Sunday, November 19, 2006

Real World Wide Web

I was in a meeting with Tim Kindberg this week. He works for HP in research and development at the HP Labs in Bristol. One of his projects is physical hyperlinks. This is by no means a new technology - it's already been put to use by the BBC and won an award.

The idea is that physical objects could have a unique barcode printed on them that can be photographed by a mobile phone. The image leads to a unique reference point on the web which contains information. The technology was used as part of the BBC series Coast. Scenic walks were marked with posters that included these tags and linked to various pieces of information. You can learn more on the Active Print site.

There are a couple of barriers to this technology taking off. Having seen it in action, though, I'm much more convinced than I was. Properly integrated into phones it could be very easy to use and very useful. The phone tells you when you've succeeded in capturing the barcode - a major plus for usability.

There are, by the sounds of it, two major hurdles. The first is getting the appropriate software embedded into phones. The second is standardisation of codes.

This technology has all kinds of possible applications. The 'barcode' could, in theory, execute any number of activities on a phone. It could probably replace phone numbers on business cards, for instance.

It could definitely act as an easily traceable response mechanic on outdoor and ambient advertising. It could add real value to consumers and be easily trackable for media spend optimisation.

Some of the ideas that Tim covered were:

  • real time travel information at bus stops and on train platforms
  • in-store promotions
  • response mechanism on outdoor
  • incentive delivery on outdoor to increase footfall
  • map download from online to mobile

    If you have another one, please feel free to comment...

  • Saturday, November 18, 2006

    Gartner Hype Cycle

    Has the buzz about Second Life been annoying you? There's a conceptual framework called the Hype Cycle developed by Gartner that I find useful most weeks at helping me figure out my views on 'hot' technology news.

    To be honest, I'm not sure how much rigour is behind it and I doubt that it's useful for definitive planning. It's extremely useful, however, in helping to maintain perspective, especially on new technologies.

    The fundamental concept is that most or all technologies go through five phases of development that see the level of hype peak long before the technologies themselves become useful. Between excitement and usefulness there is a period where most people are decidedly underwhelmed by the technology.

    If you take the mobile internet as an example, it was developed some years ago as a concept and there was a lot of excitement. This rapidly dissipated when people realised that WAP was really unimpressive and that no-one would be bothered with it. Now, WAP in its various forms is starting to make a comeback as phones have improved and people have found useful things to do with it.

    I'd highly recommend reading through the concept and then doing a little search search of the interweb to see what people have posted (neglecting copyright of course).

    Back to Second Life - companies that are making PR announcements or set up virtual shops in Second Life at the moment are very much taking advantage of the fact that the level of hype is extremely high. The vast majority of the value gained from these endeavours comes from association with the hype. There will be a severe drop in people's interest and the value to be gained from Second Life before there is any sustained interest from the 'general populaton'.

    Second Life

    There's been a lot of talk about Second Life recently. I wonder what the ratio is between people who've heard of it and people who have actually played with it (or, for that matter, people who have actually bought Linden Dollars).

    Second Life has managed to sell some pretty significant companies into giving them free PR. Reuters, Sun Microsystems and IBM have all made something of a big deal about being associated with Second Life.

    A lot of their success, I think, comes from the fact that the concept encapsulates so many different elements of the new web. It gives a physical (if virtual) dimension to web technologies and habits as varied as online gaming, instant messaging, chat rooms, Pay Pal and eBay for example.

    I feel like it's pretty safe to say that in its current form Second Life will never become 'mainstream'. The future of the web lies in its cross-over with the real world, not it's ability to make a virtual one.

    I do think that it's a step towards a viable replacement for conference calls (and instant messaging and chat rooms for that matter).

    I think it's worth mentioning that my former colleague, Barry Lee , is sufficiently bleeding edge that he was presenting 3-D net meetings as an exciting development about a year ago...

    Online Art

    My cousin Daniel recently completed a Masters of Fine Arts at the Chelsea College of Art and Design. Since moving to London five years ago I've enjoyed following his various art projects - he brings a kind of whimsy to his work that I really appreciate.

