Category Archives: Internet Technology

You should donate to Wikipedia

Posted on November 16, 2011 | Leave a comment

If you’ve been on Wikipedia lately, you’ve no doubt seen the banner with the picture of co-founder Jimmy Wales asking for your help.

A lot of the time, we all skip past this. After the obnoxious explosion of banner ads in the early 2000s, most Internet surfers developed that extra muscle in their brain that helps them not see banners.

But today I clicked through, and I donated to the cause. That graphic on the right rail of my page shows I did. You should too.

Support Wikipedia

Why? Because Wikipedia is an important source of (usually) unbiased information, a quick resource almost everyone has used at some time, that charges nothing and doesn’t ask you to buy, click or link back to. The idea that some day advertisers would be able to smear their logo feces all over the pages of Wikipedia obviously would make advertisers themselves drool.

The rest of us would likely suffer. Imagine a company with a massive ad buy on Wikipedia – which you know would be expensive, given the amount of traffic Wikipedia gets. Then a decidedly bad story breaks out in the news about said company, and the volunteer editors update this company’s page with that information, just as they would now.

Wouldn’t you imagine that company would put pressure on Wikipedia to remove those references? Perhaps they’d lobby to have their page locked down altogether? Would Wikipedia have the stones to tell this company to shove off? Actually, forget that – would they even have the financial ability for that? If they become dependent on advertiser money to keep doing what they do, everything would balance on ad revenue to keep from going under.

Donating makes sure they continue to have the funds to operate without having to answer to corporate interest. PBS and Public Radio like to lay claim to that, but they still have to mention the companies that give them “grants,” which, frankly, is its own form of advertising.

So I’m asking, if you’re reading this, for you to go to Wikipedia, click on the link to give a donation, and then actually do it. If you have Paypal, it will blow your mind how easy it is to do.

And before anyone starts blasting me about all of the other things I could ask you to donate to, I’ve given to the Haitian Relief Fund this year too. But that doesn’t have anything to do with the Internet. So bugger off.

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Posted in Internet Technology

Why we love Google, Apple and Facebook

Posted on July 19, 2011 | Leave a comment

I didn’t get enough sleep last night – so this morning I woke up so stupid-dumb tired I could barely function. When you’re in a mood like that, you want things to be simple, and just work, so you don’t have to think.

Hence the title of this post. The reason we are so enamored of these three mega-companies of the 3.0 age is that they offer a kind of Orwellian-socialist simplicity: The stuff always works, is always simple, and is always there.

Yes, there are a lot of other designs or tools that could work better. It’s the utilitarian ease behind Google Search, Facebook, or the Apple interface on anything that keeps us coming back.

Consider Facebook – why do we all keep coming back to a site with questionable privacy policies and no content of their own? Because it’s easy. If all of our friends are there, and nothing is ever too terribly broken (like Twitter is with that damn Failwhale,) we’ll keep coming back to it. Facebook doesn’t actually do anything except create a stage where our friends can entertain us, and we can entertain our friends. (Or game companies can entertain us with town and mob simulators, but that’s another story.)

Google was just another search engine, but with more believable results. Otherwise, the concept of search results is universally loved. “I ask it a question, I get an answer, I go on about my business.” It’s the reason Yahoo! and AOL before it were just as beloved: A simple service that let people use it and move on.

So many developers today think they need to reinvent the wheel to get the public’s attention, and have the next can’t-live-without-it product offering. It would be great if someone could figure out a need we have but aren’t aware isn’t being fulfilled: Search engines did that too, as did Wikipedia, e-mail, SMS/instant messaging… things we didn’t know we needed, but now that we have them can’t live without.

Apple did the same thing with personal computers instead of information retrieval or communications. I’ve used PCs all of my life, so you’d better believe I understand the appeal of Apple: Their stuff always works, all of the time. It’s easy to use and always looks pretty. PCs don’t work that way. PCs break, they’re usually poorly designed, there’s no consistency from one machine to the other, all of the really great viruses are written for PCs….

