Archive for January 2009
Live Broadcasted Interview with Jeremy Scott
Jeremy Scott has designed his own line for the adidas "Originals by Originals" collection. Today, we are at Black Market in Stockholm, arranging a "mini press conference" that will include a meet up with Jeremy. Follow the live video broadcast right here.
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Japanese Jolly Joy
Hidden Japanese emoticons are bringing the jolly joy to iPhone. Until now, only the lucky guys in eastern Asia have been privileged with silly smileys built into the phone's operating system. Since the iPhone lacks MMS, those symbols of joy are worth their weight in gold.
Yesterday something unique happened – some geniuses found out that installing an RSS-reader from the App-store will automatically unlock this smiley-mania.
Go check this out, now!
"SAAS" xD
Web-based email is great because you can check it from any computer, but there's one little catch: it's inherently limited by your internet connection. Of course, internet access is becoming more and more ubiquitous – but there are still times when you can't access your webmail because of an unreliable or unavailable connection.
Today Google Labs are starting to roll out an experimental feature in Gmail Labs that should help fill in those gaps: offline Gmail. So even if you're offline, you can open your web browser, go to gmail.com, and get to your mail just like you're used to.
Curiosity Geek – The Marketing Pro of Tomorrow
Photo: Kapungo
This is the first half of my column in the January issue of Urban Lifestyle Report.
Social media is fundamentally changing the work life of the communications professional. While change is nothing new to the communications industry, this time is different – it's a fundamental shift both in style and direction. And it is happening faster than ever before. So how do you keep up?
I have one humble advice for the communicator of tomorrow: you must be curious to learn new things. All. The. Time.
Do you converse or broadcast?
You know the modern way of communication is conversational style. You know it is all about two-way communication, listening and engaging by contributing to the community. But do you actually do this? Do you listen to find out what your community is interested in and engage by adding value to the community? Or do you use the same old one-way communication that has been so succesful historically? Do you communicate with a personal voice or do you use the old corporate kind?
If you communicate one-way with a corporate voice – is it because you think it is the best style of communication for your organization? Or is it because you know the old way of communication and that makes you feel secure?
Do you dare trying?
You know there is a whole new line of web technology that can help you in your communication. Blogging and micro-blogging platforms, RSS reading/filtering/mixing, podcasting, vodcasting. The list of new and incredibly useful information technology goes on, but have you tried it? Or do you still use the same clipping service and report the same kind of results that have been successful historically?
Read the rest of my column at Urban Lifestyle Report.
Crazy Stuff: The Average E-mail User Receives 162 E-mails per Day
Royal Pingdom shared these stats on the amount of e-mail sent during 2008. I'm stunned.
- 1.3 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
- 210 billion – The number of emails sent per day in 2008.
If I'm not wrong those numbers mean that the average e-mail user receives 162 e-mails every single day. Apparently 70% of all e-mail sent is spam, but it seems to me there is a lot of e-mail overload around the world.
I realize that I need to keep spreading the love of RSS.
Did I say Twitter mainstream – THIS is mainstream
A few hours ago I defined mainstream as when a trend hit the largest daily newspaper. I might want to re-define that as when a trend hits the country's largest blogger. Or as in this case, the fifth largest blogger, Alex Schulman, who announced yesterday he's from now on a Twitterer.
Schulman builds his blogging popularity on being controversial, writing about everything there is to know about him and his life. I'd say he has done a lot for the development of the Swedish blogosphere, taking it from something of a nerd's thing to being mainstream. I'd also say he has succeded because he is at times a brilliant blogger. He writes well, he is transparent (radically so) and he is a good communicator.
I'm pretty convinced Alex Schulman could help take the Swedish micro-blogosphere to the masses. When I write this, he has 17 followers. If he wants it he will be the most popular Swedish Tweetizen before the day is over.
The Swedish micro-blogosphere moves in mysterious ways
Photo: jandarmor
You can tell a trend is becoming mainstream when it is covered by the country's largest morning paper. Micro-blogging in Sweden reached that level yesterday when Dagens Nyheter published a story on the topic, featuring Jonas Lejon, founder of Swedish micro-blogging platform Bloggy.se.
