I learned something very valuable today. Wait. No I didn't.
I didn't really learn it as much as it kind of came to me while watching the Twebinar, that long awaited brainchild of Radian6 (who I think completely rocks) and Chris Brogan (who I think hosted it, even though it said JJ something or other under the guy in the top left...)
The premise is simple.
Use Acrobat Connect to broadcast a bunch of pre-canned videos and don't bother using the chat window built into the app, instead opting for a much more public chat to take place about the content streaming on by in the whale-plagued Twitter, which was actually holding up to the perfect storm of 500 mavens posting to 500 mavens about what 500 mavens should well know by now.
It was indeed an awesome primer for social media newbies, but I wasnt aware of any of them in attendance. It did indeed give clear examples of how really huge companies were doing things in small ways some of the time. And, low (real low) and behold (if you were in the first 500 viewers) almost all of the mavens put in a reel for us to be in awe of.
What did I learn?
1. Echo chamber, echo chamber, echo chamber, echo chamber....
2. There are clearly both an "I" and a "ME" in social media, in that order.
Okay it wasnt that bad, but @melle got a lot of followers out of being grumpy, so I thought I would jump on that bandwagon. What? Ever!
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Many still catching up, world moving on
iMedia is picking fights today with headlines including such posturing as "How Google will kill ad networks" and "the end of rich media" and such. It strikes me that there is a whole world of businesses still catching up on the new new things for online advertising, and yet we as an industry continue to posture way out in front of the curve.
That said, I kind of agree with the end of rich media - like rich internet application, new media and other now ambiguous terms it often makes it very hard to position new services and technologies - like my current pet project, Overlay.TV - using these staple terms.
Let's examine for a moment why John Vincent, the founder of EyeWonder, considers this "end" to be nigh. Findings of an anonymously fielded online survey of online advertising influencers conducted by EyeWonder in March 2008 highlights the inadequacies and confusion within the industry. The survey revealed that:
Hopefully I will be able to share that here shortly.
That said, I kind of agree with the end of rich media - like rich internet application, new media and other now ambiguous terms it often makes it very hard to position new services and technologies - like my current pet project, Overlay.TV - using these staple terms.
Let's examine for a moment why John Vincent, the founder of EyeWonder, considers this "end" to be nigh. Findings of an anonymously fielded online survey of online advertising influencers conducted by EyeWonder in March 2008 highlights the inadequacies and confusion within the industry. The survey revealed that:
- 62 percent of the respondents agree that the term "rich media" is too "generic and meaningless."
- 66 percent of industry execs surveyed did not believe that "rich media" accurately defined today's online video ads.
- 76 percent of agency executives did not believe it to be an adequate term to cover "emerging platforms" -- mobile, IPTV, etc.
- 68 percent agreed that a new category name for "rich media" is needed (term "rich media" doesn't capture where digital advertising is headed in the next five years; it is too generic/meaningless).
- 92 percent of agency influencers had a positive to neutral opinion of the term "Interactive Digital Advertising," finding it more accurate than "rich media."
Hopefully I will be able to share that here shortly.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Edicts for Monday
The world has enough neo-classical drones.
Two thirds of the population must learn to identify the branches of government.
20% of people should study astronomy at least to get the earth sun thing straight.
Economics doesn't want your input - it wants your soul. Give it input. Keep soul.
Delve beneath the surface and answer fundamental questions.
Stop consuming 1.4 tons of pork per year.
Resume the flow of nature into people's lives.
Continue on approach to global humanity carrying capacity.
Do not cry out wordlessly for help.
Smash the hall of mirrors.
Clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish.
Question the model.
Question the math.
Thank someone.
Thank everyone.
Press play.
Press pause.
Two thirds of the population must learn to identify the branches of government.
20% of people should study astronomy at least to get the earth sun thing straight.
Economics doesn't want your input - it wants your soul. Give it input. Keep soul.
Delve beneath the surface and answer fundamental questions.
Stop consuming 1.4 tons of pork per year.
Resume the flow of nature into people's lives.
Continue on approach to global humanity carrying capacity.
Do not cry out wordlessly for help.
Smash the hall of mirrors.
Clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish.
Question the model.
Question the math.
Thank someone.
Thank everyone.
Press play.
Press pause.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Broadband doesn't change the rules, even if it does change the game
Every day advertising seems to be thrown into the abyss of opinion, change, progress and subservience to the technology goddesses . Broadband technologies are essentially (apparently) rewriting the rules for every business, remaking many industries, and apparently its going to take a team of millions to decipher how advertising should respond to the challenges. I'm in.
According to Stephen P. Bradley, a Harvard professor, there are 3 key concepts that need to be considered in the path of evolution from Marlboro Man to BMW Films (which are no longer available on BMW site but still up on YouTube) to Subservient Chicken. I quote this article:
· Broadband technology is becoming more important to advertisers because of its ability to move the consumer closer to a transaction decision and to deliver clearly segmented audiences.
· The advertising industry is wrestling with this transformation in part by merging with media companies and by launching creative ad alternatives.
I am struggling with exactly this issue right now, actually still struggling to some degrees would be more appropriate. Despite spending years in the ad business, working at Yahoo!, meeting with the world's top agencies to discuss this and driving product strategy that is meant to address exactly these issues - I still feel like we are waiting for the bright light to go on, and maybe that is exactly the problem!
