I am enjoying playing with StumbleUpon at the moment. Its a toolbar that you can download to your web browser which allows you to go on a magical mystery tour of websites on subjects you are interested in. The websites included on StumbleUpon have been recommended by other users and you can give them a thumbs up and thumbs down. It’s a nice way of getting to see something new.
I went to the Online information conference today. I had the pleasure of listening to a key note speech by Jimmy Wales of wikipedia. It was irreverent but relevant and I think it set the tone for the conference. It was good to here the latest wikia developments too - I’m particularly interested in the Search functionality discussed. I now know where to go for all my Muppet information, which is very important to me as I am a child of the 70s!
I went to three other sessions today and I am still processing the presentations saw. I always view the Online Information Conference as a way of gaining some new thinking. One thing I am interested in is the fact that everyone seems to be developing a community. This is an approach that obviously has some interesting applications for some organisations more than others. As a consumer of web services however, I am not sure whether I would sign up to every community out there. Online Information sensibly tried to use the existing flatform of Facebook to engage its community.
For me Web 2.0 is now about creating distribution models beyond branded monolithic websites. I am much more interested in how I can plug information together into something that works for me at home and at work.
It will be interesting to see what transpires tommorow.
We’re watching The Thing - it is an 80’s Carpenter classic, but the effects are amusing now. I could think of a convoluted analogy between The Thing and the way in which some professionals seem to be adapting to Web 2.0, but I’m enjoying some wine at the moment.
Well I went to AOP widget forum today.
First up was Ivan Pope from Snipperoo with a 101 on Widgets and some dos and dont’s. It all boiled down to the fact that if you are expecting people to download a widget, then it has to be relevant and/or useful. At the end of the presentation he was quizzed on the legal issues surrounding widget distribution. The common sense answer was to practice good widget hygiene. Ivan will be hosting the www.widgetygoodness.com conference in Brighton next month.
Next up was a chap from ITV - Richard Waterworth. He had some interesting case studies on ITV.com - Belle de Jour. Their audience segmentation was interesting too - food for thought. There even seems to be a market for Coronation Street and Emmerdale widgets. Interestingly ITV.com don’t have any immediate plans to widgetise Friends Reunited at the moment.
David Ashbrook from Vodafone gave some insight into their thinking on Mobile widgets. It doesn’t sound as if there is anything immediate on the horizon with web widgets. I was interested by the continuation of the Vodafone as a content provider - it seems a bit of a throw back to the world of WAP. I shuddered at the idea of them sending me adverts, but then if they are promising a Google style free phone then I might tolerate a few ads. No answer as yet to the multiplatform testing issues associated with mobiles though so I suspect that their vision of an widget integration on the ‘desktop’ might be a little way off despite the huge mobile phone take-up.
Finally was Fergus Burns from nooked with more really useful and down to earth advice. He gave some stats on the Big Brother Facebook campaign which were pretty encouraging. It did enforce the whole - this has to be useful or relevant to my audience angle. The Open Social movement seems to suggest that widgets shouldn’t just come in a Facebook flavour.
It was a useful session and certainly helped me to think about how we should be looking at sharing information and resources in the future for best effect. I think there still remains a challenge in making these widgets profitable. I worry about the reliance on advertising - I do think that our audiences are becoming more and more advertising adverse . I don’t feel overt old style advertising sits very comfortably with the whole Social Media scene although there are undeniable opportunites to those who are able to tap in to interest groups and fans.
It is also my experience as a user that people often pick up and drop widgets on a whim - (apart from RSS feeds from essential sources). There is certainly something fun about trying something new so I think some of the challenges are about creating cost effective emphemera.
So it’s that time of year again. The Online Information information Conference 2006 starts tomorrow.
I attended one of the seminars (part of one anyway) on social networking. It was interesting. Lloyd Davis chaired the session. He kept it open and allowed the delegates to decide the subject matter they wanted to cover - action learning style. The discussion was interesting. It did make me think more about what I wanted to obtain from the conference.
I’m most interested in how social media is being used - beyond the sites we are all far too familiar with. I use blogs and flickr and other social networking tools as an individual. Its great for individuals wanting to network for either social or career purposes and also for campaigning. I want to see how these technologies are being used by companies and organisations. It would be nice to have some new examples other than the same old, same old. From looking through the conference proceedings, it looks as if there will be just that. It will be interesting to see what will be presented.
Anyway, today I left the seminar with one of Lloyd’s Flickr Moo cards - I’ve got one with an eye on it. it made me think maybe the Moo cards could be like top trumps or a trading game. Its a move away from the bland identikit business cards of American Psycho.
It always surprises me the conversations that people have on their mobile phones on trains. This morning there was a lady sitting next to me discussing rather confidential HR type stuff which was clearly audible to everyone on the carriage. I have also heard people divulge credit card information and security details.
