I think that it is a cool way to show your interests or what you like, in my case it is the parliament building by night. therefore I have collected som nice images of Budapest that you can save to your computer and use them as your Cover picture on Facebook. Have fun and show your support to Budapest. Click to enlarge the pictures. If you would like to add an image as well just let me know.

Foursquare

Want a free drink? Or a little present? What about a half price for all drinks? That all you can have now with Foursquare in Budapest and all over Hungary. Foursquare recently released its version 3.0 and it is now possible to add specials to certain places so that you can boost your business with specials and as a user of Foursquare you receive discounts, freebies and all that kind of stuff.

Foursquare is a localtion based mobile application for all devices from the iPhone, over Android to Symbian, Microsoft and even Java phones. It gives you the possibility to share your location with your friends, give and receive tips about certain places and from now on receive specials from certain places.

What that means for Budapest I checked out a bit and till now it is still in the beginning and probably not too popular in Hungary but its fun. So I checked few of the special you can receive. In the “Opera Garden Hotel & Apartments” for example you get a free Nespresso coffee if you stay in the hotel and check in via Foursquare. Not a big deal but once you are there grab the free drink. In a bar called Moro Antik (I haven’t been there so I can’t tell you what place it is) you get a free coffe every fifth time you check in there. So if you are anyways there often grab your free drink.
To more competitive benefits you can have ub Cheers and Dürer Kert. Cheers gives you a drink for free once you steel the mayorship (kind of proof that you are there where often) from somebody else. So check in a couple of times, see if you became the mayor and get your drink for free. In Dürer Kert it is even more beneficial since you get all drinks you order for half price if you are the mayor of Dürer Kert. So you really need to be very often there but once you are the mayor you can get lashed for half price.
And a last one is actually not a bar or cafe but the House of Terror museum. Every 20th person who checks in receives a small gift from the House of Terror, whatever that is but try it.

All that is of course playing around with the new world of technology and mobile apps but if you are into it than check out what you can get for free or cheaper around you. Do you use Foursquare already or you think these kind of apps are useless?

Budapest Android Apps

This artcile introduces a few Budapest Android applications that I would like to present you here. As Android is becoming a more and more popular Operating System for mobile phones I had a look at the Android market how you as an Android user can improve your trip to Budapest with a free application to guide you throught the city or give you some tips on the go. Basically what I found are 2 Applications about Budapest as a kind of travel guide and 1 App for information about the Budapest Airport.
If you plan to come to Budapest and need an application for recommendations and tips have a look on the apps I downloaded and had a closer look on. I think that it is a good compliment but does not replace a Budapest Guide or decent research before arrival. Don’t rely on the app to bring you to all the cool places.

Application: Budapest Agent

Well since July 6th there is an Android Application for Budapestagent.com as well which I uploaded to the Android market. It is a very simple app feeding you with new information posted here as well, so I would not really recommend it as a guide during your stay in Budapest but to get information to your mobile phone it is worth downloading it. By the way, the QR code below the article will redirect you to the Application “Budapest Agent” on the Android Market either if you read the QR code diretly on your mobile or if you click on it in your browser. So have a look, download it, give it 5 stars of course and you can give me some feedback here in the comments.

Application: Budapest

The app is simply called Budapest and is developed by Guidepal which also developed apps for other major cities such as Helsinki, Stockholm, Milan, Athens, Brussels, Dubai, Sydney, Cape Town and many many more. The app Budapest is well designed and from user experience point of perspective very simple to use. You can find information about Attractions, Shopping, Quick Facts, Restaurants, Nightlife and more. The amount of information is probably the weak point of the app since there are for example only 13 Bars & Restaurants listed and reviewed.
The App Budapest also features a Map supported by Google Maps as well as an Agenda for you to fill up with things you would like to do. So all in all it is very nice and informative to a certain extend since the content is very limited.

Application: Budapest Travel Guide

Like the above the Budapest Travel Guide App is very easy and intuitive to use even though from design perspective it is not that nice. The welcome screen is the typical image of the Chain Bridge by night plus 6 buttons as navigation. You can find information about sights, nightlife, dining as well as background information. Also you have a map and place around Budapest such as Esztergom, Szentendre, Visegrád and so on. The amount of information for example in the sights section is better than in the Budapest app and also the information itself is better structured.
Still I would say that this is a very slim app as well but for sure useful if you are standing in the midlle of the city and don’t know where to go. It is developed by Triposo Travel Guides and also covers several cities like Warsaw, Munich, Melbourne, Copenhagen, Bangkok and so on.

Summary
Summarizing the Budapest Travel applications I see that there is information coming from international Travel guides giving good information for tourists coming to Budapest and both combined probably give a  good amount of content to browse through. The Map function is not really needed since all Android devices come with Google Maps preinstalled but it is a nice to have. So if you come to Budapest with your Android make sure to download these apps.

Budapest Airport Application

The App which you can find on the Android market is called BudWatcher which is not the official application of the Budapest airport so don’t expect too much and that is exactly the problem with this application. All you can do here is search for flights and it tells you if or when it started or landed today and also watch the departures and arrivals timetable with flight number, destination, Terminal on Budapest Airport and if it departed/landed or when that is going to happen. That is all what you can do in this app and exactly that you can watch here in the section BUD Flight information. I think there is no need to download the app I even uninstalled it already.