Let's look at Marlboro Man to understand what I mean here. In his day, only a handful of advertisers used "spokespeople", hardly any ads used nature and roughing it as their way to tell the story, and most importantly, the Marlboro Man was in a lot of places in his 45 year reign of bringing early death to his loyal followers (1954-1999). Prior to the Marlboro Man creation by Leo Burnett, they were out and about with a "Mild as May" campaign that extolled the gentle virtues of the brand targeted at woman, and in a matter of weeks they had transformed the campaign into a masculine, outdoorsy, cowboy focused squarely on the aspirations of the lesser sex.
Same situation applies with BMW Films series The Hire, which saw Clive Owen doing a fast-paced increase of 12% sales and driving 11 million views and 2 million website registrations in a matter of four months. Prior to this BMW was struggling with how to elevate their brand status and effectively engage a somewhat elite audience that was starting to do more and more research online prior to purchasing a car.
Subservient chicken - well, suffice to say we all play with our food, we just hadn't really done it like this before.
If these are indeed some of the cornerstone examples, then I have to push back on the Harvard-trained theory of the problem, and the same said quest for a solution. The solution is exactly what it always has been.
Great creative transcends cultural barriers, fragmentation, and even the medium/message borders that we need to carefully observe with mediocre creative. We are going to have to crack this same nut here at Overlay.TV, and already I can say without a doubt that it is in the conversations with Amber Mac, Kevin Nalts, iJustine, EMI, JWT and all the other very forward-leaning, uber-creative types we are talking to that the real ideas are evolving. And each time it is that difference - that unique creative spark - that transcends the platform, delivery, technology, and even the current audience demo and psychographics of the individuals or brands involved.
Great creative unfragments audiences. Great media, technologies and platforms put more simply, serve to support a more rapid unfragmentation.
Let's not confuse ourselves any longer with a technology discussion. Take it for granted and get the into the bar or boardroom with a pencil or projector and start brainstorming now!
According to Stephen P. Bradley, a Harvard professor, there are 3 key concepts that need to be considered in the path of evolution from Marlboro Man to BMW Films (which are no longer available on BMW site but still up on YouTube) to Subservient Chicken. I quote this article:
"
· Traditional advertising vehicles such as television are becoming less interesting to advertisers because of fragmented viewership and inadequate user data.· Broadband technology is becoming more important to advertisers because of its ability to move the consumer closer to a transaction decision and to deliver clearly segmented audiences.
· The advertising industry is wrestling with this transformation in part by merging with media companies and by launching creative ad alternatives.
"
I am struggling with exactly this issue right now, actually still struggling to some degrees would be more appropriate. Despite spending years in the ad business, working at Yahoo!, meeting with the world's top agencies to discuss this and driving product strategy that is meant to address exactly these issues - I still feel like we are waiting for the bright light to go on, and maybe that is exactly the problem!
Let's look at Marlboro Man to understand what I mean here. In his day, only a handful of advertisers used "spokespeople", hardly any ads used nature and roughing it as their way to tell the story, and most importantly, the Marlboro Man was in a lot of places in his 45 year reign of bringing early death to his loyal followers (1954-1999). Prior to the Marlboro Man creation by Leo Burnett, they were out and about with a "Mild as May" campaign that extolled the gentle virtues of the brand targeted at woman, and in a matter of weeks they had transformed the campaign into a masculine, outdoorsy, cowboy focused squarely on the aspirations of the lesser sex.
Same situation applies with BMW Films series The Hire, which saw Clive Owen doing a fast-paced increase of 12% sales and driving 11 million views and 2 million website registrations in a matter of four months. Prior to this BMW was struggling with how to elevate their brand status and effectively engage a somewhat elite audience that was starting to do more and more research online prior to purchasing a car.
Subservient chicken - well, suffice to say we all play with our food, we just hadn't really done it like this before.
If these are indeed some of the cornerstone examples, then I have to push back on the Harvard-trained theory of the problem, and the same said quest for a solution. The solution is exactly what it always has been.
Great creative transcends cultural barriers, fragmentation, and even the medium/message borders that we need to carefully observe with mediocre creative. We are going to have to crack this same nut here at Overlay.TV, and already I can say without a doubt that it is in the conversations with Amber Mac, Kevin Nalts, iJustine, EMI, JWT and all the other very forward-leaning, uber-creative types we are talking to that the real ideas are evolving. And each time it is that difference - that unique creative spark - that transcends the platform, delivery, technology, and even the current audience demo and psychographics of the individuals or brands involved.
Great creative unfragments audiences. Great media, technologies and platforms put more simply, serve to support a more rapid unfragmentation.
Let's not confuse ourselves any longer with a technology discussion. Take it for granted and get the into the bar or boardroom with a pencil or projector and start brainstorming now!
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Wii launches video channel
You can now download and add a video channel to your Wii if you have it connected to the Internet.
While the initial offering is pretty limited, it definitely has a lot of potential. The other consoles have long been able to play videos, but those videos haven't really been organized into a "channel" per se. Wii effectively simplifies the organization of the videos and introduces a pretty slick player and nav to peruse the trailers, mini-documentaries, product demonstrations, and gameplay videos. Browse the game guide pages to get information about your favorite games on Wii and Nintendo DS, and you can also recommend games or view recommended games.
It uses a digest format of the most recent videos when you first load the channel, then it lets you skip ahead or choose the ones you want.
What I found most interesting was that you can even click to order games straight from your Wii, if you have the Internet Channel installed. There are not a lot of great examples out there of video shopping yet, but it is definitely interesting to see them evolve around recommendation, referral and sharing. I see this as another indication that the medium is evolving to direct response.
