Archive for February 2009
Sorry, What's Your Website Number, Sir?
Ted Stevens is a former senator from Alaska, who got pretty famous online after he had described the Internet as "A Series of tubes" and also mentioned an e-mail as "An internet" in a speech several years ago.
Two days ago Obama's Vice President Joe Biden made a techie gaffe as he asked an aide to tell him a Web site's "number," stirring questions online whether he knows how the Web works. Is there a new meme borned?
(Btw, me and my friends had a tribute club to Uncle Ted last fall, watch the video below)
Ted Stevens? from Ted Stevens? on Vimeo.
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4 Advices to Online Media on Full-Content RSS Feeds
Photo: jourtor
Last week former marketing mag editor-in-chief, Rolf van den Brink, argued (in Swedish) that Swedish business daily, Dagens Industri, is teaching their readers to avoid ads, by instructing them how to use RSS. The comment I left (in Swedish) disagrees with RvdB's opionion and also inspired me to continue the discussion.
Thus, here are my 4 advices to online media on how to handle RSS. I truly hope you disagree with me so the discussion can continue here and elsewhere.
1. Let people have their own special blend
RSS is a part of the chunkified web, a trend I believe greatly in. Sure, there is still a whole bunch of people that read their subscribed paper in the morning, and log on to the web version of the same morning paper when they get to work. However, I am certain that the culture of creating your own news blend will grow bigger. Much bigger. Because when people start getting the hang of mixing and filtering, leaving out the stuff they never read, and including content on their favorite topics they will never go back.
2. Develop new business models
Instead of offering an RSS feed with as little content as possible (which, as Scoble mentions, will make several RSS users skip that source), media corporations should start thinking about new business models. Several sources with full-content RSS already use ads. The best sources also have me clicking through to their website, due to rich content (e.g. polls) and a dynamic commenting culture. Web content consumption patterns will not stay the same, be assured, and you need to be able to monetize it when it has changed completely.
3. Be a pioneer
One big reason why RSS adoption is still low is the lack of user friendly ways to take part of RSS. This is an area where news media could be pioneering. This week The New York Times launched an API enabling access to all content that originate at The NY Times or The International Herald Tribune. The feed includes headlines, summaries, URLs, sections and subsections, bylines, etc. It is an open approach to content, and I doubt the NY Times are certain how they will monetize this feed. However, they are learning loads while pioneering.
4. Be a trusted source of information
Another benefit with full-content RSS feeds is creating and strengthening the relationship with me as a reader, since I continuously take part of their content. Media strives to become a reader's trusted source of information and analysis, and when that's lost there is little left. Sure, RSS has a long way to go before it kills the online news paper. But, just as TV made radio adapt to a new situation, RSS will force online media to adapt.
Conclusion
The Internet is about sharing, spreading, mixing and filtering, and RSS is a natural part of this. The Internet community also has a tendency to do what it likes with content, something that large parts of the music industry still hasn't adapted to. Those that can adapt and develop the business model to support this will be winners.
The Phone That Follows Your Eyes
What if the graphics on your mobile seemed to have real depth? Imagine tilting your mobile so you can look around corners and behind objects in the GUI to access additional information. Imagine layered GUIs where pop-up windows really pop up.
The Swedish interface experts at TAT has worked with almost every mobile manufacturer out there, and they are now working with eye-tracking and neat 3D effects to make this menu bonanza fiesta happen.
Further reading on Engadget.com
Definition: The Chunkified Web
Photo: jetsetcd
I have recently tried to define the chunkified web, but have found quite little about it around the nets. I have found info on the web design perspective and Olle Lidbom wrote about it in Swedish a few years back. Maybe it is called something different somewhere else and I have simply missed a large source of information only due to that. Or maybe I am terrible on using Google.
However, I've decided to try to crowdsource it by displaying my two cents and hoping for you to post your thoughts. I'll make sure to update the post with any additional info.
Here is my definition of the chunkified web:
- The content (e.g. an online newspaper) is consumed divided into pieces (chunks). The RSS reader is a good example of chunked content, where consumers pull the specific content of their liking.
- The content is detached from its original source. The most famous example is YouTube – today, YouTube videos are viewed pretty much all over the web, embedded into blogs or sites (YouTube says 44% of their users watch embedded vids).
[Update] Above mentioned Lidbom pointed me in the direction of a Wired (who else) article. Lots of great examples of chunked media, but I couldn't find a reason to update my definition. You disagree?
