Sam Beal & Associates

Channel ROI

Sam — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 15:25:19 +0000

With Google Analytics, you can evaluate ROI for all channels in a single dashboard.

Email
Blogs
Press Releases
Affiliate content (whitepapers)
Affiliate advertising (banner ads)
Paid search (Adwords)

Your website analytics plan should include Macro conversions (a lead, an online purchase) and Micro conversions (a document download, time on site values).

If you install the Google Analytics tracking script on your pages, search and referrals from social or affiliate sites will be automatically scored. Adwords can be added by simply “connecting” Analytics to correct Adwords account. The remaining channels require explicit tags or URLs to collect data. The Google URL builder is a simple way to add virtual campaigns. For a complex website, the can simplify tag management.

In order to evaluate ROI you need measures, i.e. goals. Analytics allows up to 20 explicit goals to be created. You can assign specific URL visits, “events” created by tags or time on site parameters, such as number pages views. Goals can also have dollar values. If you establish a cost per action (CPA) for each of the assigned goals, then Google ROI dashboard will provide insight for multiple channel and multiple conversion effects.

Consider this scenario: A visitor comes to your site from Google search. They view a couple of pages. A few days later they are reading EE Times and see you banner ad. Later on a Google search for a specific design issue takes the visitor to an article on your solution on one of your partner sites. The visitor returns to your site and registers for a demo. Each of these actions have value and the combination leads to the macro conversion the VP of Sales cares about. Marketing’s challenge is to optimize the channel investment to produce that end result.

State Machine Compiler: A Hidden Treasure

Sam — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 21:17:39 +0000

Most any digital system will require state machines to control the operation and implement algorithms. State machines are easily enough to write manually, but because they tend to require much iteration during development the frequent modifications can be tiresome and error prone. In addition, documenting the functionality becomes a chore as each iteration must be updated.

In the mid-nineties a solution appeared that seemed to address iterating and documenting state machines. A small company offered State CAD, a tool that enabled graphical entry of state machines. Along with the ease of graphical entry the tool compiled to RTL so the results could be synthesized to ant technology.

Graphical entry allows designers to see exactly what the logic does without having to pour over lines of code. Moreover, graphic entry is faster and less error prone than manual coding. Best of all, the graphic and code are always identical because one is the child of the other.

A few years after its introduction, the tool was acquired by Xilinx and added to the tool suite. It remained available without cost as part of the Xilinx suite and, best of all, technology independent.

The tool, however, disappeared after the ISE 10.1 release years ago for reasons that are obscure. For engineers who are familiar with the benefits of State CAD an internet search and a bit of luck will uncover its location. But those unfortunates who have never been introduced to the benefits of graphical entry may remain mired in their tedious ways.

While there are other tools available that have similar capabilities, none reputedly offer RTL outputs nor are they complementary.

The State CAD UI is straightforward and examples of its use abound. For example, see: http://ece.wpi.edu/~rjduck/state_cad_tutorial.pdf. In a nutshell, you select the circle icon for adding states and the arrow icon for transitions. You can add outputs to states and conditions to the transitions. There are countless other features.

The tool has a page for compile options that lets users select language (Verilog or VHDL) and other parameters such as to optimize for speed vs. size, or whether to register outputs. Errors show up at compile time and the tool offers suggestions for corrections.

Xilinx does not maintain State CAD and it is aging. One drawback in using it with Windows 7 in 64-bit mode causes a missing MSVC71.dll error. My attempts to circumvent the DLL problem were not fruitful.

Perhaps an enterprising Windows guru can give us a DLL workaround. Better yet, persuade Xilinx management to sell the tool for a dollar so that it may be made available for engineers to come. Otherwise, I fear its usage will in time will be swamped by operating system improvements.

Written by Dennis McCarty

Trends in Mobile Imaging

Sam — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 22:56:03 +0000

Introduction

There are four key elements to mobile imaging:

Media Processing
Display Technology
Content
Interface protocols between processor ICs and image controller IC’s

Today’s Application Processors for Smartphone and Tablet have substantial graphics processing capability. Most are fabricated in 28m high K metal gate CMOS nodes and the next generation of sub 20nm FINFETs will provide even more processing capability.
Display Technology for LED and AOMLED ranges from 200 PPI for large form factors to 440PPI for small form factors.
MIPI Interface standards dominate mobile electronics. Content is application and market segment driven. We’ll explore those in more detail below.