While the news paper article was big for Bloggy, yesterday's biggest win for the Swedish platform was a Jaiku thread. Active user, Morris Packer, proposed a coordinated migration from Jaiku, resulting in 87 comments on all different aspects of the platform.
The discussion ended in a move from Google owned Jaiku for large parts of the Swedish Jaiku crowd. I personally tripled my Bloggy follower crowd yesterday, and have followed the herd away from Jaiku (even though I have been more active on Twitter lately).
So why is Bloggy important? After all - Twitter will still be the choice for all Swedes wanting to keep in contact with an international community. Well, Bloggy is local and will keep getting attention from media (right, Jonas?!), which gives Bloggy a good chance to become a first step for curious Swedes wanting to check out microblogging. A local player could also convince corporations to take a look at the communications tool – both for internal and external use.
My no 3 web wish for 2009: Ubiquity changing the way I use the Internet
Whenever I find a new cool web service, I have to grab the closest sitting colleague and tell about this exciting discovery (this is actually a documented deficiency of mine). Mozilla Labs' Ubiquity, launched in August last year, is one of these. When launched it was called "an experiment into connecting the Web with language".
So what is Ubiquity? Well, it aims to simplify the creation of web mash-ups in Firefox. Still not clear, huh?! I'll try to describe it is by how I use it.
I'm a shortcut geek, always looking to decrease the amount of times I reach for the mouse and the amount of keyboard keys I press. For example, several times a day I update my status on services like Twitter, Jaiku and Facebook. Every time I do this (using the update service Hellotxt), Ubiquity saves me from reaching for the mouse and decreases the amount of keys pressed by simplifying my update process. Check out the video below to see how this is done (click through if you read this in an RSS reader).
Other ways I use Ubiquity is to insert maps when writing e-mail using Gmail (video of how this is done) and shortening URL's using Tinyurl. If you are into torrents sites, Ubiquity can help you do a simultaneous search using three different search engines in three different tabs.
While these examples might not be the kind that knock you off your chair, the possibilities of the service should. Mozilla's head of user experience, Aza Raskin, was interview by Techradar and was asked what Ubiquity will be like in 2012.
By 2012, most of your interactions with the web will be centred around your task, instead of the page you happen to be at. When the browser understands who your friends are, and what your preferences are (all, of course, without having to teach your browser explicitly), the tedious parts of getting to information will go away. What's left will be the core of the activity.
You'll be able to say things like "get me a flight on Thursday to Toronto, returning next Tuesday and email the itinerary to the Toronto office" and the browser will be able to present you with options, sorted by metrics based on your previous trips.
The service is in early beta (0.1.5), but I already have high hopes for Ubiquity to change the way I interact with large parts of the web. Hopefully already during this year.
PS: Check out my first two web wishes for 2009:
Status line bonanza
Watch President-elect Barack Obama become the next President of the United States on CNN.com Live. Update your own Facebook status and see status updates from your friends and other Facebook users on CNN.com Live. Don't miss out!
Hello, World!
Swedish Startup Cloudo recently opened up a public beta for their soon-to-be-released Internet Operating System.
With built in social networking functionality, Cloudo makes it easy to collaborate, enabling you to share documents and folders, calendars or workspaces among groups of friends or colleagues.
Cloudo features all the basic applications needed, but also has a development environment making it possible for third party developers to make their own applications.
The story of the #svpt hash tag
Photo: imapix
Twitter use among Swedes has exploded during the first weeks of the new year. I don't think anyone could name a single reason for the sudden increase, but a likely combo of reasons is Obama's campaigning, old media coverage of Twitter's importance during events such as the Mumbai attacks and a general maturing of the Swedish social mediasphere.
A fourth reason may be the hashtag #svpt (an acronym for "svenskar på Twitter" = "Swedes on Twitter"), instigated by Billy McCormac. A lot of people have found the hashtag useful to promote themselves and to find fellow Swedes to follow, and it has probably meant an easy way to quickly find a lot of interesting people.
Lately, however, hundreds of tweets every day have been marked with #svpt, making it hard to use. This has lead to several tweeters discussing the hashtag's terms of use. Should it be in Swedish or any language? When should you use it?
My personal view is that #svpt could be used in any language, and that it should be used as a way of saying "hello, here I am, fellow Swedish tweeters", rather than something you mark every single tweet with. I think the hashtag loses its purpose if it is over used.
