Archive for September, 2009

I came across this project at MIT Media Lab by Aaron Zinman. I really like the way it represents what a search term is about rating it against a pre-defined taxonomy of categories. The process of scanning the data was transparent and facinating to watch.

I took a screen shot whilst the process was running.

Here is the finished article. This is reposted from my personal blog renaissance chambara.

I am a collector. Its an intrinsic part of me. I have a bookshelf full of books, a collection of mechanical watches, a garage full of vinyl records and a collection of interesting web links online here. I am slightly different to a hoarder in that I am quite happy to let stuff go. I recently cut my watch collection right back as my interests had changed in the types of watches that I liked.

It is a similar story with my music collection, in fact the only thing slowing my thinning out my collection is the fact that you literally can’t give the stuff away on eBay at the moment and secondhand record shops will charge you to take the stuff off your hands as the recession has crushed people’s discretionary income.

I have over 9,000 links stashed away on delicious. I don’t need to clear things out because delicious has infinite room to all intents and purposes. Delicious also allows me to find people who are likeminded and do the online equivalent of shoulder surfing to take a peek at their bookmarks. For instance my friend David Rout is a great photographer, so I will pay attention to photographic-related links that he has. It has and will continue to attract collector types like me.

It makes me wonder whether early adopter-types are collectors (of beta version experiences)?

This is different to the sharing that happens on social networks which are closer to passing around dishes at a dinner party as a way of spurring interaction between guests. This is probably why the statistics in this comparative research on the way consumers share websites is of limited value.

Probably the most significant change in statistics is the surge of Live Bookmarks and Yahoo! Bookmarks in market share despite better products out there like delicious and Google Bookmarks. These show that the portals have managed to sell bookmarking to their heavy users (I am guessing through toolbar downloads) whilst the early adopters have kept with their own personal favourite tools.

This is cross-posted from my personal blog renaissance chambara.

The Lib Dem’s seaside conference

The Lib Dem Conference this year seems to have been more exciting than usual. I am afraid to say that too often I have dismissed it as a warm up for the main two conferences. But this year it has delivered a punch.

Whether you love Nick Clegg or you see him as a David Cameron downgrade, this year he has brought greater presence and press coverage to the conference than before. The newspapers have followed what, in particular, Clegg and Cable have had to say.

The two dominating policy announcements for me have been the ‘Mansion Tax’ - Vince Cable’s announcement that people with houses over £1 million would be charged a tax at 0.5% on the value of a house above this amount and Nick Clegg’s announcement of ’savage’ cuts.

These two issues gained great coverage. Cable’s was seen as wooing the left whilst Clegg’s was an admission that the Recession would lead to inevitable funding squeezes and the Lib Dems admitting that the way ahead would be difficult. With both of these two policy announcements the Lib Dems got the communications right, but the process and messaging wrong.

With the ‘Mansion Tax’ Vince Cable received great coverage and it has been debated widely in the press and on news channels. In fact people have been scrutinising it as if it could be introduced by a Government. This shows that the Lib Dems have been taken more seriously at this conference.

But equally that is why it has received so much criticism. Vince Cable was opposed by many colleagues on the issue, consulted thinly with MPs and has now admitted that he may need to consult more on the idea before updating the terms of it. In fact the initial big splash it gained has now been tarnished by the in-fighting that has followed. It has been a case of big splash with poor messaging.

Similarly Nick Clegg’s announcement of ’savage’ cuts was a strong call that gained a great deal of coverage, but again the messaging and PR behind the announcement was extremely poor. Nick Clegg has not thought through the messaging because ’savage’ cuts, as opposed to just ‘cuts’, suggests that frontline services will suffer. Again it is a case of Lib Dems making a great deal of noise and being scrutinised seriously and being found wanting on their messaging.

Overall the Lib Dems seemed to make progress this conference, being taken seriously. But their messaging has been found wanting. They need to now work out their proposals tightly and sell them with the right language that says they are a party that can govern not just a third option.

