Howto as a category morphed out of a few things. I learned about the power of helpful content from Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog. A second aspect of it was my natural inclination to share useful hacks.
I started writing this blog to explore the media so that I could advise clients so its roots were in the howto mentality. Over time, I built up a certain amount of authority based on the content that I shared here. This resulted in work for Econsultancy, teaching MBA students at a private Spanish university and a number of agency jobs.
Howto content tends to come when I am sharing skills and I have been developing AND that these skills can be easily codified into an article or two. I have also shared my personal workflow that I use to try and make sense of the world through online resources.
Many of the skills that I developed doing that came from a pre-social platform dominated world. Before Instagram told us how to look and TikTok told us what to think. And back when Google was actually useful, well more useful than it seems to be now.
I even wrote a couple of guides on how to get the most out of Google, but most of the advice won’t work any more as the platform did away with many shortcuts in favour of telling you which is the nearest coffee shop with free wifi.
The reason why howto ended up being one word rather than how to was down to the early version of Wordpress that I started to blog on and my lack of expertise more than anything else.
Microsoft Executive: Netbooks Risk Cannibalizing Windows – netbooks are considered to be part of a wider consumer trend on downshifting technology. Consequently netbooks affects a business that relies on the consumer believing that continual innovation is a good thing. ASUS’ iconic eeePC netbooks even ran a Linux desktop application. Netbooks were a realisation that a lot of people use the web to check their email and create basic content. I don’t think that Google’s thin client Chromebooks are the antidote to netbooks either due to patchy networks.
ElfYourself by OfficeMax – Powered by JibJab – viral from OfficeMax for Xmas 2008. Interesting the way they went with the same concept. This isn’t as sophisticated (from a technical perspective) as their previous viral
New York Times Finds Success with Facebook Campaign – ClickZ – reading this is a bit meta: media company which makes its money by advertising, uses Facebook advertising to successfully market itself (presumably offsetting the amount it spent in acquiring traffic by advertising on Facebook with selling advertising on its own site)
UK media set for thousands more job cuts-analysts By Kate Holton LONDON (Reuters) – British media companies could cut tens of thousands more jobs in the coming years as the economic downturn hits an industry already ravaged by the Internet revolution. British newspaper groups and broadcasters have…
Twist – see trends in twitter – like Google Trends but for Twitter. Twist looks more like a feature than a product for me. I am surprised that Twist has managed to survive, given the volume of social listening tools available. Finally, Twitter could look at Twist’s functionality and find a way to build interest and engagement around popular topics.
Beckumer Leder-Bekleidungswerk GmbH – makers of the German pilot jacket – very cool design and virtually indestructable. The same design of jacket is worn by Germany Navy and Air Force pilots, but in different colours. It offers a tough goat skin shell and is more modernist in design than US pilot jackets
Media
BBC NEWS | Can Stephen Fry kill a gadget? – interesting article about influence. The central question being did a bad review by Stephen Fry kill the BlackBerry Storm device? While Stephen Fry is influential, I don’t think his influence doesn’t have the reach of someone like Walt Mossberg over the Wall Street Journal. I think that BlackBerry killed the Storm with bad product and software design. May Fry would have been one of a number of voices who reviewed the device negatively
Triple Aught Design Gear, Inc. – dodgy site design but some nice soft shells and jackets using really good textile material partners that seem to be ‘tactically influenced’. More related content here.
How to Sing Karaoke With Confidence – wikiHow – to me karaoke is up there with water boarding, however if you want to bond with co-workers and friends in Asia karaoke is a necessary evil. My personal recommendation if you are asked to do karaoke is California Dreaming by the Mamas and the Papas
FT.com / Home UK / UK – No space wasted in the Velcro workplace of the future – the unspoken narrative here is that integrated marketing is the way forward, the PR agency in its traditional form is moribund, which is one of the reasons why Edelman took the opportunity to change their work environment when they moved into their Victoria offices earlier this year. Will this break down practice fifedoms?
