The online field has been one of the mainstays since I started writing online in 2003. My act of writing online was partly to understand online as a medium.
Online has changed in nature. It was first a destination and plane of travel. Early netizens saw it as virgin frontier territory, rather like the early American pioneers viewed the open vistas of the western United States. Or later travellers moving west into the newly developing cities and towns from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
America might now be fenced in and the land claimed, but there was a new boundless electronic frontier out there. As the frontier grew more people dialled up to log into it. Then there was the metaphor of web surfing. Surfing the internet as a phrase was popularised by computer programmer Mark McCahill. He saw it as a clear analogue to ‘channel surfing’ changing from station to station on a television set because nothing grabs your attention.
Web surfing tapped into the line of travel and 1990s cool. Surfing like all extreme sport at the time was cool. And the internet grabbed your attention.
Broadband access, wi-fi and mobile data changed the nature of things. It altered what was consumed and where it was consumed. The sitting room TV was connected to the internet to receive content from download and streaming services. Online radio, podcasts and playlists supplanted the transistor radio in the kitchen.
Multi-screening became a thing, tweeting along real time opinions to reality TV and live current affairs programmes. Online became a wrapper that at its worst envelopes us in a media miasma of shrill voices, vacuous content and disinformation.
Google Answers decides to close up shop – Google Answers is an attempt to create high quality material for knowledge search and a monetisation model at the same time. At the top end, Google Answers looked like consultancy on the cheap. Given the size of the core Google business versus other media opportunities Google Answers was never going to be big. However closing Google Answers seems to be less a criticism of knowledge search and more a broader retrenchment to only focus on ‘Google-sized’ opportunities – effectively ossification of the business.
Design
x0xb0x– amazing improvement by German designers on Roland’s iconic TB-303
Health Disparities Persist for Men, and Doctors Ask Why – New York Times – health disparities for men exist in all socioeconomic groups, all are doing poorly in terms of health. Health disparities for men is a multi-factorial problem including economic marginality, adverse working conditions, and gendered coping responses to stress. Which can lead to high of health-damaging behaviours and an aversion to health-protective behaviours. Will equality for women drive similar effects on their health to what is occurring in health disparities for men? More health related content here.
Advertising Age has a case study of the Yahoo Found campaign that ran in London.The Yahoo Found campaign was interesting because it used the environment as an interaction with the poster executions to give it an experiential feel.
The Yahoo Found campaign reasonated for a long time with consumers and we took found arrows on to the streets long after the poster campaign had finished to hijack the Dukes of Hazzard UK fillm premiere, SES London (with the help of Vegas showgirl outfits) and a Harry Potter book launch.
Running a brand building campaign like Yahoo Found on a sustained basis takes a lot of cojones, especially in a corporate environment. Its a pity that Yahoo Found wasn’t exploited to its full potential.The problem that marketers now face is that brand activating tactics Google Adwords provide a safer option with PowerPoint friendly data that can be dropped into pivot tables and used like a crutch to support their decision-making in the face of a hostile management.
What this doesn’t capture is brand equity through salience and mental availability which provides more diffuse benefits of preference over time.
Influential analyst houses
Interesting survey over at Duncan Chapple’s blog over which analyst houses have the most influence.Whilst the split may may change depending on what tech sector your client is in, its an interesting piece of research; particularly when you see the dominance of US focused players.
And the fact that a good third of the most influential analysts are in the other category indicating a large amount of fragmented trusted expertise.
EU roaming charges
Meanwhile the GSM Association have a handy site that allows you to compare roaming charges when you visit different countries in Europe.
I tried it using Orange post paid as my settings to have a look at different carriers. What I found interesting was that in the countries that I sampled (Germany, Ireland, Spain, France) there was not price differential between the carriers. Of course this was an unscientific test isn’t at all indicative of price fixing is it?
Linspire have finally released a free distribution of their Linux operating system. This is an interesting move, which could see Inspire moving away from being a z-list box shifter to being the iTunes of consumer software through CNR. There is lots of tired Gateway and Dell boxes out there that could be given a new lease of life by Linspire through the installation of Freespire provides a good way of removing and helping proof against malmare targeting the Windows platform.
It would be especially attractive in wi-fi enabled homes were computer access is at a premium as kids and parents currently duke it out over two or more computers.
For any tech-heads passing its based on the Debian distribution like Linspire.
AOL
AOL promises that it is releasing a MySpace product for the rest of us that will be ‘kick-ass’ according an AOL spokesperson quoted over on a Business 2.0 article at CNN Online. Looks like they’ve finally figured a way to leverage their huge instant messenger user base.
