[ocalafloridaseo-blog]

Why All 4 of Google's Micro-Moments Are Actually Local

Posted by MiriamEllis

When America's first star TV chef, Julia Child, demonstrated the use of a wire whisk on her 1960's cooking show, the city of Pittsburgh sold out of them. Pennsylvanians may well have owned a few of these implements prior to the show's air date, but probably didn't spend a lot of time thinking about them. After the show, however, wire whisks were on everyone's mind and they simply had to have one. Call it a retro micro-moment, and imagine consumers jamming the lines of rotary phones or hoofing it around town in quest of this gleaming gadget … then zoom up to the present and see us all on our mobile devices.

I like this anecdote from the pages of culinary history because it encapsulates all four of Google's stated core micro-moments:

I want to know - Consumers were watching a local broadcast of this show in Pittsburgh because they wanted to know how to make an omelet.

I want to go - Consumers then scoured the city in search of the proper whisk.

I want to buy - Consumers then purchased the implement at a chosen retailer.

I want to do - And finally, consumers either referred to the notes they had taken during the show (no DVRs back then) or might have turned to Julia Child's cookbook to actually beat up their first-ever omelet.

Not only does the wire whisk story foreshadow the modern micro-moment, it also provides a roadmap for tying each of the 4 stages to local SEO via current technology. I've seen other bloggers pointing to the 'I want to go' phase as inherently local, but in this post, I want to demonstrate how your local business can decisively claim all four of these micro-moments as your own, and claim the desirable transactions resulting thereby!

Understanding Google's definition of micro-moments

Google whisked up some excitement of their own with the publication of Micro-Moments: Your Guide to Winning the Shift to Mobile. Some of the statistics in the piece are stunning:

65% of smartphone users look for the most relevant information on their devices regardless of what company provides that information,

90% of them aren't certain what brand they want to purchase when they begin their Internet search,

82% consult their smartphones even after they are inside a chosen store,

and 'how-to' searches on YouTube are growing 70% year-over-year.

Google defines micro-moments as “critical touch points within today's consumer journey, and when added together, they ultimately determine how that journey ends,” and goes on to identify mobile as the great facilitator of all this activity. It's simple to think of micro-moments as a series of points in time that culminate in a consumer arriving at a transactional decision. For local business owners and their marketers, the goal is to 'be there' for the consumer at each of these critical points with the resources you have developed on the web.

Let's reverse-engineer the famous tale of the wire whisk and put it into a modern technological context, demonstrating how a hypothetical cooking supply store in Pittsburgh, PA could become a major micro-moments winner in 2017.

A variable recipe for local micro-moments success

I want to be sure to preface this with one very important proviso about the order in which micro-moments happen: it varies.

For example, a consumer might decide she wants to patch cracks in her ceiling so she watches a video on YouTube demoing this >>> looks up the name of the putty the YouTube personality was using >>> looks up where to buy that putty locally >>> buys it. Or, the consumer could already be inside a home improvement store, see putty, realize she'd like to patch cracks, then look up reviews of various putty brands, look at a video to see how difficult the task is, and finally, purchase.

There is no set order in which micro-moments occur, and though there may be patterns specific to auto body shops or insurance firms, the idea is to be present at every possible moment in time so that the consumer is assisted, regardless of the order in which they discover and act. What I'm presenting here is just one possible path.

In quest of the fluffier omelet

Image courtesy of Prayitno on Flickr

Our consumer is a 30-year-old man named Walter who loves the fluffy omelets served at a fancy bistro in Pittsburgh. One morning while at the restaurant, Walter asks himself,

“I wonder why I can't make omelets as fluffy as these at home. I'm not a bad cook. There must be some secret to it. Hey - I challenge myself to find out what that secret is!”

I want to know

While walking back to his car, Walter pulls out his smartphone and begins his micro-moment journey with his I-want-to-know query: how to make a fluffier omelet.

Across town, Patricia, the owner of a franchise location of Soup's On Cooking Supply has anticipated Walter's defining moment because she has been studying her website analytics, studying question research tools like Answer The Public, watching Google Trends, and looking at Q&A sites like this one where people are already searching for answers to the secret of fluffy omelets. She also has her staff actively cataloging common in-store questions. The data gathered has convinced her to make these efforts:

Film a non-salesy 1.16-minute video in the store's test kitchen demonstrating the use of a quality wire whisk and a quality pan (both of which her store carries) for ideal omelet results.

Write an article/blog post on the website with great photos, a recipe, and instructions revealing the secrets of fluffy omelets.

Include the video in the article. Share both the article and video socially, including publishing the video on the company's YouTube channel (*interesting fact, it might one day show up inside the company's Google Knowledge Panel).

Answer some questions (electric vs. balloon whisk, cast iron vs. non-stick pan for omelet success) that are coming up for this query on popular Q&A-style sites.

Try to capture a Google Answer Box or two.

Walking down the street, Walter discovers and watches the video on YouTube. He notices the Soup's On Cooking Supply branding on the video, even though there was no hard-sell in its content - just really good tips for omelet fluffiness.

I want to go

“Soup's On near me,” Walter asks his mobile phone, not 100% sure this chain has an outlet in Pittsburgh. He's having his I-Want-To-Go moment.

Again, Patricia has anticipated this need and prevented customer loss by:

Ensuring the company website clearly lists out the name, address, and phone number of her franchise location.

