Big Ideas

Corporate content pay walls suck..

Because I wish I could share this quick piece from the WSJ on brain activity and brand interaction with all of you. But I can't. Yeah, I might not have that many readers and yeah, I might only send them like 10 pageviews, but that's 10 more than they would have had.

There's got to be a better way to sort out this paid content / free content sharing conundrum. Now I can't engage you all (or the 5 of you who somtimes comment.. love you guys!) in a conversation about the importance of brands. We can't chat about whether or not they'll decrease in importance or increasingly matter (as the article seems to imply). No, all I can do is rant about it.

Blech.

 

 

Technorati tags: brands and brain activity, WSJ paid wall, walled garden of content, sharing, idea proliferation

Guess who made a witty, viral and effective long video ad??

C'mon, take two guesses....

 

Apple?

 

Google?

 

Hmmm...

 

 

Anyone Guess that one? Now go check out www.powertogether.com

I think this is very smart :)

 

Technorati tags: microsoft, office 2007 ads, windows vista ads, viral video, viral marketing

A few quick links of interest for today

They don't think this makes sense but I believe it has real potential. In fact, I was trying to make this point in a post several months ago (Where'd all the mallrats go?)

http://mashable.com/2006/11/24/myspace-store-could-make-billions/

 

Interesting data from CBS, saying that their viewership has increased due to sharing more of their content on YouTube. The thing is that I'm not sure that YouTube is the only reason this is happening. It's winter folks. What happens in winter? You stay inside more and yup, you guessed it, you watch MORE tv. Oh, and guess what else we need to keep in mind? Data issues. Remember that estimates of viewership for tv are still just that, they're estimates. Often made by viewers in a journal. Real high tech. Real accurate...

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=51543&Nid=25370&p=323630 

 

Wal-Mart forgets to keep its doors open... It's 2006 and the world's largest retailer (and operator of the 7th most popular online retail destination) can't keep up with traffic demands? Something's wrong with this picture. And you know what else bugs me? Wal-Mart says that it's November same-store sales number is going to come in 0.1% lower than last year and the market shits the bed. I get it, WMT never has a y-o-y decline. But hey, Mr. Market, you can't focus on just one potential real-time data point and then up and puke when WMT has a hiccup. Stupid sheep..

http://money.cnn.com/2006/11/27/technology/walmart_website/index.htm?postversionfiltered=2006112707

 

Technorati tags: social digital commerce, online mallrats, media consumption, YouTube and CBS, Wal-Mart.com outage

The power of the mind

The other night I was chatting with my friends Sylvia and Kim (ok, more like drunkenly philosophizing.. but those are just details) about creating personal change. More specifically, we were talking about creating competition with yourself, a topic which I'll write more about as a separate topic. As we were talking, I brought up something that I often remind myself of when I'm lacking motivation or think I've hit a wall:

One of the truly amazing things about us humans is that we have such powerful brains that we can truly change ourselves, just by thinking the change.

(Think about that for a moment..)

So, in that vein, by way of Evan Williams, is this tremendous post from Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip. It's surprising, powerful and really does a terriffic job of illustrating the power of the mind. Enjoy

 

 

Technorati tags: power of the mind, creating personal change, scott adams

Some hyperbole, some decent facts..

This article on personalization/recommendation software on CNN.com takes the increasingly common "everything is going to change!!!" approach to discussing what is a pretty interesting area. I fundamentally believe that personalization will have a huge impact over the long run, but there are a few things that this article kind of glosses over:

• So yes, if something could look across all of my actions online, it'd be great (privacy concerns aside for a moment, please). But when everyone working in the space is trying to come up with their own silo'd solution, what's the likelihood of that happening?
• The story's main plot line centers around two [apparently] social savants, Kuhlke and Geitgey. While it makes for a great "I wonder if they're right?" narrative to the story, what these guys do is basically the antithesis of the thrust of article. It doesn't scale. They don't get to observe people in the diner every day and then spit out an answer. Nor does it cross cultural differences. So I'm left thinking, "Were they just a metaphor for how this technology could work?"
• They also talk about Max Levchin, who says he is building a "machine that knows more about you than you know about yourself." Here's another angle that deserves more discussion: We don't know ourselves. The truth of the matter is that I am incredibly focused on figuring out what's important to me, what I value, where I'm going. But I still don't know. Sometimes I need something incredibly out of the norm to present itself as an opportunity (say, picking up and flying to St. Thomas on 48 hours notice) before ever contemplating it as something within my field of interests. So, when we think about building personalization, to what extent are we building an ever-narrowing definition of ourselves? It's important that we have opportunities to try something that no one, not a computer, not ourselves, could guess we'd be interested in based upon our past. There's a lot more here, so you can expect that I'll be bringing this up again.

In any case, it's a light piece on the topic, serves as a good entry point into this area and if you're interested in talking about this some more, shoot me an email or let's chat in the comments. I can already tell that you want to :)

 

Technorati tags: personalized portals, personalization, recommendations, user ratings, user feedback, indipity, user data, data transportability

PS3 vs. Wii web commercial

Now this is funny.. It's not even clear to me that Nintendo had anything to do with it. Added bonus: Apple gets secondary effects from its initial Apple vs. PC marketing campaign. Not bad at all huh?

You own what??

Over a couple of cocktails, my good friend Jeff and I discussed copyrights, trademarks and patents. I know, fascinating stuff right - wish you could have been there? But we're both Pomona dorks and he's a lawyer, so...

Anyhow, we ended up getting tangled in the mess of ownership and market definitions that just is too hairy for most sober brains, much less one that's 2 shots and 4 beers in...

