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Nov
29
Power to the Persons!
Filed Under Social web, Film, Tools and applications, Web/Tech | 2 Comments
The real sense of achievement is from not mentioning Web 2.0 or social media even once!
Here is version 1.0, may need to revise bits of it later - first time attempt at screencasting, new software and not used to Apple, blah blah blah…. 
Nov
28
links for 2007-11-28
Filed Under Reading & Bookmarks | Leave a Comment
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Udell likes it but filling in data takes work. UI will be essential in any VRM-own-your-data app.
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problem is our data is stored and managed by others who don’t necessarily respect it. usual security theatre applies.
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MS claims HealthVault is not a personal health record app, but like eBay - an enabler for an ecosystem of products and services. Yeah, eBay is a silo, so no surprises there.
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priceless! history at its best.
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next killer app
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both business and the media covering it are changing
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blogging and its impact on china
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notes from the same meeting on blogs in China
Nov
28
Quote to remember
Filed Under Quotes, Music, Web/Tech | Leave a Comment
UI is cute and all, but if the product doesn’t deliver, then what you’ve got left is Web 2.0.
- uncov in Songza: Beats The Shit Out Of Payin’
Nov
28
Deutsche Grammophon’s new web shop
Filed Under New models, Music, Web/Tech | Leave a Comment
And great news for classical music fans, more bad news for CD retailers…
The DG Web Shop (dgwebshop.com), which touts an industry standard-exceeding “maximum MP3 quality at a bit-rate of 320 kilobits per second,” offers more than 2,400 classical albums. That includes about 600 currently out-of-print CDs, which only adds to the enticement. (More out-of-print items are on the way.) Complete CDs and multi-disc sets, and all the tracks contained on them, are available for download. Costs for complete CDs vary, but many are around $12; individual tracks of up to seven minutes are priced at $1.29.
This is indeed good news. The out-of-print CDs especially, as serious music aficionados will love it and online they are the ones that matter and pass the word along. The download quality is 320kpbs, which is almost 3 times better than Apple sells through iTunes. The music and film business should have made this possible, let’s say, a decade ago. Is this coming too late? Will enough people pay still a rather high price for something that can be obtained for free? Without the entertainment industry sitting on their arrogant business model, P2P would have probably stayed in the geekland. Now it’s user friendly to the point of helping the demand side supply itself, thank you very much.
The Deutsche Grammaphon site is usable enough, just make sure you go here, not to dgwebshop.com, to bypass an ‘evil Flash’ splash screen. (Someone should sit on the web designers hands when they have the urge to create full screen flash nightmares!) The searching by artist, composer and even series or album is good. And I love the format options and it is DRM-free! But as Techcrunch points out:
It may be worth noting that classical music receives less legal protection than contemporary music because only its recorded performances, not its compositions, are still under copyright.
The question remains - will the convenience of official web shops by music companies and labels outweigh the price and compete with the free bittorrent downloads? One way to tip the balance would be to go heavily for the long tail. And after that, the only hope is the Because Effect…
Thanks to Mike Nutley for the heads up.
Nov
27
links for 2007-11-27
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Because privacy is not just about information. It’s all about the defaults. Social defaults over software ones. Brilliant.
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It’s them defaults… but the issue is how to ‘monetise’ people’s attention and actions without them being part of that transaction.
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“26 per cent of business and marketing leaders less familiar with social media marketing than their own customers…”
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worth checking out
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not so shiny facebook, it’s stories like this that will change the tide
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user rulez!
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datahogs and absence of export feature, user awareness is the key. and then their power
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the best description of facebook beacon and what’s wrong with it
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use for the user, if facebook records my purchases, let me add me add my experience and opinion about them.
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silicon valley doesn’t care about MSM, it’s user revolts that matter. moveon has no clue.
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beacon does what credit card companies and loyalty card programs already do, but it is breach of the norms of the Net.
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looks useful
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user campaign?
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facebook privacy officer says there is opt-in blah blah. but the company shift privacy social defaults for all. not good.
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advertising opt out
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great stuff, smart CEO
Nov
27
Work - play, play - work, even for CEOs
Filed Under New models, Business, Trends, Media, People | Leave a Comment
Tom Glocer is a CEO who’ll make it to the round.
