GPS’s Time to Shine? – It’s times like this when I’m glad I included the Yahoo! Shopping Blog in my aggregated Official Yahoo! Blogs feed. They provided the nifty tidbit of info that searches for “global positioning systems have doubled over the past 30 daysâ€. The Google Trends graph for ‘GPS’ within the U.S. also indicates that while there’s been a surge of interest around the holidays every year, this is by far the largest.
Taking a break from working on my next post, “Social Network Strategy for Web Servicesâ€, I wanted to share two interesting links with you:
Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks – Publishing 2.0 gathers up all things wrong with the mobile web and drops it as a bomb on those who have gotten too caught up in the charge of the iPhone army. Unfortunately, even this list is still thinking of the mobile web as if everyone were willing to pay the cost of an iPhone or similar mobile device. The real truth is that until costs for data … [Read the rest »]
We’ve come a long way from most websites using the height=â€â€ and width=â€â€ parameters of an <img> tag to load huge images, then squeeze them into a 200×100 box, leaving them looking more pixelated than a Pacman family portrait. High-speed internet enables higher-resolution images, people understand how to correctly resize an image now (or have help from photo sharing sites that do), and CSS gives designers more control than ever over placement of images.
But lately I’ve seen some really interesting examples of continued innovation in something as simple (and thus, ubiquitous) as how an image is displayed.
“Publishers’ push for online innovation”:http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=37067 – From the Press Gazette, an interesting article about how publishing companies are creating skunkworks-like environments(à la Yahoo!’s Brickhouse), agile development philosophies, and dedicated teams tasked specifically to bringing traditional publishing into the digital age, in innovative ways. [via “Times emit”:http://aptstudio.com/timesemit/]
“Enterprise instant messaging on the rise”:http://www.crm2day.com/news/crm/122702.php – CRM Today reports on a Gartner prediction of enterprise IM becoming the “de facto tool for voice, video and text chat” by 2011, with “95 percent of workers in leading global organisations using it as their primary interface for real-time communications by 2013.” It’s interesting to note … [Read the rest »]
‘Companies’ do not exist. There are legal documents, there are buildings, and most importantly, there are people. Those who are trying to predict the fortunes of corporations should not be working with the impressions a slogan and logo give them, but instead be paying attention to who is making the decisions behind the logo, and the people that influence them. While I’m finishing up one of the best articles I’ve written so far(make sure you’re “subscribed”:http://feeds.feedburner.com/SocialStrategistAtom to receive it!), I hope you’ll take the time to learn more about three people who have already accomplished great things: Bill Gates, Susan … [Read the rest »]
“Me.dium gets new funding, should use it to start over”:http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/medium_collaborative_browsing.php – I tried Me.dium twice when it was in beta, and both times ended up uninstalling it. There simply wasn’t enough value to it. Part of this was that there weren’t enough people using it(as of now, “20,000 *registered* users”:http://gigaom.com/2007/06/11/medium-raises-immense-amount-of-funding/, according to co-founder David Mandell), and there was no easy way of finding where everyone was. The other part is that I don’t think Me.dium is the best solution for any of the problems they’re trying to solve:
* “You and your friend are trying to accomplish a common task”. … [Read the rest »]
“Valleywag will write *anything*”:http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2007/06/442_jason_calac.html – In this hilarious interview of Jason Calcanis, he explains how Valleywag’s absolute “lack of journalism ethics”:http://valleywag.com/ can be used to provide free marketing or a smokescreen for your new product launch. Oh, and by the way, he’s launching “Mahalo”:http://www.mahalo.com/Main_Page. It’s obviously pretty one-sided, but you can’t argue with the results he received.
“Like my shirt? Text me for more info.”:http://mashable.com/2007/06/04/reactee/ – From Mashable’s web 2.0 firehose I found this intriguing company combining t-shirt sales, marketing, and mobile Internet. Reactee does “t-shirt marketing”:http://reactee.com/ by printing your company’s logo/slogan, a text keyword, and a number to text … [Read the rest »]
“The Future of Newspapers: 10 Obvious Things”:http://www.ryansholin.com/2007/06/02/10-obvious-things-about-the-future-of-newspapers-you-need-to-get-through-your-head/ – Ryan Sholin and I are clearly on the same page. His list tells newspapers who they need to stop *blaming* and what they need to start *doing* to get to a profitable future. Now I wish someone would write a list explaining to bloggers why newspapers *have* a future. Hmmm.. maybe I should do that?
“Wikis… in plain english”:http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english – In this excellent video explanation, CommonCraft explains what wikis are in a way that anyone(not just any techie) can understand. It’s a follow-up to their even better video, “RSS in Plain English”:http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english, … [Read the rest »]
“Google Face Search”:http://www.searchengineherald.com/2007/05/31/google-tests-face-detection-technologies/ – The Search Engine Herald writes about Google adding “image types” to its image search, currently just two: “face”, and “news”. Earlier today I came across “this image[NSFW]“:http://reddit.com/goto?id=1va8e from Google Maps street-view on “reddit”:http://reddit.com, and in the comments users like FCI were asking how people found these images? While searching for “face”-type images wouldn’t have found *that* particular photo, I do wonder what sort of location-based people-finding apps we could create using “face”-type search, the streetview data, Flickr, and other sites that integrate location data with their images.
“AllFacebook.com – The Unofficial Facebook Blog”:http://www.allfacebook.com/ – … [Read the rest »]
“Cure to Age-Old Retail Woe Found Online”:http://weblogs.hitwise.com/heather-hopkins/2007/05/bad_weather_drives_shoppers_on.html – As someone who used to work in retail, I can tell you from experience that nothing is worse for business than bad weather. But according to Hitwise, in the U.K. at least, bad weather isn’t stopping people from shopping, it’s just taking their shopping online. Yet another reason for every business to make sure their customers know they have a web presence.
“Most popular online radio site acquired by first company to broadcast commercial radio”:http://blog.last.fm/2007/05/30/lastfm-acquired-by-cbs – CBS has acquired Last.fm. With the future of “independent online radio stations in jeopardy”:http://www.savenetradio.org/, it is … [Read the rest »]