Check it out
While the initial offering is pretty limited, it definitely has a lot of potential. The other consoles have long been able to play videos, but those videos haven't really been organized into a "channel" per se. Wii effectively simplifies the organization of the videos and introduces a pretty slick player and nav to peruse the trailers, mini-documentaries, product demonstrations, and gameplay videos. Browse the game guide pages to get information about your favorite games on Wii and Nintendo DS, and you can also recommend games or view recommended games.
It uses a digest format of the most recent videos when you first load the channel, then it lets you skip ahead or choose the ones you want.
What I found most interesting was that you can even click to order games straight from your Wii, if you have the Internet Channel installed. There are not a lot of great examples out there of video shopping yet, but it is definitely interesting to see them evolve around recommendation, referral and sharing. I see this as another indication that the medium is evolving to direct response.
Check it out
Friday, May 23, 2008
Blogging is really good for you
Think about it.
All day long we write, twitter, blog and generally engage in the act of some form of expressive writing that may or may not be work-related and if we aren't Michael Arrington then we probably wonder sometimes what we get out of it.
Turns out that the more expressive, personal and creative we are the better it is, and in fact we are getting a lot more out of it personally than Michael is. We are actually getting healthier, happier, more immune and improving our mental health.
Scientific American's Jessica Wapner has wrapped it all up here and it is good, sound judgement on all our parts to do a lot more than just document the plays of the players and pontification of the pundits.
So let's drag out that thesaurus, search our souls, light a candle and take a few of our online social minutes every day to make the world a better place, and our lives a little better.
All day long we write, twitter, blog and generally engage in the act of some form of expressive writing that may or may not be work-related and if we aren't Michael Arrington then we probably wonder sometimes what we get out of it.
Turns out that the more expressive, personal and creative we are the better it is, and in fact we are getting a lot more out of it personally than Michael is. We are actually getting healthier, happier, more immune and improving our mental health.
Scientific American's Jessica Wapner has wrapped it all up here and it is good, sound judgement on all our parts to do a lot more than just document the plays of the players and pontification of the pundits.
So let's drag out that thesaurus, search our souls, light a candle and take a few of our online social minutes every day to make the world a better place, and our lives a little better.
Tom Raferty Accepts offer to Join Redmonk on Twitter
I find it amazing, interesting and a sign-o-the-times that Tom Raftery just agreed on Twitter (he was recruited on Twitter, the offer was made on Twitter, and he accepted on Twitter) to join RedMonk as an industry analyst covering Greentech, cleantech, Energy Demand Management and sustainability. If you haven't already heard a ton about Tom, he definitely has his own Eire brand and has always been one to address the world's bigger issues.
From the Redmonk blog:
"Greenmonk has been an interesting journey and a real world example of burstiness. I started the blog as a personal project because I feel strongly about sustainability issues, but about six months after launching it, ComputerWorld UK contacted me to discuss partnering opportunities. IDG also sees the importance of the Green agenda, and I am grateful they took a punt on me. The partnership made me realise that Green wasn’t just a personal interest, it could be a business too. Its still early days for the green agenda, but we’re reaching a few tipping points which should drive more media traffic than ever to solid green content, research and analysis. The next big eye opener was working with Interop on Energy Camp, at David Berlind’s behest.
When I started GreenMonk I wanted to focus more on people than technology, to focus more on social media tooling, for example, and how it could encourage us to change our behaviours. Over time however I have come to a different conclusion, as stated by changed strapline, which now runs GREEN FROM THE ROOTS UP, SUSTAINABLE FROM THE TOP DOWN."
What I find more interesting is that in the few years I have know James and crew at RedMonk, they have changed my mind about the importance, function, interactivity, sophistication, knowledge and accessibility we should expect from an industry analyst or firm. The move to open source analyst firm, the constant dialogue, the usefulness of having a relationship with them, and the pure utility of analysis has taken on new meaning for me and I think we should all celebrate this shift in the industry.
Sure I can pay $20K for a whitepaper, and $100K for research and perhaps might still do that, but the direct impact of that behavior will be never be as insightful, purposeful or eventful as riding the wave with a team of experts literally at your side, and at the side of all that matters and is important.
Congratulations to Tom Raferty for following the tweets to what I am sure will be a successful venture for everyone that chooses to listen. On personal note, I found this relevant because I found out that our CEO, Rob Lane, thought I was a great candidate for the role after he tweeted on meeting me...social media is directly impacting our lives, careers, and planet more and more each day.
From the Redmonk blog:
"Greenmonk has been an interesting journey and a real world example of burstiness. I started the blog as a personal project because I feel strongly about sustainability issues, but about six months after launching it, ComputerWorld UK contacted me to discuss partnering opportunities. IDG also sees the importance of the Green agenda, and I am grateful they took a punt on me. The partnership made me realise that Green wasn’t just a personal interest, it could be a business too. Its still early days for the green agenda, but we’re reaching a few tipping points which should drive more media traffic than ever to solid green content, research and analysis. The next big eye opener was working with Interop on Energy Camp, at David Berlind’s behest.
When I started GreenMonk I wanted to focus more on people than technology, to focus more on social media tooling, for example, and how it could encourage us to change our behaviours. Over time however I have come to a different conclusion, as stated by changed strapline, which now runs GREEN FROM THE ROOTS UP, SUSTAINABLE FROM THE TOP DOWN."
What I find more interesting is that in the few years I have know James and crew at RedMonk, they have changed my mind about the importance, function, interactivity, sophistication, knowledge and accessibility we should expect from an industry analyst or firm. The move to open source analyst firm, the constant dialogue, the usefulness of having a relationship with them, and the pure utility of analysis has taken on new meaning for me and I think we should all celebrate this shift in the industry.
