July 2005 Archives
Current TV is a new cable television station that sounds a lot more suited to be a website.
I was listening to the radio the other morning (imagine that) and I heard a story about
Current TV. I knew the name and that they were targeting 18-34 year-olds, but didn't really know much about it (except for the fact that Al Gore is somehow involved). Turns out the big "revolutionary" part of the station is that it's going to include consumer-created content.
The Current folks explain it like this on their about page:
There's plenty to watch on TV, but as a viewer, you don't have much chance to influence or contribute to what you see. This medium - the most powerful, riveting one we have - is still a narrow vision of reality rolled out in predictable 30-minute chunks. It's still a fortress of an old-school, one-way world.
Current TV plans to change this by, "rethinking the way TV is produced, programmed, and presented, so it actually makes sense to an audience that's accustomed to choice, control, and collaboration in everything else they do."
Now that's a nice goal, isn't it? The problem is that TV is old-school and one-way.
There's already a medium for people accustomed to choice, control, and collaboration. It's called the internet.
I can't help but feel like these guys are trying a bit too hard. If, as they say, television really is "the most powerful" and "riveting" medium, then why have all these young people been transformed by the net to a point that Current TV finds it necessary to revolutionize television?
What's more, the whole thing just sounds like it would work a whole lot better online. In their FAQ, they just happen to have a question that addresses just this issue. In response to "Why not just do this all on the Internet? BitTorrent revolution, baby!"
There is definitely some cool stuff going on with Internet video, but probably not enough to power a media company like Current yet, and certainly not enough to deliver the quantity and quality of programming that we will offer. We're going to do everything we can to sync up with those technologies, though, even as we continue with our cable and satellite TV network.
So basically they're saying they can't make the same amount of money off advertising online than they can on television. Sounds like a revolutionary reason to start a station to me!
This whole thing immediate made me think about something Steven Johnson wrote in Interface Culture:
At major transition points, where one platform or genre gives way to another, the older form invariably strains to approximate the rhythms and mannerisms of the emergent form. . . The older medium wants to reinvent itself -- chrysalis-style -- in the image of the new, but its existing conventions won't allow such a dramatic transformation.
Johnson goes on to make the point that during the "golden age" of radio, the classic shows "weren't really great
radio programs -- they were just bad
television shows," Johnson writes. They were "TV-style narratives stripped down to fit the limited dimensions of radio. They were a message waiting for their medium to come."
And so we come back to Current TV, trying to fit the message of the internet into a big, square box.
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Yet another Burger King microsite that stirs up the marketing press. Yippee.
Burger King has a new microsite called
Coq Roq. To be completely honest, I haven't spent more than two minutes on it and I probably don't have much to add to this
discussion (frankly,
I'm bored of hearing about Burger King microsites). But my question here is still relevant, I think:
Is anyone other than advertising industry folks talking about this stuff?
One of the problems with working in the industry is that you get a skewed view of what matters and what doesn't. The only place I've read about Coq Roq is on marketing sites, which leads me to believe it's entirely possible that the rest of the world doesn't give a shit (as usual, I could also be entirely wrong).
So, if anyone knows the answer to this question, please let me know (and please don't answer that it doesn't matter if the rest of the wold knows -- that any publicity is good publicity. I get that.)
Since I'm talking about Coq Roq, I thought I might also add in this cute little picture which appeared on the site up until yesterday. At that point it was taken down, apparently for non-taste-related reasons. According to this AdAge article (where I also stole the screenshot and found via AdPulp), Burger King justifies the change by saying a "malfunctions in the Flash and XML programming were responsible for putting the "Groupies love the Coq" on the photos of the young women."
Now I don't claim to know a lot about Flash and XML (well, maybe I do), but something tells me this:
Neither Flash nor XML has the ability to write sexual innuendos AND find the appropriate photos to place them on. It's an either/or deal.
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I just wanted to post this picture of NoahBrier.com recreated as Coldplay album art. That is all.
You are looking at "NoahBrier.com" encoded into Coldplay X&Y album art (thanks to this site).
Look, I really tried to figure out a good reason to post this picture. I started working on a list of my favorite albums so far this year (which includes Coldplay, I think), but I just couldn't get motivated. So that's it, you get "NoahBrier.com" from the Coldplay album art generator. Since you're such nice people, here's I'm So Goth . . . , which I'm sure you'll all enjoy. [Via Little Fucking Ray of Sunshine].
That's a day, I'm out.
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How we understand a trend like customization online first, take it offline and then bring it back online again.
If I had to boil my interests down to one sentence, it would probably be "The cultural implications of digital technology." I love this stuff. I find it invigorating to think about the larger effects of technology on people: To try to understand what the world will look like five years from now as people take learnings from their interactions with computers and apply it to toasters and mops. (Maybe that's a tough one, but you get my drift.)
