alexanderhorre’s posterous

I figured this would be a delightful post to start off my return to my
blog. I took a break to study information sharing via twitter retweets
and replies only. It was quite fun, but lacked a little personality. I
definitely prefer the augmenting my information with a little twist of
personality that only comes from your own blog post - and then twitter
it for ego-centric joy.
 
Here's the story. I was cleaning my room with a brand new vacuum, and
was unaccustomed to its vicious suction, than the old beater supplied
by our landlord. Unbeknownst to me, an easy forwardly shove of the
vacuum roared into the nightstand, knocking over the flower vase onto
the bed. Now that would have been entirely uneventful if not for the
vase being one of those tall and thin flutes. The water fired out of
the vase like a from a water hose, arched in the air, and in a
slow-motion state of mind, screamed "No-o-o-o-o-oOo-o-o" as I watched
it land on my keyboard-out Macbook at the bed's corner. Music playing
immediately flatlined; screen went black. It made one last "whrrrrrr"
and stopped dead like a stone.
 
Two days ago I ordered my new Macbook. As I simply love information
overload, I've monitored it's tracking status since I pressed order.
What puzzles me is the amount of traveling my Macbook has just now
gone through from leaving its birthplace. Take a look at this
screenshot of this UPS tracking sequence. It makes me scratch my head
in amazement, or maybe that's a FAIL I'm smelling.
 
 
 

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Last night was Twestival (Twitter + Festival = Twestival). However for those at the Tyneside Twestival: Twitter + Twestival = Twestival? I digress. Twestival itself was a wonderfully organized event for Charity Water, a nonprofit organization raising money for clean water accessibility in underdeveloped countries. The magnitiude of this event spread worldwide to 170+ cities, making donations for this charity, I would assume, quite astonishing. I'm going to think many charities will follow this way of donations.

What amazes me is the breadth of support Twestival gained through Twitter. It started small, then exploded with followers of followers getting excited to sponsor a city. What amazes me even more are the active users of Twitter. Early adopters? Geeks? Techies? This is true, but Twitter has also attracted industry leaders, and regional leaders of local business to use their resources to bring a sponsored city to life with donated prizes, and...well...networking and schmoozing. I ran into a lot of wonderful people, many who I've tweeted to quite often. I made some great contacts, and learned a few things about Newcastle's close-knit-community.

It's amazes me what Twitter can do as an open network with one-to-one and one-to-many relationships simultaneously. It's a true emotional enterprise transcendence from anchored exclusive networks like Facebook, which is struggingly to truly share information. If Twestival was organized through Facebook exclusively, I gaurantee it wouldn't have garnered the amassed following of sponsored cities and attendees. 

I can't wait for the next event of this kind. To twitter and charity!

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It's probably just my gut instinct. I feel the Amazon Kindle is still looking like a prototype. It wants to be too many things, which can impress the early-adopter geek crowd; but, to be practical to needs to be revolutionary to get the mainstream behind its price point. With netbooks costing lower than the Kindle, it makes no sense to give the Kindle features that make it act like a netbook. Toss out the keyboard. What's the purpose? Oh gosh, you can browse the web? Who cares.

The Kindle is suppose to be an e-book, period. So, design it for that specific purpose. Make the UI intuitive. How does a read flip the page of a real book? Put that gesturing ability into the screen for easy and quick page flipping with touch sensoring like the iPhone. The rounded edges are a size touch, but make the screen larger. By minimizing what the Kindle does, you can use a larger screen with less components.


Using Amazon's web services, the Kindle OS should simply boot up to a dashboard with a folder that lists your amazon cart and ability to browse e-books. Download straight to the Kindle. Read the book. There is no reason to make it a full-web browser capable e-book reader. Just make it a very fun e-book that promotes natural book reading, than attempting create an e-book reader that functions as an all in one device. It'll fail.

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Recently, Twitter hired a guy to lead their business model; and, apparently he's concluding to the obvious everyone is saying. Charge for commercial accounts. It's quite amazing this concept. Twitter has now created the direct-advertising model that social networking thought it had. When people follow Dell, the company knows they're interested, and active (because they use Twitter). This is the best way I believe for Twitter to have a business model.

This is the way of advertising. Facebook for instance promotes direct marketing, but all I get as a user are 'dating ads' when they know in my profile I'm in a relationship. It makes no sense. Apparently their idea of direct marketing is that you're male and 27. That's direct enough. They have no idea of what I like, or dislike or subject relevance. With Twitter, advertising knows I'm interested, because I'm following you!

For christ sakes, if I say I'm a fan of Coca Cola and join Facebook's fan page for Coca Cola, you'd think I'd see advertising from them? Nope. Nothing. It's ridiculous. This Twitter method, I believe will turn into a goldmine. Because now, when you follow, say, Dell, and you get a message for 20% off on Printers, you'll retweet that to all your followers, and suddenly a sunami hits Dell's website. This is called emotional enterprise.

