Friday, November 20, 2009
Moving To Beehive
We are closing down this Blogger site and moving our thoughts and ideas to our own domain - you can find our thinking at Think It. Do It.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Google's Super Simple Home Page
I love simple things. I mean simple functionality and simple visually. Google does some things really right. And other things are not at all as simple as they could be. Sometimes their engineers dominate when their design team should have more influence. (Gmail and AdWords interfaces are both good example of this.) But when Google decided to update its home page, including a version with literally nothing but its logo and a search box, it really worked out well, in my opinion. If I'm going to use Google, I'm going there to do a search. If I want access to my Google Docs or Google Maps or GMail, I'll go directly to docs.google.com or maps.google.com or mail.google.com. One the main google.com page, just give me the search box, man! BTW, if you're not seeing this, just refresh your page and this should be the view, at least for a moment.
Monday, October 26, 2009
My Google Wave Invite Request
This is the request I just posted to Google. I've already made one request, but thought I'd try again:
I really really really want an invite. I've already filled this form out. And I'm sure this is just putting me at the end of the line. But maybe, just maybe, there's a human who will get this, and feel my sincerity and, in a moment of pure altruistic glee, send me an invite just 'cuz. Please, oh please? If it helps, I will devote my entire life to Google Wave - and possibly sacrifice my second-born child to you. (My first-born is approaching teenager-hood, so she's past prime sacrificing age...)
I really really really want an invite. I've already filled this form out. And I'm sure this is just putting me at the end of the line. But maybe, just maybe, there's a human who will get this, and feel my sincerity and, in a moment of pure altruistic glee, send me an invite just 'cuz. Please, oh please? If it helps, I will devote my entire life to Google Wave - and possibly sacrifice my second-born child to you. (My first-born is approaching teenager-hood, so she's past prime sacrificing age...)
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Restraint
We're redesigning our web site here at Beehive Media. It will be ready later this fall. As part of that process, we're going to meld this blog into the main site. And I'm going through this content to figure out what pieces of it to bring over to the new site. I'm noticing that I USE ALL CAPS AND EXCLAMATION POINTS TOO MUCH!! I get excited sometimes. I'm passionate about these things, which is why I write about them, even if it's not always that frequent. But I'll take the advice I sometimes give my daughter to "use your words" and describe my excitement rather than show it in CAPS. That is my job as a professional communicator, I suppose. But do forgive me if I sometimes relapse to my old ways.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Time Tracking Bliss
Do you need to track time for client work? Have you struggled to build your own tools, leverage existing Web 1.0 tools and/or overly complex project management platforms? Have you asked yourself, why can't SOMEONE get this right?!?!?
The time has come to declare a winner, and its name is Harvest. We just converted over to Harvest and I'm loving the web input and reporting, as well as the widget and iPhone app. While the reporting could be more robust and I REALLY wish the estimation was convertible into projects, and that we could estimate jobs using the same task lists as we track projects against, and that reporting showed estimated vs. actual....etc. It is BY FAR the most elegant, simple, quick and complete enough solution out there. Use it!
The time has come to declare a winner, and its name is Harvest. We just converted over to Harvest and I'm loving the web input and reporting, as well as the widget and iPhone app. While the reporting could be more robust and I REALLY wish the estimation was convertible into projects, and that we could estimate jobs using the same task lists as we track projects against, and that reporting showed estimated vs. actual....etc. It is BY FAR the most elegant, simple, quick and complete enough solution out there. Use it!
Friday, September 11, 2009
Poverty is Declining?
Who knew? World poverty is in decline as a percentage. Does this surprise you?
Friday, September 4, 2009
Simple Screenshot and Image Manipulation Tool
Here at Beehive Media we love simple solutions. I recently came across a fantastic example of simplicity and needed to share it quickly. If you ever need to create a screenshot of something on your computer, how do you do it? On a Mac, you just hold down CMD-SHIFT-3 or on Windows, you hit "Print Screen" to copy to your clipboard. Then you need to open Photoshop or something, paste, then manipulate the image. Photoshop takes awhile to open, eats up a ton of memory and for a quick and dirty image, is often not worth the trouble. In comes Skitch - a super easy way to take screen shots, mark them up, crop them, highlight things, write text on them, etc. And you can also use photos or any image from your hard drive. You can easily click and drag an image you've made into an email or post it to your personal Skitch page or any other site, via FTP, SFTP or to Flickr, etc. Great tool, easy and fast to use, etc. Thank you @ev for tweeting about it so I could discover this fantastic piece of software!
