Why?
December 2006 Archives
So how did I get talked into this one;-) Family friends Christine and Michael Bland spend a large part of the year catering fabulous afairs on the pebbles of Budleigh beach (100 yards South of the nudist beach, near the gentlemen's club...). This is the first year that the Dug and Nicki branch of our little family managed to get our shit together to get out on the beach (Jed and Billy actually swam in the same freezing waters just yesterday) and I was way impressed: hot food, hot wine and a functioning Victrola!
(Clem, Apoa and Kiloh sing away in a manger and Clemmie really goes for it)
Drool... From this page
Rob Ferrara isn't 100% in agreement re Flickr. His point is that the free account doesn't give him enough of an incentive to upgrade.
On reflection I agree. Apart from the previously mentioned web2.0-ness of it all (api, sharing etc) the other thing I love is the offer of at least theoretically infinite image hosting. There are no idiotic limits apart from a bandwidth choke but to give you an idea, I've never gone over 2% consumption of my allowance.
I think if Rob leaves a comment to clarify his reasons for not upgrading I shall offer him a pro account as a Christmas gift :-)
Welcome to a world of prurience we didn't even know existed. No longer will the currious need to dig through the sleazier end of the tabloid press to get their thrills. We can all now view our serial killers' MySpace page and shudder...
Well, twelve hours after the arrest and it looks like MySpace has taken down Tom Stephens' profile page. Google's cache has flushed the page as well. Chalk this up as another internet milestone, the first serial killer with a website. Of course if the man's innocent we're going to feel a little stupid and I sure hope Myspace has kept a backup...
(Photo: Clementine Falby by David Hockney)
So I've just finished a user experience consultancy gig with a major mobile network operator based in France. It's an interesting project which I'll be picking up again in the new year. I've been working alongside product owners (ie individuals who are assigned with owning the business of a part of a website or service) and have been factoring their business objectives into the objectives versus needs process. Having just spent ten months working through the objectives of a UK network operator it was interesting to see the different approaches to the business. I can't really go into any details, but one of the key differences is that the French team have managed to build a business treating their products as containing inherent value. For example, the French customers are apparently happy to pay extra to add services to their account which the English would have added to the service for free in the interest of building a better experience, getting closer to the consumer and starting to build the bonds of trust that are a key component of the d.a.r.t approach.
I was reminded of all this when I rediscovered the fd's Flickr toys page. The tools (and many, many, other wonderful ones elsewhere) are built thanks to the public Flickr api. The tools let users discover value in their photographs beyond what the camera or the storage/sharing/hosting service can offer. The fd page is such a great example of what happens when openness and collaboration build on an already great service.
Note to mobile network operators everywhere: I get so much value out of my interaction with Flickr I would gladly pay triple what I pay today for my account.
So Chirac's dream of a 'French perspective' on world news has finally launched. Part of me sniggers but fair enough, why should CNN and BBC24 get all the coverage... For the launch the channel commissioned some animated ads. The concept is the same as the old Guardian ads that used the line "get the whole picture" (remember the one with the skinhead running) but they're quite heavy-handed. The one above is different, the balance of story, visual (you can feel the smile when the kid kicks the ball) and music work well, and the emotional content does resonate (what boy hasn't had a similar day-dream). Is it a French perspective... dunno, I guess the kid is Vietnamese but what is F24 saying exactly, pick your post-colonial nightmare? Still, beautiful little film.
Really good piece on the Zune's user experience chez Lefsetz:
Simplicity. Usability. Delivering what the customer wants. Sounds easy, but Microsoft fucked it up.
So I've been in Paris all week. I was here last week and will be here for three days next week. I'm so totally sad, I've been commuting out to the burbs on the RER, working all day and then coming back to the hotel and working the evenings as well. I've had to cancel my going to LesBlogs3 and have done no strolling around soaking up the sights, no catching up with folk, no doing Christmas shopping etc. all a bit weird really...
Anyhow, I haven't had a mo to publish much and I've been grabbing the odd snap en passant but the Shozu uploader is disabled in roaming mode to prevent me having more bandwidth-related punch-ups with mobile phone companies. Normal picture stream behaviour resumes Friday night (geolocation by Plazes).
Jonathan and Ross over at TMW are working through the Thresher promo thing apparently organised by Mr Gapingvoid Hugh Macleod. They both make some good points and Ross points out that the promo represents a 7% increase on discounting to coincide with Christmas and that after all the hooha, this may not harm Thresher's bottom line at all.
Well Ross, I have to ask, does this suggest (given Hugh's track record as a marketer) that this 'accidental' release might not be so accidental after all?