Sure I can pay $20K for a whitepaper, and $100K for research and perhaps might still do that, but the direct impact of that behavior will be never be as insightful, purposeful or eventful as riding the wave with a team of experts literally at your side, and at the side of all that matters and is important.
Congratulations to Tom Raferty for following the tweets to what I am sure will be a successful venture for everyone that chooses to listen. On personal note, I found this relevant because I found out that our CEO, Rob Lane, thought I was a great candidate for the role after he tweeted on meeting me...social media is directly impacting our lives, careers, and planet more and more each day.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Moving on from Yahoo!
Big change to smaller things...
The time has come to move on from Yahoo! and in some sense to close a chapter of large corporate evangelism and marketing work and get back to my entrepreneurial roots. Sure I may have mastered career development for others, coaching, piggybacking onto sales efforts in order to drive future agendas and influencing the product development roadmap, but I have been doing that in the context of the big huge we - and it really hasn't netted me much beyond a few points on share options and a hell of a lot of air miles.
So - at the end of the day we have a bitpakkit with solid corporate chops and a track record of playing at least a small role in some wildly successful platforms and ideas getting shipped, inspected, used and adopted - Microsoft.NET, Web Services, SOA, Flex, Yahoo! AMP! to name a few.
Over this time a few key trends on the internet have kept me very amused, engaged and leaning forward and one of the key ones is online video - video advertising, video sites, video editors, products, codecs, etc... - and I am going to jump headfirst into that space with a bit of a different spin. Why compete? Why fight the trend? Why focus on destinations? None of these ideas make any sense anymore. People go where they go, do what they do and use what they want.
Instead, I am going to focus on the meta aspects of video and its myriad uses and users - ultimately finding a home at the intersection of the content and the viewer and the relevance of that specific interaction of watching and finding relevance in what we watch. I know I have seen a million things in videos, but there is no real record of that.
Well, maybe we can change all that...maybe we can give users tools to say something, find something, point out something and even refer something to someone else and build a metacloud of user value on top of the streaming pixels that flow by in the billions per second.
Ben Watson
VP, Marketing
Overlay.TV
The time has come to move on from Yahoo! and in some sense to close a chapter of large corporate evangelism and marketing work and get back to my entrepreneurial roots. Sure I may have mastered career development for others, coaching, piggybacking onto sales efforts in order to drive future agendas and influencing the product development roadmap, but I have been doing that in the context of the big huge we - and it really hasn't netted me much beyond a few points on share options and a hell of a lot of air miles.
So - at the end of the day we have a bitpakkit with solid corporate chops and a track record of playing at least a small role in some wildly successful platforms and ideas getting shipped, inspected, used and adopted - Microsoft.NET, Web Services, SOA, Flex, Yahoo! AMP! to name a few.
Over this time a few key trends on the internet have kept me very amused, engaged and leaning forward and one of the key ones is online video - video advertising, video sites, video editors, products, codecs, etc... - and I am going to jump headfirst into that space with a bit of a different spin. Why compete? Why fight the trend? Why focus on destinations? None of these ideas make any sense anymore. People go where they go, do what they do and use what they want.
Instead, I am going to focus on the meta aspects of video and its myriad uses and users - ultimately finding a home at the intersection of the content and the viewer and the relevance of that specific interaction of watching and finding relevance in what we watch. I know I have seen a million things in videos, but there is no real record of that.
Well, maybe we can change all that...maybe we can give users tools to say something, find something, point out something and even refer something to someone else and build a metacloud of user value on top of the streaming pixels that flow by in the billions per second.
Ben Watson
VP, Marketing
Overlay.TV
Monday, December 03, 2007
The Machine is Us/ing Us
Excellent video - not much to add. Maybe it is important to recognize that this is a bubble, and not everyone has access - but that doesn't change that it is important to rethink everything - and wherever possible to introduce new levels of trust, honesty, respect and quality in everything we do.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Wow! That's a cool search result...
I searched for U2 on Yahoo! today and something very cool happened. I got back the above result - not just a direct match but a very thorough set of of options for me to continue on from. I think this is significantly game-changing...and here's why:- from an SEO perspective, I need to ensure I have content in the various channels that this technology can retrieve from.
- from a local information, maps perspective etc (try searching for a San Francisco dry cleaner) you would have to verify that your data is in all those locations
- from a media perspective, I want to have all forms of media available for my brand, I want to think about how major brands play together with my brand, and how I can get to the new "top" of the page
I've been playing around with it, trying searches in travel, sports, movies, etc...very cool. Congrats to the Y! search team for making me rethink search as a viable media format!
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Re-invent this blog (formerly A Creative Passionista is reborn)
I am re-inventing this blog.
I am reclaiming my own turf at the same time.
I am doing a one man project back to the future.
The smallest amounts of information (literally constrained) that are fired around the internet to nowhere in particular are obviously online ads. In all their myriad forms, they represent the millions of creative hearts, minds and hands that wake up every day to rethink how to get people what they care about, in a way they find acceptable, at the right time, and at the right place. No small challenge, and I am happy to be playing a part in taking this on again.
After a topsy-turvy career through the technology industry, all of my experiences, training and more are being brought to bear on my primary passion - advertising and design - specifically the creative aspects of advertising and design.
I have joined Yahoo! where I will be heading up the creative assembly and tools business, specifically focused on the advertising space, and how creative users can better and more easily create, manage, deploy, store, assemble, optimize and collaborate in an end-to-end process designed to replace the clunky, manual and disparate interfaces we have to use in order to create and manage award-winning creatives online.
I say award-winning because these are the creatives I ultimately care about. Flashy, gimmicky, noisy, irrelevant, poorly created advertising is the bane of the internet! But, clever, relevant, targeted and well-designed creative can actually add to the value of a surfing, or snurfing (yeah, I'm on a boring concall right now) the web.
So I'm on a mission. Go back to my roots as a creative director, designer and advertising professional - bore into this with my years of web services, xml and application platform marketing - and get it all together for some of the best creative soup we have seen in a while. Mix into the soup some really clever ideas on how user-generated content, mashups, social media and the online experience can truly begin to integrate with pure brand or direct response worlds, in ways that make sense, in ways that users really want - and I think we have a winning combination.
I may be wrong. I may fail. But if I do, the online advertising world will remain as harsh, dark and gloomy as it sometimes seems today, and eyeballs will continue to turn away in disgust and dispair, and millions of hours of personal effort by users around the internet will continue to go unnoticed and unrewarded, and the promise of the truly social and relevant internet will go unfunded and eventually only work when fully funded by unethical interests in the aggregation of personal data and information (wait, that may be happening now!).
I know - it's too much for just one man. I'm hiring...
I am reclaiming my own turf at the same time.
I am doing a one man project back to the future.
The smallest amounts of information (literally constrained) that are fired around the internet to nowhere in particular are obviously online ads. In all their myriad forms, they represent the millions of creative hearts, minds and hands that wake up every day to rethink how to get people what they care about, in a way they find acceptable, at the right time, and at the right place. No small challenge, and I am happy to be playing a part in taking this on again.
After a topsy-turvy career through the technology industry, all of my experiences, training and more are being brought to bear on my primary passion - advertising and design - specifically the creative aspects of advertising and design.
I have joined Yahoo! where I will be heading up the creative assembly and tools business, specifically focused on the advertising space, and how creative users can better and more easily create, manage, deploy, store, assemble, optimize and collaborate in an end-to-end process designed to replace the clunky, manual and disparate interfaces we have to use in order to create and manage award-winning creatives online.
I say award-winning because these are the creatives I ultimately care about. Flashy, gimmicky, noisy, irrelevant, poorly created advertising is the bane of the internet! But, clever, relevant, targeted and well-designed creative can actually add to the value of a surfing, or snurfing (yeah, I'm on a boring concall right now) the web.
So I'm on a mission. Go back to my roots as a creative director, designer and advertising professional - bore into this with my years of web services, xml and application platform marketing - and get it all together for some of the best creative soup we have seen in a while. Mix into the soup some really clever ideas on how user-generated content, mashups, social media and the online experience can truly begin to integrate with pure brand or direct response worlds, in ways that make sense, in ways that users really want - and I think we have a winning combination.
I may be wrong. I may fail. But if I do, the online advertising world will remain as harsh, dark and gloomy as it sometimes seems today, and eyeballs will continue to turn away in disgust and dispair, and millions of hours of personal effort by users around the internet will continue to go unnoticed and unrewarded, and the promise of the truly social and relevant internet will go unfunded and eventually only work when fully funded by unethical interests in the aggregation of personal data and information (wait, that may be happening now!).
I know - it's too much for just one man. I'm hiring...
Monday, April 23, 2007
At my website, I Robot - I Robot Replay
Recently at the Web2Expo, Nitobi Inc. launched an open beta for RobotReplay (http://www.robotreplay.com/),a new online service that records and plays back visitor sessions for any website, corporate site or blog.
The recorded sessions show how visitors interact with a website -- every mouse movement, keystroke,where users click, how far down the page they scroll and how long they stay on a site. The results can dramatically impact how website owners organize their site content in an attempt to improve usability and keep visitors engaged.
Check it - nitobi.com - props to Andre and gang for such a cool tool.
The recorded sessions show how visitors interact with a website -- every mouse movement, keystroke,where users click, how far down the page they scroll and how long they stay on a site. The results can dramatically impact how website owners organize their site content in an attempt to improve usability and keep visitors engaged.
As co-founder Andre Charland says, "It's hard to be effective if you have to guess at how visitors are using your site."
Instead of paying thousands of dollars to get users behind a glass wall, eating your donuts and trying to say the right things to get called back to the next "pay me to surf" night out, you can get them in their "natural environment", as though you"re looking over their shoulder. More importantly you can stay in your natural environment and make improvements to your site in real time...please. Please make improvements to your sites.
I have been following the discussion threads with the other users, and it is pretty impressive to see how quickly valuable this tool is - although I should probably warn you that this might be the most addictive thing a "webmaster" ever takes for user pains.Check it - nitobi.com - props to Andre and gang for such a cool tool.
Life in Carp
I have started a new blog - Life in Carp - at www.carpvillage.com - in order to get to what I am rapidly becoming more and more interested in - life.
I have not blogged here for some time, but I imagine that something in the technology space will get my interest soon.
I hope so.
Tech is boring.
But...
Life is good.
http://www.carpvillage.com
I have not blogged here for some time, but I imagine that something in the technology space will get my interest soon.
I hope so.
Tech is boring.
But...
Life is good.
http://www.carpvillage.com
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Web 2.0 in the New World
Web 2.0 should be synonomous with Rich Internet Applications
New brands, new experiences, new business models. We have to rethink what an application means - we have grown used to the way desktop applications behave and we have also learned how web applications work. We know the shortfalls of both approaches, and we understand the benefits of each. So it follows that tomorrow we would blend the two and discover a better way to design, architect, build, deploy and manage applications. It is my belief that the developers that build these applications will find themselves working for companies that are more likely to participate in global conversations. And the apps they build are the platform for participation - that's Web 2.0.