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Map Showing Failed States
Wow, this is really interesting. Not sure what it means - all of Africa, most of Asia and Latin America are in trouble, according to this. Wonder what this looked like 20 years ago?
Monday, August 31, 2009
Friday, August 14, 2009
Brand Redemption
Last night I experienced redemption. Not for myself, but from the other
side of the table...literally. But let me start at the beginning.
My wife and I ate at The White Barn Inn in Kennebunk, Maine, for our anniversary two years ago. The White Barn Inn is the only AAA Five Diamond, Mobil Five Star restaurant in New England. We're talking about the finest of fine dining, top notch service, a refined atmosphere, the works. Needless to say, our expectations were high.
Unfortunately, our expectations could not have been less adequately met. Briefly, the tuna carpaccio was served on a hot plate and was sliced so thin that it pretty much melted and had to be scraped off the plate nano-speck by nano-speck. The lobster bisque tasted bad and had a soggy fritter floating limply at the edge of the bowl. The lobster dinner had an ammonia flavor (a sign of bad lobster) that permeated the entire dish and made every morsel on the plate inedible. This is in Maine, which I have heard is the source of 90% of the world's lobster! We were so disappointed that we left before dessert was served, bringing it back to our hotel with us, where we were equally underwhelmed. My wife and I agreed to never go back, and were not shy about telling people of our experience.
My wife sent a disappointed letter to the White Barn Inn, expressing our dissatisfaction, and we assumed that was the end of it. But someone responded, offering us a gift certificate to come back and try them again. I try to keep an open mind, and even while this was happening, half-assumed their chef must have been on vacation that week and that it couldn't be that bad normally! So we accepted their offer and agreed to come back and try again.
Two years later, we finally had the chance. And our experience couldn't have been more different. Every course was perfectly executed - with sometimes delicate, sometimes kick-you-in-the-face (in a good way) flavors, beautiful presentation, aromas that hit you as soon as the food was delivered, the most perfectly cooked piece of fish I've ever had, etc. I'm no food critic, so I won't even try to describe it, though I will mention the roquefort mousse was indescribably delicious. (That one had a kick-you-in-the-face flavor!)
Anyway, this long post is appropriate here on Beenovation because it's about brand redemption. Beehive Media is a service business. We live and die by our reputation, as do so many of our clients. And we're not the cheapest option out there, like the White Barn Inn, so when we disappoint our clients, I think it stings that much more. This experience has reminded me that you can always accept and admit when things haven't gone well; you can always offer to do something about it; you can always do your best to redeem yourself. And if your audience is open to it, and honest with themselves, they will accept your genuine efforts to change outcomes.
This has also reminded me that at the core, every service business is really at least as much about delivering service as it is about executing on a deliverable. Good execution is assumed. More importantly, you must listen, understand and translate your client's vision, integrate it with your own vision, and make everyone feel as though their problems are being solved, and the experience is a pleasure all along the way. This has helped us for 15 years in business, and I expect that if we live up to these standards, it will help for another 15 years or more.
side of the table...literally. But let me start at the beginning.
My wife and I ate at The White Barn Inn in Kennebunk, Maine, for our anniversary two years ago. The White Barn Inn is the only AAA Five Diamond, Mobil Five Star restaurant in New England. We're talking about the finest of fine dining, top notch service, a refined atmosphere, the works. Needless to say, our expectations were high.
