Ged Carroll

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  • Google Answers + more news

    Google Answers

    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

    How tos

    7 tips to save your cell phone battery life

    Lifehacker book

    Ideas

    Information Arbitrage: The Value of Eyeballs and Its Impact on Journalistic Motivation

    The interview: Robert Pirsig | Review | The Observer

    PodCastConUK 2006: Podcasting and the Citizen Journalist. Strange Attractor: Picking out patterns in the chaos

    Innovation

    EETimes.com – Study: Spend more, get more in R&D? Not always

    Media

    Downloading TV Shows leads to more TV watching at Torrentfreak

    IAC/Interactive Wins Fans

    I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Declassified | PBS – how Craigslist has affected local and classified advertising business model of newspapers

    Boing Boing: Record industry association declares DRM dead

    Online

    Bubblegeneration Strategy Lab

    Will Blogs Replace White Papers

    paidcontent: Pearson and major business schools pair up for WikiText experiment

    GigaOM » YouSendIt Bigger Than We Thought

    Monday Morning: First lessons from our Second Life

    Twitter: A Whole World in Your Hands

    Official Google Blog: Google Base turns 1

    Security

    NSS Group – Self-described ‘world’s foremost independent security testing organisation’

    Schools ban wi-fi networks after safety fears

    Software

    WordPress Takes On SixApart With Enterprise Edition and WordPress.com

    Stellarium – great planetarium programme

    Ajaxian » Open-jACOB Draw2D

    Daily Cup of Tech » FreeNAS

    PortableApps Suite | PortableApps.com – Portable software for USB drives

  • Greenpeace reputation sails into dangerous waters

    Greenpeace has been hauled over the coals with allegations that the large multinational pressure group used classic spin tactics of lies, disinformation and sensationalism. Roughly Drafted has gone toe-to-toe with the well financed pressure group to press for the truth around their greener electonics campaign:


    The PR problem for Greenpeace is pretty simple, once they start being discovered using such underhand tactics they will appear less credible and start to lose the funding and goodwill they need to make some of their more valid campaigns and devalue what     dedicated supporters have already achieved.

    Roughly Drafted also cites well known mistakes by the large multinational pressure group including damaging a healthy coral reef in the Phillipines because they had the wrong maps and a series of lies told during the Shell Brent Spar debacle.

    As media becomes more transparent with the blogosphere, both corporates and not-for-profits cannot afford to step out of line.

    This time Greenpeace did not ignite the kind of media furore that Edelman and Wal-Mart caused, but if they keep on going they may be on the receiving end of protestors both online and in ‘meat space’.

    Greenpeace relies on the fact that it is doing the right thing to protect them and most corporate won’t go toe-to-toe. However that doesn’t mean that individuals and activist organisations won’t.

    Think about it this way:

    • Greenpeace is a large multinational organisation with 360 million USD revenues recorded for 2005, it has a network of international offices and a fleet of ships
    • The organisation has a well-known high profile brand that runs against the grain (like many large fashion brands from Nike to Stussy would like to position themselves)
    • You could even consider a lot of their protests as an extreme sports marketing campaign (abseiling, scuba diving, sailing, running around in RIBs and thumbing their nose at authority like skateboarders or graffiti artists)

    Sounds like a large corporate in structure and behaviour?

    Image from Wikipedia (click link for copyright statement)

  • American Pastoral

    While reading American Pastoral I was reminded of when I was young I was told the tale of an old Chinese farmer. The farmer who had a son and some fine horses. The neighbours thought that he was lucky.

    One day the son was out riding one of his family’s horses, he was thrown and broke his leg. The villagers thought that it was bad luck, further bad luck was considered to fall on him when the kingdom went to war and the farmer had his horses taken by the army.

    The war went badly and the army rounded up the sons of the villagers, but the farmers son with a broken leg was left behind.The villagers thought that the farmer was unlucky because their sons were sure to bring home booty from the battle.

