Group Work... Sucky, and Unproductive
Nice... I never liked doing group work in college. Now Rob points out that it doesn't work anyway by quoting a recent Inc article.
"...the notion that individuals outthink and outdecide groups is so well
established among experts that they don't bother to study it anymore."
Template Changes - Now you can Meebo me, too
I made a few updates to my site template, mostly aimed at cleaning up all the junk (um.. widgets) I have on my sidebar. Of course, most of you read via RSS, so you've probably never even seen my page.
I added a third column and put some spaces in between all the widgets. I think it looks cleaner.
I also added a view widgets, like Meebo. Now you can IM me when you're on my page. I really like the concept, but I wish the IMs would go to my AIM client... I really don't like IMing through a browser, but its a neat concept that people can just stop in and say hello. I wish AIM would copy this functionality so I can just use my AIM client for this.
The more I think about it, the more just about every single piece of social software out there should integrate with Meebo, including Oddcast. I'd love to open up a Meebo chat right where my avatar is... and since they're both Flash, it should be really easy.
Other new widgets include a YouTube badge of some of my favorite videos, which is probably too small, a Facebook badge, and yes, some Google ads.
Although, I have to say, my most lucrative program so far, by far, has been my Sitepal affiliate badge. I've made $90 already from it... you get 30% commission on all the Sitepals you sell over the first full year of the accounts you sell. So, just selling one ten dollar account nets you $36 in the first year. That's pretty good. My Feedburner ads are doing pretty nicely, too... bringing in about $30 a month.
Ads keep Charlie powered by Jamba.
Pocket PC (6700) USB Wireless Modem Drivers
Does anyone have a PPC-6700 and have their USB Wireless modem drivers handy... or know one I could use with it?
I'm trying to use my phone as a modem and apparently, I need some more drivers for it... and who the hell knows where the original CD that came with the phone went.
Sprint Mobile Broadband on my Phone
So I signed up for Sprint's EVDO service on my phone and it was a pretty good deal in the end.
I had been subscribed to their Vision data plan for getting e-mail and sending pics and stuff, and that was costing me $15, plus $5 more for unlimited texts (I use about 300-400 a month).
They don't have an EVDO phone service that works with unlimited texts, but the EVDO is actually a Vision plan, so upgrading to the $39 service meant that I could knock off the $15, and now its costing me $10 for 1000 texts a month, just to be safe. So, in total, for an extra $34 a month I now have mobile broadband internet...
...but that's not really the cool part, because the real savings is that, by plugging my phone into my computer via USB, I can use the phone as a modem and get broadband on my laptop. For $34 a month, that's TOTALLY worth it, as far as I'm concerned.
I'll keep you posted on the coverage and how it works...
Kayakr: Nice visit from Mick from Zapr over the weekend
A lot of people ask to meet up to talk shop... coffee, lunch, Jamba... I definitely put myself out there for a lot of people, but admittedly its hard to accomodate all the people that I'd like to meet with. I mean, I do have parents and friends that want to see me once in a while, too. So, when TaraRogueCow :) told Mick to look me up, I sent him down to Pier 40 for a little kayaking, since I knew that was going to be basically my lone respit from work this weekend. Well, Mick was a good sport and in the Hudson River with a paddle he went. I learned a lot about Zapr and its a lot cooler than I first thought it was.
Actually, its a pretty good model for me for meeting new people or professional contacts. It does sort of prevent live demos of services, since taking a laptop on the water probably isn't a good idea, but if anyone ever wants to get some of my time, their best bet is probably to meet me at Pier 40 on the weekends for some kayaking. Its hard for me to make time during the week, but here, I have a few hours, my head is pretty clear for thinking, and I'm in a pretty good mood. Just drop me a line at charlie@oddcast.com to see if and when I'll be down there... or check back on the blog, because a lot of times I'll mention it on Thursday or Friday.
A Quote for Today
"I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body." - Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
Sometimes, parents really get hosed..
Little kid and his dad at Pier 40 this morning...
powered by performancing firefox
links for 2006-09-09
-
I like her "tag it" section
-
Tag your entries timeoutnewyork.tv on Flickr
-
Now THIS is going to be big.