And don’t get me started on mobile! That iPhone is so easy to use, you have to wonder why all mobile interfaces aren’t required by law to mimic it.

Apple’s appeal is readily apparent to those of us who use PCs and wish they would just Goddamn work. If they managed to bring their price down to something approaching reasonable, I’d probably own one – but that is neither here nor there.

This is for the website and app developers: If you really want to innovate, innovate a simple solution that lets us get what we need and move on. All of the big, high concepts aren’t what we need. We need simple. We need something we can still use even when we’re horribly sleep deprived. We need something that makes our lives easier.

That’s how the big boys roll, because that’s all we really want.

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Posted in Facebook, Internet Technology

Why I don’t love the Cloud

Posted on June 15, 2011 | 5 Comments

There’s a lot of talk about Cloud Computing lately. There’s been a lot for the past couple of years, but with Apple’s announcement of the iCloud, everyone’s doing the talking.

iCloud Media Cloud

This is also something Google has gotten into, with their Google Music and to an extent Google Docs. So this isn’t just a slam against Apple, they’ve just gotten all of the press lately.

Like most good ideas, iCloud is a simple one: Since there are so many devices you may have – an iPod, an iPhone, an iPad, and/or an Apple computer, iCloud would be the place where all of your files and contacts live, so all of your devices can be synced up easily. Rather than living on your base computer’s hard drive, and updating everything one by one, the Cloud will simply do it for you. What’s more, your files would be accessed wirelessly and not have to live on an old fashioned, poopy hard drive.

So where do I begin with my complaints on this? All of them stem from two things that drive me crazy with modern technology: The over-large corporation that tells its users this is a good idea, and the mass of users who go along with the hype.

First off, storing all of my files on an Apple server means I no longer have my own files. There is a flimsy contract between the provider and myself that my files will be secure and always waiting for me. What happens when they aren’t though? If I am a salesman, and I lose all my contacts through a snafu with their cloud, how will I be compensated for all the lost sales that would result?

Then there’s the purely selfish reason: I have a LOT of illegally burned content. Not necessarily stolen, but I do burn my own copies of CDs and DVDs – if you’ve been online for at least a few years, you do too. What’s to say the owner of the cloud service doesn’t bow down to the RIAA or Paramount or Universal, and let them look over my collection to see if there’s anything lawsuit-worthy?

Finally, assuming there aren’t any technical or draconian legal issues, there’s still the problem of bandwidth. Loading all of your music onto the iCloud and syncing it with your iPad on the go is great – until everyone else does it too. I actually like the idea of cloud computing to store some files. But what happens when everyone’s device relies on a mobile data plan to get its music?

What happens is everything will get slower.

It is possible to get enough servers and towers to make this work. That will be incredibly expensive, of course, and that cost will be passed onto the consumer – namely, you. And me, in fact, whether I use it or not. It wouldn’t surprise me if in a year or two Android or iPhone data plans drive the monthly cost up to $200 per month.

The current cost is already too high for something as simple as a phone in my opinion. All the market needs to do is tell companies they’re willing to spend twice as much on their service just to avoid manually syncing devices. Then they can charge almost as much as they want to.

All just so Apple can stop putting hard drives in iPods, and sell you more crap exclusively on iTunes? It sounds like we’re all lining up for a major screwing.

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Posted in Internet Technology, Online Tools, Phones

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StatCounter – A fabulously useful site

Posted on April 20, 2011 | 2 Comments

If you’ve ever wondered what the most popular operating system worldwide is, or mobile browser, or screen resolution, have I got a site for you: StatCounter.

StatCounter is about the most useful free web analytics site I’ve ever seen. You can choose from a host of different options to learn about:

Browsers
Browser Versions
Mobile Browsers
Operating Systems
Mobile Operating Systems
Search Engines
Mobile Search Engines
Mobile vs. Desktop
Social Media

If there are results you don’t care to look at, like Digg on your mobile browser popularity report, you can deselect it and just look at the things you want to know more about.

