Another big announcement for us today! We have put the Wayward Bus Beta version of the website live today.

This is a cool site and includes amazing banner images by Chris Cooper. As I posted earlier when we released our new logo look, Christ has been working in the Xebidy studio doing some illustrations for the new Xebidy website - I know, I know - its’ coming (and so is Christmas)!

No amazing new features in this website yet, except for the inbound RSS feeds on the home and community page which are being fed via our XEFEED functionality and cleansed for relevancy.

Next step, travel planning, more community elements, fancy booking engine and so on.

It is kind of the unofficial launch day of our new logo and overall look. Thanks to our visiting illustrator Chris Cooper we have finally got a look and feel and feel that we hope will stay with us for many years to come. The original Xebidy logo and website was designed by me in Portugal and was really a stop gap representing where we were at that time. With 7 crew on board and lots and lots of projects well underway it was high time that we also stepped our own image up a grade.

I say it is the unofficial launch as although the illustrations are all finished we still have some way to go to complete the redesign and development of our website. We did however, get new business cards today - so it is impossible to keep things under wraps - and therefore the unofficial launch. Expect to see the logo replacing old ones in emails, letterheads, project documents etc over the next few days.

But, if you are expecting a nice corporate image - think again! Chris has a pretty unique style and he has created something that is, well, pretty out there to say the least. As I guess you can tell from this post - I am proud as punch.

We are proud to announce that Michael Gall has joined Xebidy on a short-term contract. At this stage Michael is only with us for about 8 weeks but hoping that will extend.

Michael most recently worked with Emu Design in Brisbane, but has previously worked under a grant with the Mozilla Foundation to provide user interface improvements to the DOM Inspector. This role included advanced usage of Javascript , good knowledge of XUL and CSS , advanced knowledge of Document Object Model and user Interface design.

Michael will be developing functionality for Xebidy drawing on hiw extensive Javascript, Ajax and PHP experience as well assisting with many of our in-house processes and methodology. We are looking forward to a great few months.

It’s official, as of 18th July Google Analytics has discontinued their Version 1 interface for the new look and feel. While there are many many analytics programmes on the market none delivers the quality and depth of information as Google Analytics for the price - which by the way is free!

The new interface is slick and so easy to use. Take the world map for example, the graphical presentation of where your website visitors are coming from is extremely intuitive; clicking on a country generates a close-up view with breakdown of visitors by region and/or city. Or the site overlay tool, which provides a real view of your web page with all the links from that page and a graphical and textual view of the number of clicks and the percentage of clicks that link makes up of clicks from that page. The overlaying of information onto your web page makes understanding the web statistics almost child’s’ play.

But perhaps the most valuable feature is the ‘Goals & Funnels’. Goals allow you to set up certain pages such as a booking confirmation or an enquiry page as a goal for users of your website. Funnels track the specific click path a user takes to reach your defined website goals. Goals and funnels can have specific monetary values attached, meaning you can track your websites financial performance as well - and we all know I have continually harped on about the importance of real measurable objectives in your website strategy.

So, thanks to Google for another great indispensable tool - the new interface is fantastic, and the functionality unbeatable - even for that price!

It’s a new community site and it is called Hostel Buddies. I first came across this site when it was in private beta back in March and was impressed with their agenda. But it is ironic that I should be introducing it to you today ( a few days after it went live) on the same day that I have posted information about Boo.com

David Mackenzie and I have hooked up a number of times since he first introduced Hostel Buddies from Vienna to me via Skype and I have to say he has done a great job getting it live. Hostel Buddies only claims to be in Beta Version 1.0 and it seems unfair, but unfortunately impossible not, to compare it to the likes of Boo, Tripwiser or OE.TV. These sites have a greater traction and therefore much greater depth in their user generated content and unfortunately for Hostel Buddies a much slicker interface. Somehow the Hostel Buddies interface seems clumsy and I really struggle to work out how to get around. It is also very buggy (I am using Firefox) and perhaps navigation will become clearer once some of these are ironed out.

Nonetheless, David has been great with me, sending me screenshots well in advance of everyone else and really accommodating my interest. I will watch with enthusiasm as the site grows and hopefully there will be lots of parallel marketing opportunities that I can recommend to everyone. Travel communities (and in particular backpacking/hostels) are a tough space and competition is intense!

I guess I missed the boat on this one - being in little old New Zealand; but better than late than never to announce the awesome new website from Web Reservations International - the guys behind HostelWorld - Boo.com

Love ‘em or hate ‘em the guys have done an amazing job with this one! It’s an all singing, all dancing real Web 2.0 travel site with wicked reviews and ratings, hotel bookings, flight meta-search and community. You can create your own profile and then review all the places your have travelled, stayed etc.

There is not much more I can say about it - the site is simply awesome - it looks great (very Web 2.0) and from my initial play seems to work well. It loads very slow - and that has always been a criticism myself and many others have of HostelWorld - but it is worth the wait. What’s more it already has a raft of user generated content after only 8 weeks or so online.

Don’t know about the name though. For those of you who can’t remember Boo.com was the famous fashion website that managed to burn through 100 million pounds in 18 months during the 90’s Internet boom - somehow I don’t think Ray Nolan, Tom Kennedy and crew will be following that fate with this great site!

I am to give a presentation to the Queenstown Business Network tonight on e-Marketing. That is a very big subject and one could talk for a whole day rather than the one hour I have.

The plan is to give an overview introduction starting with a general roundup of some of the elements of SEO and then go into some more marketing focuses topics such as online advertising, getting links, and so on. Time permitting then the plan is to look at some alternative channels of attracting customers such forums and review sites, mainstream grouping sites, and user generated content; finishing up with a look at how familiar technologies such as surveys, newsletters and emails can be used.

Of course, like anything we do as XSD the whole presentation is underpinned by the theme of Web 2.0.

Attached is the full presentation for all to download - I expect to rush over large parts of this - so by downloading it, you are getting the full schmoozel.

I am starting to get a few posts saved in Technorati - so this post is the beginning of me setting up a profile for Xebidy Strategic Design.

Technorati is a social bookmarking site where you can save all your favourite blog posts from around the blogoshpere. To understand the idea of social bookmarking sites and in particular, tagging, read my May article on What is Web 2.0?

For those of us behind the times (me in particular) congratulations to Brett and Brad from Calypso on their recent acquisition of Inn the Tropics Hostel in Cairns. Calypso has always one of the most ambient hostels in Australia, if not the world, and I am sure they will turn Inn the Tropics into the same funky environment.

I have been amazingly looked after this week by Brett, Axel (a mate from Stray UK days) and the crew and just wanted to say thank you and good luck with the new hostel.

We knew it was coming but here it is today!!

Google has released it’s uber search engine, combining news, videos, images and other related results into the search results. What will the mean for those with good (or bad) search results. I have checked a number of search results for some of the keywords my clients work with and in the majority most seem relatively unaffected at this stage. However, we will research it over the day and during the weekend to gauge the full extent of the impact.

One thing it will mean is the importance of including richer media such as images and videos into your websites. More soon…