With that said, it's exciting to read articles discussing just these kind of ideas. While not necessarily looking towards the future, people are beginning to realize that a huge part of the impact of technology happens outside the world of the technology itself. I like to think that this type of thinking is actually a result of the internet reinforcing the fact that the world is interconnected and following the links is a worthwhile pursuit. With an endless amount of information at our fingertips, we are forced to become more selective, a process that trains our brain as a different kind of filter. Most people have noticed that filter show up offline, as they read the newspaper with a closer eye or question a conclusion in a Newsweek article. That's what I'm talking about. Those are big changes in the way people think that come as a result of technological innovation.
Anyway, my real point here, and the reason I started writing this, is because I was reading a New York Times article about how popular limited edition T-shirts are at the moment. While interesting, the article was by no means revolutionary, rather, it was taking the usual New York Times task of covering a trend far after it has been established. Then on the second page, I ran across this paragraph which connected this offline trend to some online events:
These days, whenever two or more people gather to consider the future of consumer society, "customization" and "niche" are certain to be their most frequently uttered terms. Bored and satiated, consumers first took music dissemination into their own hands, via Internet programs like Napster, and then information, in the form of blogs, and, finally, even so-called hard goods, now that it is clear that anyone, more or less, can start a clothing company. As with garage bands and personal Web pages, a little alcoholic lubrication rarely seems to hurt at the point of conception; neither does a taste for unabashed amateurishness, communal expression and the exuberantly ad hoc.
The trend towards customization is a great example of people getting so accustomed to a digital occurance that it moves offline. On the internet, nearly anything can be customized to your specifications. That's because everything's digital and creating something that unique to you is as easy and rearranging a few bytes. Once people get used to that, however, they begin to expect it in other places, like their clothing.
This is where things get interesting. In the past customized or limited edition clothing was problematic because production in small quantity is so expensive and stores couldn't afford to waste shelf space on goods that would only be bought by a few people. That meant that these short-run articles were either marked up to make it worthwhile to the store, or required visiting a manufacturer who works in single items (which again becomes an expensive affair). However, when you bring the internet back into the equation, all of a sudden limited edition/custom becomes a reality.
Thanks to the long tail (which basically says that because the overhead cost of shelf space is not an issue online, there's a lot of money to be made by selling to niches), people can buy their limited edition t-shirts for a reasonable price and companies can actually make money off those shirts. Customers are happy. Businesses are happy. The world is now better off because no one ever has to deal with the embarrassment of walking into the party wearing the same t-shirt as someone else.
That's not it, though. No, no, no. Now that the trend has been brought back online (remember we've gone online, offline, online), we can bring in other digital principles and ideas. Take Threadless for example. Threadless sells t-shirts. But not just any t-shirts, they sell t-shirts designed by regular people. That's not even what makes them so exciting, though, those designs are chosen by regular people. Actually, their voted on by regular site visitors. As described on the site:
Threadless is an ongoing tee shirt design competition. Designs are put into the running to be scored for 7 days. After those 7 days high scoring designs are chosen to be printed and sold from our "SHOP" section!
So there it is, they take a trend of customization, add in a touch of participation and you have (what seems to be) a successful business. Viola.
Now wasn't that easy?
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Thinking about the metahpors in the interfaces of today and tomorrow.
I just began to read Steven Johnson's
Interface Culture. The book was actually recommended by an old professor of mine who read my
"I Used to Think Like Windows Explorer" post and thought I might be interested. The subtitle of the book is "how new technology transforms the way we create & communicate," which, as anyone who reads this site with any regularity knows is one of my favorite topics.
Anyway, this is not a book review (or really even a recommendation, although I can report the first 45 pages are very interesting). Rather, I just wanted to share a quote (which I failed to paraphrase in a conversation this evening). I thought this was a great description of the role of the interface in 21st century culture:
Organic, low-tech metaphors once belonged to those lagging behind the machinic power curve, the Luddites and the antediluvians, the poets and the novelists, the ones reaching for older analogies because the shock of the new had so overwhelmed them. In today's society, the task of translation has migrated to the technicians. In the age of the graphic interface, with its visual metaphors of trash cans and desktop folders, imaginative flashbacks have become programming feats, conjured up by high-tech wizards hacking away in assembly language.
Wow. I read that and realized what an amazing point it was. Rather than the users making the metaphors for the computer, the metaphors are being preprogrammed for them. To help people understand the vast intricacies of digital technology, interface designers are including everyday objects whose interaction users understand with little to no thought. We throw out the garbage when we're done. We close and open windows when necessary. We have a desktop on which sit important objects. Etc, etc, etc.
