Web 2.0

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TedGlobal 2009 Day 2 Session 1

July 23, 2009 in Social web, User experience, Web 2.0, internet by Stephen | No comments

Thanks to the very lovely Wieden+Kennedy, who kindly dedicated one of their  spanky (new?) auditoriums to screening a live stream from the TedGlobal 2009 conference, I and a few other LBi / ex-LBi folk enjoyed the first session from TED’s seminal conference series. Some highlights:

  • Jonathan Zittrain began the day by talking about random acts of kindness, and the potential for the simplifying things by removing some of the rules. He gave the example of a road crossing that had been overhauled, and traffic controls removed. Accident rates dramatically dropped. There are obvious learnings for people that design interaction…
  • I learned that Jimmy Wales didn’t originally intend Wikipedia to be quite so altruistic. I love stories like that (see: Flickr). His first intention was to develop a far more traditional encyclopaedia called ‘Newpedia’, in which experts proved their credentials before being invited to write articles.
  • In an interesting contrast to many social media commentators, Evgeny Morozov suggested that a more networked and contributing populace might actually help many totalitarian regimes (see Mashable’s guide to following the Iranian elections) create open source intelligence. “The KGB used to torture people for this information, now it’s all online!”
  • Asa Raskin’s demo of Ubiquity, an approach to using natural language to carry out tasks on the web that would currently demand a high level of effort. He gave the example of translating a block of text within a web page by selecting a paragraph and typing ‘translate this’ – and because the user’s context (language, intention) is already known, the tool can instantly carry out the action.
  • And finally, Rory Sutherland’s inspired talk on creating value from intangibles. And diamond shreddies had the audience in stitches…

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Dipity: a great execution of social time

January 2, 2009 in User experience, Web 2.0, flickr, twitter by Stephen | No comments

FirefoxScreenSnapz001.jpg

Having spent quite a lot of the last two years thinking about timelines, Dipity appears to be a fantastic tool for playing with your social activity across a timeline. The site also allows you to view your activity in other ways, including a map view or a flip-book.

Nice…

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Reputation…or…history?

November 4, 2008 in Community, Community2.0, Social web, Web 2.0, internet by Stephen | No comments

Interesting piece that positions traditional views of reputation against a sense of history. In a world where everything is increasingly recorded, it asks if this is more important than an ephemeral sense of someone’s worth. Facts versus ‘opinion’…

The Cult of the Amateur Professional

November 3, 2008 in Social web, Web 2.0, flickr, twitter by Stephen | No comments

It seems my return to blogging is out of time. The blogosphere is now rife with professional bloggers, online magazines and long-form writers, according to Wired. Instead it’s much easier to post pictures to Flickr and send Twitter updates.

True ‘dat.

But I guess it depends what you want or need out of writing in public…and if audience size ain’t your prerogative or you’re not eking out a living from your bloggy skills then what the hell. It’s not gonna stop me, I tell you…

UPDATE: Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 seems to point the same way, although it’s interesting that it backs up blogging as being a more reflective approach to writing than many of the upstart microblogging tools allow.

I agree – blogging for me has always been about the ritual of deepening my knowledge in a particular issue. It forces you to critique, to have a position and to enter the conversation…assuming that you have an engaged audience, of course. Otherwise you’re blowing smoke into a gale…

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Google's Friend Connect

May 13, 2008 in Community, Social web, User experience, Web 2.0, digital, internet by Stephen | No comments

So now Google jumps into the fray with their Friend Connect, a universal profile that will allow people to maintain one single profile across a number of different social sites. This concept has been talked about for ages now, and I guess it’s good that we’re seeing it come into fruition, with a number of other high profile sites such as Facebook and Myspace making similar plays.

It’s all about data portability, and that has to be a Good Thing, but I really do wonder how each of these sites intend to capture those ‘first use’ users that haven’t stepped into the social web world? Surely the valuations of all the major social players are based on the numbers of people registering with them, their data, and the friends that they bring with them – and as such, are we going to see a shift in how we measure their success on the back of this?

Via: Mashable

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Brands becoming porous

May 1, 2008 in Business 2.0, Social web, User experience, Web 2.0, business, customer experience, digital, internet by Stephen | No comments

Hot on the heels of my post about My Starbucks Idea, I thought I’d share a couple of pieces of Brand 2.0 love that I’ve come across recently:

  • The church of co-creation and community, Communities Dominate Brands: go here for some deep insight into how some companies are recognising the (well-documented) need to get closer to their customers, and embed them into their processes.
  • Understanding what co-creation actually means: by Corante.

I’m starting to think of brands as being porous – for the reason that the word ‘porous’ implies a flow into something, but in a gradual, slow-but-sure way. It’s not like most large businesses move (to use Tom Peters’ phrase) at the speed of light, and yet they’re waking up to the fact that they have to constantly shift and adapt to the changing needs of their customers. So…porous.

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Some updates to the Multimap web site

April 11, 2008 in London, Mapping, User experience, Web 2.0, internet, mashup, microsoft, multimap by Stephen | 1 comment

Multimap web site displaying Tate Modern in Bird\'s Eye view

The team here at LBi have been working with Multimap to make improvements to the site, and start the job of integrating with Microsoft’s Live Search product. It went live yesterday, and among the improvements are:

 

  • 45-degree angle high resolution photography – aka ‘Bird’s Eye’
  • we’ve tweaked the route planner so that it displays within the main panel of the interface rather than being cramped into a ‘palette’ on the left-hand side of the screen; additionally we’ve introduced more realistic signage to help users scan long lists of instructions
  • you can now find a business through Multimap – putting them in the local search market; 

 

Read the rest of this entry »

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Multimap honoured

April 10, 2008 in Mapping, User experience, Web 2.0, digital by Stephen | No comments

My colleague Warren Hutchinson posts about an honourable mention at the Webbys for the work that LBi did in helping Multimap redesign their site. I’ll leave it to him to big the team up, but just wanted to add my ‘well done all’ to the mix!

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My statistical addiction

March 14, 2008 in Social web, User experience, Web 2.0, digital, flickr, internet by Stephen | No comments

Stats

Stats

Stats

I had the sudden realisation, the other day, that my current daily routine takes in a number of different statistical feeds – and this set me to thinking that *this* is part of the reason that creating your own content is fun. It’s the sense of audience that gives you more of a perspective on the stuff that you put out there.

So, I check out my Flickr stats on a regular basis, then I check my blog stats, and finally, less frequently, I check out LastFM stats for Inaura, one of the bands I used to play with.

It’s this stuff that is ’sticky’ for me – and I’m not normally obsessed by stuff like this…

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Yahoo oneConnect aims to draw together your social connections

February 29, 2008 in Community, Social web, User experience, Web 2.0, internet by Stephen | No comments

…and allow you to keep in touch with what’s happening across all of your different social networks – via your mobile phone. Really interesting – I just hope they have web integration as well as it would be nice to familiarise with a single aggregation service across multiple platforms.

Link.

I’ve recently been questioning RSS as a channel for absorbing the ‘noise’ of different networks. For me, I’d like to separate out my social interaction (which I see as an ongoing social dialogue) from my day-to-day feed consumption. It just feels too cluttered.

And one other thing I’ve noticed is the value of a good email newsletter. Lo-tech, huh??! I subscribe to the daily Urban Junkies newsletter, and it’s a really well crafted piece of content that points me at some of the best things that’re going on in London. If I had the RSS feed it probably wouldn’t keep so much of my attention – which makes me think that the increased relevance and personalisation of content is key for many of the different ‘trusted voice’ web services that are out there at the moment.

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