I am certain there are other opinions on this issue, so please let me hear yours in the comments on how this (and other hashtags) should be used.
Oh, and do follow me on Twitter: @oahnve.
"Ha, fail ...but glow in the dark towels are win"
Microsoft's Songsmith software, which creates Casiotone-style beats to match whatever off-key warbling is optimistically sung into a mic, finally has an ad as corny and annoying as the software itself promises to be.
i.gizmodo.com/5128182/microsoft-songsmiths-corny-musical-infomercial
My no 2 web wish for 2009: Evernote gets even better
Photo: Hamed Saber
I'm a web service testing junkie. When a new service comes along, a voice in my head starts nagging: "sign up, sign up, sign up". If the service is only in beta the voice screams "SIGN UP, SIGN UP, SIGN UP!"
There are a few web services that function as central nodes for me. Google Reader, Gmail and delicious have been important for a several years. Last year's addition was Evernote for notes taking, a great software with an even greater future.
Wish nr 2: Evernote gets even better
I'm madly in love with Evernote and use it to save any kind of text, pdf or picture I might need to review at a later time. It is also syncronized to the web, so I don't have to worry about losing any valuable data if the hard drive crashes (that is "when" – I'm just about to get a replacement for a crashed hard drive in the laptop I bought last summer).
One favorite example of Evernote use is saving blog post ideas (yep, this post was born and written in Evernote) that I can add to over time when a new thought comes to my mind. In my life long quest of spreading great web services to anybody sitting close to me, Evernote is problably the easiest to introduce. People like it simply because it is truly useful and also easy to use.
What I do miss in Evernote is a collaboration feature.
I want to be able to share a notebook with ideas of blog posts with the rest of the Jung bloggers. I want to share a notebook within large projects with lots of notes and pictures. Evernote has already made sharing and collaboration one of their new years resolutions, but I am still looking forward to it.
In my dreams, Evernote will also include mind mapping features as well as functionality for using productivity model GTD.
How do you use Evernote? Or do you use a different notes taking system? Please post your thoughts in the comments.
My no 1 web wish for 2009: one microblog platform to rule them all
Photo: R▲▲S
Predicting the future is popular around the web, which is why I won't try it myself. Instead I will write about what I'm hoping for regarding communications and technology on the web during 2009. Yes, that's right - no trends, only what I'm wishing for.
Wish nr 1: One micro-blog platform to rule them all
At the moment I use two micro-blog platforms - Twitter and Jaiku. For Swedes, Jaiku has been used to communicate in Swedish while Twitter has been for English, but keeping up with both is hard and simply unproductive. For 2009 I'm wishing for one of these platforms displaying the following functions or services:
- Desktop app
- Comments
- Feeds syndication
According to HubSpot, Twitter grew 600% in the last 12 months with 5-10,000 new account registrations every day. I haven't seen any growth numbers for Google-owned Jaiku, but my guess is they are far from those of Twitter. This is a shame, since Jaiku is a much better platform with both comments and RSS feed syndication built in (Jeremiah Owyang mentions Twitter's problems when describing why he's on a Twitter hiatus).
But while Jaiku has the functions, Twitter has the users. And hosting the party with the most visitors is of course all that matters – people want to be there. For example, in the last couple of months, parts of the Swedish micro-blogosphere has left Jaiku for Twitter. Twitter also has the third party tools, such as the desktop app TweetDeck, and statistics/information services, such as Twittercounter, Twitter Search and Twubble.
In conclusion: Twitter is wiping the floor with Jaiku, simply because Google is letting them. Open source alternative, Identi.ca, has pros such as scalability and openness, but right now their chances of beating Twitter look slim.
Slim are also my chances of being able to use one micro-blogging service with all the above mentioned functions. But it is my first wish for 2009. Stay tuned for number two and three!
Among the clouds
Photo: mlag
The Apple Computer super company today released an online "cloud" beta of their Microsoft Office suite-killer iWork.
This web based twin of the traditional iWork software makes it possible to share advanced layout, spreadsheets and presentations with friends, family and biz-partners. Without worrying if they've got compatible software installed.
But Apple were not the first ones doing it this way. If you haven't already, check out Jaycut, Photoshop Express and Google Docs – All three helping you out with everyday work tasks, all alive and online on the internets.