Providing excellent driving directions for getting there from all points of origin.

Either using a free tool like Moz Check Listing to get a health check on the accuracy of her citations on the most important local business listing platforms, or complying with the top-down directive for all 550 of the brand's locations to be actively managed via a paid service like Moz Local.

Walter keys the ignition.

I want to buy

Walter arrives safely at the retail location. You'd think he might put his phone away, but being like 87% of millennials, he keeps it at his side day and night and, like 91% of his compadres, he turns it on mid-task. The store clerk has shown him where the wire whisks and pans are stocked, but Walter is not convinced that he can trust what the video claimed about their quality. He'd like to see a comparison.

Fortunately, Patricia is a Moz Whiteboard Friday fan and took Rand's advice about comprehensive content and 10x content to heart. Her website's product comparison charts go to great lengths, weighing USA-made kitchen products against German ones, Lodgeware vs. Le Creuset, in terms of price, performance for specific cooking tasks, and quality. They're ranking very well.

Walter is feeling more informed now, while being kept inside of the company's own website, but the I-Want-To-Buy micro-moment is cemented when he sees:

A unique page on the site for each product sold

Consumer reviews on each of these pages, providing unbiased opinion

Clearly delineated purchasing and payment options, including support of digital wallets, Bitcoin, and any available alternatives like home delivery or curbside pickup. Walter may be in the store right now, but he's glad to learn that, should he branch out into soup kettles in future, he has a variety of ways to purchase and receive merchandise.

I want to do

The next day, Walter is ready to make his first fluffier omelet. Because he's already been exposed to Patricia's article on the Soup's On Cooking Supply website, he can easily return to it now to re-watch the video and follow the recipe provided. Even in the I-want-to-do phase, Walter is being assisted by the brand, and this multi-part experience he's now had with the company should go far towards cementing it in his memory as a go-to resource for all of his future culinary needs.

It would be excellent if the website's page on fluffy omelets also challenged Walter to use his new whisk for creating other dishes - perhaps soufflés (for which he'll need a ceramic ramekin) or chantilly cream (a nice glass bowl set over ice water helps). Walter may find himself wanting to do all kinds of new things, and he now knows exactly where he can find helpful tutorials and purchase the necessary equipment.

More micro-moment variables

As we've seen, it's completely possible for a local business to own all four of Google's attested micro-moments. What I can't cover with a single scenario is all of the variables that might apply to a given geography or industry, but I do want to at least make mention of these three points that should be applicable to most local businesses:

1. Understanding how Micro-Moments Begin

The origins of both I-want-to-do and I-want-to-know moments are incredibly varied. A consumer need can arise from something really practical, as in, it's winter again and I need to buy snow tires. Or, there can be public/cultural happenings (like Julia Child's cooking program) to which consumers' ultimate transactions can be directly traced. To discover the sparks that ignite your specific customers' micro-moments fires, I recommend delving further into the topic of barnacle local SEO - the process of latching onto existing influences in your community in order to speak to existing wishes and needs.

2. Investing in mobile UX

Google states that 29% of smartphone users will immediately navigate away from any website or app that doesn't satisfy them. 70% of these cite slow loading and 67% cite too many steps to reach information or purchase as reasons for dissatisfaction. On November 4, 2016, Google announced its major shift toward mobile-first indexing, signaling to all website publishers that Google sees mobile, rather than desktop, as the primary platform now.

Google's statistics and policies make it irrefutable that every competitive local business which hasn't yet done so must now devote appropriate funds to creating the best possible mobile user experience. Failure to do so risks reputation, rankings, and revenue.

3. Investing in in-store UX

Though my story of Walter touches briefly on the resources Patricia had built for his in-store experience, I didn't delve into the skyrocketing technology constantly being pioneered around this micro-moment phase. This would include beacons, though they have so far failed to live up to earlier hype in some ways. It could involve the development of in-store apps. And, at the highest echelons of commerce, it could include kiosks, augmented, and virtual reality.

From shoestring to big-time, micro-moments aren't so new

Image courtesy of Glenn Dettwiler on Flickr

KFC may strive to master I-want-to-buy moments with chicken-serving robots, Amazon Go may see micro-moments in checkout-free shopping, and Google Home's giant, listening ear may be turning whole lives into a series of documented micro-moments, but what makes sense for your local business?

The answer to this is going to be dictated by the competitiveness of your industry and the needs of your consumer base. Does a rural, independently owned hardware store really need a 6-foot-high in-store touch screen enabling customers to virtually paint their houses? Probably not, but a well-written comparison of non-toxic paint brands the shop carries and why they're desirable for health reasons could transform a small town's decorating habits. Meanwhile, in more competitive markets, each local brand would be wise to invest in new technology only where it really makes proven sense, and not just because it's the next big thing.

Our industry loves new technology to a degree that can verge on the overwhelming for striving local business owners, and while it can genuinely be a bit daunting to sink your teeth into all of the variables of winning the micro-moment journey, take heart. Julia Child sold Pittsburgh out of wire whisks with a shoestring, black-and-white PBS program on which she frequently dropped implements on the floor and sent egg beaters flying across rooms.