Because you don’t really care how many people are still web browsing with a Sony PSP, do you? Of course you don’t.

You can also create a jpeg of the report you looked at, so you can easily share it around, or use the embed code for your blog.

And did I mention it’s free?

Seriously, bookmark this site right now. It will teach you a lot about how your potential customers might be finding you.

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Posted in Interactive Marketing, Internet Technology

What I love about.me

Posted on March 22, 2011 | 2 Comments

If you’re digitally hip, you’ve likely heard of this site before – about.me.

But if you’re normal, you haven’t. Normal people don’t care about things like this. They just care about e-mail and Facebook at best. Twitter is one of those dumb things you hate because you can’t get into it. QR codes seem designed to make you feel inadequate because you can’t even install Angry Birds onto your phone without throwing it across the room, much less a QR scanner.

The truth is, though, that’s why about.me is such a perfect site for the technically challenged: It is an online business card that introduces you to anyone who lands on it. It’s less of a “social networking” site than it is a social networking Hamburger Helper – it accentuates what you’re doing, but doesn’t add anything to the content.

Okay, bad metaphor. Moving on…

I'm an SEO, a blogger and a zombie killer.

About.me works because it’s easy to get, easy to use, easy to understand. AOL recently bought them, I think because they see the potential behind the online business card and want to grab it up before it becomes expensive.

If you’re a tech geek, it’s great because you can show the various profiles you have on other sites like WordPress, Twitter, Flickr, Linkedin, whatever.

For the luddites in the audience, (see how the word “luddite” is underlined and/or colored differently depending on your browser preferences? That’s because it’s a link – if you’re a luddite, you can click on it to find out what you are!) about.me is easy to use and easy to understand. You simply plug in the URLs of the sites you’re on and like into the profile when you sign up. When you need to add a page link to yourself somewhere, if you don’t have a blog or site of your own, you can leave your about.me page in it’s place.

This is my own about.me page. This took about 10 minutes to sign up, and as you can see it has links to a LOT of different profiles on the web. While it gives me a lot of options for modifying the look, the majority of the screen is whatever picture I want to upload to it. I like that too – it means I get to dominate the look of my page. Where Facebook dictates the entire look of the page, and WordPress practically requires a Master’s degree in tedious coding to make it pretty, all about.me needs is a picture.

Finally, it’s a lot less obnoxious sharing an about.me page than it is a lead gen form or a blog on social media profiles. Sure, you don’t get all the traffic from your profile link to your blog – that’s a strike against it. But if you’re more into sharing your real life with people, you look less like a desperate marketer and more like an actual, real life person.

Check it out – it’s very cool stuff.

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Posted in Interactive Marketing, Internet Technology, Online Tools, Social Networking

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Apple iPad’s strange photo for Facetime

Posted on March 13, 2011 | 4 Comments

When the iPad 2 was announced this month, Apple put together a micro site of features and pictures of all the neat doo-dads it comes with. On one of those pages, I found this awesome picture:

ipad 2

The picture was on the page touting Facetime, Apple’s re-branding strategy where they rename webcam chat and call it innovation.

But it also showcases how the iPad now comes in black AND white.

So is it just me, or do the choices of clip art models for each color tablet seem a little… I don’t know what – either “weird” or “obvious” comes to mind. Why would they put the black model on the screen of the black iPad, and the white model on the white one? I’m all for diversity – and if the pictures had been switched, I don’t know that I would have noticed anything.

There isn’t anything wrong with the choices of models in the photo, except it does elicit the idea that Facetime changes the color of your iPad depending on the race of the person you’re talking to.

Oh okay, no it doesn’t. I know, I’m being silly stupid. I frankly don’t care about their choices in photos – and it could just be a coincidence, sure. But isn’t this something someone would have caught eventually? Especially at Apple?