What's so interesting, though, is that as we become more accustomed to these digital devices the metaphors expand, often becoming only tenuously metaphorical. Both Windows and OS X now include a "toolbar" of sorts at the bottom of the screen. What exactly is a toolbar in real life? Yeah, a tool box exists, but that is an object that we store things in. How many people actually use a bar to store their most important tools on? (I've never heard of one except for this).
So with that in mind, what future metaphors might be in store? It's kind of fun to imagine a future where digital devices become metaphors inside interfaces for other digital devices. Take a look at this picture and tell me what it looks like:
If you answered an iPod, you were correct. That, little screenshot comes courtesy of the iTunes Dashboard widget. I wonder how many other examples of interfaces there are that include such obvious calls to other digital interfaces. (In case anyone was wondering how I spend my days, it's pondering these kind of questions.)
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More thinking about the implicit dangers of marketers trying to create "viral" elements.
A
while back I mentioned that I was beginning work on an article about viral marketing. Well, as that article moves closer and closer to being finished I find myself faced with the need to add a concluding paragraph. Of course, this is problematic because one of my conclusions is that it is impossible to know if you've created something viral. In fact, much of the article focuses on understanding the real goal of this kind of marketing, which is contagiousness. When you create a "viral" element, the goal is to create something that people will be impelled to pass around.
In response to this Mobile Technology Weblog post about viral marketing, I commented:
I think the issue here may be a semantic one. The more I think about the term "viral" marketing, the more it bothers. After all, a virus is "an infective agent that typically consists of a nucleic acid molecule in a protein coat, is too small to be seen by light microscopy, and is able to multiply only within the living cells of a host." Now, isn't that the ultimate goal of all marketing? Isn't the goal of any advertisement to infect a person and multiply inside them, thus connecting the individual and the brand? It seems to me that contagious marketing is a much better term for what this is. The goal of this kind of marketing is to create something that impels a person to spread it through online channels.
While I understand that when spread, this type of marketing follows a similar path to that of a virus, however, if you haven't made some contagious, it can never hope to "go viral" (if that makes sense).
Anyway, after reading this very interesting 1997 article about how Hotmail used viral tactics to grow it's user base (found via The Mobile Technology Weblog) I thought I might explore some of the ideas out loud here, in hope of getting to a conclusion for myself. What's interesting about Hotmail's growth is that rather than spending money on advertising to add users, they simply added a little message at the bottom of each email that made the recipient realize that the sender was using a new, free web-based email. Hotmail used it's users' email messages as an advertising platform, just as another company might use billboards or television commercials in the non-digital world. While it's certainly a fairly intrusive way to get the word out, it's undeniably contagious because everyone who sends an email has no choice but to extol the value of Hotmail. They have become carriers of Hotmail's message.
What's so interesting about this is that people might not necessarily think of it as "viral," especially people in marketing. I expect that's because we've slowly backed ourselves into a corner of just what a "viral" element is, which is why it seems so important to me to back up and concentrate on the contagiousness of the message. Essentially this kind of marketing looks to use ordinary people's online connections as its advertising platform. Hotmail found a way to tap into that network without the express consent of the users, most advertisers, however, don't have that option.
With that said, though, there's no reason we should limit "viral" to videos or interactive games. As shown by Hotmail, something can go "viral" by utilizing the medium in new and exciting ways. In the case of Hotmail, there is little doubt that the medium is the message, with each email contained a snippet that introduced the reader to this new service that obviously works well enough that their friend has chosen to use it. Marketers need to expand their zone of comfort. Marketers need to forget what they've learned and open their minds to new things. To quote from Weiden + Kennedy's five rules of creativity, "come in ignorant every day. The idea of retaining ignorance is sort of counterintuitive, but it subverts a lot of [problems] that come from absolute mastery. If you think you know the answer better than somebody else does, you become closed to being fresh."
It's for this reason we need to remember the purpose (contagiousness), the audience (most often those people who are bored at work) and the medium (the internet and, increasingly, mobile devices). If marketers insist on trying to create "viral" elements than it's important to remember one simple thing: Start with what you know and work your way to an idea, not vice-versa.
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A more detailed explanation of just why I chose to include links right alongside content on my homepage.
When I added links to the homepage content section
I promised to give a little bit more reasoning behind the decision, especially as it relates to
this Kottke.org entry about the fundamental unit of the web. Well, after receiving an email from a source who will remain unnamed (though he'd probably prefer I plug his play
Shore Points), I feel as though I must defend my decision. Basically the email told me that I need to get rid of the links in the body section because there's no reason someone should have to scroll down to find one of my entries, especially with the site being named NoahBrier.com and all. Well, let me attempt to defend my decision (I apologize to all the RSS readers out there, but hopefully you'll find this interesting anyway).
