Isotoma

Nice, considered post from Andy of Isotoma on Web2.0.

His point about the ratio of limited impact: maximal hype rings very true. He references the Redeye blog’s point that TechCrunch is not the web, even though it has the “53,651” globly Geekhood tuning in (I wonder if my RSS subscription therefore makes me a geek? Woo!).

More importantly, Andy’s noted that many of these ‘new companies’ are simply peddling that which can be achieved with existing tools:

it’s also worth noting that writely could actually be deployed in about 15 minutes with one of kupu, FCKeditor or Tiny MCE and some storage on Amazon’s S3 platform.

I like the ambition, focus upon tools and user context, and the elements of simplicity that “web 2.0” allows us to talk about. However, the warning signs are there: never mind how simple the idea, spend marketing dollars to get first mover advantage (which these days means “tug Yahoo|Google|Amazon’s chain and get bought”).

Now, all I have to do is persuade Andy to knock up some of these “15 minute” mashups for me as a favour… 😉

I’m struggling to get any interest in MySpace/bebo etc. Yes, I know that they’re phenomena, growing, vibing and otherwise pulsating with the very lifeblood of young consumers, but still I feel as if it’s already over. Yesterday. Popped.

Why? Well, as I get older and recall the goldrush to have a ‘homepage on the web’ (the virtual “landgrab”), and then to have an AOL member’s page, .Mac etc. Then to have a basic blog. Then to have a “social” flickr/delicious/whatever account. Now it’s to have a MySpace ‘space’.

These passings fads are to do with inscribing your name temporarily on the web (“carving your name in a block of ice on a hot July day” as I think Miller said in Death of a Salesman). While many people use them for hobbies, communication, respositories, the real buzz is around the “youth” usage of them. Looking at such spaces though really shows that they’re doing exactly what teenagers do in real life: talk about little, tease each other, comment on other people and gossip, occasionally shock and generally play with notions of identity and presentation. In these cases it’s the interaction that’s important: the medium not the message, the journey not the destination.

Technorati Weblog: Technorati and Edelman Partner on International Blogosphere

Interesting press release ^W^W blog posting on the collaboration between Technorati and Edelman (“the largest independent global PR firm” – not sure how many other firms would be competing in the ‘independent global’ category for the prize…).

The release is rather short on substance to warrant the tag “partnership”: this is more like the 1999 version of ‘partnership’ – we’re chatting together and looking for ways to make money:

Technorati is accelerating the development of fully localized versions of our service in Chinese, Korean, German, Italian and French. … [snip]

Edelman is providing support for this accelerated development effort and will have access to these new sites as they are in development and testing this year. They will be working with their international clients on how to listen to and engage the blogosphere. How to move away from one-way, command and control marketing towards the conversational era we’ve entered.

So: Technorati is trying to be multilingual, multinational and multicultural (ie not just speaking to/about The Valley). Edelman is elbowing its way into the comms and marketing budgets of big clients, telling them how to ‘engage’ the blogosphere.

Just because a room is full of flies it doesn’t make them easier to catch, and the notion that the ‘blogosphere’ is coherent, can be addressed logically or that it’s a sort of ‘oasis’ where the big beasts of the savanna congregate, allowing the marketing hunters to take potshots at them, is fundamentally flawed.

This ‘blogosphere’ is more akin to watching a swarm of locusts: you have little warning of the swarm forming and so it appears a force of nature; you have only the most general idea of the direction the swarm will follow, but when it’s passed boy do you know they were hungry!

A former chairman of mine had an aphorism that the person who profits most in a gold rush is the one selling shovels, and there’s a nugget (sorry!) of truth in that for the current push to monetise the blogosphere.

Edelman are by no means digital slouches, and they gave a great account of themselves at the recent Blogging for Business conference where Guillaume du Gardier spoke with insight and pragmatism. In linking with Technorati, Edelman will have direct access to the online behaviour and shifting interests of a class of internet user that’s at the leading edge of behaviour. This will give them a sort of “lab” to assess behaviour and commercial opportunities so that they’re prepared for the late majority of adopters.

In advance of any such learning, however, there are clear pointers for companies looking to use digital channels to address or influence consumers: have a product with integrity, fit for purpose and need; listen and respond to customers insofar as it’s commercially sensible to you, but don’t pretend to be a co-op or to run your product by focus group (see first point!); give voice to your staff and customer service teams – don’t route all comments via your legal department!