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Posted in Advertising, Internet Technology

Top 5 Useless New Technologies

Posted on February 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

There are a lot of gadget toys available to us these days. They’re all pretty neat, but how useful are any of them anyway? These five are, in my opinion, the most worthless of the lot.

Sorry ladies - theyre married!

1) Facetime/Video Phone Calls

I know a lot of Apple people will, again, cry foul at this. It’s a great idea, and why do I keep bashing Apple? I’m doing it because no one uses Facetime, and no one asked for it. How many people bought an iPhone 4 or iPod Touch because it afforded them the ability to place a video call? I sure don’t hear anyone telling me to get one so they can see me while they’re talking to me.

And I’m incredibly handsome!

Out of curiosity, I ran a search for, “does anyone need Facetime,” just to see if there was any consensus on this. What I found were forum posts from people asking complete strangers if they had an iPhone 4, and could they call them “just to try this Facetime thing out.” There’s even an article on how Apple now has a service so you can Facetime them, because they know full well no one uses this thing.

BTW, can this really be called “innovation” when most laptops now have built-in cameras, and there are programs like Skype that people don’t use very much either? The only industry that’s found any niche with video chat so far are sex cams. And I don’t see too many consumers or marketing people in that industry doing a lot of bragging.

2) QR Codes/MS Tags

Heres the QR code for this very post - if you really care.

Both of these things come from the same idea: A physical bar code that can be read by a phone, and call up a web site or video for the consumer. See one on your favorite soda? Scan it and see a commercial for the movie “Avatar!” That’ll be fun!

But it’s not. Setting up the app to scan these things for most users isn’t easy, and the payoff is just seeing the company’s advertising. That’s so lame it defies language.

3) Augmented Reality

Here’s one that sprang up a while back and never took off. The idea was that, though your phone’s camera, you could see your surroundings with additional information – like the location of your Twitter friends, or Google Maps information on the shops your camera was looking at.

The reason this flopped seems to be two-fold: First, an app has to be set up, which is not fun to have to do. I know the first few that came out required several apps running at once. I, like most, gave up after that.

Second, the result was never terribly Earth shattering. Sure, it’s tripy to see a row of restaurants with their review information hanging over them, but actually reading the reviews is easier on a plain old flat page of text.

4) Geosocial Networking

I’m looking at you, Foursquare and Gowalla and Facebook Places. I’ve bitched about these things long enough I don’t feel I need to do much more here. But I did finally, for the last time, end my relationship with Foursquare because of the fruitlessness of it. No one cares where you went to lunch today, no one cares that you’re the Mayor of the local pizzeria, and getting 1/2 off a taco when you buy another taco of equal or lesser value is a stupid offer. I’ll just buy two tacos, and not look like another douche playing with his phone in public, thank you.

5) 3-D

That James Cameron decided this was the “Next Big Thing” should have clued in  everyone that this was not the next big thing. I saw “Tron: Legacy” last week at IMAX, in 3D, and you know what? The IMAX screen is what was impressive – but I forgot I was looking at anything in 3-D.

In fact halfway through the movie I was trying to force myself to see the 3-D and couldn’t. My mind had adjusted to depth – just the way it does when I’m in the real world. The real world is 3-D and I don’t hear anyone saying, “Wow! Driving is such a rush! It’s like all the other cars are coming at me! Classic.”

Even Adolph Hitler knows "Avatar" sucked.

My point with all of these things is that they will not last, unless the developers of these technologies can find an easy way to make us need them. E-mail didn’t need much to become widespread because it’s simple to set up, and simple to understand. It came along when people wrote letters – on paper! – so the concept was pretty easy to get.

If all these companies celebrating their innovation were really innovating, they’d work on fulfilling a current need. Creating a solution, then telling us how we have the need for it, when we don’t, is silly and wasteful.

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Posted in Geosocial Media, Internet Technology, Marketing, Mobile Phone Technology, Online Tools, Phones

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12seconds.tv Shutting Down

Posted on October 4, 2010 | Leave a comment

12seconds.tv

12seconds.tv, the micro vlogging site, is closing it’s doors this month. All of it’s users received an e-mail today (included beneath this post) from founder Sol Lipman saying goodbye.