Amsterdam Plane Crash – Another Display of the Power of Twitter's Speed
A plane crashed today in Amsterdam and the Twittersphere again proved its quickness on reporting. Twitpic had an early picture and a passenger sitting in a plane wating to take off from Schiphol reported the following.
Update: lots of queues on the highway near Schiphol. Watch this webcam.
Wired Proposes Radical Transparency as Solution to Finance Crisis
Wired magazine is a favorite of mine, often times proving to be several steps ahead when it comes to analysis of how communication and business is interconnected.
Yesterday they published a lengthy story on how radical transparency should be the foundation to solve the financial crisis. Wired's proposal is to digitalize information that now is on paper. With a set structuring standard to tag all info everybody will have access to it and thus we'll have transparency.
As mentioned, Wired is several years ahead, but the ideas are worth spreading and inspiring all functions of society. It will do us good.
Swedish Search Engine Salutes the Royal Engagement
The engagement between the Swedish crown princess and her boy friend was announced today. I expect this to affect the whole Swedish economy positively until the actual wedding in the summer of 2010. In Swedish we would call this "rikspepp" (~dang, we're excited).
Swedish search engine hitta.se salutes the historic event by displaying an engangement logo (of course linked to their sister company, tabloid Aftonbladet) to their site. Now that's "rikspepp"!
This just in: The Swedish King/Queen etc. just uploaded their first Youtube video ever. Wierdo feeling is over 9000 right now
Spotify iPhone Application In Action
Tech Digest: We've managed to get hold of a video of a Spotify iPhone application in action. [..] As you can imagine, it looks fantastic. It promises to give you access to over-the-air streaming of Spotify's entire music library, as well as playlist access.
Best of all, you'll be able to cache playlists while in Wi-Fi areas so that you'll be able to play them back when you're on the go. Initially it'll only be available to Premium users (presumably because it's tricky to work out how to serve ads in cached mode).
Horray!
Etiquette Maestro: "Damned Impolite to Add Employees on Facebook!"
Legendary Swedish etiquette writer, Magdalena Ribbing, received a question from a youngster asking for advice on how to act on being added on Facebook by the boss. The writer thinks the add was an obvious attempt to snoop around his or her private life. Ribbing, who normally answers questions about what kind of spoon goes on what side of the soup bowl, showed no fear becoming a netiquette advisor:
"I honestly believe it is damned impolite by your boss – or by anyone – to add a person on Facebook without asking first."
Ribbing also advices the writer to step into the boss' office and say that he or she wants out of Facebook since they don't like the idea of it after all. Ribbing ends her answer by calling the boss pathetic for wanting lots of friends.
What do you say – do you keep professional contacts on the Book of Faces or do you stow them away on LinkedIn?
RSS Going Mainstream – Strengthening the US Democracy
Photo: zyrcster
It took Obama 20 days in office to publish a document commiting himself to openness and transparency, an initiative that very well could become the standard for any democratic government around the world. Now he is setting a new standard, and this one could mean an important push for RSS.
Any government agency involved with the new US stimulus bill is required to report the money it gives out through RSS:
"For each of the near term reporting requirements (major communications, formula block grant allocations, weekly reports) agencies are required to provide a feed (preferred: Atom 1.0, acceptable: RSS) of the information so that content can be delivered via subscription."
Thinking about what this initiative could mean to RSS adoption makes me all warm inside and it doesn't stop there. The document states that the feed can’t simply be unstructured text, but have to be reusable data. With a structured feed the data can be used for data mining and enables total transparency.
This initiative is an enormous step towards what is popularly called government 2.0.
Via Boing Boing.
Second Edition of Jung Twitter Music Quiz feat. @RWBHenke - Live Now!
The second edition of Jung Twitter Musiq Quiz is live right now. Log on to Twitter to check out the question and direct message us your answer. Not following Jung – here is the link.
A Short Chat with Pluxemburg
Swedish independent record label Pluxemburg (where Jung's Jonas is involved) recently released a new edition of their homepage. Since the previous version were amazingly beautful, we were quite curious on how Konst & Teknik and Martin Ström were going to re-develope the site. The result seems to have been produced with great portions of love — and even included every single hip online web service out there.
We asked Peter about the idea behind their work on Pluxemburg.com.
— Our vision (idea) was to create a website that automaticly updates itself if the content we anyway would want on our website already can be found online. By making a site that works as an aggregator, gatherering all that info from the different social networks without us having to be in its way, we can instead spend our time actually participating in the different communities.
By the way, don't miss out these guys' previous work in "One (Two, Three, Four)" and Copypastecharacter.com.