The answer is MeVertising!!
From Searchviews...
"Marketers have been getting excited about the recent distribution deals cut between search engines and social networks....Now consider social networking sites. Users visit pages in those networks not because of the concepts being discussed, but because of the people they know. You may like the same bands, movies, books or sports teams as your friends, but that’s not why you’re ending up at their pages. You’re there to catch up on what’s new with your crew. This is going to completely change the way marketers need to message to these groups."
Can I repeat that?
"This is going to completely change the way marketers need to message to these groups."
Unless you get you users intimately involving themselves in your brand, like this young woman who has a Coach wallpaper as her background in MySpace, its all just going to sound like push advertising for products we don't want, like or care about... non-user selected or MeVertised advertising is going to be the pop-ups of Web 2.0... people will do everything to block, get rid of, and avoid this kind of messaging.
What kind of CPMs do you think she's getting on her page for that? How badly do you think Coach wants to be able to push that kind of thing out?
powered by performancing firefox
Quotes of the Day: From the Gothamist Article on the new WTC Buildings
Here's the rest of what the WTC site is supposed to look like. If we have to wait any longer, they'll have to retrofit parking on the roof for flying cars.
Two great comments by Gothamist readers:
"I, for one, welcome our new steel and glass monolithic overlords."
powered by performancing firefox
I believe
I was almost there when the Mets sent Dave Williams and Oliver Perez to the mound in a doubleheader and won both ends.
But last night, they shutout Brad Penny and the Dodgers. Jose Reyes hit an inside the park home run and Glavine cruised.
At first, I just thought they shouldn't have a problem getting out of the National League... but now...
Now I really believe they are going to win the World Series. Its all too perfect.. twenty years later. 1986. 2006.
No one is going to stop this team... not the Braves, Dodgers, Cardinals, Padres... not the Yanks, Tigers, or White Sox.
So if anyone has any access to playoff tickets, I'm all ears...
powered by performancing firefox
The Faces Have Spoken and the Book Listens
I logged into Facebook this morning to see a public notice from Mark Zuckerberg (posted below) 
about the recent changes to Facebook. (It wound up in the Facebook blog as well.) danah asks whether or not Facebook has learned a lesson. I think they have and I really believe that they were pretty bummed out that they angered so many of their members. It really takes a lot to admit mistakes, and I think this will go far in making users feel like its their service. When your users start feeling like they own what you built, you've really got something.
danah wrote "People are taking to the (virtual) streets to object to what the architects are doing their (virtual) city. They don't like the changes in the architecture and they want their voices heard. And it also looks like virtual protesters can raise a far greater ruckus than the ones in meatspace."
Sad, but true... if only all these people would get as upset over the war or healthcare or just sign up to ban Paris Hilton from all media. I digress.
In response to this problem, Facebook built a really easy opt-out menu for the mini-feeds.
Its really amazing to see the expectation level on the part of the users as to how responsive a service should be. They didn't like a feature, so they banded together on the site and in a very short time, they got a resolution. Could you imagine anything like that happening in the enterprise software world? If I don't like any part of Vista, I'm going to make a group called "Vista looks like it was designed by a hyperactive 5 year old" (as one of the FB groups was) and then see how long it takes Microsoft to fix it. :)
Nice job by the Facebook team to recognize their mistake. I hope the users move on, because, as I mentioned the other day, this is a service that really has the potential to create positive change on college campuses because of its widespread use among a glocolized audience.
Here's Mark's letter:
An Open Letter from Mark Zuckerberg:
We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. I'd like to try to correct those errors now.
When I made Facebook two years ago my goal was to help people understand what was going on in their world a little better. I wanted to create an environment where people could share whatever information they wanted, but also have control over whom they shared that information with. I think a lot of the success we've seen is because of these basic principles.
We made the site so that all of our members are a part of smaller networks like schools, companies or regions, so you can only see the profiles of people who are in your networks and your friends. We did this to make sure you could share information with the people you care about. This is the same reason we have built extensive privacy settings – to give you even more control over who you share your information with.