I decided to add the links as content because I believe that's just what they are: Content. What I tend to do here is annotate/comment on other media. I read things and link to them with my own thoughts and opinions. While that's not the entirety of the site, it is probably the majority. So with that in mind, why should the links themselves not be given equal real estate?
Yeah, they're not my own work, but they (in theory) should be equally interesting to a reader since they are, essentially, where the majority of the commentary on this page come from. I am acting as a filter for you all (my readers), or at least that's how I see myself. Links are part of my filtering process. Before almost anything is written here, the link is bookmarked. By adding a comment and tags to a link I am annotating it. I am pulling out what I think is important or writing it myself. How is this any different than writing a full entry?
Yes they're not my words entirely, but why should I fear the work of others? I have no reason to be afraid that people will leave NoahBrier.com because that is my ultimate goal. If you come here and spot some great article to go read on another site then I have succeeded. It's safe to assume that if you enjoy my links, you will return and enjoy my writing. By making those links as accessible as possible I am broadening my audience and expressing my belief that this should be both a place for interesting content to live as well as a place to find interesting content elsewhere.
Other mediums fight for your eyes and ears because they have advertising that relies on those sense to support them, I, on the other hand, only want your trust. I want you to believe that I am a good person to help filter and decide what's worth reading and what's not. If I earn that trust, I believe you will actively dig to find my own writing, wherever on the homepage it may appear.
Is this wrong? (It could very well make no sense since I just took a bunch of Nyquill that is starting to kick in.)
Update (7/21/05): I've added a link to the latest entry at the very top of the main content column. Thoughts?
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Another front page AM New York article on cock fights . . . strange.
A while ago I pointed to
this AM New York article about an Oklahoma senator wanting to give rooster's boxing gloves for cockfights. Well, I happened to have picked up an AM New York article last night and ran across this front page article:
Bad chickens that are veterans of the cockfighting ring can now be rehabilitated, reports the Wall Street Journal. More than 200 birds are currently living at the Eastern Shore Chicken Sanctuary in Maryland, where they receive psychological treatment to make them less violent. Most cockfighting survivors are too violent, and have to be killed. But thanks to the Sanctuary, they can have peaceful lives.
What a nice story. I'm glad AM New York has such a think for cockfights. Gotta wonder what
Tom Cruise would have to say about rooster psychologists.
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Bloglines appears to have lost all my feeds and I am angry.
I just signed into Bloglines only to see 0 feeds. Not sure what's going on, hope it's just a temporary problem. This would be a huge deal to me if they lost all my feeds. I trusted them and never thought to back up my OPML file (maybe my own fault), but if they're gone I'm going to be royally pissed.
Pissed to the point that it might be time to get off the Bloglines bandwagon and find a new web-based reader.
I'm stewing . . . anyone have any suggestions? Has this happened to anyone else?
Update (7/19/05): Phew, all my feeds are back. Looks like the lesson here is back up your OPML file just in case.
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A look back on one year of this site.
Queue the streamers and cake, this place has been around for one full year as of today. That's right, on July 16, 2005 NoahBrier.com was brought into this world. For those of you that remember those early days, the
design was very ugly and the writing was far more random than it is now (I hadn't fallen into full-fledged geekdom yet). In the 365 days since this page has gone through quite a bit:
Redesigns: 2 (this is NoahBrier.com 3.0)
Entries: 315 (which include more entries than I care to think about on the topic of RSS)
Comments: 406 (there are a fair amount of poop jokes in that count I think)
Trackbacks: 19 (that number only comes after erasing the 2,000 others about poker)
Time Spent: No comment (for real, I can't even imagine)
In all seriousness, though, I really do want to thank everyone who has read this page, made a comment (even if it is about just how boring this place is), emailed me a suggestion or anything else. Knowing that there are people out there that enjoy my writing and thoughts is a powerful thing. It pushes me to write more and consider issues more deeply than I might otherwise. I feel as though I'm a far better writer than when I started this exploration and I couldn't have gotten there if there weren't people to support me. For that I thank you all.
It's been a great year for me personally as a result of this site. I can only hope the next twelve months work out as well as these have. This site has helped me land jobs, meet interesting people and grow as a thinker. To anyone considering starting a blog, look beyond the hype and backlash and consider it for what it is: A place to keep track of thoughts. It has become a kind of addiction for me. Knowing that I have an outpost has forced me to consider things for their worthiness on this site and has sharpened my skills in innumerable areas.
Again, thank you all and if you'd like to take a trip down memory lane, check out the recommended section of the site. It includes some of what I believe are the best entries to come out of NoahBrier.com.
I hope to see and hear from more of you over the next twelve months. If you haven't ever made your voice heard, leave a comment or get in touch with me, I'd love to hear from you.
That's it, I'm on my out for a birthday lunch (not really).
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Explaining some of the things that I thought about when redesigning my homepage.