I have mixed feelings about this, frankly. Last year I posted about the reasons I felt 12seconds never took off like so many people thought it would initially. After that I used the site more, and found I rather liked it – even though my initial criticism was, I feel, correct: People who post video want more than 12 seconds worth, YouTube has a larger potential viewership, and most people aren’t brave enough to constantly shoot video of themselves.

http://embed.12seconds.tv/players/remotePlayer.swf
12erator: The Song That Best Captures How I Feel Today on 12seconds.tv

Above: An example of 12seconds’ embedding code not working. Among all of the other points I made in my initial review of the site, this one is still the most annoying to me. Ah well – what do you want for nothing, right?

Still, the concept for 12seconds did grow on me. After a few months I managed to shoot some bits at least I was happy with. It seems the real magic of 12seconds was that, since you’re only on the spot for a short amount of time, you can only make yourself look so stupid – so go for it because how bad can you possibly make yourself look in 12 seconds?

The problem is, with 20% of social media users actually producing content, far fewer of them are willing to regularly broadcast video of themselves. Not when a Tweet or a Facebook update takes less effort and doesn’t make them self-conscious. It’s a subtle issue that they could never have gotten around, as it was baked into the concept of 12seconds itself.

Actually, given the recent news of Twitter’s updated page, and how they were going to partner with 12seconds.tv among other sites, I thought they were doing better. I had even planned on using them for a project coming up in a Twitter/12seconds hybrid campaign. I guess I’ll be going back to Vimeo after all.

What’s strange to me is that no other site stepped up to buy them. It seems like the kind of concept Facebook would be all over, getting more users to post free content and hopefully make a run for all that YouTube traffic. Perhaps Twitter would have found it more useful, as the only major site that doesn’t have it’s own in-house video solution? Perhaps the site didn’t seek out any offers, and simply wanted to lay it to rest rather than sell it?

Hopefully there will be more details in the coming weeks. Suffice it to say, though, you’ve just lost one more use for that dusty webcam on top of your monitor.

Dear 12ers,

Nearly 3 years ago, David Beach and I decided to grab a beer at a local pub and talk about startup ideas.  I told him a dumb idea and he told me about one called 10seconds.  I said, “we should do that one.”  He said, “okay.”  And that was it.  That is until we figured out that 10seconds.tv was already taken.  12seconds sounded pretty good to us too.

We set out on a journey that would take on a wild ride of ups and downs.  We experienced birth, death and (Beach) even battled cancer.

Today we are announcing the end of 12seconds.

Why?  As you probably know, everything has a life cycle.  12seconds is in its twilight.  After all the new product launches and attempts at a revenue model, fundraising with VCs and late night coding sessions with Jacob hunched over his monitors – it’s time to call it.  It is time to end 12seconds.

However, if 12seconds had a bucket list it would have filled it up with amazing life experiences!  We launched an innovative micro-vlogging system, built crazy mobile apps, created revenue with legit sponsors, we were nominated for awards and had the best users on the Internet – our beloved 12ers.

12seconds is not a failure – it is a life well-lived.  It really is about the journey.  I know this because I’m at the destination.

You’re thinking, “holy crap I made like 1000 12second videos, what do I do?”  Later this week, we’re going to release a download tool for you to capture those moments in time.  It will be available until we pull the plug – on October 22nd.

If you have any questions or want to say goodbye, feel free to reply to this e-mail or click here (goodbye@12seconds.tv) to wish us all well.

There were a lot of team members and users who made 12seconds an incredible experience.  I can’t possibly list them all here but you know who you are.  Finally, to my co-founders Beach and Jacob – I love you guys.

Sol Lipman
Founder

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Posted in Facebook, Interactive Marketing, Internet Technology, Online Tools, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, Viral Content

Podcast Player for Facebook Realized

Posted on June 28, 2010 | 1 Comment

After a series of unhelpful posts trying to find information on how to include podcasts in a Facebook page, we finally have success! See the Isagenix Podcast Tab on our Facebook Fan Page here!