With our modern capabilities of surveying and mining consumers needs and presenting useful solutions via the instant medium of the web, what can't you do? The steps in the micro-moments funnel are as old as commerce itself. Simply seize the current available technology ... and get cooking!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[localseoservicestampa-blog]

Why All 4 of Google's Micro-Moments Are Actually Local

Posted by MiriamEllis

When America's first star TV chef, Julia Child, demonstrated the use of a wire whisk on her 1960's cooking show, the city of Pittsburgh sold out of them. Pennsylvanians may well have owned a few of these implements prior to the show's air date, but probably didn't spend a lot of time thinking about them. After the show, however, wire whisks were on everyone's mind and they simply had to have one. Call it a retro micro-moment, and imagine consumers jamming the lines of rotary phones or hoofing it around town in quest of this gleaming gadget … then zoom up to the present and see us all on our mobile devices.

I like this anecdote from the pages of culinary history because it encapsulates all four of Google's stated core micro-moments:

I want to know - Consumers were watching a local broadcast of this show in Pittsburgh because they wanted to know how to make an omelet.

I want to go - Consumers then scoured the city in search of the proper whisk.

I want to buy - Consumers then purchased the implement at a chosen retailer.

I want to do - And finally, consumers either referred to the notes they had taken during the show (no DVRs back then) or might have turned to Julia Child's cookbook to actually beat up their first-ever omelet.

Not only does the wire whisk story foreshadow the modern micro-moment, it also provides a roadmap for tying each of the 4 stages to local SEO via current technology. I've seen other bloggers pointing to the 'I want to go' phase as inherently local, but in this post, I want to demonstrate how your local business can decisively claim all four of these micro-moments as your own, and claim the desirable transactions resulting thereby!

Understanding Google's definition of micro-moments

Google whisked up some excitement of their own with the publication of Micro-Moments: Your Guide to Winning the Shift to Mobile. Some of the statistics in the piece are stunning:

65% of smartphone users look for the most relevant information on their devices regardless of what company provides that information,

90% of them aren't certain what brand they want to purchase when they begin their Internet search,

82% consult their smartphones even after they are inside a chosen store,

and 'how-to' searches on YouTube are growing 70% year-over-year.

Google defines micro-moments as “critical touch points within today's consumer journey, and when added together, they ultimately determine how that journey ends,” and goes on to identify mobile as the great facilitator of all this activity. It's simple to think of micro-moments as a series of points in time that culminate in a consumer arriving at a transactional decision. For local business owners and their marketers, the goal is to 'be there' for the consumer at each of these critical points with the resources you have developed on the web.

Let's reverse-engineer the famous tale of the wire whisk and put it into a modern technological context, demonstrating how a hypothetical cooking supply store in Pittsburgh, PA could become a major micro-moments winner in 2017.

A variable recipe for local micro-moments success

I want to be sure to preface this with one very important proviso about the order in which micro-moments happen: it varies.

For example, a consumer might decide she wants to patch cracks in her ceiling so she watches a video on YouTube demoing this >>> looks up the name of the putty the YouTube personality was using >>> looks up where to buy that putty locally >>> buys it. Or, the consumer could already be inside a home improvement store, see putty, realize she'd like to patch cracks, then look up reviews of various putty brands, look at a video to see how difficult the task is, and finally, purchase.

There is no set order in which micro-moments occur, and though there may be patterns specific to auto body shops or insurance firms, the idea is to be present at every possible moment in time so that the consumer is assisted, regardless of the order in which they discover and act. What I'm presenting here is just one possible path.

In quest of the fluffier omelet

Image courtesy of Prayitno on Flickr

Our consumer is a 30-year-old man named Walter who loves the fluffy omelets served at a fancy bistro in Pittsburgh. One morning while at the restaurant, Walter asks himself,

“I wonder why I can't make omelets as fluffy as these at home. I'm not a bad cook. There must be some secret to it. Hey - I challenge myself to find out what that secret is!”

I want to know

While walking back to his car, Walter pulls out his smartphone and begins his micro-moment journey with his I-want-to-know query: how to make a fluffier omelet.

Across town, Patricia, the owner of a franchise location of Soup's On Cooking Supply has anticipated Walter's defining moment because she has been studying her website analytics, studying question research tools like Answer The Public, watching Google Trends, and looking at Q&A sites like this one where people are already searching for answers to the secret of fluffy omelets. She also has her staff actively cataloging common in-store questions. The data gathered has convinced her to make these efforts:

Film a non-salesy 1.16-minute video in the store's test kitchen demonstrating the use of a quality wire whisk and a quality pan (both of which her store carries) for ideal omelet results.

Write an article/blog post on the website with great photos, a recipe, and instructions revealing the secrets of fluffy omelets.

Include the video in the article. Share both the article and video socially, including publishing the video on the company's YouTube channel (*interesting fact, it might one day show up inside the company's Google Knowledge Panel).

Answer some questions (electric vs. balloon whisk, cast iron vs. non-stick pan for omelet success) that are coming up for this query on popular Q&A-style sites.

Try to capture a Google Answer Box or two.

Walking down the street, Walter discovers and watches the video on YouTube. He notices the Soup's On Cooking Supply branding on the video, even though there was no hard-sell in its content - just really good tips for omelet fluffiness.

I want to go

“Soup's On near me,” Walter asks his mobile phone, not 100% sure this chain has an outlet in Pittsburgh. He's having his I-Want-To-Go moment.

Again, Patricia has anticipated this need and prevented customer loss by:

Ensuring the company website clearly lists out the name, address, and phone number of her franchise location.

