a blog by Ian Kennedy
iPod Directions is a cool little app that takes your Yahoo Maps (remember, we support multipoint and right-click location) driving directions and puts them in your video or nano iPod.
Note: I haven’t been able to get this to work with the Yahoo Maps Beta (I contacted the company several days ago but never heard back) but it works just fine on basic Yahoo Maps.
Technorati has been keeping track of the increasing number of blogs in languages other than English reporting at their last State of the Blogosphere that English is no longer the dominate language of blogs; the majority of blog posts are now in Japanese.
The number one blog on the Technorati 100 is now, 老徐 徐静蕾 新浪BLOG by Xu Jing Lei taking over the number one spot from BoingBoing earlier this month. Using Yahoo’s updated Babel Fish service, this title of this blog translates roughly to, "Old static flower bud." I think there’s a cultural nuance that I’m missing here. Anyone know what this blog is about?
Davis Freeburg has a long post about Tivo’s new Product Watch service which allows people to subscribe to advertisments. I’ve signed up for the service and will post more about it once I’ve had a chance to try it out.
Davis writes:
Advertising, ironically enough for an ad zapper, is probably more important to TiVo than just about anything for them right now. While TiVo makes far more money from a standalone subscriber, the explosion of TiVo users in the years ahead are more likely to come from the major cable deals that they are striking with folks like Comcast (and many more surely to come shortly). In these deals TiVo makes much less money per subscriber but is entitled to valuable advertising revenue from a far greater audience.
We’re seeing an honesty in the dialog between advertisers and their audience that I hope will unleash a new wave of innovation in marketing. Tivo teaches us that people resist interruptive advertising. This tends to be the case with most advertising (that’s why we have pop-up blockers on the web) unless it is highly relevant or entertaining.
If you want to reach a specific audience for your products, why not just ask them to identify themselves? If I understand it correctly, Tivo’s Product Watch is giving advertisers room to stretch out their creative and offering 2 – 6 minute segments. In return, users are directing their interest and are explicit about what products they are interested in. Tivo’s already got the “thumbs up/thumbs down” rating buttons on their remote and this feedback can be used by the system to serve up suggested advertising just as they do with their existing programming suggestion engine.
Just as we all went to the web to view clips of the best Super Bowl commercials along with commentary and discussion, Tivo’s Product Watch has the potential to be the place to go to view the most informative or creative advertising on television. Instead of being something you skip, this showcase may actually be a reason to sign up to Tivo.
Dust off the conspiracy books – this one’s getting juicy. Tonight Wired posted the full memo from the whistle-blower at AT&T in San Francisco that tipped off the recent firestorm around suspected domestic spying by the NSA. It gets pretty technical but deep in on page three the writer hints that there may have been some deal-making going on.
The USA Today story that broke this news last week leveled charges that Verizon, Bell South, and AT&T had all cooperated with the NSA spying program. Since then, both Verizon and Bell South have come out with carefully worded statements denying that they had handed domestic phone call records to the NSA. I have not heard a similar statement from AT&T.
Mark Klein, the whistle-blower, writes that the wire-tapping was coordinated out of a Mississippi AT&T office,
As a sign that government spying goes hand-in-hand with union-busting, the entire (Communication Workers of America) Local 6377 which had jurisdiction over the Bridgeton NOC was wiped out in early 2002 when AT&T fired the union work force and later rehired them as nonunion “management” employees.) The cut-in work was performed in 2003, and since then new circuits are connected through the “splitter” cabinet.
I wonder if the US Govt. cut a deal with the AT&T to coorperate on the NSA wire-taps in return for going easy on them while they busted up their union during restructuring. It’s unlikely that the many branches of govt. are coordinated and monolithic as Mark supposes but it does get you thinking and would be great grist for a movie plot.
UPDATE: eff.org has posted a full summary of their case against the NSA along with links to all the relevant legal documents.
I have a confession to make. Although I’ve been using flickr for a good long time (I’ve posted over 500 photos since July 2004), it was only several months ago that I clued into the Recent Activity feature. I had mainly been using the site as a way to stream photos to friends and family and only viewed photos from others via my RSS reader so I really didn’t explore the website that much.
One day I did happen to login to the site and found this feature which let me see who had commented on my photos, which ones were "favorited" and which were the most viewed. There were a few comments from family that I noticed (I felt horrible that I never acknowledged these!) and then someone had commented that one of my photos of a lego-encrusted car should be submitted to something called the "Pixel Art" group.
I had discovered the wonderful world of flickr groups which leads me to the topic of this post. Flickr took the wraps off a major redesign today that cleans up some of the rough edges a bit but also makes it easier for newbies to get introduced to the great communities living on the site. I’m really happy to see the Groups we’ve noticed feature because it highlights all the great groups that are out there. People that photograph interesting signs, classic cars, or strange uses of English. There are also gaming groups like the GuessWhere groups (I play the SF chapter) and the now famous squared circle group. There is really something for everyone here.
There are a ton of other features rolled out like a revamped Organizr but I’ll point to my all time favorite flickr photographer, Thomas Hawk, who gives the best run down.
Oh, and why Gamma? It comes after Beta of course.
(large posters appeared overnight to promote the brand new yahoo.com home page)
Lots of buzz around the new Yahoo homepage which was made available as a preview today. Most appreciated the interactive elements that let you check your email and local traffic conditions without leaving the page. The team packed in a lot of information on the page (no scrollbar on my 1280 x 1024 screen) without making it overwhelming. Just right I think.
Havi Hoffman has a great writeup on the launch over on Search Blog and Richard MacManus has the podcast exclusive. For those that want to get in under the hood, check out Bill Scott posting on design considerations and Nate Koechley with the nitty on the technical details covering things such as the use of CSS sprites.
There’s a lot here to discover, subtle things such as changing of the font from Arial to Verdana for better legibility as you get smaller and the countless bits of stuff to see in the Pulse module. More details on personalization features from Scott Gatz.
Finally, don’t miss the quirky welcome message from Jerry and David.
Excellent work all around, makes me proud to work here.
OMG! I’ve been hearing all about this game as the next greatest thing but until you see it, you can’t really appreciate just how cool it is. Joystiq has links to videos from E3 that show the game in action and it looks amazing.
While the big gaming show E3 is going on in Los Angeles, Yahoo Games has released an update to Yahoo Games including a shiny new version of Yahoo Chess.
Certainly people want good deals, but a good deal is sweeter when it’s available someplace where people can engage. That’s why even small efforts to facilitate shared moments of self-expression make sense for PopSecret at Whatsyourpopsecret.com, or for Saab at Maintainyouridentity.net, or for msn.com at Whatsyourstory.msn.com (sponsored by Volvo), or for Tazo Tea at Tazo.com, where Tazo encourages visitors to "enlighten us." These campaigns aren’t about engaging consumers with the brand. They’re about brands enabling people to engage with one another in new, often quirky, but always meaningful ways.
– J. Walker Smith in Feb. 2006 issue of Media
Amen to that! The more marketers understand that the new web is about two-way conversations, the less we’ll hear from the klaxon horns of the likes of x-10
For a sampling of some of the more engaging advertising efforts, check out Random Culture.