Expat Living and digital agency Ad.WRIGHT! are currently working on the development of the magazine’s new online product.

Expat Living, which has a monthly print run of over 18,000 copies, is matching the grant it has received from Singapore’s Media Development Authority to re-launch what will be a completely redeveloped website and new online product.

Alexander Knight is consulting for Expat Living and coordinating the website effort with Andrew Patterson, recently hired by Ad.WRIGHT! as digital strategist.

The site, based on the state-of-the-art Ad.PUBLISH! web platform, will house the magazine’s content, both current and past, which amounts to over 6,000 articles.

The site will provide Expat Living’s advertisers with another channel to extend their presence and brands.

“We’re very excited about it because we see this as a parallel revenue generating platform.” Knight said.

“We’ve also been talking to some of our advertisers and they’re very interested in getting on board.”

“We are using some of the latest web technologies to both increase time on site and reader loyalty, as well as ad effectiveness via highly-relevant and targeted content,” says Patterson.

“Through the use of semantic applications we can create serendipitous web experiences using the site’s huge wealth of content, user generated content, and content from elsewhere on the internet,”

The new site is set to be launched on 1 August.

As internet creator Sir Tim Berners Lee flipped on the switch for the world wide web in 1991, he had an inkling that it would lead to a global business revolution — and so along comes the demise of the mass print media and advertising markets. It was the shortest life span of any market in the history of man.

The web’s ability to be the proverbial sniper, to print’s weapon of mass destruction, makes it so much more attractive to advertisers who crave fast, high quality results for their limited budgets.

An example of the ‘long tail’ market that is replacing the mass market is that of my fictional hero, Romano, and his “Alfa Anti-Ruggine” — a device made specifically for the 1974 Alfa Romeo Spyder to keep it rust free (remember, it is fictional).

The old market model would have Romano pay tens of thousands of dollars for the pleasure of waiting for weeks while publications were printed and distributed with his advert in them. He would then have to replicate the process dozens of times around the world to cover his markets properly — all on an off chance that an owner of a such a classic car in need of his product would see the ad. If Romano were really, really lucky, he may have had some positive coverage in one of the magazines.

The new model has Romano’s company sell the product on eBay or an Amazon type site for a few percentage points in commissions. Romano’s company would also buy some Google keywords to make sure that the thousands of people searching for ‘1974 Alfa repairs’ would find it easily. These avenues are instant, highly targeted, cost effective and global.

Importantly for Romano’s “Alfa Anti-Ruggine”, his customers could be members of an Alfa group on social networking, site such as Facebook, or could even be a writers of the Argentinean or Norwegian Alfa blogs — giving them an ideal outlet to write about and discuss the miracle cure that stops their cars falling apart. Romano could then freely use these testimonials, enhancing his products credibility and saleability. How very Web 2.0.

¡Viva la revolucón!

Welcome to Web 3.0. It’s here, right now — and it’s all about semantics and content with context. What if our Argentinean or Norwegian Alfa owner is a racing buff? Facts, such as how many Alfas won races 1974, would probably interest him. That information is out there and this is where data linking — or semantics — opens up limitless possibilities.

Crucially, it would bring advertisers directly to customers surfing for information that holds a deep personal interest for them. Imagine our car buff, while looking for the antirust gadget he had recently read about on a blog, mouses over the phrase “1974 Alfa” and a poster of an Alfa winning the 1974 Canadian-American Challenge Cup slides out? Or, perhaps a framed poster of a car just like his, but in its prime and rust free? It is conceivable that a purchase would be made.

Publishers still hold the aces: they are (mostly) respected authorities in their fields and, essentially, have extensive archives of quality content that can be exploited for its semantic value. This is the new big traffic driver. Content is also being constantly updated and created — adding to the giant jigsaw puzzle. All of this gets married to advertising — be it banner networks or Google AdSense — the more pages, the more views, the more revenue.

The way to get our hero and his car parts business back into magazines is by providing a platform that enables him to effectively and directly target consumers — those readers that the publishers should know so well.

At the same time, intelligent targeting and a tightly wound online brand awareness campaign will increase traffic and at the same time convert print readers to online — reducing overheads and increasing revenues-per-reader.

This will all lead to a much deeper relationship between publishers, advertisers and readers — and everyone gets precisely what they want.

Ad.WRIGHT worked with Andrew on the client side while working on a social network for the TV show.

Andrew later moved to Qais Consulting as a business manager. Qais are quoted as being one of the leading Digital Agencies in Singapore.

Andrew brings with him skills in “Immersive Social Media” (yeah! we would like to coin the term) and has deep knowledge in both content strategy and SEO techniques.

This demo — from Pattie Maes’ lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry — was the buzz of TED. It’s a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Imagine “Minority Report” and then some.

About Pattie Maes

At the MIT Media Lab’s new Fluid Interfaces Group, Pattie Maes researches the tools we use to work with information and connect with one another.

At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what’s coming in the next 5,000 days?

About Kevin Kelly

Kevin Kelly has been publisher of the Whole Earth Review, exec editor at WIRED, founder of visionary nonprofits, and writer on biology and business and “cool tools.”

Researcher Kwabena Boahen is looking for ways to mimic the brain’s supercomputing powers in silicon — because the messy, redundant processes inside our heads actually make for a small, light, superfast computer.

About Kwabena Boahen

Kwabena Boahen wants to understand how brains work — and to build a computer that works like the brain by reverse-engineering the nervous system.

My partner Danny got just that the other morning, when he opened his email, certainly justifiable to create a page for it: A Tremendous Relationship

Thinking Juice, our sister agency in the Uk, with their latest TV advert for Wyke Farms was voted best, beating John Lewis (Lowe London), Sony Ericsson (Iris) and Magic FM (St. Lukes) to become ‘The People’s Choice’ with a massive 33% of the vote.

For original article click here…

The cost is already down significantly to make this a real technology to change our lives on an interesting level. Both for fun but of course we have all seen minority report and how it can be put to serious use (and I don’t mean predicting the future).

The iPhone brought a hint of what we have in store for the future, it is also an example next step for how we interact with web sites and content. Our next generation of web sites will take this in to account.

This is Nicholas Negroponte (A founder of the MIT Media Lab), making the same predictions back in 1984: