November 2009
6 posts
Murdoch Proposes To Block Google
Rupert Murdoch recently talked with Sky News political editor David Speers on Sky News Australia. Murdoch has proposed that he wishes to block Google from indexing News Corporation sites. He goes on to say that he envisions a model where users would pay News Corp. for accessing news on his sites.
This seems like a desperate plea from Murdoch and it shows that Newspapers are on the decline. He...
“The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding.”
– Malcolm Gladwell
Losing Has Been Digitally Redefined
“Lose/Lose” is an Arts project conceived by Zach Gage, a digital and mixed media artist from New York. In a 1980s-style video game the application actually attacks the Mac platform, deleting users’ files as they progress through the level and shoot enemies. It is a ‘video-game with real life consequences’. Zach explains it in more detail on his website:
Each alien in...
“When we change the way we communicate, we change society.”
– Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody
Viral Marketing, Meet Social Media
Executive Director of the CA Milk Processor Board, Steve James, talks about the marriage of viral marketing and social media.
Social media and viral marketing are virtually interconnected (no pun intended). The success of social media — in allowing people to gather in groups of mutual interest and to share what’s meaningful in their lives — is really the foundation of viral communication. In terms...
The Viral Loop
I came across a post by Adam L. Penenberg, author of the Viral Loop, in which he talks about entrepreneurs who built multimillion- and billion-dollar businesses from scratch by ‘building virality’ into their products and services. He says:
At some point, as the number of users doubles, then triples, the company achieves what’s known as a “viral loop,” when the product spreads even if...
October 2009
18 posts
“Viral marketing is the concept, social media is the tool.”
– Curtis Silver
Tweets From Build. →
I collaborated with Elliott Kember to design and code a feed aggregation service for all Build, Belfast attendees. Build is a web conference running from the 3rd-6th of November with speakers such as Eric Meyer, Wilson Miner, Ryan Simms, Andy Budd, Mark Boulton and Tim Van Damme.
There are a number of workshops, events, films and meet-ups planned for conference which is part of Design Week. Head...
“The word of mouth, has gone global.”
– Cluetrain Manifesto
Who Owns Twitter?
I came across an article by Steven Levy on Wired entitled ‘Mob Rule! How Users Took Over Twitter’ which talks about the evolution of Twitter. Levy talks about how the Retweet wasn’t introduced by Twitter but by its users — Biz Stone called it “a great example of Twitter teaching us what it wants to be.”
A second example he went on to discuss was the introduction of the hashtag,...
Twitter Will Never Work, Needs Video
Ev Williams and Biz Stone took the stage at Startup School, where they took many questions form the audience. The guys were asked ‘How did you estimate the size of the market?’, Biz replied:
If anything we sort of thought it a waste of time, some of our engineers thought it was a waste of time, “If you add video to it maybe I’d work on it”.
Evan went on to say:
With Twitter there is...
Apple Graveyard
I came across The Apple Time Capsule Memorial Register. It is an ‘online memorial’ for Apple users who have had their Time Capsule die. The owners of the site hope to provide a reliable overview of the scale of the premature passing of Apple’s “server grade” backup solution.
It’s quite interesting how a small community of unhappy users have come together, quite like in the story...
Atto Masterclass
I was lucky to attend a Masterclass by the local ‘responsible design agency’, Atto. Atto have worked on a number of amazing projects, Your Name on Toast, Build-a-Beard and the Good Little Company to name just a few.
Heather, Karys and Peter are a small team of creatives that truly understand the secret of awesomeness. During the Masterclass they talked about how to create a...
tweasyJet.com →
tweasyJet.com is a forum for easyJet passengers to vent or praise easyJet’s services. It is an attempt to analyse how the Internet and social media is affecting how businesses and services have to adapt and engage with their customers.
The Power of Constraint
I have always believed that by creating and working within constraints allows me to be more creative with my output. A brief that is too open-ended can often hinder the project that I’m working on and I find that it is much better having limitations in place.
I recently read through Paul Constant’s review of Twitter in which he talks about how human inventiveness arises from the...
“The reason the internet is such a home to wow business models is that it’s...”
– Seth Godin
Branding Breakfast
Kellogg’s have announced that they are to laser etch their logo onto individual Corn Flakes in attempt to hit back at the accusations that they make cereal for other companies. I’m all for brand identity but I’m going to draw the line at eating logos for breakfast.
Source: Daily Mail
Mapping the Internet
I came across Bill Cheswick and his work whilst listening to Clay Shirky. Bill undertook the mammoth task of mapping the Internet coloured by IP addresses and they turned out to be visually stunning pieces of design.
“Group action just got easier.”
– Clay Shirky
Kashiwa Mystery Cafe
Kashiwa is a cafe is found in Japan. It’s just a normal cafe but when you order and pay for something instead of getting what you ordered you get what the previous person ordered. It’s an interesting idea for the more adventurous among us. The ‘rules’ are:
Let’s treat the next person. What to treat them with? It’s your choice.
Even if it’s a group of...
“Positive emotions broaden people’s thought-action repertoires, encouraging...”
– Barbara Fredrickson & Thomas Joiner
“If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else...”
– Dr. Hunter S. Thompson