David Mitchell of Peep Show fame said on Mock the Week last night that the Liberal Democrat Conference was simply a warm up for the Labour and Conservative Conference’s in the coming weeks. Normally, from what I’ve experienced, this was probably the case, although this time I’m not so sure.

Naturally, there has been a fairly large amount of press surrounding the Lib-Dem Conference. It is after all, the first major conference in the last conference season prior to a General Election. Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Vince Cable MP has been named the most trusted politician in the UK. Nick Clegg has found his feet as Leader of the Lib-Dems and as he states he is ready to become Prime Minister. This obviously will never happen, but I predict that the Lib-Dems will play a more significant role in this election than they have played in recent ones.

All elections are fascinating, but this one will potentially benefit the Lib-Dems for a number of reasons:

1.       Increased visibility. I’m sure Nick Clegg was the first to jump at the chance of a three way debate between the leaders. Clegg has nothing to lose and everything to gain. A story on Newsnight earlier this week revolved around Barack Obama’s polling analyst looking at the upcoming election.

Via a number of focus groups he initially determined that Clegg’s biggest problem was the lack of visibility i.e. no one had heard of him or understood what he stood for. However, once they were shown footage of him speaking and discussing his policies, many of the focus group opinions changed. He was seen as likable, strong with reasonable policies. A televised debate would give him a national platform that the Lib-Dems would not have experienced for a long time.

2.       Social media. This kind of fits within the increased visibility section above, but like the other parties, the Lib-Dems are going to be able to push their policies and candidates over the web, something that hasn’t been done during a general election in the UK before. Voters will therefore be more aware than ever before.

3.       Disaffected Labour voters. The term progressive has been over used to a nauseating level in the past two weeks, but, let’s be truly honest the Lib-Dems probably have more right to the term than the Conservatives. With the Lib-Dems wanting to tax the rich via the mansion tax and out flanking Labour from the left by raising the tax-free threshold to £10,000, scrapping trident and ID Cards, angry lefties might just tick the yellow box.

4.       People who can’t bring themselves to vote for David Cameron. In the North, Cameron is still going to struggle, simply because of his Oxbridge, Etonian, Bullingdon club reputation and there will be many voters who won’t be able to bring themselves to tick the Tory box. If they don’t vote for Labour, or god forbid the BNP, the Lib-Dems might just pick up a few votes or even seats here and there.

5.       Expenses. The Lib-Dems were comparatively unscathed as an individual party, although as MPs, they were dragged through the mud with everyone else. The Lib-Dems should have done better in the Euro elections in June, but they did reasonably in the local elections so it is hard to say whether they will garner extra votes from being relatively clean.

6.       Increased voter numbers. The public is peeved with Westminster and this could either mean a record high or low turnout. If it is high, then I think the smaller parties, including the Lib-Dems will pick up a significant number of votes because they are still not seen as one of the major players, yet they are still seen as a viable protest vote destination.

No Party is doing as well as they should be. Sure, the Tories have a commanding lead in the polls and hover just above 40%, Labour mid to high twenties and Lib-Dem low twenties, high teens. That to me suggests some issues. To be clear winners, the Tories should be 45%. Labour should be higher at 30% to be in with a chance, but things will tighten as the elections looms. But the fact is, there looks like around 15% undecideds, even if you give 5% to the minor parties.

The Tories should still get it, but things aren’t as black and white as some pundits claim they are. If the election was called today, it would not take a huge percentage shift for the Tories to be presiding over a hung parliament and Ming has already stated that if the Tories won, the Lib-Dems would be compelled to work with Labour. The Tories are also clearly a tad concerned, hence David Cameron and Eric Pickles calling, slightly ridiculously, for Lib-Dem voters to come home to the Tories.

The ultimate test will be election day, but the fact is, I don’t think the Lib-Dems can necessarily be discounted. They may be a force to be reckoned with, or they might fluff it, they’ve done it before after all. But you never know, come Autumn in 2010, we could be waking up with a few extra pounds in our pockets or less, if you own a whopping great house.