17 inch MacBook Pro
Apple have released a 17-inch version of the MacBook Pro, but it isn’t really news as the rumour sites had it down pat for a few weeks now. Over at Crack Unit Iain Tait has been talking about life with his new MacIntel companion.
Yahoo!
I have left Yahoo! after being made redundant and about to start a new role agency-side (which is both exciting and kind of scary all at the same time), I now feel that I can now say nice things independently about the Yahoo! family of products on here, without it being construed as the insepid scribblings of a paid shill. I used to be a European buzz marketing manager working on various bits of the business including Yahoo! Search, My Web, Answers, Delicious, 360, Flickr, Research and the technology development team which put me pretty much right at the centre of the web 2.0 vortex.
You can find some of the good stuff that was happening here.
Not so much a product big-up but Carole McManus – community manager of Y!360 in Sunnyvale has put up a useful posting on how to blog. Obvious I know, but some good tips on writing style and getting around writers block (also check out the comments section on the posting).
Ok, a question to leave you with: how can the scribblings of an engineer like Robert Scroble or Jeremy Zawodny be considered to be great communication but a PR person’s postings be always viewed with suspicion (except when discussing the dark arts of misdirection and deception)? Answers on a comment below please.
The Wall Street Journal Online or as it calls itself the WSJ Online has been celebrating its tenth birthday with some retrospectives and future gazing.
WSJ Online dot com disasters
A couple of the articles caught my eye.The Best of the Worst by Kathryn Meyer (May 3, 2006) celebrates the suckiest ideas of the first dot com boom.
CyberRebate
CyberRebate did what it said on the tin; they charged you an outrageous price for an item and then promised you a rebate, they hoped to make money on the redemption drop-out – they were overwhelmed and drowned in a sea of debt.
Digital currency
Digital currency ideas (Beenz and Flooz) withered on the vine as they weren’t as universal as Mastercard or cash. PayPal survived because it kicked Western Union’s ass and we could all be credit-card merchants.
iSmell
iSmell was a device designed to release smells appropriate to the pages you surf (don’t even think about it, get your mind out of the gutter this instant) like some kind of b-movie experience enhancement craze of the 1950s.
CueCat
CueCat plugged into your PC (Windows only if you please) and allowed you to scan bar codes of magazines into your computer to get further information or content. This idea seems to have caught on in Japan with mobile phones and specialised software, so maybe they were too visionary?
3Com Audrey
The 3Com Audrey internet appliance was a great well engineered device killed by the ever decreasing price of PCs. I still rate its QNX-based OS and I like the product design on it.
PointCast
PointCast the push technology service that was a richer more engaging experience than RSS is today, but then I was sat at the end of a fat pipe whereas most users were on dial-up. Also marketers knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing used the service to carpet-bomb users with unwanted ads.
Tech trends
Tim Hanrahan’s piece on Tech’s 10-year Creep (May 8, 2006) brings out some interesting trends that have occurred. I have paraphrased and commented on his trends below
Anytime, Anywhere: Push email and wireless internet access mean that getting online whilst traveling or wire-free on your couch or at Starbucks — is possible for $60 a month or so. However it eats into the work life balance.
Think Better! Google basically.
Putting Yourself Out There: Originally people liked their privacy, caller ID on phones was pushing the envelope in terms of social disclosure. Over the past five years people have gotten used to sharing personal information online. Chat rooms, forums, online dating followed by social-networking sites; to blogs and MySpace came to dominate. Easy-to-use tools, cheap to free storage and online social interaction brought out the pioneer spirit ‘Go web young man‘.
The Post-Stuff World: Music downloads, ebooks, ripped movies. (But if its that post-stuff why is Amazon so successful selling books, everyone’s iPod is full of music ripped from CDs and people love their laptops, mobile phones, PDAs, crackberries, Nintendo and Sony handhelds). This techno-minimalism bollox didn’t wash with me.
Free Information, Free People: People are exercising their free speech and there is a maelstrom of content out there that Technorati struggles to handle. The social web has replaced the techno web – (though when Soledad O’Brien hosted a show on MSNBC that featured a young Max Headroom-type avatar sidekick named Dev ten years ago (good gosh, was it that long ago?) was it precient of Second Life?) CNN now covers blog content as if it was matter-of-fact, though blogs often don’t have the same rigorous process behind them as well-written journalism.
Picture of Soledad O’Brien courtesy of CNN.com. More related posts here.