Unfortunately, our expectations could not have been less adequately met. Briefly, the tuna carpaccio was served on a hot plate and was sliced so thin that it pretty much melted and had to be scraped off the plate nano-speck by nano-speck. The lobster bisque tasted bad and had a soggy fritter floating limply at the edge of the bowl. The lobster dinner had an ammonia flavor (a sign of bad lobster) that permeated the entire dish and made every morsel on the plate inedible. This is in Maine, which I have heard is the source of 90% of the world's lobster! We were so disappointed that we left before dessert was served, bringing it back to our hotel with us, where we were equally underwhelmed. My wife and I agreed to never go back, and were not shy about telling people of our experience.
My wife sent a disappointed letter to the White Barn Inn, expressing our dissatisfaction, and we assumed that was the end of it. But someone responded, offering us a gift certificate to come back and try them again. I try to keep an open mind, and even while this was happening, half-assumed their chef must have been on vacation that week and that it couldn't be that bad normally! So we accepted their offer and agreed to come back and try again.
Two years later, we finally had the chance. And our experience couldn't have been more different. Every course was perfectly executed - with sometimes delicate, sometimes kick-you-in-the-face (in a good way) flavors, beautiful presentation, aromas that hit you as soon as the food was delivered, the most perfectly cooked piece of fish I've ever had, etc. I'm no food critic, so I won't even try to describe it, though I will mention the roquefort mousse was indescribably delicious. (That one had a kick-you-in-the-face flavor!)
Anyway, this long post is appropriate here on Beenovation because it's about brand redemption. Beehive Media is a service business. We live and die by our reputation, as do so many of our clients. And we're not the cheapest option out there, like the White Barn Inn, so when we disappoint our clients, I think it stings that much more. This experience has reminded me that you can always accept and admit when things haven't gone well; you can always offer to do something about it; you can always do your best to redeem yourself. And if your audience is open to it, and honest with themselves, they will accept your genuine efforts to change outcomes.
This has also reminded me that at the core, every service business is really at least as much about delivering service as it is about executing on a deliverable. Good execution is assumed. More importantly, you must listen, understand and translate your client's vision, integrate it with your own vision, and make everyone feel as though their problems are being solved, and the experience is a pleasure all along the way. This has helped us for 15 years in business, and I expect that if we live up to these standards, it will help for another 15 years or more.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Browsers, browsers, browsers
I've written about this before, but with the rise of Chrome and IE8, it deserves another post.
In the course of discussing the difficulties of coding for IE6 (again!), I looked up browser market share statistics.
This table at W3Schools.com is a great resource because it shows a 9 year trend.
Bad news for those tearing their hair out coding for IE6: It took over 4 years for IE5 to move from a 14% share to zero.
Good news for the same folks: IE8 market share is growing much faster than IE7's did (0 to 5.2% within 5 months compared to 0 to 2.5% for IE7 in the same amount of time).
Based on my experience with IE8, it's a much better browser than IE7. I noticed IE7, but I don't notice IE8. My colleague August tells me that "its javascript performance is weak compared to other browsers, but they could easily improve that." Indeed, he'd much "rather be complaining about javascript *SPEED* than rendering bugs and CSS omissions."
Chrome is also growing quickly - not as quickly as IE8, but still a good showing. It's above 5% now, too.
Firefox continues its steady climb (at 47.7% now), Safari holds steady (3%), as does Opera (2%).
The big story, however, is that IE7 and IE6 market share are dropping at the same time that IE8 and Chrome have emerged.
August tells me that Thursday, 13 July 2010 is the last day of support for IE6. I predict it'll be pretty much gone substantially before that.
In the course of discussing the difficulties of coding for IE6 (again!), I looked up browser market share statistics.
This table at W3Schools.com is a great resource because it shows a 9 year trend.
Bad news for those tearing their hair out coding for IE6: It took over 4 years for IE5 to move from a 14% share to zero.
Good news for the same folks: IE8 market share is growing much faster than IE7's did (0 to 5.2% within 5 months compared to 0 to 2.5% for IE7 in the same amount of time).
Based on my experience with IE8, it's a much better browser than IE7. I noticed IE7, but I don't notice IE8. My colleague August tells me that "its javascript performance is weak compared to other browsers, but they could easily improve that." Indeed, he'd much "rather be complaining about javascript *SPEED* than rendering bugs and CSS omissions."