Providing excellent driving directions for getting there from all points of origin.

Either using a free tool like Moz Check Listing to get a health check on the accuracy of her citations on the most important local business listing platforms, or complying with the top-down directive for all 550 of the brand's locations to be actively managed via a paid service like Moz Local.

Walter keys the ignition.

I want to buy

Walter arrives safely at the retail location. You'd think he might put his phone away, but being like 87% of millennials, he keeps it at his side day and night and, like 91% of his compadres, he turns it on mid-task. The store clerk has shown him where the wire whisks and pans are stocked, but Walter is not convinced that he can trust what the video claimed about their quality. He'd like to see a comparison.

Fortunately, Patricia is a Moz Whiteboard Friday fan and took Rand's advice about comprehensive content and 10x content to heart. Her website's product comparison charts go to great lengths, weighing USA-made kitchen products against German ones, Lodgeware vs. Le Creuset, in terms of price, performance for specific cooking tasks, and quality. They're ranking very well.

Walter is feeling more informed now, while being kept inside of the company's own website, but the I-Want-To-Buy micro-moment is cemented when he sees:

A unique page on the site for each product sold

Consumer reviews on each of these pages, providing unbiased opinion

Clearly delineated purchasing and payment options, including support of digital wallets, Bitcoin, and any available alternatives like home delivery or curbside pickup. Walter may be in the store right now, but he's glad to learn that, should he branch out into soup kettles in future, he has a variety of ways to purchase and receive merchandise.

I want to do

The next day, Walter is ready to make his first fluffier omelet. Because he's already been exposed to Patricia's article on the Soup's On Cooking Supply website, he can easily return to it now to re-watch the video and follow the recipe provided. Even in the I-want-to-do phase, Walter is being assisted by the brand, and this multi-part experience he's now had with the company should go far towards cementing it in his memory as a go-to resource for all of his future culinary needs.

It would be excellent if the website's page on fluffy omelets also challenged Walter to use his new whisk for creating other dishes - perhaps soufflés (for which he'll need a ceramic ramekin) or chantilly cream (a nice glass bowl set over ice water helps). Walter may find himself wanting to do all kinds of new things, and he now knows exactly where he can find helpful tutorials and purchase the necessary equipment.

More micro-moment variables

As we've seen, it's completely possible for a local business to own all four of Google's attested micro-moments. What I can't cover with a single scenario is all of the variables that might apply to a given geography or industry, but I do want to at least make mention of these three points that should be applicable to most local businesses:

1. Understanding how Micro-Moments Begin

The origins of both I-want-to-do and I-want-to-know moments are incredibly varied. A consumer need can arise from something really practical, as in, it's winter again and I need to buy snow tires. Or, there can be public/cultural happenings (like Julia Child's cooking program) to which consumers' ultimate transactions can be directly traced. To discover the sparks that ignite your specific customers' micro-moments fires, I recommend delving further into the topic of barnacle local SEO - the process of latching onto existing influences in your community in order to speak to existing wishes and needs.

2. Investing in mobile UX

Google states that 29% of smartphone users will immediately navigate away from any website or app that doesn't satisfy them. 70% of these cite slow loading and 67% cite too many steps to reach information or purchase as reasons for dissatisfaction. On November 4, 2016, Google announced its major shift toward mobile-first indexing, signaling to all website publishers that Google sees mobile, rather than desktop, as the primary platform now.

Google's statistics and policies make it irrefutable that every competitive local business which hasn't yet done so must now devote appropriate funds to creating the best possible mobile user experience. Failure to do so risks reputation, rankings, and revenue.

3. Investing in in-store UX

Though my story of Walter touches briefly on the resources Patricia had built for his in-store experience, I didn't delve into the skyrocketing technology constantly being pioneered around this micro-moment phase. This would include beacons, though they have so far failed to live up to earlier hype in some ways. It could involve the development of in-store apps. And, at the highest echelons of commerce, it could include kiosks, augmented, and virtual reality.

From shoestring to big-time, micro-moments aren't so new

Image courtesy of Glenn Dettwiler on Flickr

KFC may strive to master I-want-to-buy moments with chicken-serving robots, Amazon Go may see micro-moments in checkout-free shopping, and Google Home's giant, listening ear may be turning whole lives into a series of documented micro-moments, but what makes sense for your local business?

The answer to this is going to be dictated by the competitiveness of your industry and the needs of your consumer base. Does a rural, independently owned hardware store really need a 6-foot-high in-store touch screen enabling customers to virtually paint their houses? Probably not, but a well-written comparison of non-toxic paint brands the shop carries and why they're desirable for health reasons could transform a small town's decorating habits. Meanwhile, in more competitive markets, each local brand would be wise to invest in new technology only where it really makes proven sense, and not just because it's the next big thing.

Our industry loves new technology to a degree that can verge on the overwhelming for striving local business owners, and while it can genuinely be a bit daunting to sink your teeth into all of the variables of winning the micro-moment journey, take heart. Julia Child sold Pittsburgh out of wire whisks with a shoestring, black-and-white PBS program on which she frequently dropped implements on the floor and sent egg beaters flying across rooms.