There was one particularly memorable journey between Paddington and Bristol where a lady was discussing the intimate details of her florid personal life. As you may imagine the whole carriage went silent and the lady in question said rather self conciously to the listener - ” I’ll have to call you back later as the whole carriage is earwigging.” There was a palpable sigh of disappointment from her audience.
Similarly, I have seen people marking examination papers, reading documents marked confidential (not that I was looking of course) and discussing business strategy with colleagues face to face.
Its interesting because both individuals and organisations get uptight about blogging and what can and can’t discussed, but the same issues often apply to other forms of communication ….
I keep coming across Sitepal advertisments online. http://www.oddcast.com/sitepal/
Apparently, its meant to ‘enrich the user experience and increase sales’. On face value it sounds like a really neat idea to include an animated shop assistant to talk to your customers.
But having heard the ads ’enrage users and decrease sales’, seems closer to the mark IMHO. The adverts are driving me mad at the moment. I have switched the sound off on my PC.
Maybe, I’m just tooooo old.
(The name ’sitepal’ makes me think of its pronunciation in a broad Glaswegian accent for some reason).
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/08/22/712830.aspx
It sounds as if the Microsoft IE 7 development team are *really* trying to improve their CSS2.1 compliance. Hurrah!
This video clip on YouTube seems to be doing the rounds at the moment.
The bit that spoke volumes was the piece at the end, where the Executives in their ivory towers aren’t sure whether to blog back or not. “What would be the point?” Quite!
This Web 2.0 clip, also on You Tube by jutecht , also interested me. Although I found it annoying, it did begin to make me wonder whether what is popularly being defined as Web 2.0 technology is of any relevance to organisations or companies. His comparison of the Kodak photo processing website (Web 1.0) to Flickr (Web 2.0) seemed to infer that Flicker was the only way forward. Personally, I don’t feel that the advent of Flickr makes the Kodak site obsolete. Both have their place and distinct purpose. Also I wasn’t convinced by his conviction that these collaborative technologies make web design obsolete. Arguably the explosion of web content, makes good web design even more vital, even if in the end, those creating content have no web design knowledge.
Web 2.0 keeps coming up in conversation. I had a good chat with friends about it the other night.
I’m a cynic. This web 2.0 buzz that has been zooming round and round the industry through magazines, journals and conferences like an irritating gnat hasn’t really bitten me yet.
I’ve been working in an online world since 1996. Even back then we could see the internet evolving quicker than the marketers could make up a snappy acronym. The internet was no longer for academics, but also for business and home users who could afford a home computer. Media convergence was assumed, although the technology wasn’t quite there yet. Any company worth its salt had to have a wizzy website, preferably with ecommerce, which meant that developers came up with increasingly sophisticated ideas and ways of burning budget. Investors ploughed money into .dot com this and that, throwing caution to the wind. The “information superhighway” began to develop virtual tail backs because websites were developed that were so graphic and application rich that those modems and the communications network throttled access speeds. For some users the world wide web became the world wide wait …and then the dot come bubble burst. The web was killed by its own hype.
At around this time Tim O’Reilly and friends came up with the idea of web 2.0 which now seems to be adopted widely by internet marketers across the globe.
I can see how trying to formalise this progression of technology and approach into something more academic and investor friendly helps to reenervate internet business and that’s really helpful, but packaging it almost as a new release has clearly confused things a bit. The fundamental concepts of the www have not been superceded, we are simply finding different means of achieving them.
From my perspective, the web is continously evolving. At the heart of any successful commercial internet enterprise is still thought, organisation and adoption of technology relevant to the business needs, for all the user collaboration, social networking.
I guess what has truly changed is the volume of people now online throughout the world and this was what we were aiming for back in 1996. Those without computers are either unable to afford them, or so stubbornly luddite that they don’t want them. The needs of both user groups are perhaps being tuned out by big internet business. It leaves me wondering what will happen if more of our daily routine, education, information and entertainment gets delivered exclusively online.
The saga of Mumsnet v. Gina Ford has stirred up the debate on Freedom of Speech online. Gina Ford, a parenting guru (without her own children) seems to have objected to some of the comments made on the Mumsnet Bulletin Board. Mumsnet appear to have pulled the offending posts in accordance with their own board rules, but Gina Ford seems to be pushing to have Mumsnet closed down. Cynics have suggested that Ford, who has just set up her own parenting website is trying to wipe out the competition.
Much of the press seems to have picked up on this, including The Guardian, who have set up a channel of their Comment is Free blog to which Justine Roberts of Mumsnet is contributing. Whilst any website worth its salt should moderate its boards carefully to remove defamatory and offensive posts, it seems unfair that they should be shut down because they allowed the posts in the first place. It will be interesting to see what transpires next. If Gina Ford is successful, the future of freedom of speech online looks bleak.
In the meantime, one is left wondering whether Gina Ford anticipated the level of coverage this is getting and the sympathy that Mumsnet is receiving.