Chrome is also growing quickly - not as quickly as IE8, but still a good showing. It's above 5% now, too.
Firefox continues its steady climb (at 47.7% now), Safari holds steady (3%), as does Opera (2%).
The big story, however, is that IE7 and IE6 market share are dropping at the same time that IE8 and Chrome have emerged.
August tells me that Thursday, 13 July 2010 is the last day of support for IE6. I predict it'll be pretty much gone substantially before that.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Are you a Talker or a Listener?
OK, it's sort of a Sophie's Choice. But I've been thinking a lot about what makes people share things about themselves on Twitter or Facebook that they might not shout across a subway car full of strangers. First, what is the basic personality trait that makes us want to expose ourselves at all? Second, what is the difference between what I might say semi-anonymously on the web vs. what I might say with attribution on the web vs. what I might say in line at Dunkin' Donuts. In fact, it's this last piece that intrigues me the most - the difference between what we share online vs. in the real world, but that's for a later discussion.
If you do a quick review of the Twitter topic #WhyITweet, you get an unsurprisingly large number of people who pretty much admit Tweeting because they like to talk. They are using a legitimate outlet for expression or they are pure narcissists. I won't attempt to assign a reason to it, but am just acknowledging the concept that some people just want to express themselves. But there is a smaller number of people who are doing other things - sharing and listening for trends, conversing with colleagues and strangers, promoting themselves, etc. In the end, though, my own experiences using Twitter seem to suggest that people who like to talk are more likely to use services like this.
OK, you might be thinking, "Duh, Bill, that's no huge insight." But I think it is. In the end, a platform like Twitter will only succeed if there are a lot of people who like to talk (or produce content) AND a lot of people who like to listen (consume content) and that there is a balance between the two. It doesn't have to be 50/50 but if a tree falls in the forest...or if you're Tweeting and no one is listening...
There is a big idea in this seemingly obvious idea and I'm still working on what it means and thinking of the right way to frame the questions to get to good answers. So I've created a poll on PollDaddy to ask this simple question and am curious to see the results. Please take this poll and help me to understand a bit more about the world.
If you do a quick review of the Twitter topic #WhyITweet, you get an unsurprisingly large number of people who pretty much admit Tweeting because they like to talk. They are using a legitimate outlet for expression or they are pure narcissists. I won't attempt to assign a reason to it, but am just acknowledging the concept that some people just want to express themselves. But there is a smaller number of people who are doing other things - sharing and listening for trends, conversing with colleagues and strangers, promoting themselves, etc. In the end, though, my own experiences using Twitter seem to suggest that people who like to talk are more likely to use services like this.
OK, you might be thinking, "Duh, Bill, that's no huge insight." But I think it is. In the end, a platform like Twitter will only succeed if there are a lot of people who like to talk (or produce content) AND a lot of people who like to listen (consume content) and that there is a balance between the two. It doesn't have to be 50/50 but if a tree falls in the forest...or if you're Tweeting and no one is listening...
There is a big idea in this seemingly obvious idea and I'm still working on what it means and thinking of the right way to frame the questions to get to good answers. So I've created a poll on PollDaddy to ask this simple question and am curious to see the results. Please take this poll and help me to understand a bit more about the world.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Web 3.0 / Social Web
Just viewed a very interesting interview with Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang, who just came out with his Social Media Report.
In this interview Owyang talks about 5 eras of social media:
1. Relationships - mature, e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.
2. Functionality - nascent, e.g., Facebook apps - but much more to do
3. Colonization - your whole experience is social, e.g, Facebook Connect
4. Context - your social persona provides information to marketers, hopefully a quid pro quo - changes way marketers measure their interaction with you, too.
5. Commerce - power to the people - group-designed products
The list and discussion are here.
Beehive has been thinking hard about issues like this, especially #4 - what happens when your social identity becomes ubiquitous? How do we encourage people to use social media?
Yes, now that Oprah is using Twitter, its visibility is high, but there's still not much return for many potential users.
