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July 31, 2006

Make things fun!

I love it when I read something that makes me smile. I get this kind of satisfaction out of finding a new book I really love... or discovering an article that confirms a theory I might have had... and these days, in finding a new blog to read that has very good things to say.

I found a blog called "Creating Passionate Users" with a great post titled "Usability through fun" that was very cleverly written (and fun) and added an interesting argument to the whole usability discussion.

I've always had a thing about making sure that things are entertaining. I guess it comes back to the fact that currently, people are experiencing a loss of "free time" in our always switched-on world. We need ways to get our messages across that don't feel like a "waste of time"... and reading long boring documents, even reading our emails are becoming too much of a bore... but we will always make time for something fun.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 03:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 13, 2006

From the deep end...

I remember the first time I played The Sims. It was years ago now, so long ago that I can't remember if I was playing it first on my Apple LCIII or if I was playing it on my 8500. (Yes, I am definitely a computer geek.) I remember enjoying being able to tell someone what to do, and being responsible for whether or not they ate, slept, made music, art, watched TV and all of the above... but I was always conscious of the fact that I was controlling another person. If I look back and really think about it, I was most likely creating an alter-ego and doing the things I wanted to be doing in my life at the moment.

However, the lack of connection between the joy, sadness, happiness, etc felt by my electronic self and my real self kept me from really playing the game. I had a job in my simulated world, friends, a nice house, etc... and none of it translated into anything in the real world.

But now that's beginning to change...

This article in business week, about Second Life is well worth checking out. People are now creating virtual versions of themselves and then making money from them. Talk about moonlighting, you could be a banker by day and a rock star by night.

Is this scary?

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 01:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 05, 2006

Web Sociology

or something like that...

Yet another reason why I love what's happening in the world... I've always considered myself as a person with some good ideas to share. Probably why I started a blog... I'd love to claim that it's all about research and staying on top of my field, but if I'm honest it's also just a place for me to show my thinking, or more directly to blabber on about stuff that my friends won't ordinarily let me talk about.

But it has also become a realisation (Yes, I'm using the English spelling... when in Rome.... or London, in this case) that the Web is also the great equaliser where you realise that there are tons of people out there with great ideas... and in fact that you're all somehow connected. (It truly is a small world).

But back to my point...

I was reading an article about a new competitor to YouTube (see my other post) and making fun of their terrible name, which lead me to blogging about Igor because they love to talk about names, and I saw a post on their site talking about Media Influencer, which is a site that they obviously found interesting.

On the MediaInfluencer site was a link to add the blog to MyYahoo page (which is where I have all of the RSS feeds I subscribe to...) when I noticed that the author had a post about Online Communities in which the Chief Executive of WPP, a company that used to pay my salary, was quoted.

In it, he is quoted as having said (in FT) that "has warned media owners must find ways to attract and retain talent and create stand-alone digital divisions in order to compete in the era of internet blogs, open access and online communities. So far so good. He believes that the shortage in human capital would be one of the main challenges facing companies in the future, and successful companies were those that could "find, retain, and incentivise good people". This is because "young people, accustomed to quick response on the internet, were shunning hierarchical organisations where decision-making took a long time."

What's funny about this is that this is the industry that I work in and I was just out seeing a client today and talking about the importance of taking a community approach to recruiting graduates because of the differences in their expectations of their workplace and their employer.

Talk about full circle.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 10:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

YouTube and the competition...

YouTube is one of the great examples of what's happening on the Web. On this site, you can upload video clips of just about anything and YouTube makes them easily viewable by anyone (anyone you want to see your video, you can make them private and only allow your friends/family to see them). The site is so popular that NBC has entered into a deal with them whereby content will be released on YouTube.

It's fast becoming a platform for budding video producers, TV producers, recording artists and just about anyone else that wants to showcase their home movies to the world... and like everything else, is sparking lots of communication (by way of links being sent to one another and tagging and other Web 2.0 goodies).

Funny that I was recently telling someone I know that does TV presenting that they should start a TV show themselves and promote it via vodcast (video podcast, even though I hate the term vodcast) and YouTube... and how they could use this to get rich, and now there's another company trying to do the same thing but offer a share of the profit to people whose videos are downloaded more often than others.... (see article on Cnet)

A great idea....

The only problem? They are called eefoof.com... a terrible name. If I'm lucky, I've blogged about this before igor has. They always have something to say about people with bad names.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 10:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack