There’s no telling what could happen inside Wrigley Field anymore. Brawls? Drama? Defeat? Gasp…Victory? Yes, those lovable losers are at their MOST lovable this year, but the good news is, no matter what’s going on inside the ballpark, you now can always, at any time, see what’s going on outside the park.

Our friends at CubWorld.com have recently added a cool, new, live-streaming Wrigley Field web cam to their site. Perched at CubWorld.com’s brick & mortar location, Sports World, across the street from and with a full view of the front entrance of the ballpark, the camera gives you a live feed of all the action! Visit it the day of a game to check traffic, weather, crowd level, or just to get a taste of the action when you can’t make the game. Oh, the stories it would tell if this camera could only talk….

While you’re on the site, you can of course mosey on over to their great selection of Cubs jerseys, hats, shirts, and other Cubs merchandise (including a Zambrano “Blow Up” sale…seriously). And if you do venture out to support the Cubs (c’mon, they need you more than ever!), be sure to pop into Sports World for some goodies, then wave at the camera on your way out!

envisionit media teams up with Fairmont Hotel in Chicago to develop a “new dining experience”. The iPad application will give diners a behind the-scenes look at the more unusual and unexpected items on the aria menu. Diners can tap on specific ingredient names for definitions, descriptions, and notes about preparation. The wine list, organized by region, will suggest menu pairings for each vintage, as well as background information about each winery. The application also incorporates elements of social media, allowing diners to share their favorite items with people they know via email, their Twitter feeds, or Facebook walls.

-click here for the press release-

Dear Todd Brook & envisionit media,

The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce would like to thank you and your team for a successful event last week. Your comprehensive seminar on how to make the most of your marketing efforts in the new mobile world was extremely informative. The attendees learned a great deal about the new mobile landscape and how to optimize, design, and develop within it. All of the feedback we received have been overwhelmingly positive.

envisionit media’s expertise in new and emerging technology and strategic marketing has made you an asset to the Chicagoland Tech 2020 Committee and the Chamber as a whole. We appreciate your participation in this event and look forward to collaborating with you in the future.

Regards,

Linda Dao
Member Investment Manager
Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce

Click here to view the slides from the presentation

envisionit media enthusiastically welcomes to our interactive agency: Marquette Companies!

Founded in 1983, today Marquette serves as private real estate company committed to investment excellence in real estate assets across the U.S. Marquette Companies is involved in a number of local real estate properties, including the Ponds of Naperville and Lemont Lofts. The company also just moved their operations to a new office in Naperville, IL.

With the launch of Google Caffeine and after talk at SMX Advanced 2010 in Seattle, Google’s made it clear that they will start looking more at video sitemaps when indexing websites. Why? Because they’re sexy! Videos are slick, compelling and fun, and people like them. And what does Google like? Things that people like.

Videos and Video Sitemaps themselves are not brand new, but there are related changes in the Google landscape that make them more important.

Universal Search
This actually isn’t brand new either, but many people probably still don’t really know about it. I’ll guess you have noticed over the last several years that pretty pictures and such have been popping up on the Google results pages. This is Google intuitively guessing what kind of content you’re looking for, and pulling the appropriate rich media or other targeted results right into their main search results (see the results snapshot below for “monkeys jumping on the bed”). This is in contrast to a user clicking on what Google calls their “vertical search” options, like Videos, Maps, or Books, to only search that type of content.

Soul Search before Universal Search
This was actually a popular point at this year’s SMX Advanced: Before making yourself crazy trying to get your videos listed in universal search, examine your video pages. It would be a shame to nab a top spot in Google for a page that doesn’t work for you, especially if you had another page on your site already listed prominently in the search results. So just consider: Does this video represent my brand well? Does this video page have supporting copy and calls to action that encourage further engagement with my brand? Am I making it easy for people to share my video with friends or on their social media networks?
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envisionit media has extended a warm, summertime welcome to one of the newest clients to our interactive agency, the ROOF at theWit in Chicago. The new relationship may require more than a few “user experience” visits on our part. Or, we hope so, anyway.