Somehow we missed this point with Feed and we didn't build in the proper privacy controls right away. This was a big mistake on our part, and I'm sorry for it. But apologizing isn't enough. I wanted to make sure we did something about it, and quickly. So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. This new privacy page will allow you to choose which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends' News Feeds, and it also lists the type of actions Facebook will never let any other person know about. If you have more comments, please send them over.
This may sound silly, but I want to thank all of you who have written in and created groups and protested. Even though I wish I hadn't made so many of you angry, I am glad we got to hear you. And I am also glad that News Feed highlighted all these groups so people could find them and share their opinions with each other as well.
About a week ago I created a group called Free Flow of Information on the Internet, because that's what I believe in – helping people share information with the people they want to share it with. I'd encourage you to check it out to learn more about what guides those of us who make Facebook. Tomorrow at 4pm est, I will be in that group with a bunch of people from Facebook, and we would love to discuss all of this with you. It would be great to see you there.
Thanks for taking the time to read this,
Mark
One more thing:
Interesting thought from UNC Fred on the size of the anti-Facebook Facebook group:
"The group has grown to almost 700,000 users, representing almost 8% of
Facebook's total user base. If the equivalent happened in Myspace, the
group would have grown to 8 million people. In two days."
This was my scheduled time waste today
Interactive tour of my desk on Flickr taken with my new Canon SD 500.
I would love to see what other people's desks look like... tag them "mydesk" in Flickr. :)
What else can YouTube do besides pre-rolls?
I disagree with Fred's assertion that YouTube could be making a ton of money on pre-rolls.
Pre-rolls, in their current form, suck.
No, really suck.
The other day I was watching some great wiffleball footage. Anyone who ever grew up playing would be really jealous of these guys who seemed to record every single pitch on video over eight seasons. Man, I pitched this one game where I gave up one hit and whiffed 25... of course I walked 11, but still... Anyway, repurposed TV car commercials and mortgage ads would have completely ruined the experience for me.... and that's all YouTube really is... its an entertainment experience.
We put up with TV commercials because, they're more than just entertainment. There's social capital being built. We're watching the same shows as our friends... the price for knowing what happens on Nip Tuck is that you have to watch some commercials... but socially, being in the Nip Tuck "know" is very valuable. Plus, we're planted in front of the TV... not much on... the value of switching is pretty low.
But when I watch these wiffleball clips, I may send them to a couple of friends, but its mostly a solitary experience... just pure entertainment value. I don't need to watch them, and there are a million other distracting entertaining things on the web to choose from. If I had to watch a 10 second preroll in front of each one, I'd quickly lose interest, because the entertainment value would suffer.
So how else can YouTube monetize these videos? Rather than a full pre-roll... how about just a "Sponsored by, around the player.... re-skin the player." Maybe not the same CPM, but that wouldn't really ruin my viewing experience.
More interesting would be the idea of a user selected theme of some sort... How about breaking down the elements of a brand and allowing the user to mix them in. So, with the wiffleball videos, the user could be given a little editor that allows him to stick a logo and some text right on the corner of the screen... they select from a menu of choices... they might pick Nike or Adidas or Gatorade or something. Or, let ESPN sponsor the sports videos, pull them onto their site, throw in the SportsCenter theme song, etc. In that scenario, the owner of the video knows something about the content and the audience that allows them to select an ad that fits, in a way that's not obtrusive. Plus, knowing that the owner selected it also makes it part of the content, versus something YouTube tacked on at the beginning.
Plus, the breadth and quality of video advertising has to get a lot better... maybe companies should be putting live offers out on YouTube for people to create advertising for them and make the videos themselves the advertising.
Pre-rolls are non-contextual. They degrade the user experience. They degrade the quality of the content. They are not expressive the way the content itself is.
I know its hard to be creative with your advertising and scale at the same time, but I don't think you'll ever see anyone put up with 10 second prerolls on half the videos they see on YouTube.
"Cingular Presents: The NYC Skyline. Get more bars with Cingular's All Over Network."
Hilarious.
Individually, I don't mind the designs. I always liked the exoskelatal concept and so I like Tower 3 the best. However, they absolutely look nothing like each other and seem sort of random. Hopefully, they'll gel a little better as the designs get tweaked.