Other than this the rudiments of customer communications, research and planning all stand. The new ‘blogosphere’ serves only to increase the speed at which customers can move away from you or – most painfully – the speed at which inept, inauthentic, manipulative, hollow and formulaic marketing rubrics can be exposed and mocked.

How much do I love Charlie and Lola? Muchly much.

The books are OK – not my favourite – but they capture that 4-going-on-fourteen behaviour that young girls exhibit. The narration – by a long-suffering, rather cool, kindly older brother – frames the stories nicely. Think “Matilda” for the Noughties in a family context.

Anyway, good though the books are, the animated series goes a major step further: great animation, true to the book’s illustrations yet really innovative, and a fab tune: you’ll be whistling it all day!

So, the cellophane’s off, the DVD’s spinning and two little-big-girls are watching in rapt attention (and getting lots of tips on excuses for not having a bath, going to bed or eating tomatoes…).

Oh, the C&L website at www.charlieandlola.com is in the vein of the animation and has a fun ‘webisode’ to entertain the kids while daddy explains about not getting crumbs in the keyboard…

Oh dear. I’ve been wanting to move my blog layout to a 3 column one for ages and found some pretty good instructions, to be fair.

Since I don’t have the luxury of a) a couple of hours without interruption/real work and b) in-depth technical skills that allow me to laugh with scorn at such a trivial task you’ll notice that the site atm is, ahem, “in transition”.

All should be back over the weekend (and, let’s admit it, you’re not really missing the photo of me 😉 ) but it’s made me resolve to stick with standard templates in future and not to fiddle. Honest.

At least the new Stylecatcher plugin will mean that I can swap styles in future without having to recode, un-bodge and generally fiddle around.

If it weren’t for the fact that I want to have my data in the trusted hands of Isotoma who provide hosting etc then I’d certainly be better off using Typepad.

This brings me back to musings on the Web2.0 ‘ASP’ services and the importance of data (ie am I really that fussed? Isn’t a weekly backup less hassle than weekly fiddling?).

With a different hat on I’m working on a business at the moment that’ll be using blog software and in this case we’re going to use an ASP since not of us want to (nor are able) to support and develop the software to the standards we’d wish.

This just emphasises I suppose the difference between a hobby/learning activity (this blog) and real business!

Right, where’s that MT manual?

Well, I suppose that we were overdue for a bout of imaginary people, but Alice surprised us last week with a new, imaginary grandfather.

Apparently, “my granpa” has been taking her to nursery, to soft play in Fishguard (obviously, a memorable soft play session from a raining day in Pembrokeshire one holiday) and buying her hair clips.

We asked, one day, what Granpa’s name might be and – without a pause – we’re told it’s Penyasser (or Penny-Asser? A sort of Spanish tilde-type pronunciation comes into play).

I must say that I rather like the name – makes me think of an ancient wizard or mediaeval king…

Anyway, she’s remained firm and unwavering on the name, and this morning we had mention of Penyasser’s dog – Bella Primrose.

Still, that’s par for the course on the naming front (their combined best suggestion for their impending baby brother’s name is Dora Kirsty). These ‘combo’ girly names are the norm, so it just makes us wonder even more about the origin of Penyasser.

If anyone’s got any suggestions – stories, characters etc that we may have missed – I’d be pleased to hear of them. In the meantime, Granpa is about to take her to the shop for an ice cream. That should be worth watching 😉

[via TechCrunch]

So, Google’s rush of ‘widgets on the web’ continues with Google Notepad – looks like a combined scratchpad, tagged link store and shared repository. Neat.

So: we now have two things:
1) yet another way to put granular, transient tidbits in a ‘web bucket’; and
2) yet another google* thing to increase our use of and devotion to the Great G.

Thinking about this accelerating trend to light apps, provided free, in open-ish fashions and a ‘web 2.0’ feel, makes me think:

* data is increasingly going to be the issue: why would I want all of my data to be held by Google?
* now that we all have good broadband at home, work (firewalls permitting access, natch) and in many metropolitan areas, there’s going to be a further push to get fully pervasive internet connectivity
* these tools will need to get offline caches/versions/synchronisation options in the medium term
* the browser is now the window on the world and increasingly performs the general tasks we need: information sorting, display, analysis and the basic, normal activities (mail, calendar, notes, tags, images).

