Month: November 2009

I Have A Kindle Now. But I Won’t Read A Book On It. Discuss.

I had a birthday a few weeks ago and to mark the occasion, my wife bought me a Kindle.   OK, yes, I’m a pretty digital guy, and despite writing my 1992 Berkeley Master’s thesis on “The Future of Print in the Age of Interactivity” – a thesis that celebrated…

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I had a birthday a few weeks ago and to mark the occasion, my wife bought me a Kindle.  

OK, yes, I’m a pretty digital guy, and despite writing my 1992 Berkeley Master’s thesis on “The Future of Print in the Age of Interactivity” – a thesis that celebrated the rise of a digital tablet fed by a world wide network – I didn’t run out and buy a Kindle as soon as they came on the market. In fact, I was rather suspicious of the device, with its cultish clan of devotees and its somewhat insidious approach to purchases (Whispernet is free – just use it to buy stuff!). I actively demurred my wife’s consistent implorations to buy one – much to her frustration as a card-carrying member of the aforementioned cult.

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Just Give Me One Modal Dialog ….

Back when I was reporting the book, I remember a meeting I had with Gary Flake, then the lead technologist at Overture, now a Fellow at Microsoft running Live Labs, responsible for stuff like Seadragon, Photosynth, and now, Pivot, an experimental approach to large datasets that attempts to rethink…

Screen shot 2009-11-22 at 7.52.16 PM.png

Back when I was reporting the book, I remember a meeting I had with Gary Flake, then the lead technologist at Overture, now a Fellow at Microsoft running Live Labs, responsible for stuff like Seadragon, Photosynth, and now, Pivot, an experimental approach to large datasets that attempts to rethink some fundamental approaches to what we understand search to be today.  

Back in 2004, I asked him why we couldn’t move forward in search interface, which struck me as a major issue (and still does). Gary looked at me ruefully and said something I’ve never forgotten: “If only I had just one modal dialog box…”

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“WuzUp?”

From Biz' post on Twitter's shift: Twitter helps you share and discover what's happening now among all the things, people, and events you care about. "What are you doing?" isn't the right question anymore—starting today, we've shortened it by two characters. Twitter now asks, "What's happening?" Well, regardless of…

Screen shot 2009-11-19 at 2.32.51 PM.png

From Biz’ post on Twitter’s shift:

Twitter helps you share and discover what’s happening now among all the things, people, and events you care about. “What are you doing?” isn’t the right question anymore—starting today, we’ve shortened it by two characters. Twitter now asks, “What’s happening?”

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I Love It When…

You imagine something out loud in a book, and then it starts to happen…. I am sure many of you have heard of RedLaser, but I hadn't until today. I love it! Here's the text from my blog post, written in 2004 (pre iPhone, so I used a Treo…) which…

You imagine something out loud in a book, and then it starts to happen….

I am sure many of you have heard of RedLaser, but I hadn’t until today. I love it!

Here’s the text from my blog post, written in 2004 (pre iPhone, so I used a Treo…) which I rewrote into the book:

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Thanks For Flying With Us. Please Give Us All Your Money.

Today I had quite an experience with United Airlines. It has very little to do with much of anything I usually write about here, save one key element: I have posited that to succeed in what I've been calling the Conversation Economy, companies must learn to have conversations with their…

Screen shot 2009-11-15 at 9.55.18 PM.pngToday I had quite an experience with United Airlines. It has very little to do with much of anything I usually write about here, save one key element: I have posited that to succeed in what I’ve been calling the Conversation Economy, companies must learn to have conversations with their customers at scale. (And to do so, they will need to leverage open platforms like Twitter, Facebook, etc. and, of course, change the way they instrument their business. But more on that later).

Well, here’s a tale of one company failing miserably at doing just that, even while, in the end, due to my own insistence (and most likely, the rising level of anger in my voice), it kind of, sort of, managed to not totally fail.

But first, the backstory.

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Why Did Google Buy AdMob?

Look. Sure, it's a mobile ad platform, and sure, Google wants to play there, more than they already are. OK. Fine. But really. What's the play? Droid. Data. Droid. Iphone App Data. Droid. K? Data. Just to be clear. Data. About what works, on iPhone apps, so they can leverage…

Look. Sure, it’s a mobile ad platform, and sure, Google wants to play there, more than they already are. OK. Fine. But really. What’s the play?

Droid.

Data.

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Hey Mr. Murdoch: It Doesn’t Have to Be Black and White

Sheesh. Just give Google summary text and headlines to index (like the WSJ does now). Then do your best to convert would be readers to your paid model. That's it. What's the big deal? The rest is bluster….

Sheesh. Just give Google summary text and headlines to index (like the WSJ does now). Then do your best to convert would be readers to your paid model. That’s it. What’s the big deal?

The rest is bluster.

6 Comments on Hey Mr. Murdoch: It Doesn’t Have to Be Black and White

Twitter Incorporates Retweeting (Beta Launch)

Saw this greeting me whilst on Twitter.com today (gotta love WiFi on a plane): Nice to see Twitter rolling out so many new things, like Lists, which seems to be taking off (though I find the lack of a discovery interface vexing, for now). Retweeting is integrated in an elegant…

Saw this greeting me whilst on Twitter.com today (gotta love WiFi on a plane):

Screen shot 2009-11-06 at 12.27.35 PM.png

Nice to see Twitter rolling out so many new things, like Lists, which seems to be taking off (though I find the lack of a discovery interface vexing, for now).

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A Step Toward Realizing the Data Bill of Rights Vision

Danny was kind enough to ping me about this story, which breaks the news about Google's new "Dashboard," which is, in essence, a first start toward realizing the "privacy dashboard" I asked for so long ago (and again here), back when I was posting ideas like a madman (I'm…

google-dashboard.png

Danny was kind enough to ping me about this story, which breaks the news about Google’s new “Dashboard,” which is, in essence, a first start toward realizing the “privacy dashboard” I asked for so long ago (and again here), back when I was posting ideas like a madman (I’m going to be doing that again shortly, so watch out…).

It’s a big deal I think, even if most of us never use it. And it’s very smart of Google to lead here. It really had no choice, when you think about it. And it’s kind of cool to see stuff I wrote about here over three years ago happen in the real world.

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OK, What the Real Phone Map Should Be

The sphere is abuzz with today’s news that AT&T is suing Verizon over those apparently quite effective ads which borrow heavily from Apple’s tagline – “There’s an App for that…” Verizon has created a map that compares AT&T 3G coverage to Verizon’s, and then uses the tagline “there’s a…

The sphere is abuzz with today’s news that AT&T is suing Verizon over those apparently quite effective ads which borrow heavily from Apple’s tagline – “There’s an App for that…” Verizon has created a map that compares AT&T 3G coverage to Verizon’s, and then uses the tagline “there’s a map for that.” (Above is the commercial, here’s the map.)

Well, I’ve been ranting about a real carrier mapping application (executed as a marketing campaign, natch), for nearly three years, and while I’ve told just about everyone I can about it, so far it’s still not done (I know, I know, we should make it ourselves, right? Well, maybe we will!).

Meanwhile, here’s the idea. If any of you brilliant coder/UX/marketing geniuses want to go do it, just credit FM and I, ok?

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