Smartphone Displays

Steve Jobs introduced the 326 PPI “retina display” of the iPhone 4 with the claim that it exceeded the discrimination of the human retina. According to Dr. Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate Technologies this was marketing hyperbole. He calculated that the maximum discernible PPI at 12 inches from your eyes is 477 pixels per inch. At 18 inches it falls to 318 PPI. I think most people tend closer to 18 inches so Mr. Jobs was basically correct. Perhaps we will be able to identify 4K Smartphones by their owner’s viewing style.

Advanced high resolution requires improved transistor density (and adequate dark space) and lower RC delays to reduce refresh times. There are two transistor technology candidates, amorphous oxide semiconductors and low temperature polysilicon. Faster refresh is required to improve motion blur. LCD TVs with 120Hz refresh are common and 240Hz is emerging. The same improvements will emerge in portable displays. Motion estimation and motion compensation (ME/MC) techniques use frame insertion to improve motion effects in action video and 3D gaming.[1]

Professional Tablets

Who will pay for more resolution than a digital movie requires? How about architects, general contractors, and a wide range of scientists and medical professionals.

High Resolution Content

Cloud based telemedicine, i.e., image processing in the cloud for display on mobile devices, will play a key role in improving and distributing diagnosis. John Gore, director of Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science (VUIIS) is researching medical imaging that produces extreme close-up views of the details of tissues, revealing the dynamics of cellular and molecular biology. [2]

Smartphones could be ideal for stereoscopic 3D technology allowing capture, playback and gaming. Codecs such as multiview H.264 (MVC), stereo JPEG (JPS) and JPEG Multi-Picture Object (MPO) are a critical element. OpenGL is used for gaming. 3D is achieved with dual images offset in color and phase, effectively doubling the resolution processing for a given display. Video frame rates are typically doubled to remove visual jitter. [3]

Image Interface Technology

The MIPI Alliance is a standards setting body with over 240 contributing member companies from the mobile platform, semiconductor and IP industries. Image display is supported by MIPI DSI with D-PHY connectivity. D-PHY allows power efficient, EMI reduced, serial communication between a CSI-2 or DSI host/device pair. 4 lanes of 1.5Gbps D-PHY supports displays of up to 2.5Kx2K resolution. A potential upgrade to M-PHY (DSI-2) could boost support to 4K.

Camera Interface Technology

Image capture is supported by the CSI-2 and D-PHY combination. Image data captured by the camera sensor should be presented to the CSI-2 Transmitter in RAW, RGB or YUV formats; the MIPI spec lists all the detailed formats that the CSI-2 connectivity infrastructure is required to support. The CSI-2 sensor interface provides you the option to compress the RAW data, and converts any kind of pixel data to bytes, which are then packetized and distributed over one or more lanes of the D-PHY. The higher the resolution of the captured image, the more speed and/or number of lanes needed. Given the max D-PHY throughput of 1.5Gbps per lane, with a maximum of 4 data lanes, the maximum camera resolution supported, assuming 24 bits/pixel in RGB format, with 30 frames/second is 8 megapixels. The proposed CSI-3 standard with MIPI M-PHY at Gear 3 (6.0Gbps) could support 60 fps.

What does the future hold

The trend to higher resolutions both in image capture and image display will continue. Will we ever see the quality of a RED EPIC Camera in a smartphone? Seems unlikely, but with stereoscopic multi-camera imaging and processing, who knows. One challenge that will not dissipate is the power required to transmit raw bandwidth between components in a system. From the tables above there is a level of resolution that will only be supported by compressed bit streams. Cameras will compress images on the fly and displays will decompress frames to buy 2 to 3 orders of headroom.

Technical References

State of the art technologies and future prospective in display industry
Moon, Joo-Tae, Samsung Display Labs, (IEDM), 2012
Medical Imaging: Just What the Doctor (and the Researcher) Ordered: New Applications for Medical Imaging Technology, Mertz, L., Pulse 2013, IEEE
Embedded stereoscopic 3D camera system for mobile platforms
Aguirre, A.; Batur, A.U.; Hewes, G.; Pekkucuksen, I.; Venkatraman, N.; Ware, F.; Buyue Zhang, ICASSP 2012

Written by Sam Beal

Webinar 101

Sam — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 22:56:01 +0000

A Webinar is a great Inbound Marketing tactic

Webinars typically produce a cost per lead of $5 or less. Webinars allow your product managers and key engineers to interact with existing and potential customers in a seminar like setting without the time and money cost of a live seminar.

And webinars continue to work for you by pulling in leads after the event.

The keys to webinar success are:

Great Content – presentation material that keeps views interested
Promotion Plan – get folks registered
Infrastruce – use a service that simply works and works simply. We recommend by Citrix.