    When their sons didn’t return, they thought that the farmer was lucky.

    This juxtaposition of luck or fate is captured in American Pastoral by US author Philip Roth. Roth tells the story of an All-American success story, initially through the eyes of a high school reunion and then lifts the lid on all the elements that were tearing him apart from the inside. A domestic drama featuring a mentally unstable spouse and a counter-culture terrorist daughter plays out against a backdrop of globalisation shaping the US manufacturing sector, civil rights and social unrest during the latter days of the Vietnam war.The main protagonists life comes apart at the seams whilst seemingly been fine.

    Roth has written a melancholy story which is strangely compelling in a similar way to Requiem for a Dream. It is an easy read that I would recommend. More book reviews here.

  • Cosa Nostra and other things

    I finished a book by Cosa Nostra – A history of the Sicilian mafia written by John Dickie. Dickie’s work demystified the glamour and media perpetuated stereotypes of the mafia. They were never men of honour. In a surprising degree of personal honesty unusual in these type of books, Dickie is forthcoming about the elements that he doesn’t know or understand about the Cosa Nostra. Usually loose ends are glossed over or used to take the material in another direction – a la many conspiracy theorists.

    Dickie’s account leaves the alone the American cousins of the Sicilian mafia unless they impinge on the Italian story. The mafia story weaves a complex pattern around modern Italian history. More book reviews here.

    I also got to see Clerks II and The Departed. I love Clerks and I really liked what Kevin Smith did with the follow-on film, neatly answering the question how do you top a film that captures the existentialist navel gazing of generation x slackers?

    I won’t spoil the plot, but if you haven’t seen it you can look forward to some classic Jay moments, a boom box to die for, drama worthy of Days of Our Lives and inter-species erotica.

    The Departed is an American interpretation of Hong Kong classic thriller Infernal Affairs. Leonardo DeCaprio plays an undercover police man coming apart at the edges and Matt Damon is the mole inside the police department.

    The film is a good movie in its own right, but lacks of the polish of the performances in the original.

  • The Change Function by Pip Coburn

    Thinking about The Change Function as a book reminded me as an agency person, it is not enough only be a good, but to understand something about your clients. Are they a winner or a flamer?If they are a flamer, you want your cash up front and start contingency planning for how you replace them with another piece of business.

    If they are a winner, then you can be more flexible and possibly take a bath if they are going to be a flagship brand on your client list.

    What is the compelling reason to purchase their product or service.

    Rule one: Clients are generally too close to their products, consumers will work out how they become relevant to their own lives or not

    Rule two: The greatest lie after ‘I love you’ and ‘I can guarantee you coverage in the Financial Times’ is ‘Our product is unique’. If the problem can be solved another way, it means that the product is not unique because the customer has a substitute choice. Believe: flickr was not unique, it was an innovative way at looking at the same problem. The iPod was not unique, Compaq made the first hard drive-based MP3 player back in the late 90s and the Mac wasn’t unique because it got the queues from Doug Engelbart and Xerox PARC.

    The Change Function by Pip Coburn makes an interesting read as it shows by example why some technologies take off, while others flame out.

    What’s the crisis the product or services solves? People will generally only adopt the new, new thing if there is a compelling reason for them.

    Is the crisis one for real-world people, or just for rich people (who fly business class three days in every week and think that having a social life is messaging fellow college alumni on their Blackberry once every six weeks)?

    How high is the total perceived pain of adoption?

    Is your client user-centred: do they use language that shows they look at things from the users point of view?

    Do they have an iterative development cycle? (Do they roll out improvements on a regular basis, based on user feedback and their technological roadmap rather than blockbuster updates.)

    Pip Coburn elegantly codifies common sense; its the stuff you know instinctively, like the smartphone that you only use voice and texting on and yet still listen to music on your iPod, or the latest cool web 2.0 service that you registered for but then never seem to go back to. More book reviews can be found here.