This relates to browsers, too. Firefox has probably 340 million users. What if it became a social media platform? Click here to see an interesting article. Both Facebook and FF have apps associated with them.
As we design Web 3.0 sites, we'll be able to take advantage of all of this.
In this interview Owyang talks about 5 eras of social media:
1. Relationships - mature, e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.
2. Functionality - nascent, e.g., Facebook apps - but much more to do
3. Colonization - your whole experience is social, e.g, Facebook Connect
4. Context - your social persona provides information to marketers, hopefully a quid pro quo - changes way marketers measure their interaction with you, too.
5. Commerce - power to the people - group-designed products
The list and discussion are here.
Beehive has been thinking hard about issues like this, especially #4 - what happens when your social identity becomes ubiquitous? How do we encourage people to use social media?
Yes, now that Oprah is using Twitter, its visibility is high, but there's still not much return for many potential users.
This relates to browsers, too. Firefox has probably 340 million users. What if it became a social media platform? Click here to see an interesting article. Both Facebook and FF have apps associated with them.
As we design Web 3.0 sites, we'll be able to take advantage of all of this.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
How Brands Fail on Twitter - Twiagra Anyone?
I recently posted a query on Twitter searching for people from a certain company or two or three. I will protect the names here, though it would be easy enough to dig up that information, if you really wanted to look for it. The next morning (no problem there, I posted this in the evening East Coast time, didn't expect an immediate response) I received a tweet back from one of the target companies and two OTHER companies who said they were in the same space. All offered their help. Nice job, guys!
So, I responded to the two competitors outlining the need I have. I am requesting their business. I am describing my need. It's 140 characters, but hey, I'm doing what I can!
Meantime, later that same day, one of the other companies I mentioned in my original post starts to follow me on Twitter. "Hey", I think to myself, "this is good - they're the company that's offering the closest to what I want - can't wait to hear what they have to say!"
I wait and...........nothing. The company that followed me never sent me a message. So I thought, OK, I'll just reach out to them. I already tried emailing them through their web site (they don't list a phone number on their site) and never got a response. I'll try here. So I post three tweets explaining the situation.
The day gets away from me, like it always does, and I find myself checking TweetDeck at 5:30 or so. Lo and behold, of the four companies, all of whom are on Twitter, all of whom took some cursory action to reach out to me in response to a direct request, just one of them replied to my requests for information. And their answer? "Check out our site and let me know if it meets your needs." I asked for them by name. I've probably been to their web site before, no? Maybe it requires some engagement to really find out what I'm looking for.
This is a classic "failure to launch" moment. They're on the right platform, reacting to customers (sort of) but can't close the deal. Talk about Fail Whale!
The old cliche "it happens to everyone" just isn't true. Anyone have some industrial strength Twiagra?
So, I responded to the two competitors outlining the need I have. I am requesting their business. I am describing my need. It's 140 characters, but hey, I'm doing what I can!
Meantime, later that same day, one of the other companies I mentioned in my original post starts to follow me on Twitter. "Hey", I think to myself, "this is good - they're the company that's offering the closest to what I want - can't wait to hear what they have to say!"
I wait and...........nothing. The company that followed me never sent me a message. So I thought, OK, I'll just reach out to them. I already tried emailing them through their web site (they don't list a phone number on their site) and never got a response. I'll try here. So I post three tweets explaining the situation.
The day gets away from me, like it always does, and I find myself checking TweetDeck at 5:30 or so. Lo and behold, of the four companies, all of whom are on Twitter, all of whom took some cursory action to reach out to me in response to a direct request, just one of them replied to my requests for information. And their answer? "Check out our site and let me know if it meets your needs." I asked for them by name. I've probably been to their web site before, no? Maybe it requires some engagement to really find out what I'm looking for.
This is a classic "failure to launch" moment. They're on the right platform, reacting to customers (sort of) but can't close the deal. Talk about Fail Whale!
The old cliche "it happens to everyone" just isn't true. Anyone have some industrial strength Twiagra?