With our modern capabilities of surveying and mining consumers needs and presenting useful solutions via the instant medium of the web, what can't you do? The steps in the micro-moments funnel are as old as commerce itself. Simply seize the current available technology ... and get cooking!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[digital-strategy]

http://img.youtube.com/vi/zS2-eyhlRA4/0.jpg

Posted by MiriamEllis

When America’s first star TV chef, Julia Child, demonstrated the use of a wire whisk on her 1960’s cooking show, the city of Pittsburgh sold out of them. Pennsylvanians may well have owned a few of these implements prior to the show’s air date, but probably didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about them. After the show, however, wire whisks were on everyone’s mind and they simply had to have one. Call it a retro micro-moment, and imagine consumers jamming the lines of rotary phones or hoofing it around town in quest of this gleaming gadget … then zoom up to the present and see us all on our mobile devices.

I like this anecdote from the pages of culinary history because it encapsulates all four of Google’s stated core micro-moments:

I want to know - Consumers were watching a local broadcast of this show in Pittsburgh because they wanted to know how to make an omelet.

I want to go - Consumers then scoured the city in search of the proper whisk.

I want to buy - Consumers then purchased the implement at a chosen retailer.

I want to do - And finally, consumers either referred to the notes they had taken during the show (no DVRs back then) or might have turned to Julia Child’s cookbook to actually beat up their first-ever omelet.

Not only does the wire whisk story foreshadow the modern micro-moment, it also provides a roadmap for tying each of the 4 stages to local SEO via current technology. I’ve seen other bloggers pointing to the ‘I want to go’ phase as inherently local, but in this post, I want to demonstrate how your local business can decisively claim all four of these micro-moments as your own, and claim the desirable transactions resulting thereby!

Understanding Google’s definition of micro-moments

Google whisked up some excitement of their own with the publication of Micro-Moments: Your Guide to Winning the Shift to Mobile. Some of the statistics in the piece are stunning:

65% of smartphone users look for the most relevant information on their devices regardless of what company provides that information,

90% of them aren’t certain what brand they want to purchase when they begin their Internet search,

82% consult their smartphones even after they are inside a chosen store,

and ‘how-to’ searches on YouTube are growing 70% year-over-year.

Google defines micro-moments as “critical touch points within today’s consumer journey, and when added together, they ultimately determine how that journey ends,” and goes on to identify mobile as the great facilitator of all this activity. It’s simple to think of micro-moments as a series of points in time that culminate in a consumer arriving at a transactional decision. For local business owners and their marketers, the goal is to ‘be there’ for the consumer at each of these critical points with the resources you have developed on the web.

Let’s reverse-engineer the famous tale of the wire whisk and put it into a modern technological context, demonstrating how a hypothetical cooking supply store in Pittsburgh, PA could become a major micro-moments winner in 2017.

A variable recipe for local micro-moments success

I want to be sure to preface this with one very important proviso about the order in which micro-moments happen: it varies.

For example, a consumer might decide she wants to patch cracks in her ceiling so she watches a video on YouTube demoing this >>> looks up the name of the putty the YouTube personality was using >>> looks up where to buy that putty locally >>> buys it. Or, the consumer could already be inside a home improvement store, see putty, realize she’d like to patch cracks, then look up reviews of various putty brands, look at a video to see how difficult the task is, and finally, purchase.

There is no set order in which micro-moments occur, and though there may be patterns specific to auto body shops or insurance firms, the idea is to be present at every possible moment in time so that the consumer is assisted, regardless of the order in which they discover and act. What I’m presenting here is just one possible path.

In quest of the fluffier omelet

Our consumer is a 30-year-old man named Walter who loves the fluffy omelets served at a fancy bistro in Pittsburgh. One morning while at the restaurant, Walter asks himself,

“I wonder why I can’t make omelets as fluffy as these at home. I’m not a bad cook. There must be some secret to it. Hey — I challenge myself to find out what that secret is!”

I want to know

While walking back to his car, Walter pulls out his smartphone and begins his micro-moment journey with his I-want-to-know query: how to make a fluffier omelet.

Across town, Patricia, the owner of a franchise location of Soup’s On Cooking Supply has anticipated Walter’s defining moment because she has been studying her website analytics, studying question research tools like Answer The Public, watching Google Trends, and looking at Q&A sites like this one where people are already searching for answers to the secret of fluffy omelets. She also has her staff actively cataloging common in-store questions. The data gathered has convinced her to make these efforts:

Film a non-salesy 1.16-minute video in the store’s test kitchen demonstrating the use of a quality wire whisk and a quality pan (both of which her store carries) for ideal omelet results.

Write an article/blog post on the website with great photos, a recipe, and instructions revealing the secrets of fluffy omelets.

Include the video in the article. Share both the article and video socially, including publishing the video on the company’s YouTube channel (*interesting fact, it might one day show up inside the company’s Google Knowledge Panel).

Answer some questions (electric vs. balloon whisk, cast iron vs. non-stick pan for omelet success) that are coming up for this query on popular Q&A-style sites.

Try to capture a Google Answer Box or two.

Walking down the street, Walter discovers and watches the video on YouTube. He notices the Soup’s On Cooking Supply branding on the video, even though there was no hard-sell in its content — just really good tips for omelet fluffiness.

I want to go

“Soup’s On near me,” Walter asks his mobile phone, not 100% sure this chain has an outlet in Pittsburgh. He’s having his I-Want-To-Go moment.

Again, Patricia has anticipated this need and prevented customer loss by:

Ensuring the company website clearly lists out the name, address, and phone number of her franchise location.