Please view a short clip that explains it more detail

The Web Tech Dilemma for High Tech

Sam — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 16:40:19 +0000

Inbound vs. Outbound

In a typical high tech startup company, the marketing budget is allocated to outbound activities, e.g. trade shows, display advertising and press coverage. This works in the short-term but at a high cost (>$100/lead). Sustainable lead generation requires Inbound Marketing.

Search is where the engineers are

Search is almost free if you have a website that converts visitors into leads. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialists, like web design specialists abound. They know the buzz words and you can pay them a lot of money for results you may not understand. SEO was once a “work at home in 10 easy lessons” career path, but SEO techniques that relied on simple tricks to “game” Google have been crushed by Google’s Panda and Penguin updates. SEO today requires an understanding of the content.

Content is Complicated

High tech content is best created by people with an engineering background, who understand Integrated Circuits and design. The founders of the high tech company have that expertise. Unfortunately their ability to communicate in website format, is often lacking. Content is much more than detailed product features. See the video from Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D, author of 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People.

The right solution is a combination of landing page optimization, content creation and SEO, performed by Semiconductor Professionals who understand web technology. That is Sam Beal & Associates.

Written by Sam Beal

Search Engine Marketing

Tikuli Dogra — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 22:31:06 +0000

Web marketers use online advertising to lure customers and create leads. Web analysis tools are used to monitor web site activity and generate statistics regarding the behavior of site visitors. Two components of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) include organic (non-paid) Search Engine Page Results (SERPs) and paid advertisements. These two sorts of results are displayed by the search engine in different parts of the results pages. A sample Google search result is shown in the figure below. It contains paid text ads at the top and right side, paid display ads in the center, and organic (free o non-paid) search results in the center. The organic search results may extend for many pages. In this example, there are over 90,000 pages of results.

SERPs – It is all about position

Rank positioning is very vital for success of a campaign and here is where you need a good SEO/PPC expert to do it for you. It may involve deep keyword research, intelligent grouping, and an intense analytic driven campaign management using various strategies and web tools.

Ninety nine percent of clicks occur on page one and two-thirds of those are the top three SERPs on page one. If your keywords are not on page one, your site is effectively invisible to most users. The figure below compares SERP vs. Keyword for three competing websites. SERP analysis is a key part of understanding how your keywords compete. You can improve SERPs with SEO and great content. Depending on your competitive position, it can take months to improve search ranking. However, in the short-term you can promote with earned media such as third party blogger, social media or paid media, (i.e. advertising).

Search Advertising

Google Adwords is segmented in two types of Advertising networks – Search Network and Display Network. Web site managers use each according to their goals for the site. Google continuously improves AdWords with features such as multiple site links, click-to-call, and user ratings. It may seem like an overwhelming experience but an expert team of analysts which knows the complex optimisation techniques can take your business to another level keeping in mind your brand image and business initiatives. Google continuously improves AdWords with features including multiple site links, clibk to call, and user ratings.

The key elements of a Paid Search campaign are:

Adgroups
Keywords
Ads Text)
Ads Media (image, animated gif, video)
Landing Pages
Bidding
Metrics, like CTR, CPM, Ad Position, etc.

AdGroups are the most important elements of site effectiveness and are built around a set of keywords selected to relate to your products.

Keywords may be head or long tail as well as branded and non-branded. They are inserted into targeted AdGroups for monitoring and adjusted for performance. The iteration of the words needn’t be costly. Our experts can fine-tune your campaign using site management tools.

Ad Text are the copy words. We assist you to design Ads with clear, compelling messages with relevant keywords, right landing pages, a search user’s query and also encourages potential customers to act while simultaneously raising CTR and quality scores.

Landing pages should be a thematic expression of an Adgroup and effectively communicate what the Ad is offering. They should also be keyword-relevant to improve the quality score. Visitors to the site should immediately grasp the key benefits of the products.

The science of bid management is often guided by common sense. The maximum amount you are willing to pay is one factor in your position on the page. The consistency between the ad, the keywords and the landing page are part of a complex formula Google uses to determine Ad position and the actual cost per click. In other words, the better the consistency the less you pay. There are other aspects like geo tagging, Ad scheduling, negative keyword research, A/B testing etc which come as a complete package when you engage with us.

Metrics such as Click Thru Rate (CTR), Cost per Action (CPA) are part of Business Intelligence. Typically an analytics tool like Google Analytics is used to measure Ad effectiveness or ROI. For some businesses, time on site or depth of visit might be an effective action.