It doesnt have to be rich...but its better if it is. If its not rich, its only because it doesnt have to be - maybe it does just store photos, or aggregate blogs, how rich do we need that to be? But the underlying technology is the medium. It is in it's simplest and most pure form, a highly performant, massively scalable, sharable, pushable, pullable, combination of professional media and user-generated media.
Brand experience - Performance, expressiveness
Great design, talking celebrities, tactile audio events, personalized feature content, the fastest service editorial, maps, media, talking bios, anchor desks, 3d immersive worlds or environments, and seamless transitions and ONE loading screen, ONE time - its possible with RIAs. They just give you total control over how your brand reaches the world. You can customize applications in such a way that immerses the user in your world and if you do it right, you get immersed in theirs. By making subtle changes to the content, and constructive architectural changes and design tweaks to the experience, in very little time your audiences are viewing and interacting with your content on their terms.
And the good news is that your multimedia content becomes part of the experience instead of an extra feature, requiring yet another plugin and yet another interface to learn.
Because you have control over exactly what the user experiences, you can use that experience to make them part of the product or service experience. Incorporate multimedia, allow incredible amounts of comparison or customization, run on different devices, standalone apps and in the web browser so that they are seeing your product in a way they can't with your competitors.
Changing enterprise - business gets a new, improved interface that's realtime
New because it had an old one before and we could already use it. Not a new enterprise necessarily, although there are some good examples of that too, but a new face on business and a new way for employees to get their jobs done...and it's improved based on all the years of learning we have had - some of the best and brightest minds in the business have been working on this stuff for years now. Not necessarily software as a service, but definitely "Software is a service in the enterprise" - it both provides one and it enables many.
You only get a "better-than-desktop" experience to fly if it works better for IT to have it over the web because it provides a single point for upgrades. And as long as noone is giving up any control over their applications, that's okay, you are able to map the events and processes you need access to and the interactions take place more efficiently - no surprises, no random approaches and the workaround is the app, not beyond the walls of the app where IT cant do anything about it.
This is not really about web applications - these are powerful and robust full featured applications. Developers have control over every event, every keystroke, every action taken and fine-grained controls can be built onto every aspect of the experience and design Try anything - including things that aren't possible with traditional web applications. I have already seen this make for some very ugly interfaces, but I believe that it's also going to make for some absolutely mind-bending experiences.
Minor note, but you also print a lot less output with RIAs, because you inherently trust that the transaction is in the app...there's a lot less of a feeling that your work is gone in the cloud, and you aren't left praying that the interface will show you the same results again.
It's a big network - apps to the edge, on everything and offline
Kids in Japan. Ships in the arctic sea. Helicopters doing top-secret training. Ecologists monitoring endangered species behaviour....
The interface options are endless, the screen real estate is changing by definition and the the web is everywhere that they are - at least some of the time. And that spotty connection is enough to go on - your new web application can take advantage of this. RIAs take you beyond the connected web browser and into a range of devices and mediums.
By taking full advantage of the Internet, RIAs can be used to connect a living room or a community. You can get to it on your set top box or on your X Box. You can share with your son who has a PSP. Your network enables real-time collaboration and in the lack of network you can still provide for a great experience. RIAs have the potential to bring people from all over the world together - people make the internet, and RIAs can make it seem like those people are next to each other.
Go faster, use the blocks in the box and leverage the new programming models
The holy grail of RIAs is to write one set of code and have that code run on any device or computer in the world. As a development shop, you can have one code base and deploy that anywhere your users go. If you're a business then you can make sure your executives have your application whether they are on a plane with their PDAs or at their desk on their laptops.
RSS, micro formats are quickly becoming the building blocks of the web. They provide the invaluable content in easy to consume bits which means greater accessibility to content everywhere. RIAs are in a unique position to take this content and give users a great deal of control over it. RIAs free the building blocks from the confines of the web browser meaning much more potential for how we view and interact with content.
Let's have fun out there today...
New brands, new experiences, new business models. We have to rethink what an application means - we have grown used to the way desktop applications behave and we have also learned how web applications work. We know the shortfalls of both approaches, and we understand the benefits of each. So it follows that tomorrow we would blend the two and discover a better way to design, architect, build, deploy and manage applications. It is my belief that the developers that build these applications will find themselves working for companies that are more likely to participate in global conversations. And the apps they build are the platform for participation - that's Web 2.0.
It doesnt have to be rich...but its better if it is. If its not rich, its only because it doesnt have to be - maybe it does just store photos, or aggregate blogs, how rich do we need that to be? But the underlying technology is the medium. It is in it's simplest and most pure form, a highly performant, massively scalable, sharable, pushable, pullable, combination of professional media and user-generated media.
Brand experience - Performance, expressiveness
Great design, talking celebrities, tactile audio events, personalized feature content, the fastest service editorial, maps, media, talking bios, anchor desks, 3d immersive worlds or environments, and seamless transitions and ONE loading screen, ONE time - its possible with RIAs. They just give you total control over how your brand reaches the world. You can customize applications in such a way that immerses the user in your world and if you do it right, you get immersed in theirs. By making subtle changes to the content, and constructive architectural changes and design tweaks to the experience, in very little time your audiences are viewing and interacting with your content on their terms.
And the good news is that your multimedia content becomes part of the experience instead of an extra feature, requiring yet another plugin and yet another interface to learn.