Providing excellent driving directions for getting there from all points of origin.

Either using a free tool like Moz Check Listing to get a health check on the accuracy of her citations on the most important local business listing platforms, or complying with the top-down directive for all 550 of the brand’s locations to be actively managed via a paid service like Moz Local.

Walter keys the ignition.

I want to buy

Walter arrives safely at the retail location. You’d think he might put his phone away, but being like 87% of millennials, he keeps it at his side day and night and, like 91% of his compadres, he turns it on mid-task. The store clerk has shown him where the wire whisks and pans are stocked, but Walter is not convinced that he can trust what the video claimed about their quality. He’d like to see a comparison.

Fortunately, Patricia is a Moz Whiteboard Friday fan and took Rand’s advice about comprehensive content and 10x content to heart. Her website’s product comparison charts go to great lengths, weighing USA-made kitchen products against German ones, Lodgeware vs. Le Creuset, in terms of price, performance for specific cooking tasks, and quality. They’re ranking very well.

Walter is feeling more informed now, while being kept inside of the company’s own website, but the I-Want-To-Buy micro-moment is cemented when he sees:

A unique page on the site for each product sold

Consumer reviews on each of these pages, providing unbiased opinion

Clearly delineated purchasing and payment options, including support of digital wallets, Bitcoin, and any available alternatives like home delivery or curbside pickup. Walter may be in the store right now, but he’s glad to learn that, should he branch out into soup kettles in future, he has a variety of ways to purchase and receive merchandise.

I want to do

The next day, Walter is ready to make his first fluffier omelet. Because he’s already been exposed to Patricia’s article on the Soup’s On Cooking Supply website, he can easily return to it now to re-watch the video and follow the recipe provided. Even in the I-want-to-do phase, Walter is being assisted by the brand, and this multi-part experience he’s now had with the company should go far towards cementing it in his memory as a go-to resource for all of his future culinary needs.

It would be excellent if the website’s page on fluffy omelets also challenged Walter to use his new whisk for creating other dishes — perhaps soufflés (for which he’ll need a ceramic ramekin) or chantilly cream (a nice glass bowl set over ice water helps). Walter may find himself wanting to do all kinds of new things, and he now knows exactly where he can find helpful tutorials and purchase the necessary equipment.

More micro-moment variables

As we’ve seen, it’s completely possible for a local business to own all four of Google’s attested micro-moments. What I can’t cover with a single scenario is all of the variables that might apply to a given geography or industry, but I do want to at least make mention of these three points that should be applicable to most local businesses:

1. Understanding how Micro-Moments Begin

The origins of both I-want-to-do and I-want-to-know moments are incredibly varied. A consumer need can arise from something really practical, as in, it’s winter again and I need to buy snow tires. Or, there can be public/cultural happenings (like Julia Child’s cooking program) to which consumers’ ultimate transactions can be directly traced. To discover the sparks that ignite your specific customers’ micro-moments fires, I recommend delving further into the topic of barnacle local SEO — the process of latching onto existing influences in your community in order to speak to existing wishes and needs.

2. Investing in mobile UX

Google states that 29% of smartphone users will immediately navigate away from any website or app that doesn’t satisfy them. 70% of these cite slow loading and 67% cite too many steps to reach information or purchase as reasons for dissatisfaction. On November 4, 2016, Google announced its major shift toward mobile-first indexing, signaling to all website publishers that Google sees mobile, rather than desktop, as the primary platform now.

Google’s statistics and policies make it irrefutable that every competitive local business which hasn’t yet done so must now devote appropriate funds to creating the best possible mobile user experience. Failure to do so risks reputation, rankings, and revenue.

3. Investing in in-store UX

Though my story of Walter touches briefly on the resources Patricia had built for his in-store experience, I didn’t delve into the skyrocketing technology constantly being pioneered around this micro-moment phase. This would include beacons, though they have so far failed to live up to earlier hype in some ways. It could involve the development of in-store apps. And, at the highest echelons of commerce, it could include kiosks, augmented, and virtual reality.

From shoestring to big-time, micro-moments aren’t so new

KFC may strive to master I-want-to-buy moments with chicken-serving robots, Amazon Go may see micro-moments in checkout-free shopping, and Google Home’s giant, listening ear may be turning whole lives into a series of documented micro-moments, but what makes sense for your local business?

The answer to this is going to be dictated by the competitiveness of your industry and the needs of your consumer base. Does a rural, independently owned hardware store really need a 6-foot-high in-store touch screen enabling customers to virtually paint their houses? Probably not, but a well-written comparison of non-toxic paint brands the shop carries and why they’re desirable for health reasons could transform a small town’s decorating habits. Meanwhile, in more competitive markets, each local brand would be wise to invest in new technology only where it really makes proven sense, and not just because it’s the next big thing.

Our industry loves new technology to a degree that can verge on the overwhelming for striving local business owners, and while it can genuinely be a bit daunting to sink your teeth into all of the variables of winning the micro-moment journey, take heart. Julia Child sold Pittsburgh out of wire whisks with a shoestring, black-and-white PBS program on which she frequently dropped implements on the floor and sent egg beaters flying across rooms.