Love to know your thoughts.

Cross posted with my personal blog.

I was listening to a mix by Japanese DJ SoccerBoy when I came across this page on his site. It featured a section of the documentary film made about the traditional dolphin cull in a small village in Japan.

The text on the page reads:

“Whites don’t kill dolphins, Yellows do”

HUMANE + ECOLOGY = NEW RACISM

Are the likes of Greenpeace, PeTA and the World Wildlife Fund as guilty of racism as the 19th century missionaries who wanted to civilise the savages by bringing God’s word to them, or the entrepreneurs who sought to open the Chinese market for opium with cannon shot and muskets?

At the very least, it indicates that western pressure group’s confrontational ‘Two Minutes Hate‘ approach needs to be revisited and they need to search deep within their motivations to come up with a more empathetic and effective way of influencing their desired changes in behaviour because its leaving potential allies alienated in non-Western countries.

This is cross-posted from my personal blog renaissance chambara.

I suffer from back pain periodically (hey I’m getting old, these things happen), and I use this medicine from Hong Kong to massage into the painful spot. Wong To Yick Wood Lock is the bomb, kind of like a nuclear deep heat which hits the spot and straight burns out the pain.

The reason why I am writing about it here is the contradiction in the packaging design. Which on one level seems old-school and conservative. However given that the world’s best printing industry is across the border in Shenzhen, it would be ridiculously easy for the unscrupulous to come up with an identical facsimile.

So they trick the cardboard box out with a holographic film (thats the shimmer you can see in the pictures.) A complete contradiction in design wrapped up in this one set of packaging.

This is cross-posted from my personal blog renaissance chambara.

A series of fairly hard hitting ads with the tagline AIDS is a Mass Murderer, will be played on Germany TV and cinema screens in the lead up to World AIDS Day.  The video features a couple having sex, however, at the end of ad, the male raises his head and is clearly supposed to be Hitler. A number of posters are also being produced and the imagery is again of a couple however, the male character is either Hitler, Stalin or Saddam Hussein.

AIDS has always been a focus of hard hitting ads. I don’t remember many ads from my childhood, but one that has always stuck with me is from 1987 from back home in Australia. I’ve embedded it below. It is one of the most frightening ads I’ve seen, but the message is essentially that AIDS doesn’t discriminate and it is a devastating disease that could affect anyone, so take proper precautions and don’t be naive.

That, personally, was a pretty effective ad. The Hitler one I think goes a tad too far.

I realise that AIDS doesn’t receive the same headlines as it did in the 80s and 90s and AIDS groups and advertisers have to rely on shock value to get the message across these days because unfortunately there simply isn’t enough media or public interest. This is what the campaign is clearly trying to address as the first line of the website’s homepage states “Over the past number of years, public interest in AIDS has massively declined. The number of victims, however, has not. As of now, over 28 million people worldwide have died. And every day another 5,000 fatalities are added to that number. This makes AIDS one of the largest mass murderers of all time.”

But, the problem with this ad is that the message could be read by some people as - if you have AIDS, you are as bad as Hitler/Stalin/Hussein.  By personifying an individual with AIDS as a mass murderer, you could be running into trouble and you enter the territory of vilifying AIDS sufferers.

I know that there are few internationally recognisable female mass murderers, but I think it is also questionable that the person transmitting AIDS in these posters are only men. I know it sounds silly, but with people thinking chicken skin, kebabs and coke can act as contraception (I know, I was stunned too), it isn’t outside of the realms of possibility that young men would think you can only catch AIDS through sex with men and you can’t catch it from a unprotected sex with a woman.

I believe the most effective campaigns are a combination of shock and education. These ads only state protect yourself. From what? Where is the advice around condoms, clean needles etc.?

To me, this ad is only about raising the issue of AIDS as a media priority and is based purely on shock value. It will, as it already has sparked debate and gained publicity, but do we need more than that? Like other shock campaigns, people will also become desensitised, then the media will move to the next story, so what is the next step for media campaigns? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Cross posted with my personal blog.