Yeah, so I've been pretty quiet lately. But I like to think I have had good reason. Beyond being busy with
work, I've been working on a slight, yet important, homepage redesign. For those of you looking at the page now you'll notice I got rid of the links on the right side and have changed the look slightly. (For those of you not looking at the main page,
why don't you give it a shot?) Well, this redesign was about more than just making things look different, this was all about links.
What I have done (and will be doing from here on out) is pulling all my links off my del.icio.us and posting including each link on this blog. The reasoning behind this is threefold:
1. Comments: Some people have asked me if I could let them comment on my links. Since some of my entries tend to be kind of dense, this should be a way to engage people and create a forum on entirely new topics.
2. Search: Now all my comments are completely searchable via my regular search bar. That means you don't ever have to leave NoahBrier.com to find a link you clicked to from here. I think this is pretty damn cool.
3. Descriptions: Because I'm running everything through my own servers and posting links right inline with entries, it means I can easily include descriptions of links, therefore making them more valuable. By including descriptions, my links have become real content, deserving of premium space. This has been a goal for a long time, but I only recently figured out a way to do it (which I have explained in this post).
4. Tags: I try to tag everything I link to. I think the links help add context and are a good way to organize my tags. I've spoken about tags before, but finding a way to incorporate my link tags into my own site (by making each tag it's own archive), should make finding new and interesting links easier than ever for you, the reader.
So that's it, for those of you that want the technical explanation for how I am including del.icio.us links inline on my Movable Type (MT) weblog, read my entry titled Including del.icio.us Inline on MT. I have more to say about the reasoning behind this, especially relating to this Kottke.org entry on the fundamental unit of the web, but I will write it when I'm less tired.
Goodnight.
Update (7/15/05): Until further notice (read: when I fix this problem of rebuilding 2,800 entries) commenting on links won't be enabled. Sorry
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I decided to start including del.icio.us links inline alongside my Movable Type blog entries.
Alright, for all you geeks out there, you're probably wondering how I include my
del.icio.us links inline. Well, the process includes two perl scripts and three
Movable Type plugins. Here's the breakdown:
Plugins
1.
MTSwitch: I use MTSwitch to differentiate the styling on links and entries. I use MTSwitch within tags from . . .
2. MTMultiBlog: This plugin allows me to easily include entries from multiple blogs within one page. All you do is use the <MTMultiBlog> tag and tell it which blogs to include (by using the blog id numbers).
3. Tags: This plugin takes the Movable Type keywords field and lets you use it to tag entries. Essentially what you can do is type out the categories you want to include your entry in and it will automatically create those categories if needed. I used this because it easily work with . . .
Perl Scripts
1. Linkblog del.icio.us Script: I originally found
this great script from
Squarewithin which got me pretty close to where I wanted to be, except I couldn't get the categories to work. So, after finding Brad Choate's Tags plugin, I decided to just cut the whole categories section and tell the script to just write the tags as keywords (now tags).
Here is the final version of the script (after my tweaks) (just save it and change extension to .cgi).
After setting up some cron jobs to call to my script, the only thing left was to make the site rebuild. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't happening with the linkblog script, but it wasn't a problem once I found . . .
2. MT-Rebuild: This is just a perl scrip that rebuilds MT blogs. Simple, easy and effective.
That was pretty much it, the only other thing I did was change the call to grab del.icio.us links to http://del.icio.us/api/posts/all instead of http://del.icio.us/api/posts/recent so I could go back and grab all my old links the first time. Now all I do is grab my recent links ever 15 minutes and rebuild the site accordingly. Nice and easy.
I wrote this late and I'm tired, if you've got any questions just leave a comment.
Update (7/15/05): I may have jumped the gun a bit on this, turns out rebuilding an MT blog with 2800 entries and hundreds of categories is a little problematic. I considered just rebuilding the blog once a night and rebuilding my index template more often, but then the link won't work to allow commented. Oh my, oh me. Anyone with any ideas?
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I think on the way to work. Sometimes they're stupid thoughts, sometimes not. Here are this morning's.
I've been too lazy to write anything of serious substance lately (which can be seen as a good or a bad thing, depending on who you talk to). I did, however, have a few quick thoughts this morning that I thought maybe I could use in place of a full-on entry (and who's to judge what a "full-on entry" is anyway). So here are some of the things I thought about this morning, consider it a look into the somewhat strange mind of me.
1. DVDs cost less than CDs. Not sure why this never occurred to me until now but it seems like a pretty big deal. What's up with that?
2. If you leave your RSS aggregator alone for a day or two a whole lot of shit piles up. It becomes nearly unruly which would be discouraging if not for . . .
3. Bloglines' best interface design feature is that the default action is to not save entries from any given feed. I've tried other aggregators where you have to explicitly tell the thing you read that entry and it can be erased. On Bloglines you have to make an effort to save something. This is a huge distinction and I expect will become the status quo as RSS goes more mainstream.