With our modern capabilities of surveying and mining consumers needs and presenting useful solutions via the instant medium of the web, what can’t you do? The steps in the micro-moments funnel are as old as commerce itself. Simply seize the current available technology ... and get cooking!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

via SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

[ormlacom]

Why All 4 of Google's Micro-Moments Are Actually Local

Posted by MiriamEllis

When America’s first star TV chef, Julia Child, demonstrated the use of a wire whisk on her 1960’s cooking show, the city of Pittsburgh sold out of them. Pennsylvanians may well have owned a few of these implements prior to the show’s air date, but probably didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about them. After the show, however, wire whisks were on everyone’s mind and they simply had to have one. Call it a retro micro-moment, and imagine consumers jamming the lines of rotary phones or hoofing it around town in quest of this gleaming gadget … then zoom up to the present and see us all on our mobile devices.

I like this anecdote from the pages of culinary history because it encapsulates all four of Google’s stated core micro-moments:

I want to know - Consumers were watching a local broadcast of this show in Pittsburgh because they wanted to know how to make an omelet.

I want to go - Consumers then scoured the city in search of the proper whisk.

I want to buy - Consumers then purchased the implement at a chosen retailer.

I want to do - And finally, consumers either referred to the notes they had taken during the show (no DVRs back then) or might have turned to Julia Child’s cookbook to actually beat up their first-ever omelet.

Not only does the wire whisk story foreshadow the modern micro-moment, it also provides a roadmap for tying each of the 4 stages to local SEO via current technology. I’ve seen other bloggers pointing to the ‘I want to go’ phase as inherently local, but in this post, I want to demonstrate how your local business can decisively claim all four of these micro-moments as your own, and claim the desirable transactions resulting thereby!

Understanding Google’s definition of micro-moments

Google whisked up some excitement of their own with the publication of Micro-Moments: Your Guide to Winning the Shift to Mobile. Some of the statistics in the piece are stunning:

65% of smartphone users look for the most relevant information on their devices regardless of what company provides that information,

90% of them aren’t certain what brand they want to purchase when they begin their Internet search,

82% consult their smartphones even after they are inside a chosen store,

and ‘how-to’ searches on YouTube are growing 70% year-over-year.

Google defines micro-moments as “critical touch points within today’s consumer journey, and when added together, they ultimately determine how that journey ends,” and goes on to identify mobile as the great facilitator of all this activity. It’s simple to think of micro-moments as a series of points in time that culminate in a consumer arriving at a transactional decision. For local business owners and their marketers, the goal is to ‘be there’ for the consumer at each of these critical points with the resources you have developed on the web.

Let’s reverse-engineer the famous tale of the wire whisk and put it into a modern technological context, demonstrating how a hypothetical cooking supply store in Pittsburgh, PA could become a major micro-moments winner in 2017.

A variable recipe for local micro-moments success

I want to be sure to preface this with one very important proviso about the order in which micro-moments happen: it varies.

For example, a consumer might decide she wants to patch cracks in her ceiling so she watches a video on YouTube demoing this >>> looks up the name of the putty the YouTube personality was using >>> looks up where to buy that putty locally >>> buys it. Or, the consumer could already be inside a home improvement store, see putty, realize she’d like to patch cracks, then look up reviews of various putty brands, look at a video to see how difficult the task is, and finally, purchase.

There is no set order in which micro-moments occur, and though there may be patterns specific to auto body shops or insurance firms, the idea is to be present at every possible moment in time so that the consumer is assisted, regardless of the order in which they discover and act. What I’m presenting here is just one possible path.

In quest of the fluffier omelet

Our consumer is a 30-year-old man named Walter who loves the fluffy omelets served at a fancy bistro in Pittsburgh. One morning while at the restaurant, Walter asks himself,

“I wonder why I can’t make omelets as fluffy as these at home. I’m not a bad cook. There must be some secret to it. Hey — I challenge myself to find out what that secret is!”

I want to know

While walking back to his car, Walter pulls out his smartphone and begins his micro-moment journey with his I-want-to-know query: how to make a fluffier omelet.

Across town, Patricia, the owner of a franchise location of Soup’s On Cooking Supply has anticipated Walter’s defining moment because she has been studying her website analytics, studying question research tools like Answer The Public, watching Google Trends, and looking at Q&A sites like this one where people are already searching for answers to the secret of fluffy omelets. She also has her staff actively cataloging common in-store questions. The data gathered has convinced her to make these efforts:

Film a non-salesy 1.16-minute video in the store’s test kitchen demonstrating the use of a quality wire whisk and a quality pan (both of which her store carries) for ideal omelet results.

Write an article/blog post on the website with great photos, a recipe, and instructions revealing the secrets of fluffy omelets.

Include the video in the article. Share both the article and video socially, including publishing the video on the company’s YouTube channel (*interesting fact, it might one day show up inside the company’s Google Knowledge Panel).

Answer some questions (electric vs. balloon whisk, cast iron vs. non-stick pan for omelet success) that are coming up for this query on popular Q&A-style sites.

Try to capture a Google Answer Box or two.

Walking down the street, Walter discovers and watches the video on YouTube. He notices the Soup’s On Cooking Supply branding on the video, even though there was no hard-sell in its content — just really good tips for omelet fluffiness.

I want to go

“Soup’s On near me,” Walter asks his mobile phone, not 100% sure this chain has an outlet in Pittsburgh. He’s having his I-Want-To-Go moment.

Again, Patricia has anticipated this need and prevented customer loss by:

Ensuring the company website clearly lists out the name, address, and phone number of her franchise location.