Monday, March 23, 2009
Growing List of Twitter Resources
Here's a list of Twitter tools and fun things. It is, of course, incomplete, as there are only so many hours in the day, and I do have a day job!
One trend I have noticed is the compilation of tweets by category of tweeter or tweet - executives, expletives, followers, top #followfriday recommendations, etc., etc.
This will be updated!
Download the PDF here. Right-click to save as a file.
One trend I have noticed is the compilation of tweets by category of tweeter or tweet - executives, expletives, followers, top #followfriday recommendations, etc., etc.
This will be updated!
Download the PDF here. Right-click to save as a file.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
IE6
Here's a great article - and comments - about "The Slow, Lingering Death of IE6."
The first commenter notes that IE6 compatibility can add 25% to the coding budget. I have found this to be too true.
That said, I still use IE6 on one of my computers, so that I can test sites for clients. Only when IE6 is truly dead will I feel that I can move on. Catch-22: then I'm part of the stats saying it's still alive. I wonder how many developers are in the same boat?
So we will continue to advise our clients to upgrade to IE7 (and then 8) and hope that IE6 will soon be a thing of the past.
The first commenter notes that IE6 compatibility can add 25% to the coding budget. I have found this to be too true.
That said, I still use IE6 on one of my computers, so that I can test sites for clients. Only when IE6 is truly dead will I feel that I can move on. Catch-22: then I'm part of the stats saying it's still alive. I wonder how many developers are in the same boat?
So we will continue to advise our clients to upgrade to IE7 (and then 8) and hope that IE6 will soon be a thing of the past.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and all that
I've been diving deep into social networking in the past weeks and learning a lot.
Twitter. The key to Twitter is that to be followed, you have to be informative, helpful or entertaining. Sure, people use it to market themselves, but self-indulgence just leads to "unfollow." I follow Stephen Fry (@stephenfry), who is very witty and tech-savvy. Also Lance Armstrong (@lancearmstrong) because of his cancer survivorship and leadership. He's also witty and informative. My husband wonders why I follow them. Because I can!
Twitter is at its beginnings. So we have opportunities here that we may not have later. To follow celebrities, to be in at the ground floor of something - but most importantly, to shape the community. Already, there are certain standards - like # to signify a topic and @ to signify a tweeter - indeed, the word tweet to signify the 140-character tidbits that are published - that have been generated by the community and adopted by Twitter.
The requirement of being informative, helpful or entertaining is also community-generated. All generate value, as corporations have learned. Twitter is the next generation of customer service (as well as being an example of "flat-earthedness").
Facebook. Okay. I am a baby boomer, and I am on Facebook. I am enjoying it - I'm in touch with old friends, and I get to see what they're up to. We get to have conversations (asynchronous, to be sure), but we're in more communication than we were before we were all on Facebook.
But I, and all my friends, have made Facebook uncool. See Time Magazine's article "Why Facebook is for Old Fogies." As recently as August 2008, blogger Nick O'Neill wondered if Facebook would go the way of Friendster.
The answer is YES. My 16-year-old niece thinks MySpace (which enthralled her for years) and Facebook are booorrrrring. She's moved on to Tumblr.
Tumblr. I'm just starting on Tumblr. And it looks like it's been commodified already. Wine Library's Gary Vaynerchuk is on Tumblr - with an ad asking for followers! But it allows a lot of creativity - not as structured as MySpace or Facebook. You can mash up different media, and so, I think to teenagers, it's a way to creatively express themselves. My brother, who is an artist, has a Tumblr account, too. So even though he's an old fogie, it speaks to his creativity, too.
So it remains - the same as it ever was. People like their friends, they like helpful people, they like useful information, they like to be entertained, they like novelty, and they like to be creative. What a great time we live in, that we have so many avenues for all of this.
Twitter. The key to Twitter is that to be followed, you have to be informative, helpful or entertaining. Sure, people use it to market themselves, but self-indulgence just leads to "unfollow." I follow Stephen Fry (@stephenfry), who is very witty and tech-savvy. Also Lance Armstrong (@lancearmstrong) because of his cancer survivorship and leadership. He's also witty and informative. My husband wonders why I follow them. Because I can!