4. McDonald's smells delicious.
5. Black iced coffee tastes delicious.
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Looking for feedback on a proposal I'm sending to a cultural studies journal for a paper on blogging.
Anyone who reads this site with any regularity will know my position on transparency (I'm all for it). With that said, I'm currently working on a proposal to write a paper on blogging for a cultural studies journal. As I was wrapping up the short proposal I really felt like some feedback would be helpful and who better to turn to for feedback than all of you? So read this and let me know what you think. Feel free to suggest additions/subtractions, tell me what you like/don't like or just give me your general thoughts. Anything would be greatly appreciated. If for whatever reason you'd rather email me, you can do that too. Just use the handy
contact form. Thanks.
Blogging Paper Proposal
This essay will examine blogging as a renewal of many of the ideals of
oral society. Blogging's democratic nature and conversational style
hearkens back to the oral traditions discussed by Plato and Ong, standing
in opposition to the authority that has been placed on the written word in
the modern age. What is more, the premium placed on debate and opinion
means the lessons of blogging could form the building blocks to a return
of public discourse.
While "blogging" as it is referred to now may or may not exist ten years
from now, its messages will undoubtedly resonate in future generations
as they take hold in other areas of communication. With that said, what
are the likely effects of this huge shift in communication technology
and style on a culture that has long relied on traditional modes of
authoritative communication to deliver messages?
Business, and more specifically marketing, seems like a great place to
examine those impacts, for in many ways blogging is the antithesis to
business communication. While businesses carefully monitor messages,
blogs are generally free form and open. It's a battle between
transparency and opacity and examining what happens when these two
worlds collide provides many fascinating angles. How does the business
world deal with a shift in culture to where people expect communication
to come in a straightforward fashion, rather than hidden behind a
smokescreen of press releases and advertising copy?
Grounding the business arguments will be sources ranging from the
Cluetrain Manifesto which purports that "markets are conversations" to a
blog like Scobleizer, written by Microsoft employee Robert Scoble.
While there will be a business/marketing angle to the piece, it is by
all means a look at communication history, a suggestion that blogging
bears certain resemblances to oral culture and an argument that there
are lessons of blogging that can't be ignored. Once that idea has been
set up, however, I think it's valuable to examine what the effects of
such a huge shift in the way we communicate could be on a pillar of
society like business, which is so rooted in literacy, opacity and
authority. Business, in this case, then acts as a kind-of guinea pig to
examine the larger effects of blogging on twenty-first century culture.
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A short look at the little tricks/tips and apps I use on my Apple on a regular basis.
Today as I was filing away my mail with the help of
Mail Act-On, I decided it would be worthwhile to list out all the productivity apps/plugins/tricks I employ on a regular basis on my Mac (both at work and home).
Quicksilver
If you're using an Apple and you're not using
Quicksilver, then I'm sorry. It's amazing. I've said it before and I'll say it again. It puts every program at my fingertips and opens up parts of apps that I never would have used (bookmarks in Firefox for example). It's more than just a launcher, it's the hub of everything I do on my computer. For the lowdown on setting up and using Quicksilver to the best of its ability check out
Dan Dickinson's great tutorial and
this entry from The Apple Blog titled "Quicksilver Changes Everything".
Mail Act-On
This was a recent addition thanks to a
tip from Merlin Mann over at 43 Folders. Essentially what
Mail Act-On does is allow you to set up rules that are invoked by keystrokes. I have different keys set up to move messages to different important folders, which is a hell of a lot easier than dragging and dropping every one.
TextEdit
I'm not sure you can count this one, but I always have an open text document where I keep all my notes and save them at the end of the day. It's easy to use, takes up no space and a snap to backup to my server and read online. Who said .txt was useless? (Not me, for the record.)
iCal Subscriptions
I'm subscribed to a calendar that gives me all the US Holidays as well as the Chicago Bears season schedule. They refresh automatically and beat the hell out of writing all those dates in yourself. Apple
has a ton of calendars to subscribe to and there are lots of other sites as well. Also, check out
Upcoming.org which is an event sharing site that provides you with an iCal file of events you've marked.
I'm sure there's more, but that should be enough to chew on this Monday morning.
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I'm sick of hearing how RSS is like TiVo for the web.
It's normal to want, often need, to find an analogy to describe something reasonably new (or complex). This is the case with RSS. I first encountered this issue when I was writing my
This Way App article for American Demographics. When I pitched the idea of a story about RSS my editor refused to let me do it unless I could come up with an analogy there and then.
Of course I had considered it before, the thing is that the most popular way to describe it (as a kind of Vivo for the web) wasn't doing it for me. The problem with describing it that way is that TiVo lets you choose specific programs from a stream to watch, you need to know what you want and choose accordingly. That's not what RSS does.
