The Secret to Professional Success
Posted by goodmind on September 29th, 2008
One of our favorite ways to knock out a quick and easy blog post is to discuss (take a shot at) the cause and effect relationship between Facebook activity, and employment situation. We post about Facebook a lot, so we couldn’t resist when Stan Schroeder over at Mashable had this to say about the career intelligence of heavy Facebook use;
If you’re a Facebook user and are at the same time interested in doing whatever you can to help your country, you may have seen an odd advertising campaign there from Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service.
The Facebook ads bear text messages such as “Time for a career change? MI6 can use your skills. Join us as an operational officer collecting and analysing global intelligence to protect the UK.” Obviously, someone over there at the secret service thinks that an average superpokin’, donut throwin’, penguin fondlin’ Facebook fiend is spy material. When I think about it, perhaps they’re right – who else is better suited to do deep data analysis than someone who hasn’t got anything better to do than waste time on Facebook all day?
As a market research firm, maybe we should consider recruiting a few of these prime analytic minds from the Facebook talent pool…
YouTube Video Games
Posted by goodmind on September 25th, 2008
Remember when it was “innovative” to issue corporate mea culpas on YouTube? Well this is a truly forward thinking way to use the video sharing site. Hexolabs, a mobile game development company has put the video annotations feature to good use, linking several videos together as different levels of a single game;
The rule is simple – a button will momentarily flash on your screen while the video is playing – you have to click that button before it disappears else your car meets a crash. If you click at the right moment, you jump to the next level.
This is where it gets interesting. The next level is actually another YouTube video clip that is linked to the button you just clicked in the previous level. Good idea. (via Digital Inspiration)
Great, now Google has a gaming platform too.
Social Networking Wars
Posted by goodmind on September 24th, 2008
Though we prefer to classify it as a “conflict,” this cartoon (via Current) titled “Social Networking Wars” is right on the money. Which is probably good since certain individuals have invested a good deal of it in some of these social networks.
Much thanks to Alison Bryant for bringing it to our attention deficit disorder. Come to think of it, given our own deficit spending on social sites, maybe “war” is the correct term.
Walk This Way
Posted by goodmind on September 17th, 2008
Google Maps for Mobile now offers walking directions, the convenience of which may make Google’s controversial Street View a bit more acceptable. Granted, it’s not as if GPS navigation made driving more popular, but we have to wonder if Street View level walking directions will help popularize pedestrianism.
Realistically, Google is probably just hoping the application will help popularize Android.
Web TV Guide
Posted by goodmind on September 9th, 2008
Invision.tv is the new TV guide for internet video, though sadly it doesn’t appear to include horoscopes.
Here’s the pitch: Why just go to YouTube to find a video when you can search nearly all online video sites instead? With Invision.tv’s online guide, you have a one-stop-shop for searching online video from all over the web. Videos can be sorted by channel or category as you browse through their video guide. Here, you’ll find everything from user-gen content like that found on YouTube and MySpace to professional-produced videos from the likes of CNet, Hulu, Comedy Central, Funny or Die, CNBNC, Discovery Channel, Food Network, ESPN, HGTV, ABC, and more. (via ReadWriteWeb)
While it sounds an awful lot like TechCrunch for streaming online video, Invision.tv allows you to watch video through its own interface, or through the original source. It’s also recommendation based, meaning the more internet TV you watch, the better Invision will get to know your preferences. So, if you watch a lot of viral videos, will Invision find the next big thing for you?
Educated Readers
Posted by goodmind on September 2nd, 2008
Website usability isn’t all about having tabbed navigation and an intuitive layout. The language used within a webpage is of course quite central to user experience. Interestingly, language can also undermine user expectations. Take for example a recent post by Alain Thys on the Marketing and Strategy Innovation Blog.
Using SMOG (a formula used to translate the readability of a text into a score), it’s possible to estimate the level of education needed to read and understand the content of your website. Thys ran a little experiment with several well known brands, using random paragraphs from the “About Us” pages. The results from this informal study are included below;
| Brand |
Score | Education Level |
| Nintendo | 10.49 | Some High School |
| General Electric | 12.49 | High School Graduate |
| Goodmind | 13.06 | Some College |
| McDonalds | 13.25 | Some College |
| IKEA | 13.35 | Some College |
| Honda | 13.49 | Some College |
| Nike | 14.40 | Some College |
| Citi | 15.00 | Some College |
| HP | 15.76 | Some College |
| Porsche | 15.85 | Some College |
| Samsung | 16.69 | University Degree |
| SAP | 16.69 | University Degree |
| Disney | 17.66 | Post-Graduate Studies |
| Microsoft | 17.75 | Post-Graduate Studies |
| Starbucks | 18.49 | Post-Graduate Studies |
User Experience Design
Posted by goodmind on August 28th, 2008
Having recently invested in some usability testing technology for research purposes, we’re bummed we overlooked the Experience Recorder from designer Valeria Fuso.
It’s basically a sophisticated glove in a neon color scheme, with a rich feature set, including a movement sensor, audio recorder, still-image camera, video camera, thermometer, and a wireless computer connection. Plus, the Experience Recorder can;
…record on auto mode, deciding on its own which information to collect, or on manual mode. While in manual mode, the user must activate the Experience Recorder through sensors in the fingers of the glove. For instance, if the user of the Experience Recorder is in manual mode and wishes to record video, they make their fingers into an O shape, and look through the newly formed finger-viewfinder to see what will be recorded. (via Yanko Design)
Fashionable and functional.
Junk Mail With a Purpose
Posted by goodmind on August 20th, 2008
According to AdAge, Direct Mail works, though not for its original intended purpose;
New Orleans has found a novel use for the massive database used by Valassis Communications’ RedPlum direct-mail operation. Normally used to send promotional circulars to virtually every household in the U.S., it’s now being used to track the speed of recovery in the Crescent City.
Non-profit organizations are able to use the street level data (i.e. which households are actively receiving mail) to measure repopulation progress, and determine where to target rebuilding efforts. This may not seem like a big deal, but it can actually save these groups valuable time and money, since they no longer need to conduct repopulation surveys themselves.
You can check out the full map here, courtesy of the Greater New Orleans Data Center. Like Wired, we’re anxiously waiting for them to figure out an equally useful purpose for online spam.
Dialed In
Posted by goodmind on August 18th, 2008
“Deep Dialing” is a service that might be more significant than Deep Throat;
Toronto-based Fonolo works by using transcriptions of the phone menus of large companies so that users can navigate them visually. Users simply pick the company they need to call, scan through the company’s phone menu visually, then click the spot they need. Fonolo will automatically dial, navigate the menu and then dial the user’s phone. When the user answers, they will be connected to the right spot in the menu—hence the name, Deep Dialing. (via Springwise)
It will be interesting to see if customer service satisfaction ratings will improve as a result of the service, as one of the most common frustrations is time spent on hold.
Learning to Share
Posted by goodmind on August 6th, 2008
It’s amazing how often we need to be reminded of what should be obvious – collaboration works best when everyone shares. This is because it’s so hard for community and commerce to coexist happily on the web. However;
In “We Think: Mass Innovation, Not Mass Production”, British innovation and creativity guru Charles Leadbeater makes the case, based on countless well-documented examples from all over the world, that innovation in the era of the Web has become a collective, collaborative effort. “You are what you share”, he writes. Walking his talk, he shares part of the final book and the full first draft on his website. (via SwissMiss)
Maybe this logic holds true for books sales, as Leadbeater will soon find out from his with a personal experiment.