At the recent Teen Choice awards one category stood out from the rest. Alongside the standard categories like ‘Best Actor’, ‘Best Actress’ and ‘Best Liplock’ the awards also ran a category for the first ever ‘Best Twit’ award. After a long build up where presenters extolled the virtues of twitter the nominees were announced. Each celebrity in the category was nominated for one particular tweet with examples including:

Kim Kardashian – PLEASE HELP ME! I am so sunburned! I fell asleep with huge glasses on yesterday! This tan line is not ok!!

MC Hammer – NFL Football camps start in about 2 weeks…I’m ready for some Football!!! !!!!!

Ashton Kutcher –Ashton does it!

The overall winner was Ellen DeGeneres for her tweet, ‘This is what happens when you tweet about Garbonzo beans….’

Aside from thinking that this was an extremely odd category it got me thinking about what the criteria must have been to judge ‘the best tweet’. Can you even categorise a tweet?! What makes a good tweet? Does it have to be funny? Useful? Thought-provoking?

Answers to @annabelkerr23!!

Mark Pesce, one of the pioneers of the modern web; who was the prime mover behind a now-forgotten technology called VRML. In the mid-1990s virtual reality was all the rage and the future was going to be all about tactile gloves, video visor helmets and surround sound; so a three-dimensional worldwide web made sense and ’surfing’ the web was going to be more than just a metaphor. VRML was going to be the language that it was built in and the whole lot would run on Silicon Graphics servers.

Virtual reality fell on its ass as it gave people motion sickness, but the rise of augmented reality, the Nintendo Wii controller and three dimensional displays from the iTunes jukebox to Microsoft Surface shows that Pesce may have just been too early. I recently got reacquainted with Pesce’s work when I found his latest online incarnation and read about his vision of the changing nature of the web on his blog The Human Network. Hyperconnectivity is a phrase that Pesce uses to describe the effects brought about by the following factors:

• Content and experiences can be shared easily throughout the world
• Humans are social creatures
• The web and its audiences have become a worldwide eyes and ears, wherever there is connectivity there is nothing that can remain hidden. This means that many of the traditional control mechanisms no longer work: just ask the music industry

Pesce is interested in what this means for society and social interaction, we are the precipice of a social experiment from which there is no way back. So in some respects, hyperconnectivity has yet to be fully defined.

This is cross-posted from my personal blog renaissance chambara.

A interesting post appeared on the BBC dot.life blog yesterday afternoon outlining the results of a recent panel discussion held by the Centre for The Study of Financial Innovation. This city think tank got together a panel of teenagers to try and delve a little deeper into the media habits of ‘Generation Y’.

The part of the discussion that really interested me was the teenagers’ response to TV advertising vs. online advertising. The media nowadays is full of talk about ‘the death of TV advertising’ and increasingly, as is the case for new jeans Gap jeans campaign [see earlier post], companies are pulling their TV advertising altogether to focus their budget on what they see as the more lucrative realm of online advertising. This comes as we are told that more and more people are consuming their media online both on illegal sites and on sites such as BBC i-Player. And yet according to this recent event ‘television seemed to have an enduring appeal for the teenagers.’ Moreover ‘television advertising seemed to be viewed with a degree of enthusiasm – in stark contrast to web ads.’ I know this study is by no means conclusive and is merely the opinion of a few ‘representatives’ of Generation Y but it does make you think…

Personally I would agree with the above opinions. At 23, while I do watch a certain amount of TV online this does not mean that I watch any less TV. In fact, most of the time I watch programmes online only if I have missed them on TV. Equally I would say that I am much more open to TV adverts than I am to online adverts – online adverts totally pass me by, they are on the periphery of what I am looking at so rarely do they earn my focus.

So what is the answer for advertisers? Advertising on TV or online? It would be interesting to learn some of my colleagues’ opinions on what works better for them. Can the answer really be a generational thing?