RSS is far more like On Demand.
Here's how I ended up explaining it in the article:
Many people describe RSS as TiVo for the Web. Part of what makes TiVo so appealing is the ability to pick and choose from across the network spectrum and record those shows you're interested in. RSS, however, records an entire opt-in spectrum of feeds, rather than one show at a time. It's like being able to choose your cable package with On Demand channels only. That way, when you get home from work, rather than watching what's on at that time, you are provided with a list of every show that has appeared on your chosen channel lineup since the last time you watched. This way, if you only watch ESPN, HBO and NBC, you only need to subscribe to those 3 stations. And for those who watch 100 different channels, RSS can handle that too by spidering across all the sites you've chosen and posting update signs and signals for each of them.
You're not getting feeds of single entries, but rather entire channels. Would you say that subscribing to the
New York Times homepage is equivalent setting to the TiVo to record each week's episode of
The OC? (I hope not.)
I happen to believe the act of searching for an analogy is very often problematic, however, if you've gotta do it, how about doing it right?
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How insurgent brands are invading the business world and making themselves heard.
There are insurgents in our midst. They are invading our streets and skies and there's no sign they're going anywhere. They're a danger to the institutions we have grown up with and come to know.
Before you think I'm getting all Dubya on ya, let me explain. The insurgents I'm speaking of have nothing to do with violence, or even politics, these are brand insurgents and they've gained quite a foothold in the world of business over the last few years. Think about it for a minute, how many small brands have come into the game and set their own rules, in turn changing the game. In a recent entry about just this topic, Gareth Kay explained insurgent brands in this way:
They have a powerful belief system that drives them; they ignore the dogma of the category about how to behave; they act (and are often organized) in a decentralized 'cell like' structure; and they continually surprise people (and their competitors) as they don't wear a uniform (it's no longer about uniform message, look and feel or behavior).
He mentions companies like Jet Blue, Axe, Fox News and even Apple as examples of this kind of mentality. I would add companies Dyson and Starbucks to the list. These are both companies that have taken the dogma of an industry and turned it on it's head (Dyson by telling consumers that your vacuum is more than a cleaning device and Starbucks by shifting the focus of a coffee shop away from coffee and onto the customer). Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz
explains that,
"we [Starbucks] are not in the coffee business serving people, but in the people business serving coffee." (One of the ways insurgent brands make their mark is by shifting focus away from themselves and onto the benefit to their customers. Something I discussed at some length in my
"Creating Passionate Users" post.)
When you look at the success of companies it forces you to wonder why every brand isn't taking an insurgent stance. I mean, with the price of entry moving ever-lower thanks to digital technology, what's stopping everyone from being an insurgent?
Before even delving into that question, though, I think it's worthwhile to take a closer look at insurgent brand strategies. When I sent this link to my friend Tad, who's currently getting his MBA at Kellogg, he wrote this back, which I think gets at the heart of insurgency as a strategy:
Good find. I'm taking a marketing strategy class and
the professor has another very simple theory that
actually explains why insurgents work so well. His
belief is that old marketing paradigms work when the
consumer knows what they want. Then companies just
find out what they want and do it better than
competitors.
The problem is most consumers don't know what they
want or are continually learning about what they want.
For example, no one wanted an iPod until Apple made
one and taught people what was so cool about it.
The key for companies is to be the one to lead the
consumer learning to create new rules of the category.
once consumers have learned about a category according
to your rules, all the other players have to then
follow your lead as a second-rate replacement OR
change the category rules again. Which is why the
insurgent brands are becoming more successful.
[Tad asked me to make sure I credited Professor Carpenter at
Kellogg, since that's where the idea came from.]
The thing that bothered me when I first read this explanation was the "when consumers know what they want." More often than not, want is created by marketing, at least partly. I mean, I don't want a Dyson because it's just a vacuum. But as I thought about it more (and discussed it a bit more with Tad), the idea that the brands that define the rules of the game are the ones who are successful, makes lots of sense.
What Dyson does, as a brand, is show people that a vacuum should be more than just the thing you pick up dust with. It should be a piece of art, an expression and extension of your life. Whether this is bullshit or not, Dyson has sold a hell of a lot of vacuums by making people believe it. Not only that, though, they've forced other manufacturers to rethink their strategies.
The reason everyone hasn't jumped on the bandwagon, though, is because it's not easy. How do you convince people who have been in a business for a long period of time that they should focus on something completely new? Large companies get so caught up in their ways that change becomes a dirty word. They start to believe that their experience will lead them to the top of the pack. While twenty years ago this may have been true, that mindset is become more and more detrimental.
