opinions
Timelines Re-visited
Storyline - a proposed service in 2009 and the current Facebook Template for a Timeline
So it seems that Facebook is finally taking it’s Timelines feature out of Beta (now in full production mode) and pretty soon is going to be forcing those of us who haven’t bothered to changeover, to have one. Why have they devoted so much energy to this seemingly trivial feature… and what happened to those services that already existed for creating personal timelines? About 3 years ago I did do some research into the ‘Timeline’ services available on the internet with a view to developing a standalone service for a major broadcaster. So what insights does that give me?
The Only Way is … Facebook!
The Livemusic.fm Welcome page on Facebook
So yes we’ve had a lot of focus on Facebook recently … from the media industry in general (when was the last time you saw a TV or poster ad with a good old-fashioned but boring simple WWW URL ?) to the specifics of suddenly feeling that the Livemusic “Like” page is a bit ‘unloved’. It wasn’t even that long ago we didn’t have a Facebook ‘Fan’ Page at all (as they were called back in the heady days of 2010!) I think you’d have be living in a cave not to notice that Zuckerberg and pals have been making a serious land-grab for large swathes of cyberspace in the last 18 months or so …
Sky Songs Off Air … Who’s Next?
Sky Songs Has Announced it is to Be Shut Down in Feb 2011 ... Who's Next?
BSkyB closed its music-subscription service, Sky Songs, this Monday 6th December – a little more than a year after its high-profile launch.The music-streaming service, similar to the iTunes store, has been “unable to reach a large enough customer base”, the company admitted today.
What does this mean for the other players in the streaming music & subscription space – from the Freemium services to the fully-paid streaming services, through to the download services. And more importantly who’s next?
Cloud-Computing vs Apps
Google's Chrome Operating System
With the introduction of Google Wave, following Google Docs and the Google Apps suite of productivity and collaborative working tools released over the last year, the release of Google Chrome is truly one of the most serious ventures in challenging Microsoft’s dominance of the way 90% of the population use their computers.
Freebooters, Nostalgics, Renaissants & Media Urchins
Napster's Streaming Music Service
Sky Songs – a new music service, in beta naturally, which offers a streaming service similar to Spotify for a little over 6 quid a month, has over 4m tracks AND you get to download 15 tracks to keep. Now that seems like the perfect model – a decent balance of streaming everything, a reasonable monthly charge AND you get a few favourites to keep. So why has Spotify cornered the market as the “plat du jour” of the streaming music services? How did it manage to get the drop on Last.fm and since its adoption of a download costing model (all neatly synched with partner 7Digital) … will it really start being a threat to iTunes music store?
The inevitable demise of Geocities
Original Yahoo-Geocities Co-branded Landing Page
Geocities, Geocities, Geocities … so Yahoo have finally announced that they will be ditching the Geocities free web-hosting facility. What do internet veterans feel about this?
Undead Avatars and Digital marketing
Facebook Werewolf Application
No-one has attacked my werewolf for at least 12 months thankfully. That might be because, along with a major purge of people I half knew (or old ex-girlfriends that my wife still had a problem with!) I also had a spring clean of all the useless ‘Web 2.0’ social networking apps that were funny for about 5 seconds. And it got me thinking … now that the buzz has died down somewhat concerning all things Web2.0 – what does social networking & user generated content really mean in the context of digital communications campaigns as we come to the end of 2008?
Wayfinding & Signposting in interface design
digital image header for teara.govt.nz - after Rosalie Gascoigne
“You have to lead them by the hand – It’s not the number of clicks, it’s the confidence level that you’re still headed in the right direction”
Steve Krug “Don’t make Me Think – A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability”
Best-practice involves making navigation and interaction as simple and logical as possible for the user. This is neatly summarized by the concept of ‘wayfinding’ – an alternative and more natural approach to what is normally captured under the heading of “Information Architecture”.
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