Happy Hardcore Taken One Step Further
Today it is the "get to know what the hell the kids are doing" day on Jung at Heart.
VBS.TV (Vice Magazine's tv-channel) went to the northern parts of United Kingdom to take a closer look at the new type of bouncy techno called Scouse House, also known as Bouncy House or "Donk".
Last year, we were fully amazed and fascinated in Central European dance genres such as Tecktonik (wiki) and Jump Style (wiki). By all of my heart, I hope that 2009 will be a year in the sign of Donk bass.
Louise @ the NY Fashion Week – Tiles for America
Walking to dinner last night I found this in the corner Greenwich and 7th ave. People salute USA in art. Self made words and drawings on porcelain stoneware. There were hundreds of them along the street.
Louise @ the NY Fashion Week – the Diesel Show
Backstage at the Diesel show in "the tents", Bryant Park. Insane production. (Diesel is a Jung client)
Inside the venue, just before the show.
The man behind the brand: Renzo Rosso. Here together with Sweden's ambitious fashion editor, blogger and web TV host, Sofi Fahrman.
Sweden's Largest Daily – Dagens Nyheter – Loves the Chunks
I am a big fan of the chunkified web. I love reading selected parts of several media sources and also being able to take part of content detached from its context: I read RSS rather than the original sites and I think Youtube is popular largely due to the possibility to embed the content on other sites.
But I am fully aware of the fact that most (normal) people are still surfing the web from site to site. And today Sweden's largest daily, Dagens Nyheter, has redesigned their web site – chunk style. It is divided into distinct rows, with the news section to the left, RSS and news lists to the right and a mix of tips, TV, features etc in the middle.
The design is stylishly clear and easy to read. I simply love it. I bet DN.se will be followed by other Swedish online media.
Louise @ the NY fashion week – Cafe Habana, New Modern Museum & Brooks Brothers
Lunch at Cafe Habana.
The amazing building of the new Modern Museum in SoHo.
Brooks Brothers at Madison Av. Preppy menswear for the gentlemen. New York designer Thom Browne design the Black Fleece collection for them. There you have the hype.
The Brooks Brothers logo.
Louise @ the NY fashion week – the Y3 show & Pier 40
From last night's Y3 show. Front row was packed with celebs. Kanye West, Mila Jovovich, Ian Thorpe, Tyson Beckford and Rufus Wainwright. Funny mix. That's New York for ya.
Outside the showdown at pier 40. Very suitable...
Louise @ the NY Fashion Week
My dear colleague Louise Sondlo is in New York with a client for the fashion week. These are her MMS impressions of popular culture. So far.
"Street art at its best. Keith Harring wall in the corner of East Houston and Bowery."
"Japan vs USA. Always something going down in the no 1 hipster store in NY. Opening Ceremony filled with Alexander Wang and Hello Kitty."
"Store window."
"Inside the store."
Intergalactic Processed by Songsmith
As reported on earlier, the Microsoft Songsmith project is quite a blast. But the real fun started right now, people out there are making Songsmith remixes based on acapellas of popular hits.
Hopefully this will become an online application in a near future.
Jung Twitter Music Quiz feat. @RWBHenke - live now!
You on Twitter? You like music? You like quizes?
If you just answered "heck, yeah!" to all three questions, you should beam yourself online and answer the question in the world premiere of Jung Twitter Music Quiz feat. @RWBHenke.
Link to follow Jung on Twitter.
YouTube Adds Creative Commons
The world's most popular YouTube yesterday announced they will give their users the possibility to add a Creative Commons license to uploaded content. The aim of Creative Commons is to increase the amount of creative content for everybody to share and mix, all under controlled forms.
Along with yesterday's second announcement saying that users now can permit downloads of their videos, this is really interesting news. From now on, YouTube users can decide exactly what rights they want to slap on their videos. They will even be able to add a download fee.
This is cool in so many ways. The largest video community is now also a platform where videos can be legally spread, mixed, and then shared again. Another cool thing is universities (MIT for instance) already sharing their entire curriculums online, that are now given the perfect platform.
Ps: I am aware of that there have been Greasemonkey scripts around for years allowing people to download YouTube videos, but this is different - this is about spreading the sharing spirit of the Internet.
Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs on Twitter... Or Not?
Carl Bildt, the Swedish minister of foreign affairs, has been on the Internet more or less since the beginning of its times. His newsletter was famous in the mid 90's and his blog made people and old media scared senseless in the mid 00's (today it's simply a standard).