Especially when talking to young people, experience is hardly an advantage. That's because it often acts as a barrier between the company and fresh thinking. People want attitude. They want brands that they feel reflect them and their thinking. In a digital world, where anything can be personalized and customized, we feel as though we have more control over our identity than ever before. Therefore, a company that follows the rules is deemed behind-the-ball: A place no company wants to be.
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Too often people forget about words when they're thinking about products/companies/ideas, but often they're the most important part.
Not too long ago I wrote about
my need for a clean and simple interface and lately I've been thinking about the pickup speed I require from those things I interact with (from webapps to music). Because there's an almost infinite list of alternatives out there I expect you to deliver something to me that I can figure out quickly. The thing is (and something I left out of my first entry), this thing I figure out quickly isn't limited to something I touch, it's also what I read.
Good copy's just as important as a good interface.
In fact, the two really go hand in hand. To
quote Jason Fried of 37signals:
Copywriting is interface design. Great interfaces are written. If you think every pixel matters then you also need to think every letter matters.
As a copywriter myself, I appreciate the vote of confidence and agree completely. Too often words are the ugly stepchild of the design process. People seem to believe that words just happen, that they're a side product of the idea.
They're not though. In fact, words can often spurn entirely new ideas and positions. What I mean is that if you can't explain your idea quickly, then what good is it? How do you expect to design something that people can understand in 30 seconds if you can't explain it that quickly. Think people, this is common sense. When you start paying attention to the language that communicates your product/company/idea you start really thinking about that product/company/idea. As explained in this Inc. Magazine article, "Focusing on the way your company communicates compels you to set aside what you think about your business and instead be open to what others -- who, after all, are the ones who matter -- might think."
I tried to do think through language issues when reworking this site. Buttons, links, archives and even the RSS explained page are worded as clearly as possibly (I hope).
The most important lesson I've learned in my time as a writer is that words don't grow on trees (especially marketing words). They take time and effort and if you're not giving them the time they need everything around them will fall apart.
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It's always been my style to listen to the sounds in music without paying much attention to the lyrics.
I listen to a lot of music. It's just what I do. I carry my MP3 player around everywhere I go and love to discover the next musical thing. All that may or may not interest you (I'm going to assume not), but this may: When I listen to music I listen sounds, not words. I pay no attention to lyrics. That extends even to the most lyrical music (Elliot Smith, Fiona Apple, Mountain Goats), groups that hardly exist without the lyrical handiwork of their lead singer. I've talked to a few people about this and never really run into anyone who shares my listening style.
My method has its advantages, though. For instance, it's easy to get the gist of music while not giving it your full attention and I can quickly dispose of albums with sounds I'm not into. Most importantly, though, it allows me to make recommendations to people that usually accurately match their musical tastes. This is probably because rather than paying close attention to lyrical intricacies I'm more aware of general trends in sound, which makes it easy to match one sound to another (they key to making music recommendations).
With all that said, it was with much interest that I read the following passage in a New York Times magazine profile of Nic Harcourt, host and DJ of KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic:
Many people would love to know what exactly Harcourt is listening for, but he is unable to provide a simple answer. Surprisingly for someone who plays so much emotional, personal music, Harcourt rarely pays attention to lyrics. What he listens for, he says, is primarily a sound and a feeling -- part of the reason he's so willing to play music in foreign languages -- rather than literary content.
That's it, in words, finally. Though fairly non-descriptive, I couldn't agree more. It's a feeling I'm listening for, something that attracts me to the music, invites me in, makes me want to keep listening. There are sounds I know others will like, even sounds I know will make a mainstream splash, as well as those sounds that will always be reserved for my ears only. People find it hard to believe that I can be a music fan and ignore lyrics like this, but I think it's exactly that that allows me to be a music fan who's tastes range from one end of the spectrum to the other.
It's nice to know there's someone else out there.
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Ever wish you could easily skip through those automated customer service telephone menus?
I ran across this
list of shortcuts to automated phone systems (via
Jon Udell) and thought it was too good not to post. How many times have we all been stuck on a phone wading through number after number trying to speak to a customer service rep. What's even worse is those ones where you speak your problem because it's almost like you're being laughed at. It's like the customer service people are in the background saying, "we know you want to talk to us, now not only do you have to navigate a maze, but you have to do it by talking to an obnoxious computer voice . . . MWAHAHAHAHA." Seriously, it's awful.
What really gets me though, is the listing for Compaq, which, unfortunately, offers no tips. I can't tell you how many times I sat on the phone, heart rate increasing by the minute, trying to get on the phone with a Compaq customer service rep. Only to have them tell me they didn't know what was wrong with my computer, or, my personal favorite, that although I had purchased an extended warranty good for three years, they did not have it on record.
Damn you Compaq! Damn you to hell!
[Deep breath.]
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Hi, I'm 