The biggest realisation of the day though is the reduction in content creation or origination: everything is geared towards seeing what others have produced, linking to it, telling your mates you’ve linked to it and then collecting your links and publishing those too!

This isn’t a value judgement nor a criticism: in fact, isn’t this the basis of virtually all human conversation? He said that she said and then I said and then this happened – tell your friends!

I’ve come round to thinking that it’s the turn of “content” to have its day in the sun (the wheel’s come round again: content – community – capability (software, broadband, technology – whatever)). This time, though, it needs to work more closely with the architects and planners since there are going to be so many feeds, mashups and secondary sources looking to found themselves on definitive yet accessible data that for the first time in my working life it’s not enough to create a closed, custom data source/base. Content may soon be King, but it’ll be like having an heriditary monarch in a political democracy – more of a balance and a complex set of interdependencies, niceties and planning considerations.

No palaces, though. Unless you count Bush House 😉

Update: How long until we get GoogleWiki? That’d be something I’d like to see: personal aspects for project and data management, but with a group/publish option. Surely it can’t be more than a month or two before we get an announcement…?

Update 2: TechCrunch has done a nice comparison of the simpler todo listy things currently available. Worth reviewing if you want a list of ones to play with ^W^W evaluate.

Just been watching “Lazy Town” on CBeebies with my (mesmerised) daughters (3). I reckon it should be called “Crazy Town” since, erm, everyone’s just crazy there.

It’s visually a real treat: imagine a cartoon meets real actors meets sponge sets and puppets. Hmm – put like that it does sound weird. Primary and pastel colours, plastic masks, music-hall piano and “ta-daaaa” sound effects and that goodie-goodie moral “reveal” in the story telling… Sigh.

The main character is Sportacus (!) who’s erm sporty. There’s a nice kid Stephanie who’s nice and a traditional baddie (like Dick Dastardly) called, helpfully, Robbie Rotten. The rest are puppets. The plot each time is: Robbie dresses up and does something naughty. Stephanie is suspicious but nice, everyone else is gullible and shallow. Sportacus is nice, dim, well-meaning but fit. He bumbles his way to ‘victory’, helped sometimes by the innate non-nastiness of the populace of the town.

So far, so boring. What saves this show is that it’s got great dance routines (yes, I AM sad!), good filming (think “Delicatessen” for kids) and it’s just sweet.

I was pleased therefore to find out that it’s Icelandic. Huzzah. That explains the ‘unique’ take on life. The creator saith:

The philosophy of Lazy Town is
to motivate children and inspire them to live a healthy life.
The creator of Lazy Town, Magnus Scheving, also plays
one of the leading roles, athletic, super-fit super-hero
Sporticus. This children’s programme has received wide
acclaim in the United States.

Sigh – if only life were like this!

Fast Company has an article on it (thanks, Google!):

It really shouldn’t work: a 41-year-old Icelander in a blue spandex unitard, with a waxed Dali mustache, floppy cap, and goggles, doing one-handed push-ups, high kicks, and backflips to convince kids that exercise is cool. …

In a (healthy) nutshell, each show is a 30-minute tale of sporting Sportacus outfoxing the slothful villain Robbie Rotten and encouraging LazyTown’s young couch potatoes to swap their PS2s for outdoor pursuits and fresh vegetables. The pink-haired heroine Stephanie interrupts the action with bubblegum-pop music.

More info on Wikipedia.

That my girls are currently glued to the telly rather undermines the hope (the medium kills the message in this case).

Right – enough typing: there’s a dance/pop routine on: “if you believe there is always a way (always a way”, “gorra believe it, gorra believe it, gorra believe in yerrself”)”. Just going to drop onto the sofa with the girls and get motivated. I believe it!

e-Consultancy have just announced details of the 2006 “What’s New in Online Marketing” event on 7 June 2006. I shall be speaking on “Web 2.0”, navigating between excitement and cynicsm, focusing on the ROI opportunities and pitfalls for businesses. There’s a great line-up of speakers, many of whom I’ve heard before and combine expertise with engaging presentation styles. Very much looking forward to this!