Because you have control over exactly what the user experiences, you can use that experience to make them part of the product or service experience. Incorporate multimedia, allow incredible amounts of comparison or customization, run on different devices, standalone apps and in the web browser so that they are seeing your product in a way they can't with your competitors.
Changing enterprise - business gets a new, improved interface that's realtime
New because it had an old one before and we could already use it. Not a new enterprise necessarily, although there are some good examples of that too, but a new face on business and a new way for employees to get their jobs done...and it's improved based on all the years of learning we have had - some of the best and brightest minds in the business have been working on this stuff for years now. Not necessarily software as a service, but definitely "Software is a service in the enterprise" - it both provides one and it enables many.
You only get a "better-than-desktop" experience to fly if it works better for IT to have it over the web because it provides a single point for upgrades. And as long as noone is giving up any control over their applications, that's okay, you are able to map the events and processes you need access to and the interactions take place more efficiently - no surprises, no random approaches and the workaround is the app, not beyond the walls of the app where IT cant do anything about it.
This is not really about web applications - these are powerful and robust full featured applications. Developers have control over every event, every keystroke, every action taken and fine-grained controls can be built onto every aspect of the experience and design Try anything - including things that aren't possible with traditional web applications. I have already seen this make for some very ugly interfaces, but I believe that it's also going to make for some absolutely mind-bending experiences.
Minor note, but you also print a lot less output with RIAs, because you inherently trust that the transaction is in the app...there's a lot less of a feeling that your work is gone in the cloud, and you aren't left praying that the interface will show you the same results again.
It's a big network - apps to the edge, on everything and offline
Kids in Japan. Ships in the arctic sea. Helicopters doing top-secret training. Ecologists monitoring endangered species behaviour....
The interface options are endless, the screen real estate is changing by definition and the the web is everywhere that they are - at least some of the time. And that spotty connection is enough to go on - your new web application can take advantage of this. RIAs take you beyond the connected web browser and into a range of devices and mediums.
By taking full advantage of the Internet, RIAs can be used to connect a living room or a community. You can get to it on your set top box or on your X Box. You can share with your son who has a PSP. Your network enables real-time collaboration and in the lack of network you can still provide for a great experience. RIAs have the potential to bring people from all over the world together - people make the internet, and RIAs can make it seem like those people are next to each other.
Go faster, use the blocks in the box and leverage the new programming models
The holy grail of RIAs is to write one set of code and have that code run on any device or computer in the world. As a development shop, you can have one code base and deploy that anywhere your users go. If you're a business then you can make sure your executives have your application whether they are on a plane with their PDAs or at their desk on their laptops.
RSS, micro formats are quickly becoming the building blocks of the web. They provide the invaluable content in easy to consume bits which means greater accessibility to content everywhere. RIAs are in a unique position to take this content and give users a great deal of control over it. RIAs free the building blocks from the confines of the web browser meaning much more potential for how we view and interact with content.
Let's have fun out there today...
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Elicitation
Started off on James Governor's blog this morning, with an interesting post about a series of events taking place in UK lead by James Stamper and got lead through his blog to a very interesting paper on Requirements Elicitation. Having recently implemented change policy, governance and SDLC at Corel, I was very interested to see this blast from the past - a pertinent reminder that we still face the same issues 14 years later and the human condition still prevails in IT.
Carnegie-Mellon's Michael G Christel and Kyo C Yang provide a brilliant and still relevant position as seen in the overview of the problem in the abstract of the paper:
"There are many problems associated with requirements engineering, including problems in defining the system scope, problems in fostering understanding among the different communities affected by the development of a given system, and problems in dealing with the volatile nature of requirements. These problems may lead to poor requirements and the cancellation of system development, or else the development of a system that is later judged unsatisfactory or unacceptable, has high maintenance costs, or undergoes frequent changes. By improving requirements elicitation, the requirements engineering process can be improved, resulting in enhanced system requirements and potentially a much better system.
Requirements engineering can be decomposed into the activities of requirements elicitation, specification, and validation. Most of the requirements techniques and tools today focus on specification, i.e., the representation of the requirements. This report concentrates instead on elicitation concerns, those problems with requirements engineering that are not adequately addressed by specification techniques. An elicitation methodology is proposed to handle these concerns.
This new elicitation methodology strives to incorporate the advantages of existing elicitation techniques while comprehensively addressing the activities performed during requirements elicitation. These activities include fact-finding, requirements gathering, evaluation and rationalization, prioritization, and integration. Taken by themselves, existing elicitation techniques are lacking in one or more of these areas."
Like it or not, agree or not with the methodology, you are engaged in requirements elicitation if you are in IT. I have to run to an ops meeting, but I am not stopping my rant on this yet. It strikes me that we have come a long way with Agility, but the bottom line is that if you don't start your journey facing in the right direction, then it will always take you longer to get there.
Now, where am I going?
Carnegie-Mellon's Michael G Christel and Kyo C Yang provide a brilliant and still relevant position as seen in the overview of the problem in the abstract of the paper:
"There are many problems associated with requirements engineering, including problems in defining the system scope, problems in fostering understanding among the different communities affected by the development of a given system, and problems in dealing with the volatile nature of requirements. These problems may lead to poor requirements and the cancellation of system development, or else the development of a system that is later judged unsatisfactory or unacceptable, has high maintenance costs, or undergoes frequent changes. By improving requirements elicitation, the requirements engineering process can be improved, resulting in enhanced system requirements and potentially a much better system.