Twitter is at its beginnings. So we have opportunities here that we may not have later. To follow celebrities, to be in at the ground floor of something - but most importantly, to shape the community. Already, there are certain standards - like # to signify a topic and @ to signify a tweeter - indeed, the word tweet to signify the 140-character tidbits that are published - that have been generated by the community and adopted by Twitter.
The requirement of being informative, helpful or entertaining is also community-generated. All generate value, as corporations have learned. Twitter is the next generation of customer service (as well as being an example of "flat-earthedness").
Facebook. Okay. I am a baby boomer, and I am on Facebook. I am enjoying it - I'm in touch with old friends, and I get to see what they're up to. We get to have conversations (asynchronous, to be sure), but we're in more communication than we were before we were all on Facebook.
But I, and all my friends, have made Facebook uncool. See Time Magazine's article "Why Facebook is for Old Fogies." As recently as August 2008, blogger Nick O'Neill wondered if Facebook would go the way of Friendster.
The answer is YES. My 16-year-old niece thinks MySpace (which enthralled her for years) and Facebook are booorrrrring. She's moved on to Tumblr.
Tumblr. I'm just starting on Tumblr. And it looks like it's been commodified already. Wine Library's Gary Vaynerchuk is on Tumblr - with an ad asking for followers! But it allows a lot of creativity - not as structured as MySpace or Facebook. You can mash up different media, and so, I think to teenagers, it's a way to creatively express themselves. My brother, who is an artist, has a Tumblr account, too. So even though he's an old fogie, it speaks to his creativity, too.
So it remains - the same as it ever was. People like their friends, they like helpful people, they like useful information, they like to be entertained, they like novelty, and they like to be creative. What a great time we live in, that we have so many avenues for all of this.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Aggregate & Identify Me, Please!
Remember way back when, when you had to sign up, register, fill out a profile, pick a user name and password and add "friends" and "link in" and.....over and over and over again at every site you visited? Whether a social networking site or an e-commerce site or just a web forum. Everywhere required unique identities and profiles. What a pain! Wait a second, that wasn't way back when, it's still like that now!
Well, OK, there are some solutions floating around out there that do a variety of things such as creating a single sign-on or aggregating your social media profiles or creating an "attention" profile that can be re-used. Here are some of the players:
OpenID
ClaimID
APML
Windows CardSpace
Higgins
Sxipper
FriendFeed
Profilactic
etc.
etc.
etc.
When will someone win this battle already? I need a single place to do my "social media'ing" and I need a single sign-on and a single profile to manage. Where is the innovation - or really, the perfect evolution - for this need? C'mon, it's 2009 already!
Now some of you may say, "OK, Bill, if it's such a need, why don't you fix it, tough guy? All talk and no action, you bum!" Well, that's fair. And all I can say is that we recognize there are some big players out there in the consolidated identity space (like OpenID) and the social media aggregation space (like FriendFeed) and we want ONE of them to win. Because then, our new big idea, which will be announced at a later date, will have a good partner to work with. Yes, this plea is totally self-serving - we have an identity/social media platform we're developing that will be SOOOOOO much better if someone can figure out the other stuff. And we're not interested in being that someone right now.
There you go - my rant for the day. Well, considering how often I write posts here, it could be my rant for the month.
Well, OK, there are some solutions floating around out there that do a variety of things such as creating a single sign-on or aggregating your social media profiles or creating an "attention" profile that can be re-used. Here are some of the players:
OpenID
ClaimID
APML
Windows CardSpace
Higgins
Sxipper
FriendFeed
Profilactic
etc.
etc.
etc.
When will someone win this battle already? I need a single place to do my "social media'ing" and I need a single sign-on and a single profile to manage. Where is the innovation - or really, the perfect evolution - for this need? C'mon, it's 2009 already!