Display Advertising

Google Display Network helps you expand your campaign to include graphics allowing you to reach a wider market. Google Display Ads are image ads of various IAB standard sizes. The Ads may also include text, interactive, rich media or flash Ads as well as mobile or video Ads. The new Dynamic Ad Display allows the Ads to be tailored to target-specific audience and placed accordingly on specific sites. You select ads for Google partner websites based on an Adgroup of keywords. Keywords in this space are used to identify themes and websites that match your theme. The Ads can be priced as CPC or CPM (cost per 1000 impressions). With careful optimization advertising can achieve significantly greater CPM with Display than with contract or brokered ads.

You need both

In general, if your keywords have high SERPs you may not need advertising. Or you can focus your advertising on select products or services. The ideal scenario is a search result that returns multiple links to your website – through a combination of Ads and organic search results. If you employ site extensions, visitors will be able to preview the landing page for either an Ad or a search result. Your analytic tools (e.g. Google Analytics) can help you measure the ROI of both organic search and advertising.

Written by Tikuli Dogra

The Law of Accelerating Returns for computing cycles

Sam — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 17:41:47 +0000

1943 – One ENIAC was ~300 Operations per Second (Ops)

2003 – no smartphones, no cloud, 500M PCs x 1Gops x 10% usage = 50*10E15 + BigIron

2013 – Cloud (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple) computing cycles is ~200 petaflops {guess}
The sum of the Top500 supercomputers is >100petaflops
1B smartphone/pads x 1GOps x 25% activity = 250 PetaOps
PC sales have declined but still contribute >50*10E15
Assume Big Iron is constant (very conservative) [Note 1]
Total ~ 10**18 Ops

Ignoring the difference in FlOps and Ops.
In 70 years, Ops have increased by ~17 orders of magnitude, or about 2X Moore’s Law [Note 2]
In 10 years, Ops have increased by 200X, or about 2X Moore’s Law.

With (very fuzzy) activity assumptions, it’s not obvious that total computing is accelerating beyond Moore’s Law.

But total computing capacity appears to be accelerating.

[Note 1] IBM has 90% of the Big Iron market, sells ~4000 mainframes/year x 1GOps x 10 years of active installations = 4×10**13, so we can discount the impact since they’ve only gotten faster.

[Note 2] Moore’s Law is a metric of semiconductor performance which doubles every ~18 months.

See The Law of Accelerating Returns

Ideal for the small business

Sam — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 20:41:59 +0000

If you just started your own business you know everything about your particular line of work.

You know what to do and how to do it best. You also know you need to market this. But how?

Should you advertise? Print a folder? What suits your business’s needs?
How do you get the most costumers for the least amount of money?

This is where we come in. Let us look over your marketing needs. Any market, any budget, we’ll help you make a marketing plan and see it through. All the way.

Get Your Business Online

Sam — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 04:45:05 +0000

California Initiative to get small business online.

Did you know that 60% of California’s small businesses have no online presence?

If you don’t have a website it’s not too late. Regardless of your business model – bricks and mortar, consumer or professional services – you can benefit from being where smartphone owners and web-savvy clients can find you.
If you are comfortable with computer applications like Microsoft Outlook, you can probably master WordPress. If not, there are paid website design solutions that are very economical like Squarespace or Wix. Do not hire a fancy PR firm that will charge you thousands of dollars when a few hours or few dollars per month will do the job.

Perhaps the most frugal option was just announced by Google. Google has teamed up with the state of California to help small business get online with a low-cost domain name and hosting services. Find out more here.

But a website alone is not an online experience. With proper marketing, content and search engine optimization no one will find your site. Like a yellow page ad in a book that is tossed in the recycle bin, your investment will be wasted.

That’s we do at Uzzicom – help small business not only get online, but utilize the power of the web to increase their sales.
So what are you waiting for? Get your business plugged in today.

Written by Sam Beal

A low tech website in a high tech market?

Sam — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 23:28:34 +0000

High technology products for computing, communications, instrumentation and industrial equipment, etc., are designed by engineers. There is no shopping cart on a website for products or services that cost $10,000+. To borrow a term from Jeff Thull, author of The Prime Solution, selling software, design services, intellectual property, sub-systems, etc., is a complex sale. The goal is to establish value for your products and services. In high tech, that cycle starts with getting an engineer to take interest.

Historically this happens by demonstrating your products or services at trade shows or through direct sales contacts. While effective the “cost per lead” can be several hundred dollars. Leads generated through a website can be an order of magnitude less – if you know how. The process can be viewed a funnel.

Awareness – Can engineers find your website?

Interest – Do they explore or bounce?

Desire – Do you “educate” them adequately to take the next step?

Action – Do you convert them into a lead for the sales team?

The AIDA acronym is ~100 years old but still relevant

Written by Sam Beal