Requirements engineering can be decomposed into the activities of requirements elicitation, specification, and validation. Most of the requirements techniques and tools today focus on specification, i.e., the representation of the requirements. This report concentrates instead on elicitation concerns, those problems with requirements engineering that are not adequately addressed by specification techniques. An elicitation methodology is proposed to handle these concerns.
This new elicitation methodology strives to incorporate the advantages of existing elicitation techniques while comprehensively addressing the activities performed during requirements elicitation. These activities include fact-finding, requirements gathering, evaluation and rationalization, prioritization, and integration. Taken by themselves, existing elicitation techniques are lacking in one or more of these areas."
Like it or not, agree or not with the methodology, you are engaged in requirements elicitation if you are in IT. I have to run to an ops meeting, but I am not stopping my rant on this yet. It strikes me that we have come a long way with Agility, but the bottom line is that if you don't start your journey facing in the right direction, then it will always take you longer to get there.
Now, where am I going?
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Pass the Beatz, Pastor Beatz
Posting on mix2r is a great way (brilliant idea, Duane and Matt) for musicians to share ideas, collaborate and get feedback on tracks, hacks, jacks and smacks. It feels funny to do it though - its not like you are just putting music out there to share. Instead you are asking for an audition with other musicians that are also interested in auditioning for you...something like that. I'll get used to it.
My favourite music: Music I have never heard before
Where to find it: Click a random link on mix2r
My favourite music: Music I have never heard before
Where to find it: Click a random link on mix2r
RAW data
Robert Anton Wilson has a blog. Not a big blog, but RAW Data is significant as a moment in time.
It's either a first for high-brow thinking or a first for low-brow posing/faking.
I know that we are all hoping it's real...now we need one of those Google verification tags that works on thought leaders.
It's either a first for high-brow thinking or a first for low-brow posing/faking.
I know that we are all hoping it's real...now we need one of those Google verification tags that works on thought leaders.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Noone cares what you think...
I hear this a lot in conversations around blogging, forums and general social computing studies. "Noone cares what I think, why would I do that...?"
I want to set the record straight on this. Noone cares what you want them to think. Everyone cares what you really think. Subtle? Obscure? Marketing diss?
Just be yourself. Really.
I want to set the record straight on this. Noone cares what you want them to think. Everyone cares what you really think. Subtle? Obscure? Marketing diss?
Just be yourself. Really.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Use case for Flex Data Services
I have been working on an interesting use case for Flex and Flex Data Services, that will build nicely into the recently announced Apollo runtime.
More and more products are focusing on in-product messaging, a pipeline for updates, upsells, upsets, uplevels, etc built into the product interface and then pumped full of sometimes useful, sometimes necessary and sometimes not - clickable marketing matter.
Assuming it is only a matter of time until this approach matures completely and usefulness is part of the usability, it seems to me that what we ultimately need is some way of pumping a series of messages, samples, updates, patches, etc into a local object that can be accessed by users in different ways, whether they are online or offline...hmmm
Given the richness of the Flash interface, the ability to build nice transitions and states into applications or widgets within applications, and the horsepower delivered by FDS to get all that data streaming out to the applications, whether or not it is being viewed in real time and the general productivity of the programming paradigm would position Flex well for stuff like this.
I know I should stop coming up with ideas that Adobe is not interested in focusing on - I had that same problem when I worked there, right DM? ;-) But it seems to me that this is a viable use case, and one that I am going to explore further for some future projects I see coming my way.
More and more products are focusing on in-product messaging, a pipeline for updates, upsells, upsets, uplevels, etc built into the product interface and then pumped full of sometimes useful, sometimes necessary and sometimes not - clickable marketing matter.
Assuming it is only a matter of time until this approach matures completely and usefulness is part of the usability, it seems to me that what we ultimately need is some way of pumping a series of messages, samples, updates, patches, etc into a local object that can be accessed by users in different ways, whether they are online or offline...hmmm
Given the richness of the Flash interface, the ability to build nice transitions and states into applications or widgets within applications, and the horsepower delivered by FDS to get all that data streaming out to the applications, whether or not it is being viewed in real time and the general productivity of the programming paradigm would position Flex well for stuff like this.
I know I should stop coming up with ideas that Adobe is not interested in focusing on - I had that same problem when I worked there, right DM? ;-) But it seems to me that this is a viable use case, and one that I am going to explore further for some future projects I see coming my way.
Friday, November 17, 2006
What is that guy doing with all those gears?
Have you seen the IBM ads made up in Flash with the guy figuring out integration by bouncing around, falling, flying and tumbling in turmoil through a whole bunch of rotating disconnected gears? Sorry I can't dependably link to the ad since it seems to be tracking my clickpath in some very strange ways.
I can't figure out what they are trying to tell me...I have done a lot of integration projects and I definitely don't remember feeling like I was bouncing through gears. I think I was actually bouncing through global services, support, manuals and help files, but they were not gears, did not spin well, and they definitely did not look the same or even appear to have much to do with each other from a pure shape perspective.
One of us is brain dead.
I know it's a Rational ad, so maybe it has something to do with the way former Rational developers were packaged out of the blue?!? Were all IT guys just given the gears?
I can't figure out what they are trying to tell me...I have done a lot of integration projects and I definitely don't remember feeling like I was bouncing through gears. I think I was actually bouncing through global services, support, manuals and help files, but they were not gears, did not spin well, and they definitely did not look the same or even appear to have much to do with each other from a pure shape perspective.
One of us is brain dead.
I know it's a Rational ad, so maybe it has something to do with the way former Rational developers were packaged out of the blue?!? Were all IT guys just given the gears?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