Ford F150 Raptor | Ford Vehicles – real men drive Unimogs, but if you’re a hairstylist then Ford’s F150 Raptor maybe just the thing for you. A low centre of gravity, decent tires and a paint job that looks the customers from an Essex tanning salon. Lovely.
Nintendo announces new version of DS gaming handheld: the DSi » VentureBeat – interesting new design on the DS with the Nintendo DSi. The Nintendo DSi features two digital cameras, supports internal and external content storage, and connects to a Nintendo DSi Shop. The Nintendo DSi supports ‘physical games’ in addition to DS games with DSi-specific features and standard DS titles. The only exceptions in backwards compatibility is any DS products that use a Gameboy Advance slot.
Facebook Redesign Succeeds: Widgets Are Dead – interesting article on how the Facebook redesign has killed the basic widget Facebook application. Clearing this clutter will hopefully make Facebook a more useful and rewarding platform to use. I still personally dislike it however.
Social media and brands in 2009 – Shiny Red’s vox pop survey; nicely done. Wouldn’t necessarily agree with some of the trends such as the semantic web, but otherwise good material. More related content here.
James Earl Jones has one of the most distinctive voices in the entertainment industry as you can hear in this Sesame Street clip. You might recognise from his appearance in Conan the Barbarian film, but James Earl Jones has a surprising variety in his career across film, television and stage performance. James Earl Jones has done voiceover work for everything from Disney’s The Lion King to CNN station idents.
Hollow Spy Coins – talk about niche businesses, this is definitely on the long tail. You have to admire their dedication to engineering this.
Economics
Boomtown of Dubai feels effects of global crisis – International Herald Tribune – Until recently, credit in Dubai was growing by 49 percent a year, according to the Emirates’ Central Bank — a rate almost double that of bank deposits’ growth. That unnerved some bankers here, who felt it could lead to a collapse. “In the U.S., the challenge is about keeping the banks going,” said Marios Maratheftis, chief economist for Standard Chartered Bank. “Here, the economy has been overheated, a correction is needed, and it’s about making sure the slowdown happens in a smooth, orderly manner.”
Klein Verzet: Freaking doomed – the premise is that the demand for shipping of raw materials like coal, bauxite and iron ore have ground to a stand still and soon even the factories of China will be a lot quieter – so the economic outlook is nothing short of ammegeddon
P&G to launch washing gel that cleans at 15 degrees – Brand Republic News – Brand Republic – “According to P&G, Ariel’s Cool Clean campaign encouraged more than five times as many customers than normal to switch to low-energy washing programmes, with Ariel customers twice as likely as the average consumer to wash at a lower 30 degrees temperature (28% of Ariel customers in 2007 versus 13% of those using other brands). P&G has a partnership with the Energy Saving Trust, which encourages people to use energy efficiently and reduce their carbon footprints.”
I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Data Debasement | PBS – cloud computing versus DBMS, interesting reading, I need to go back and look at it a few more times to understand it fully. But initial take is that parallel computing as well as parallel processing changes how computing works and databases have to be adapted (like Oracle’s Grid database concept from the tail end of the dot com era and cloud computing. It’s the failings of Moore’s law rather than progress that is driving this change
Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman – while I have sympathy for some of what Mr Stallman says, his argument misses the point about the benefits of social software. Open formats and APIs allow you to move from one service to another as needs must.
I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Collateral Damage | PBS – interesting take on the mobile market, not one that I necessarily agree with, but interesting none the less. Cringely expect that Microsoft Windows Mobile software will fail and has some interesting ideas around the why. I think Microsoft has everything to play for with enterprise users and can leverage items like security authentication and Outlook email access – they might not be dominant but they could still be in with a shout
Beginning of end of megapixel marathon – Pixel count gives phones and cameras the ‘Dixons Factor’ – being able to be sold easily by some pimple-faced oik; but doesn’t mean you will have better quality pictures. I have a digital SLR which takes pictures at 5.1 megapixels and a phone camera that will do the same – no prize for which one takes the better pictures.