Providing excellent driving directions for getting there from all points of origin.

Either using a free tool like Moz Check Listing to get a health check on the accuracy of her citations on the most important local business listing platforms, or complying with the top-down directive for all 550 of the brand’s locations to be actively managed via a paid service like Moz Local.

Walter keys the ignition.

I want to buy

Walter arrives safely at the retail location. You’d think he might put his phone away, but being like 87% of millennials, he keeps it at his side day and night and, like 91% of his compadres, he turns it on mid-task. The store clerk has shown him where the wire whisks and pans are stocked, but Walter is not convinced that he can trust what the video claimed about their quality. He’d like to see a comparison.

Fortunately, Patricia is a Moz Whiteboard Friday fan and took Rand’s advice about comprehensive content and 10x content to heart. Her website’s product comparison charts go to great lengths, weighing USA-made kitchen products against German ones, Lodgeware vs. Le Creuset, in terms of price, performance for specific cooking tasks, and quality. They’re ranking very well.

Walter is feeling more informed now, while being kept inside of the company’s own website, but the I-Want-To-Buy micro-moment is cemented when he sees:

A unique page on the site for each product sold

Consumer reviews on each of these pages, providing unbiased opinion

Clearly delineated purchasing and payment options, including support of digital wallets, Bitcoin, and any available alternatives like home delivery or curbside pickup. Walter may be in the store right now, but he’s glad to learn that, should he branch out into soup kettles in future, he has a variety of ways to purchase and receive merchandise.

I want to do

The next day, Walter is ready to make his first fluffier omelet. Because he’s already been exposed to Patricia’s article on the Soup’s On Cooking Supply website, he can easily return to it now to re-watch the video and follow the recipe provided. Even in the I-want-to-do phase, Walter is being assisted by the brand, and this multi-part experience he’s now had with the company should go far towards cementing it in his memory as a go-to resource for all of his future culinary needs.

It would be excellent if the website’s page on fluffy omelets also challenged Walter to use his new whisk for creating other dishes — perhaps soufflés (for which he’ll need a ceramic ramekin) or chantilly cream (a nice glass bowl set over ice water helps). Walter may find himself wanting to do all kinds of new things, and he now knows exactly where he can find helpful tutorials and purchase the necessary equipment.

More micro-moment variables

As we’ve seen, it’s completely possible for a local business to own all four of Google’s attested micro-moments. What I can’t cover with a single scenario is all of the variables that might apply to a given geography or industry, but I do want to at least make mention of these three points that should be applicable to most local businesses:

1. Understanding how Micro-Moments Begin

The origins of both I-want-to-do and I-want-to-know moments are incredibly varied. A consumer need can arise from something really practical, as in, it’s winter again and I need to buy snow tires. Or, there can be public/cultural happenings (like Julia Child’s cooking program) to which consumers’ ultimate transactions can be directly traced. To discover the sparks that ignite your specific customers’ micro-moments fires, I recommend delving further into the topic of barnacle local SEO — the process of latching onto existing influences in your community in order to speak to existing wishes and needs.

2. Investing in mobile UX

Google states that 29% of smartphone users will immediately navigate away from any website or app that doesn’t satisfy them. 70% of these cite slow loading and 67% cite too many steps to reach information or purchase as reasons for dissatisfaction. On November 4, 2016, Google announced its major shift toward mobile-first indexing, signaling to all website publishers that Google sees mobile, rather than desktop, as the primary platform now.

Google’s statistics and policies make it irrefutable that every competitive local business which hasn’t yet done so must now devote appropriate funds to creating the best possible mobile user experience. Failure to do so risks reputation, rankings, and revenue.

3. Investing in in-store UX

Though my story of Walter touches briefly on the resources Patricia had built for his in-store experience, I didn’t delve into the skyrocketing technology constantly being pioneered around this micro-moment phase. This would include beacons, though they have so far failed to live up to earlier hype in some ways. It could involve the development of in-store apps. And, at the highest echelons of commerce, it could include kiosks, augmented, and virtual reality.

From shoestring to big-time, micro-moments aren’t so new

KFC may strive to master I-want-to-buy moments with chicken-serving robots, Amazon Go may see micro-moments in checkout-free shopping, and Google Home’s giant, listening ear may be turning whole lives into a series of documented micro-moments, but what makes sense for your local business?

The answer to this is going to be dictated by the competitiveness of your industry and the needs of your consumer base. Does a rural, independently owned hardware store really need a 6-foot-high in-store touch screen enabling customers to virtually paint their houses? Probably not, but a well-written comparison of non-toxic paint brands the shop carries and why they’re desirable for health reasons could transform a small town’s decorating habits. Meanwhile, in more competitive markets, each local brand would be wise to invest in new technology only where it really makes proven sense, and not just because it’s the next big thing.

Our industry loves new technology to a degree that can verge on the overwhelming for striving local business owners, and while it can genuinely be a bit daunting to sink your teeth into all of the variables of winning the micro-moment journey, take heart. Julia Child sold Pittsburgh out of wire whisks with a shoestring, black-and-white PBS program on which she frequently dropped implements on the floor and sent egg beaters flying across rooms.

With our modern capabilities of surveying and mining consumers needs and presenting useful solutions via the instant medium of the web, what can’t you do? The steps in the micro-moments funnel are as old as commerce itself. Simply seize the current available technology ... and get cooking!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!