Podcast Facebook

We are now able to share four of our podcasts on our Facebook Fan Page. While we have been sharing these on iTunes for a while, and the RSS feed is available for whatever reader people like to use, the majority of people who come to it are not web savvy enough to use either easily.

But because Facebook is so easy to use, it is the perfect platform for introducing them to our audience.

The key was in accessing Facebook’s default media player. With this we were able to plug in the podcast’s feed. Our Facebook designer is freakin’ brilliant for figuring this out. I understand the what, but don’t ask me about the how (I’m just an SEO and a marketer, you know.)

I’m glad we were able to get this running, though, as Facebook – despite it’s flaws – is the most mainstream platform for content today. Podcasts, while undoubtedly popular, still have a learning curve to them that makes them difficult for the uninitiated to jump into. With this, hopefully, we can start making converts.

I will let you know how it goes. If you get your podcast up and running on Facebook, let me know where so we can all come see it! And if you want the particulars of how this was achieved, let me know that too and I’ll see if our designer has some time to lay it out.

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Posted in Facebook, Internet Technology, Marketing, Online Tools, Social Networking, Viral Content

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7 Reasons Microsoft should release a Cloud version of Office

Posted on May 27, 2010 | 2 Comments

In case you haven’t heard, Microsoft Office 2010 will be web based. Yeay!

Google Docs and Microsoft Office

However, they are still going to be charging money for this. Boo!

Microsoft could get a lot of people using Bing if they simply made a cloud version of Office. Sound like a bad fiscal decission? It’s not! Here’s why:

1) Not everyone needs everything that comes with the full version of office anyway. A simple version of Word and Excel would be enough to make most people happy. If they don’t like it, they can buy the full version.

2) PowerPoint is useless to the average user. However, you could retool it so people can create presentations out of their photos, videos, music, narration, and share it on Microsoft Video. If it’s easy to use, a lot more people would create, and you’d have a wealth of fresh, new, common use content on your other platform. (As well as giving people something else to share with your new Hotmail.)

3) You could add more to the sale version of Office, to make it more enticing. Certainly a Microsoft Money for Small Business on Office would help to get more people using both. If people need a heftier version of Office for college or a small business, then they’ll pay for it. Everyone else who just needs to write a quick letter can do it on their site.

4) If you can build dominance with a free version of Office, you can take an important shot at Google Docs, which more and more people are using who don’t want to pay for the full version of Office. The problem with Docs is it doesn’t have the tools and usability people are already used to with Office. The best way to compete with Google is to offer people what they already know.

5) Google Docs kills office on price, sharing and online storage of documents. Obviously, a competing could version would take care of the price advantage. Including sharing and online storage would be simple to add, and level the playing field against Google.

6) Why would Microsoft care to compete with Google Docs? Because it keeps some people using Google Search. If Office was widely available as a component of Bing, don’t you think there would be a LOT more people using that?

Microsoft would make their money back – in advertising. Google has no problem paying the bills each month because they have hoards of traffic. If Bing sacrificed the small percentage of income they get from households that just need a copy of word, and exchanged it for the ad revenue they’d get from all those people using their site, they’d make all that cash back. Seriously.

7) Finally, if Microsoft doesn’t, Google will own the market on free desktop publishing with Docs. It’s been growing slowly, but as more and more people balk at the idea of paying for Office when they can get the simple jobs done with Docs, more will. Office can jump into the fight any time – but the longer they wait, the more people will just get used to using Docs, and they’ll lose the advantage they have now of being the most familiar program.

That’s all of the reasons I can think of in one sitting – but I’m sure there’s more. I doubt Steve Ballmer will read this, but if you are Steve, seriously – you’ve got an Ace in the hole, and you need to play it.

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Posted in Advertising, Email, Interactive Marketing, Internet Technology, Search

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