So in general you can say that it is worth to have one of the above applications installed while you are in Budapest though it will not replace a proper planning before you arrive in Budapest. Budapestagent.com is one source to inform youself but there are many others like blogs, normal websites and also the classical Budapest travel guide which you buy in the good, old book format. For quick information though an app is for sure nice to have.

You can with one simple click spread the information written here to your network of followers and friends over at Facebook and Twitter. Of course this is also a help for me to gain some visitors at the end of the day. So be social and spread the news. As I can see some people did already post things on Facebook or Twitter. Thanks for that.

First of all Twitter lives from followers AND following other people. Have a look on the Sziget Festival account. Around 500 followers but following nobody. Well OK, some people / companies do that because they have no time to reed all the tweets. So there is already no communication and Twitter is a communication tool. Next thing you will see if you check out the tweets. “Sziget on Flickr >>> bla bla message here – link”. Thats about it. They simply took the Flickr RSS feed for the tag “sziget” and use a service that automatically posts all pictures that are uploaded on Flickr with the tag “Sziget” on Twitter. Nothing more, no own posts. The problem here is that Sziget means island in English named after the Hajógyári island in Budapest where it takes place. So what happens if you take a RSS feed which has a generic word? You get tweets with all images tagged as “sziget” including the ones which have nothing to do with the Sziget Festival in Budapest. How annoying is that?

Now automating your tweets is no problem I thing especially if you use it to create fake accounts which are great because whenever you need to you can tweet some ads or self promotion and even earn some cash with it. I have some of these accounts but a bit more creative than the Sziget account.

So here is some recommendation for the Sziget people on how to use the account automated in a bit less simple way. The main thing is that followers don’t just want to see images. They want to watch movies and read articles as well. So?

1. Take the RSS feed of a Youtube tag as well to tweet some videos in between.
2. Search in Google News for “Sziget Festival” (I think that’s unique not just like “Sziget”) take the RSS and post these news articles to read.
3. Go to Technorati, search for “Sziget Festival” and take that RSS feed to cover the blogosphere and tweet their articles.
4. Create an Google alert on “Sziget Festival” with “as it happens” and take that RSS feed to cover the rest of the net.

Yo will now have a quite good amount of Tweets on a daily basis which are not just false images but also videos, text, blogs and much more. Every once in a while you should of course tweet the one or other real thing written by your own. I set up a Twitter account about the Sziget Festival and did exactly the above mentioned steps plus some additional features which might even bring some money but that I will cover in another post some time later. So I would bet that I pass the real Sziget Festival Twitter account (if it is a real one) by the next Sziget Festival in 2010. And because I am setting up this account now I will add some more accounts with similar topics to save some time.

So once more for the makers of the Sziget Twitter account. Put a bit more effort in Twitter because it really is a great communication tool with great effects now and in future.

iGBaffiliate brought over the best of the best in the gaming and casino industry filled up with the top of the Forex industry. The panels were filled with big names in gaming and casino affiliate as well as world wide top SEOs and affiliate marketers. It is useless to go into details now about the program and the parties because it happened so much and at some points I don’t really remember what exactly happened in the clubs afterwards.

Anyways I would love to see iGaming Business coming back to Budapest next year I will be there for sure. If you want to learn anything about the Poker, Casino or Forex industry you should attend this conference as well because you will have the chance to meet top affiliate managers of all programs and network with them.

Check out the video:

I have been to several SEO or other internet marketing related conferences if it was SES, SMX or the BAC this year and for every conference I was going I knew at least one month before that I will be there for the 2 days (Keresőmarketing Nap is as usual just one day). OK most of these conferences were much more expensive for regular visitors than here in Hungary but nevertheless you cannot announce a conference 2 days before it actually starts to the paying crowd.

Now for all of you who plan on going there what can you expect? Just another Keynote by Erica Schmidt from iProspect, another pannel on Etarget vs. Adwords again some skin deep Analytics session. Nothing new, same old speakers, same old exhibitors and yet another pen from Google. Wow. But for all of you who begin with SEO these days go there, have a look and listen. You will hear that you need SEO in your company and why but you probably won’t hear what you can do to improve your SEO inhouse, where to start as an affiliate doing SEO nor do professionals get any deeper discussion except from the things they know and you won’t hear any super insights like for example Dave Naylor talked about on the Budapest Affiliate Conference this year.

Enough critics, I really like that a conference like that is taking place in Budapest but they way it is announced and built up is something I don’t really like. As I said if you don’t have deep knowledge or want to network go there, it is something like 25.000 HUF for that day including a warm meal and coffee.

For me this is great news since I am in affiliate marketing since many many years, even though not too much into gambling or poker affiliate. But anyways it is good to have a affiliate conference in Budapest once in a while since this topic, which I am actually spending my working days on, is not too big in Hungary yet and it could bring a boost for Hungarian webmasters. Not only in gambling, since online poker and Co are illeagal in Hungary, but also the entire affiliate industry could improve from such an event.

But not only the industry news and panels will be interesting for affiliates but also the networking parties around the conference seem to be loads of fun (Check out the pictures of CAP Euro Barcelona). So if you are up to affiliate marketing and especially gambling affiliate check out the website and register as soon as you can.

The Budapest Sun exists since 16 years and is/was one of the leading news sources in Hungary in English language. Just a couple of weeks ago they change their design to a rather magazine style than newspaper style and where publishing every fortnight. It is sad that the financial crisis reaches such good papers as the Budapest Sun definetly is. We will see when it will happen and how.