Archive for April, 2007
Citizen Journalism
Link: ABC News Betters Citizen Journalism Tools.
Check out the comments above from Mashable.com. Although I applaud ABC News’ attempt to better connect with the citizen jounralist, something still feels a little unsatisfying about the whole thing. In my mind, there is value in keeping "professional" journalism and "citizen" journalism seperate…and I think that lies somewhere in the credibility of what is being reported (and I won’t say which way). Granted, I was impressed at the camera phone video from Virginia Tech students being aired on the networks. The up-to-the-minute coverage there was impressive.
1999 A.D. (Kitchen of the Future)
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| This is a great short film that the folks from Philco-Ford created in 1967 called "1999 A.D." Truthfully, it’s not that far off from reality – microwaves, frozen meals, calorie counting machines, refrigerators that keep track of what you have. Although, I’d say one of the last statements is arguable:
I guess it all depends upon how you define leisure. We most likely sit more than any other age before us, but that seems to be the result of being plugged into our work more too. By the way…I love how computer interfaces during this period are depicted as a set of knobs and unlabeled buttons. |
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New movie widget on spout.com
Spout, The Reeler and the Tribeca Film Festival
Spout and The Reeler are in cahoots. Spout will proudly be presenting ReelerTV during the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. ReelerTV is "a daily interview show promising a diverse range of guests from some of the festival’s most significant films." Cool stuff…as is the teaser video below (produced by Good Hard Working People).
Keep up with the festival by following Spout’s Tribeca Sitelet.
Lame Technology Mascots
Link: Gallery: Lamest Technology Mascots Ever.
Wired has published a gallery of the lamest mascots ever (could you even doubt that Clippy would have made the cut?…even his swan song video sucked). Quite frankly, I’m not particularly impressed with the list. Not that they aren’t all lame, but the point is: what mascot isn’t? Consider the following:
I don’t think it has been since the Pillsbury Doughboy that I have ever related to a mascot, but perhaps that’s another story.
Twitter For Marketing
Link: A Few Non-boring Ways to Use Twitter For Marketing.
Rohit Bhargava, VP of Interactive Marketing at Ogilvy Public Relations, posted some great suggestions on how to use twitter for marketing. More details from the link above, but here are the highlights:
- Capture the live pulse of an event
- Deepen a static experience through live commentary
- Facilitate collaborative watching
- Add a new dimension to promotions
As Pete Cashmore’s diagram of The Evolution of Cat Blogging suggests, twitter adds an element of immediacy to blogging…and what promotion couldn’t use a little kick like that?
Pixel Break
Link: pixelbreaker.
Josh Spear just turned me on to The Polar Clock on Pixel Breaker. Extremely cool and elegant…and available as a screensaver for both Windows and OS X.
2 seconds of fame…literally
I ran across a new video this weekend that highlights all of the great things that happened at TED2007. Hosted on the new TED site, it’s a 7-minute Taste of TED Documentary (hi-res version here) As you watch it, pay attention between 2:27-2:28. Yep, that right. That’s me in the lower left hand corner of the video…sitting right next to David Pogue of the New York Times. 14 minutes and 58 second to go. (Could I be a bigger geek?)
So, what are the kids up to then?
There was a bunch of interesting stuff happening at the Web 2.0 Expo last week. You can catch-up on the round-up of topics/discussions here:
But this is the stuff that I found the most interesting from a broad perspective: according to Bill Tancer, Hitwise’s General Manager, we’ve made all of the wrong assumptions when it comes to social networking demographics. As reported in InfoWorld:
There is a "surprising age distribution of Web 2.0 content
generators. Pundits always hold up Gen X and Y — born to the Web — as
the participatory generation. But — surprise — it turns out that
Wikipedia is built on the backs of participating 35-55 year olds. Even
YouTube skews older than you’d think, with most active uploaders
weighing in north of 35."
Huh. Interesting, but not surprising. I’m personally in that north-of-35 year-old group and find myself participating and contributing quite a bit to "community media" sites…and not just because my bread and butter falls within those ranks. I actually use these site to get work done – from LinkedIn to flickr to Spout to TED to anything with my Typepad account. To me, social community media sites (and the internet in general) have begun to deliver on the promise William Shatner made to me when I got my Commodore Vic-20 – to bring the world (work and relationships) to my computer screen. Well…he didn’t come right out and say that, but you could hear it in his voice…right?
UPDATE: More info reported from the Bill Tancer presentation at Church of the Customer.
Good customer experiences?
Every year, the members of the Customer Experience Councils (brainchild of Mark Hurst) hand out awards for companies that are "doing it right" – these are "organizations that understand the value and
unassailable competitive advantage of a good customer experience." Last years winners included: Google, TiVo, del.icio.us and Heifer International.
Below are the nominated companies. As customers, do YOU think they "do it right"?
Large category finalists (a billion or more in revenue):
- Newegg, an online e-commerce company
- USAA, a global financial services company
- Whole Foods Market, seller of natural and organic food
Medium category (a hundred million or more in revenue):
- Endeca, a software services company
- NYTimes.com, the online arm of the New York Times
- Shutterfly, an online photo service
- Thomas Pink, a retailer of shirts and other products
Small category (less than a hundred million in revenue):
- Angie’s List, an online ratings service
- Constant Contact, an e-mail marketing service
- The Motley Fool, a provider of investment and financial content
- Pandora, an online radio service