    He recently hosted a week-long art event on a small island off the coast of Croatia called Susak. Apparently it's a beautiful and somewhat isolated place. I've lifted some text from a forum site about the island:

    THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH THE PEOPLE LIVING ON THE ISLAND!!!!! (I can't seem to stress this one out enough)

    So all of you that hear things about deliverance-type of weirdos and shit about mutants - You've been tricked. I can guarantee you that the percentage of strange people is far lower than in the town where you're comming from.

    IF YOU WANT FREAKS, GO TO THE FUCKING CIRCUS.


    The island doesn't really have roads so the all the locals have wheelbarrows to cart their things around. Daniel made a t-shirt inspired by this which you can buy from his site . During the Susak Expo Daniel undertook a project to paint as many of the wheelbarrows as possible bright orange. There are some great photos here . I'd particularly recommend clicking on the photo on the right of the old guy.

    Daniel has invited me to collaborate with him in a project yet-to-be-defined. Hopefully we can think of something cool...

    Monday, November 06, 2006

    Divining Rods III - Pôle Nord

    The acquisition of Pôle Nord by Publicis Groupe is very much of today's media zeitgeist. Not entirely unlike Rupert Murdoch's spate of acquisitions, it is 'old' advertising learning from new.

    Pôle Nord as a company has earned its stripes by servicing e-commerce companies. For those of us who have worked in online marketing for established companies, this is an impressive place to prove yourself. Established companies tend to be burdened by complexities of multiple corporate objectives and legacy systems. E-commerce, typically, has a sharp focus on a single bottom line - delivering the maximum return on what is usually almost 100% online spend through a single sales channel.

    This is the smithy at which Pôle Nord's tools were forged. As a result, they are very exciting. Word Catcher delivers unparalleled insights into SEM effectiveness charting brands against competitors within key categories in terms of volume of search terms and position on the listings.

    Click 2 Sale is sufficiently flexible that it is an ideal divining rod . It's an automated bid management tool that works with APIs and javascript coding to create a platform which allows advertisers to maximise their investment by delivering as much relevance as possible - matching a wide variety of 'post-click actions' to keyword data with sufficient ease that marketers can devote their time to adding the human touches which are so important to real relevance.

    The future of marketing will be when machines do jobs appropriate for machines, humans do jobs appropriate for humans and the rigour of e-commerce marketing meets the magic of 'old' advertising.

    Divining Rods II - Attentio

    I met today with Per Siljubergsåsen, one of the co-founders of Attentio . I first learned about Attentio from an interview of another co-founder called Simon McDermott on Podleaders , a series of podcasts that I'd highly recommend.

    Attentio is one of the tools that promise to deliver on the promises that remained undelivered-upon at the end of the last web boom. It has the potential (along with, presumably, its still small competitive set) to effective online consumer feedback the norm rather then the exception. It does so through facilitating the process of listening. It aggregates feeds from a careful selection of sources and gives a good snapshot of different web 'channels' (eg. news, blogs, forums...)

    The tool, in theory, allows a marketer to use a single interface to have a dashboard quantitative view of the buzz relating to a product or brand online and then to drill down to the qualitative - individual entries. It also aggregates volumes of postings relating to pre-set topics of discussion and identifies new themes.

    The tool in action seems to have more strengths than weaknesses and their business model looks like it has an interesting future. It looks like it has very good applications for tracking the effectiveness of marketing initiatives as the focus towards word of mouth (mouse) increases. It also has a lot of potential for feeding into product development.

    Divining Rods

    I saw three commercial proprietary tools for Web 2.0 in action today. The first two were developed by Pole Nord - a company acquired by the Publicis Groupe (my employers) last year. The third was developed by Attentio , a Brussels-based start up that aggregates online content into a 'buzz tracking' tool. All three were great examples of how it's relatively easy to develop ground-breaking tools in online marketing.

    In each case the tools differentiate themselves from the competition by facilitating the manipulation of data in order to provide actionable insights (how 'bout that for marketing speak).

    There is far too much data in the digital world and not enough insights. Great tools (and people who know who to use them) are too few and far between.

    Sunday, November 05, 2006

    Minor SEO Win

    I'm feeling very smug about my neo-logism. It will be a long time before Google recognises it as a word unto itself, in the meantime I'm happy to be top of the listings for people who search on "e-pisteme".