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There's a major component missing in Facebook's plan to seemingly take a bite out of Twitter's rising stardom. This major flaw is smack in the middle of their own logic, the essence of Facebook's platform. You see, Facebook is broken up into what I call contextual networks (friends, region, city, business, university). It's a closed off network, visible only to accepted friends. This understanding of connectivity is upside down to Twitter.

Specifically, your applications can now directly access all of a user's status, links, and notes via new methods and FQL calls. Your application will have access to any status, notes, or links from the active user or their friends that are currently visible to the active user.

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A host of important people flock together to talk amongst other important people about important things in our lifetime. An exclusive event about inclusive issues. To attend the event, it makes a point that those of most value per conference seat should be selected amongst those that can actually made a difference with their social wealth and bank account and market leverage to cause change. However, for the best of us I would think this cheaply pervasive web can easily stream live all events brought on by TED easily. I sit and wait for TED to upload one talk by Bill Gates' famous mosquitoes. I sit and wait for more knowledge that TED is saying is important; but, we're all shutout unless we're rich. It's counter productive, and a farce. The value chasm shows its ugly face once again.

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As of Thursday, February 5th, 2009, this New York Times article about digital piracy winning the battle against studios has hit the front page of Digg.

Because of widely available broadband access and a new wave of streaming sites, it has become surprisingly easy to watch pirated video online — a troubling development for entertainment executives and copyright lawyers.

 In 2008, DVD shipments dropped to their lowest levels in five years. Executives worry that the economic downturn will persuade more users to watch stolen shows and movies.

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Mashup culture is seriously a wonderful thing. Combining different media to create amazing things. Instead of logging into Wordpress, I simply utilize Posterous to mashup email and my blog. What was once simply an information silo, essentially one communication medium to communicate with another inbox, I can now simply post to my blog, twitter, plus more to document my online existence. It's a wonderful thing.

However, combining different media can sometimes freak out the old culture. Did you hear about this: Shepard Fairey is in trouble with the AP for using their photograph to create that iconic three-tone Obama image. Exuse me? What was that? Is the dying dog crying wolf? Sadly, this is still happening. Entrepreneurs create amazing things, and the tools to share these creations continue to be developed.  Let innovation grow, than hinder it. The most accessibility to the product, the better value of its brand; isn't that the true essence of marketing? Building brand value is the money-maker. Utilize it.

What about Mozillas' Ubiquity? Mashup a ton of services (using their public API) to allow amazing things for email. No longer will you have to provide links in email; you can now essentially create a webpage within the email with full API functionality.  That is mashup culture at its finest. It increases the value of experience using the APIs of these services, which makes me an active user of these many services, than I would have if I had to go to every single Website to access these services. I can now easily without much effort become a user to these services than before: making them 'sticky.'

This new culture is even in the realm of music. Have you heard of Jaydiohead? Jay-z and Radiohead mashed up to create an amazing remix album duet. It's amazing. Now I can share this album to the masses within my growing network, harnessed by Posterous' ability to automatically tweet to Twitter and post it on my blog with ease, automatically when I click 'send.' Spread the wealth of experiencing two great experiences in one.

This digital marketplace is no longer about the end product: music, tv shows, or even images. It's about the brand image built upon the platform that provides these services. After all, we as users can easily go to the next competitor. What makes us return to you? What makes me return to iTunes than Piratebay? It's not the products. It's the experience of being apart of the brand. What does that brand provide? Well, for iTunes I'm given email updates to season passes when an epsiode is released. I can share my opinion in writing reviews of to the shows I enjoy. I can synch my purchases across my Macbook and iPhone. I can download my iTunes' RSS and plug it into my lifestream plugin on the blog to show others what I've purchased, or if I left a review on a great tv show. I can immediately watch an episode while it's downloading. It's the experience; it's the value in use.

Hopefully companies will begin to understand this more and more. It's the value of the experience that the product creates, not the product.  Why do you think customer service is so important? The experience of the customer makes them return. Why has this value chasm continued to grow in regards to products? Understanding the fundamental of value opens up a lot of doors to the benjamins.

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Ever since I cut the chord of "living in the United States" to study abroad, I found myself at ends with American television. When I visit home for vacation, Hulu is there welcoming me with open arms. However, while back in England I'm banned due to something called 'geographical barriers of intellectual property and copyright and licensing...la la la la la la.' So it comes to a surprise that the BBC had the game televised at midnight. I didn't watch it.

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Have you heard of this? I simply had to post this. The Mighty Wallet is made from 100% recyclable materials. It shrinks and expands depending how much you stuff into it due to the fiber strength of its design. This fiber made from randomly-woven paper is of a higher-grade than those indestructible paper envelopes used for mail envelopes. Even though I'd never get this, it's awesome. Thanks BoingBoing gadgets.

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