Over the past several years, some in the British media have suggested that I should have better things to do than spend my time on Facebook or other social networking or web services. …I believe it is a very worthy investment of my “free” time to explore the latest interactions of media and technology, or indeed to write this blog when I feel I have something worthwhile to say.
Innovation is non-linear - perhaps that is why all that networked stuff works rather well. What doesn’t work is the traditional command and control but that’s another conversation. Lateral thinking is rewarded in this day and age (actually, I believe it always has been) and a good way to get cracking when thinking about new business models. So, Amazon’s ‘unique proposition’ is reader book reviews, although it makes money on selling books, eBay ’sells’ reputation, makes money on auctions, Google’s offering is reach, though it makes money on text ads. Behind every new-ish business model is lateral monetisation struggling to get out.
Growth requires innovation, and, unfortunately, innovation is not a linear process. When Columbus “discovered” the New World, he had actually set out to find a new route to India. The much admired Google similarly did not set out to invent the dominant ad monetization engine. Too much idle experimentation in the executive suite leads to a failure to execute on any plan; however, the total absence of imagination leads to plans that lead nowhere.
And now for the personal touch. Tom Glocer is spot on about the nature of expertise. Recently I noticed how people in business are starting to approach learning about social media second-hand, listening to the self-proclaimed experts* rather than jumping straight in themselves.
I believe that unless one interacts with and plays with the leading technology of the age, it is impossible to dream the big dreams, and difficult to create an environment in which creative individuals will feel at home. This does not mean that the ceo needs to program a third-party app on Facebook, but I believe it is ultimately more useful in understanding business concepts like viral marketing, crowd-sourcing or federated development to use a live example rather than wait for the Harvard Business Review article to appear in three years time.
We should all feel comfortable to follow our own paths. What counts is the results, not living-up to some outdated view of what “work” looks like in the 21st century.
Indeed. This is an area of exploration that no CEO or other executive should leave to others. If part of the job of a business leader is to see the big picture, well, there is no more distinct big picture out there than what is happening at the crossroads of the web, technology, media and human interactions within networks and outside traditional organisations and institutions.
*For the record, rather than consider myself an expert on social media or Web 2.0 or [fill in the web buzzword du jour], I’d prefer to be an ‘expert’ at shifting people’s mindset and helping them understand what is the web and what’s possible on the web.
Nov
26
links for 2007-11-26
Filed Under Reading & Bookmarks | Leave a Comment
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And this is hardly the most important giving up of control. Most important, I want them to give me control of my data.
Nov
25
links for 2007-11-25
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stop petitioning facebook and google
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advertiser’s idiotic idea: a social site based around a cookie. last gasp of dying media model
Nov
25
You know your mind is being stretched when you can get excited by a presentation of which you understand about 30% and it really shouldn’t make sense to anyone who can’t hack. You are also probably at Barcamp.
Here are the crumbs:
- Long running processes
Search the future
worker queues/farms
event oriented applications
delegated response
out of order reception
compartmentalisation
multiple sources of query results
ubiquitous computing
Also:
- extreme late-binding
data and code combined in browser, processes talking to each other
delegate responsibility to different parts of the system, don’t have to trust or rely on one bit only
And finally:
The internet is the computer.
Another session I’ll remember was Lloyd’s talk about Tuttle Club previously known as Social Media cafe, some of it can be found here.
Some applications of note that I will be checking out are TipIt, NoseRub and DaoConsumer.
Many thanks to Ben and Ian for being such good hosts. And to Google, of course.
Nov
25
links for 2007-11-25
Filed Under Reading & Bookmarks | Leave a Comment
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geeky but very relevant, message passing between processes, the internet is the computer!
Nov
24
links for 2007-11-24
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Mark Pesce at his best. Made my day.
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blacked out typed text can be ‘decrypted’ - the sneakiness of human mind. and government has no clue, as usual. not that I want them to, just give me my data
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that’s why I use skype. oh, and free calls
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technical and structural challenge for web developers
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humanised CRM, if at all possible
Nov
23
links for 2007-11-23
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iMedia Connection: Goodbye viral marketing, hello social marketing
marketing lingo applied to what flies in the face of marketing. good distinction between viral and social marketing, although the latter is moot.
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Faking it: Craigslist becomes a workshop for aspiring writers - International Herald Tribune
as most ’social spaces’ craiglist being used for other purposes. power to the persons.
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London VRM meetings
