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.
Campaign Commentary
Posted by goodmind on September 23rd, 2008
Covering a political campaign on a blog is sooo 2004. For the 2008 presidential election, running your own version of the campaign is all the rage;
Game developer Stardock has released Political Machine Express, letting you live out your political fantasies and take Obama, Biden, Palin or McCain all the way to the White House…you have a scant 21 weeks to scramble for endorsements, launch attack ads and drum up support while outmaneuvering your political foes and crisscrossing the United States.
It’s like Fantasy Football for fans of the democratic political process, only you can play whenever you want since it seems like the campaign season never ends.
(via Wired)
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?
We Love Chrome
Posted by goodmind on September 3rd, 2008
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.
Heading Back to Campus
Posted by goodmind on August 25th, 2008
Back-to-school season usual means big business and splashy marketing campaigns for office supply stored. The WSJ reports that;
Sony Pictures Television, which distributes “Seinfeld” in U.S. syndication, announced the “Seinfeld Campus Tour,” in which it’s sending a 60-foot “Seinfeld”-themed bus to U.S. colleges to drum up interest in “a new generation of viewers,”
It seems sort of cynical on Sony’s to try to manufacture nostalgia in this way, but we say it’s still a smart idea. Generations to come will associate the best years of their life with George Costanza. It’s going to make the inevitable romantic failures, unemployment, and male pattern baldness seem at least somewhat comical.
(via murketing)
The Dieting Game: Manage Your Resources Online
Posted by goodmind on August 21st, 2008
She must be on weight watchers
Awhile back, we wrote a post on how multi-player online role playing games, like World of Warcraft, have become their own economies thanks to practices such as gold farming (paying someone else to rack up points and virtual items for your character). These virtual games have real world implications, and now it seems that real world concerns (like losing weight for example) can be solved with a virtual game interface;
Weight Watchers is an RPG.
Think about it. As with an RPG, you roll a virtual character, manage your inventory and resources, and try to achieve a goal. Weight Watchers’ points function precisely like hit points; each bite of food does damage until you’ve used up your daily amount, so you sleep and start all over again. Play well and you level up — by losing weight! And the more you play it, the more you discover interesting combinations of the rules that aren’t apparent at first. Hey, if I eat a fruit-granola breakfast and an egg-and-romaine lunch, I’ll have enough points to survive a greasy hamburger dinner for a treat! (via Wired)
Gold farming wont work in this instance, and paying someone else to use your points for you wont help you “level up.” However, Wired makes the Weight Watchers interface seem like so much fun. The “elegant online tool” allows you to easily calculate points for pretty much any food, or ingredient, so you can easily budget your resources for the day. Maybe the financials could learn a thing or too…
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.