Now some of you may say, "OK, Bill, if it's such a need, why don't you fix it, tough guy? All talk and no action, you bum!" Well, that's fair. And all I can say is that we recognize there are some big players out there in the consolidated identity space (like OpenID) and the social media aggregation space (like FriendFeed) and we want ONE of them to win. Because then, our new big idea, which will be announced at a later date, will have a good partner to work with. Yes, this plea is totally self-serving - we have an identity/social media platform we're developing that will be SOOOOOO much better if someone can figure out the other stuff. And we're not interested in being that someone right now.
There you go - my rant for the day. Well, considering how often I write posts here, it could be my rant for the month.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Google Earth...or is it Google Ocean?
Google innovates. Yes, it's true. They create, or buy companies that have created, some of the coolest things in technology. In case you didn't know.
I first saw the precursor to Google Earth (or maybe it was another company's attempt at something similar) in Davos at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in 2001. Yes, long before Google Earth ever appeared, I saw a mind-blowing application that allowed you to see satellite photography from around the world and zoom in to view just about anyplace on earth at very low altitudes. It was, and remains, one of the most awe-inspiring applications in technology, in my opinion.
And now, with the release of Google Earth 5.0, we get to take a peek at the ocean's depths. It would be silly to try to describe the experience of "flying" along the Mariana Trench when you can just download it and try it yourself.
My company, Beehive Media, created the first-ever Flash integration using the Google Earth API, which incorporated Flash, video and all kinds of rich media and interactivity overlaid on top of AND controlling Google Earth. I can't wait to experiment with 5.0 and start playing in the water!
I first saw the precursor to Google Earth (or maybe it was another company's attempt at something similar) in Davos at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in 2001. Yes, long before Google Earth ever appeared, I saw a mind-blowing application that allowed you to see satellite photography from around the world and zoom in to view just about anyplace on earth at very low altitudes. It was, and remains, one of the most awe-inspiring applications in technology, in my opinion.
And now, with the release of Google Earth 5.0, we get to take a peek at the ocean's depths. It would be silly to try to describe the experience of "flying" along the Mariana Trench when you can just download it and try it yourself.
My company, Beehive Media, created the first-ever Flash integration using the Google Earth API, which incorporated Flash, video and all kinds of rich media and interactivity overlaid on top of AND controlling Google Earth. I can't wait to experiment with 5.0 and start playing in the water!
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Picasa for Mac!!!
Beehive Media used to occupy space in the Boston office of IdeaLab! (the exclamation point was part of their logo - it's not that this sentence is so exciting.) IdeaLab! was an incubator, and one of its companies had created this great software program called Picasa. It was the best digital photo management software I had ever seen, by far. With incredibly intuitive interfaces, slick import management, fantastic and easy to use photo manipulation, for those who aren't Photoshop gods, etc., it blew away the competition.
At the time, I was primarily using PCs. But about three years ago I made the permanent switch to Mac (primarily because I can still run Parallels and run XP when I need to.) But I was so depressed to find that Picasa wasn't available on the Mac. So I tried other programs - free ones, paid ones, etc. I settled on iPhoto because it was free and didn't suck too bad. But I cursed it on a regular basis.
Lo and behold, the company was bought by Google a few years back. I figured, OK, now the Mac version HAS to come, but noooooooooo. But now, with the announcement at MacWorld, I can finally, thrillingly, use Picasa again. This product was an innovation (or an elegant evolution, I guess) at the time it came out and, amazingly, still owns the photo management space - kicking butt over anything I've seen. That is what I call a beenovation!
http://picasa.google.com
At the time, I was primarily using PCs. But about three years ago I made the permanent switch to Mac (primarily because I can still run Parallels and run XP when I need to.) But I was so depressed to find that Picasa wasn't available on the Mac. So I tried other programs - free ones, paid ones, etc. I settled on iPhoto because it was free and didn't suck too bad. But I cursed it on a regular basis.
Lo and behold, the company was bought by Google a few years back. I figured, OK, now the Mac version HAS to come, but noooooooooo. But now, with the announcement at MacWorld, I can finally, thrillingly, use Picasa again. This product was an innovation (or an elegant evolution, I guess) at the time it came out and, amazingly, still owns the photo management space - kicking butt over anything I've seen. That is what I call a beenovation!
http://picasa.google.com
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