So anyhow, that's how I got to finding these two pieces and finding them pretty interesting, in fairly divergent ways:

-This piece on copyright really takes the stance that Silicon Valley is full of thieves making money off of the works of others (mostly Google, they say). I've got to say, Adam Lashinsky, you sound like you're whining. I'm not totally set in how I think about the issue of copyrights and ownership of IP, but I don't believe it's terribly constructive to complain in the fashion that many of these "owners" do. They tend to basically say, "Look, we own it. You've figured out how to increase the ways in which it's being consumed, but we're not making money, so we'll sue you." That's a ridiculous approach.

A much more constructive approach would be to say, "You know what, we're just not as innovative about increasing our distribution and tapping into consumer needs as fast as we should be. Thank you for showing us this new stream of desire. Let's work together to determine the best way to obtain some value for the consumption that this drives."

Pundits, blogges, executives are all saying this and they're right: this is the Age of the Consumer. The choices available to each and every one of us are massive and they're growing every day. If you don't want to be left out in the cold, irrelevant and penniless, you better figure out what consumers want and serve that need. Plugging your ears and shutting your eyes while you send out the lawyers is NOT going to cut it.

-So, that brings me to the second article, which I just saw today in Wired, about how Second Life is dealing with copyright problems. This sounds more correct to me. I don't know that it'll get us all the way to the right solution, but giving the tools to the creators to better identify what they've created, giving the community at large the option to self-police and basically making this a community challenge should change the game. The truth is that there is always going to be some amount of "theft", digital or otherwise. But some of that "theft" creates value, by creating interest. And some of that "theft" comes at a real cost to society. But draconian enforcement of DRM and legal battles isn't going to be the best way to solve the problems while maintaining the robustness of the creative community. Second Life will be a fascinating world to follow for many reasons, but I think this copyright issue might be the most interesting contribution it brings to us all.

 

Technorati tags: Second Life, copyright law, digital rights management, Age of the Consumer, community self-policing

Uh oh, here we go.. posting overload

Several folks have noted that I haven't written in well over a week (yes, yes, I do listen when you say so..). I only have excuses, really.. Very busy with work. Having to write/create a lot during the day takes it out of me in the evening so, as a result, I haven't actually finished a post in a while.

But, the bad news for you, my loyal readers (all 15 of you, thank you!), is that now that I've basically ported all of my drafts over to Windows Live Writer (seriously, if you're blogging, you HAVE to try this out, it's pretty fantastic) I'm going to go a little nuts. I expect by the end of the weekend to have up no fewer than 6 posts. So, keep that in mind: when you're leaning back in your chair, unable to move b/c you've eaten far too much turkey you'll have something to read and also put you to sleep :)

So, here's a nice little nugget to kick it off: Apparently Bill O'Reilly doesn't like people who are out of touch with reality. No no, he doesn't mean his own viewers.. but oh, wait, he kind of does, since he disses the iPod, even though he sells his podcasts.

Of course, the thing that REALLY cracks me up about this is this quote from the idiot:

Basically what you have is a large portion of the population, mostly younger people under the age of 45, who don’t deal with reality - ever. So they don’t know what day it is; they don’t know temperature it is; they don’t know what their neighbor looks like. They don’t know anything… because they are constantly diverted by a machine. Now what this does is it takes a person away from reality because they’ve created their own reality…

Hmmmmmmmm. He doesn't want people to be diverted by a machine?

"All right viewers at home, turn off that damn TV and stop watching me! And don't even think about watching me just to reinforce your own wacky opinions. No no, I know I've been denying it for years, but really, you only listen to me because I spout some crap that you already agree with and I get you angry. So here's the deal: turn me off. Don't even listen to my radio show. Go out there and socialize! Find out for yourselves that people aren't nearly as evil as I say. Laaaaaaaaaaaaaate."

No wonder he used to host Inside Edition :)

Technorati tags: Bill O'Reilly, iPod bashing, videogames are ruining society, the O'Reilly Factor, Inside Edition, idiot

This gets my brain whirring...

Yes, that's right, I said whir. As in, my brain starts sounding like an overly taxed computer right now as I play around with the tech preview of Microsoft Photosynth

Take a few moments and check it out for yourself. Note, for right now, it only works on IE.

Quick thoughts:

1. Boy, my camera phone just got more useful.
2. I'll end up taking a LOT more pictures, as this will help me piece them together and basically give a more complete picture of where I've been and what I was doing.
3. Being able to annotate, comment, narrate or otherwise mash this up with other content will let me actually "show and tell". Photoblogging is cool because I can just share images and you can pick up on what I was doing. This takes that to another level.
4. I haven't even begun to think through the advertising capabilities here, but damn.. this kind of interface for the targeting and messaging components you could enable... Pretty damn cool.
5. This + geotagging + community equals much better than Google Earth or MSFT Virtual Earth, in my mind. Let me explore places from a personal perspective. Let me link through to people's comments on those places, feelings, tips, etc

Ok, must get back to work, too many ideas here. What're yours?

 

Technorati tags: Microsoft Photosynth, photoblogging, sharing your digital life, advertising ideas

Interesting take on Windows dominance

Well now, I hadn't really thought of the regulations in this way, but the logic here makes sense

Thought it was worth passing on, especially in light of the recent announcements that Vista will be launching on time. Scoble's got an interesting and personal take on that stuff here. This is a great example of why I love blogging - you get to see his perspective and the personal challenges that he struggles with in a seemingly innocuous situation.

Technorati tags: Scoble, Vista, Windows dominance vs. Linux, Government regulation of MSFT, Microsoft