Sitting atop theWit, ROOF is Chicago’s unparalleled stargazing destination. A glamorous, 7,000 square foot, year-round indoor/outdoor lounge, ROOF offers stunning city views, roaring fire pits, handcrafted cocktails, live music, and–get this: a suspended, glass-enclosed table for eight that literally dangles 27 floors above the city. Rounding out this perfect experience is acclaimed chef Todd Stein’s menu of Italian-inspired small plates—American cuisine he created during his time as Executive Chef at MK restaurant.

We at envisionit media are raising our glasses high–very high–for the work ahead on this one. Welcome to our team, ROOF!

Settled back in from 2 full days at the SMX Advanced 2010 search marketing expo in weather-schizophrenic Seattle (hmm, sounds like another city I know) . The jet lag is fading back to my normal everyday loopiness, the withdrawal from 24/7 search marketing conversation is waning, and it’s time to recap a few takeaways that I think our readers would particularly like.

Now, while some debate always occurs at these conferences about the level of information (is it truly “advanced” SEO info?), the fact remains that our job here is to help the clients of EIM stay in the know enough to make smart decisions about their businesses’ online presence (and lean to us for the advanced details! ). So this recap is for you. Our user. It’s not necessarily to gain points with the SEO community (although I do love thee).

So here goes…by the way, if you haven’t already noticed it, keep an eye out for one very conspicuous theme:

Google Caffeine and Mayday—one more quick overview of what you need to know:
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• Google analyzes a TON more data now, and quicker. As soon as your well-built webpage gets crawled, it gets indexed. (This is in contrast to the every-30-days or very segmented indexing they used to do, which sent businesses and SEO pros into a mass frenzy. It also promises users that they’re being delivered the freshest content on the web.)
• Soon, Google will start looking at video sitemaps more (Methinks because: surprise, surprise, users like them!)
• It was confirmed that Google does not consider a site’s bounce rate—or any Google Analytics data—when ranking it. So no need for SEO pros to freak out over this.

Let the battle of the search engines begin! (again)

This week Google announced it’s new web indexing system called Caffeine. The new system promises to offer even fresher web content than ever before, up to 50% more than the old Google system. The old way of indexing was not in real time as one might have believed, as Google had only been crawling fractions of the web and updating it a batch at a time.  The batch updating created layers of indexed information for the searcher to sift through. Sometimes one of the layers would be refreshed by Google, and others wouldn’t. Needless to say, it wasn’t a perfect system to provide real time content.

Caffeine will change all that, with continuous indexing that will feature new content immediately, fulfilling the consumer want for their news “now” as it’s happening. From here on out, Google will immediately show breaking news stories in real time, photo updates, social media updates and more. Here is Google’s visual representation of the indexing change:

So why would Google do such a thing? What if we don’t like change? Well, it’s a good change that works in our favor. One of the main reasons for the update is to capture all the continuous new content being generated on the web, and that includes content generated by you and me. Not convinced? We posted when Google and Twitter agreed to “date” so check out the real time Twitter scroll now on a search results page:

Caffeine’s system will allow Google to index content on a much larger scale at a faster pace than ever before, stepping up its game against the other search engines. And if that wasn’t enough excitement for you, Google promises even more updates in the coming months!
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Today marks the first month of my internship here at EIM, and to say I’ve learned a lot since I started working here would be an understatement. When EIM declares themselves an “interactive agency”, they aren’t kidding, they really do live and breath interactive, and for some reason (although interactive is at the cutting edge of advertising) I was never taught these techniques in college.

After working here for a month, I’ve already learned various “new” advertising tactics (SEO/SEM, PPC, Social Media, and the list goes on) that leave those “old-school” techniques (my professors spent months talking about) in the dust. Don’t get me wrong traditional forms of advertising can be extremely beneficial to your business, and a great foundation for a campaign, but these days it’s about integrating both modern and traditional forms of advertising to create that perfect cocktail that tastes like nothing other than success!

I’ve quickly learned that this concept of integration is very important here at EIM, and something I am going to personally dub “the special blend.” It’s about analyzing each client, their target, and numerous other factors of their business, to ultimately create and apply the perfect mixture of online and offline marketing to generate them maximum return.

These tactics are something that the average person doesn’t understand, and even as a graduate in Advertising I didn’t understand, but as I continue to work at EIM (even though I’m only at tip of the iceberg), I can continue to delve deeper under the water and eventually apply my knowledge of this process to future prospects.

Come see what different combination of online and offline media we can apply to your business to create a recipe for success!