And now he's joined Twitter. Or has he? Handle napping is popular in Twitter and this "Bildt" handle isn't even correct – it spells @carbildt (without the L in Carl). He also hasn't updated the feed for several days (Bildt is an Updater) and only follows Social Democratic party leader Mona Sahlin (which made Paul Ronge curious at DagensPS.se).
Dalai Lama's Twitter account was fake/unofficial – I figure we'll soon have the answer to wether or not @carbildt is fooling us.
[Update] The word is out – @carbildt is fake. Twixdagen on the topic. Come on – we knew all along! :)
Government 2.0 – Obama setting the Standard
The White House blog posted an article a couple of weeks ago about what the people should expect from the new Whitehouse.gov.
Three priorities for Whitehouse.gov:
- Communication
- Transparency
- Participation
This truly sets the standard for a modern way of government communication, and could serve as a white paper for organizations around the world.
[Update] Barack Obama yesterday posted a memorandum stating that his administration is "committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government".
Interspace Communication Experiment
Hyper Island graduates are making it possible for each and everyone to send their own message (you know the standard case description), but and here it goes, the message is going to be sent — TO SPACE. In a "unguided, spin-stabilised rocket". This is due to a close co-lab with the Esrange Space Center. I really like the space-o-sperical. And this makes me impressed 4 reallaz.
How to Become a Google Reader Ninja
Photo: weesen
I'm a big fan of Google's RSS reader Google Reader, spending on average 1-2 hours per day with it. However, I know there are always new tips and tricks to learn about GR and today I want to share five of my best moves to get you started on becoming a Google Reader Ninja.
1. Make an appointment with your RSS reader
When I'm out spreading the message of RSS love, I often hear that there is no way to find time to catch up on RSS reading. While I generally think this is a matter of prioritizing (my experience shows that a LOT of people spend 10-15 minutes once, twice or even three times a day surfing their favorite news, sports, gossip, you name it-sites), I do have a ninja move to teach that has helped me a lot: make an appointment with your RSS reader.
The appointment should be in your calendar and it should be recurring every day. It doesn't have to be long – 15-20 minutes will do – but make sure to set that appointment up.
2. Don't fear the "Mark all as read"-button
You started using Google Reader by adding a few blogs and news feeds? Maybe you didn't have time to do the daily reading for a few days, and when you logged in again your reader screamed at you: "there are 1000+ unread posts in here!" This made you so scared you didn't want to go back to your reader, ever again.
This is where my second Google Reader Ninja move comes to resque: don't fear the "Mark all as read"-button. That's right – dare starting from scratch. The RSS reader should always be a support and if the unread items are making you uneasy – let go of them.
3. Prioritize among your feeds
Google Reader allows you to create folders for your feeds. However, the folders are actually tags (they simply look like folders) which makes it possible to place a feed in several folders (i.e. tags). The most straight forward way of creating folders is by e.g. topic, area or client which I recommend you to do.
However, when you have added 20, 30 or 40 feeds and are turning into a power user you will soon feel that the amount of feeds are piliing up. You need to prioritize, and you should do this ninja style. Create new folders (tags) with a priority status, e.g. "important", "sometimes" and "dispensable". This way you can keep a different focus depending on what folder you are reading.
For me this means that when I am low on reading time I can open my "dispensable" folder, take a quick look and then click the magic button.
To be a true Google Reader Ninja you also need to continously reconsider what feeds deserve to be in what folder. If you feel your "important" folder is getting full a bit too often – don't be afraid to move two or three feeds down a notch in the prioritization order.
4. Use the shortcuts
Google is great at creating shortcuts for their services and Google Reader is no different. My fourth Google Reader Ninja move is a list of really handy shortcuts which will save you lots of time and reaching for the mouse.
- j,k – next or previous post
- r – refresh
- v – opens up the post in its original site
- shift-a – mark all as read
- s – star a post
5. Add a real ninja to your Google Reader
You now have a few tricks to make your life less information overloaded. The fifth move is done by the real Google Reader Ninja. When in Google Reader, press the good old Konami haxxor key combination up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. Enter, the real Google Reader Ninja.
You are now on your way to become a certified Google Reader Ninja. However, if you have questions or your own ninja moves to share – please do in the comments!
They Don't Belong to Us
Reports from people living in southern Sweden tell us that they aren't allowed to use Spotify — since the popular music service isn't released in Denmark yet. Yes, you got it right: Denmark.
Due to digital Internet misunderstandings and root mother modem failures, the servers rejected these users since they're living a little bit too close that forbidden country in the name of Pølse-wurst.