It's Time To Render and Waterboard John Thain

Link to story

Surely the SEC can imprison this MF for such outrageous behavior. I suggest Barack hold off on outlawing extraordinary rendition until this f-er is on a nice Afghan waterboarding table.

Seriously, what kind of screwed up values must a person have who begs for money from people who are struggling to buy groceries and gas so that corrupt failures can get bigger houses in The Hamptons.

And the GOP wanted to stop bailing out GM because auto makers make on average $28 an hour.

Soylent Green - No, Wait, Diesel Fuel - Made of People!

http://consumerist.com/5120330/beverly-hills-plastic-surgeon-uses-liposuctioned-fat-as-fuel-for-car

Digital Marketing Factoid Of The Day: Top Vid Sites By Streams

Fox's looking good, eeh?

2010 Toyota Prius: Prettius!

StatSheet: Where Sport Stat Geeks Go To Play

Years ago I had a friend named Terry that was positively obsessed with baseball stats. Understand, dear reader, that this was before there were online fantasy sports sites and whatnot. He just loved the data, and spent hours and hours and hours every week tracking every possible baseball stat there was.

Now, he is not alone, o'course, and the advent of fantasy sports online has surely increased the numbers 100 fold from when Terry was devouring the old Sporting News newspaper.

And for such geeks, now there is StatSheet, a mindbogglingly rich environment packed with stats -- and here's the interesting bit -- great ways to visualize them. Better yet for those who share my penchant for a good story, the site was created and is operated by one person. Here's the text from their about us page that tells the rich beginning to this story:

My name is Robbie Allen and I'm the sole founder and developer of StatSheet.com and creator of the StatSheet Network (which includes StatFix.com and StatTweets.com). I'm a long-time sports fanatic and web entrepreneur, and I want to change the face of sports on the web.

The major sports websites have yet to embrace the web as a platform for presenting and visualizing stats. It is time for a fresh perspective and my answer is the StatSheet Network, which comprises sites I've created as well as partnerships I've formed with other companies and organizations. The feedback I've received so far has been very positive, which is great because I've barely scratched the surface.

All the sites in the StatSheet Network have the singular goal of doing something interesting related to sports stats. Three sites are publicly available, three others are in development, and three more are at the "notes on a napkin" stage. There is no shortage of interesting things to do with sports stats on the web.

Yep, one person made this powerful site. One. let me say that again. One.

And here he is, the star of the show:



And it is the charting that makes this quite cool. These little minis don't do the functionality justice, but they will give you a teeny taste of the incredible range of data presentation available on StatSheet.



One he's also a one man network, with a site for college hoops, StatSheet itself, and StatTweets, which I am guessing you can figure out just from the name.

His vid (if you didn't watch it) claims that he got a sub prime mortgage to get his seed money. Let's hope he was kidding, or at least that the Obama package passes fast so he can continue his great work on this fascinating and intriguing offering.

So leave that pad and paper at home. Cancel the sub to Sporting News (if it even still exists.) And get your b-ball shorts over to StatSheet and check it out!

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Digital Marketing Factoid of the Day: Music Sales

The 2008 music sales figures are in, and it appears that digital tracks and albums are holding up the walls of the business. They are driving basically all of industry growth.



Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

White Paper Wednesdays: Future Of Media In the Social Era

You can always count on a good deck from Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang and this little gem is no exception.

The Future of Media in the Social Era

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: socialmedia social)

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

White Paper Wednesdays: Marketing Beyond Social Media

An excellent preso given at Ad Club this year. Check dis awt.

Beyond Social Media: Ad Club 11/08

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: socialmedia trust)

White Paper Wednesdays: Newspapers For The 21st Century

An awesome deck on the technologies and ideas that will redefine newspapers in the future.

Newspaper Of The Future

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: news journalist)

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

White Paper Wednesdays: Marketing With Online Video

Like it says on the tin...

Marketing with Online Video: Challenges & Opportunities, Raghav Gupta, VP of International Partnerships, Brightcove

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: iab conference)

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White Paper Wednesdays: How To Advertise Today

A deck on how to advertise in our odd times:

Branding Strategies in an ever-changing digital world, David Pugh-Jones, Creative Strategist, MSN

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: creativity online)

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

White Paper Wednesdays: Top Tech Breakthroughs of 2008

A short and oh so sweet deck on the top technological innovations of 2008. Check it out!

Top 10 Technological Breaktroughs In 2008

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: 2008 in)

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

BackType: Track Comments Across the Web!

The advent of web celebrity has fascinated me from the get go. People like following others -- I mean, it's the whole basis of Twitter.

But sometimes I lose track of how reality has changed from the old days, when one wanted one's name in print three times in one's lifetime -- at birth, at marriage, and at death.

So I was puzzled when I first read the concept behind a service called BackType. But the more I explored it, the more I realized what a bang up idea it is. Here's how the company summarizes its key offerings:

Claim your comments Whenever you write a comment on a blog or other website, BackType attributes it to you. We give your comments a home where they can be discovered, followed and shared.

Subscribe to search results Receive updates whenever a search term is mentioned in a comment – delivered by e-mail (immediately, or in daily or weekly digests), RSS or your Dashboard.

Connect with others Identify and connect with the people who's thoughts and opinions you value; follow their comments in your Dashboard.

The comments feature looks familiar if you are a Twitter user -- you can follow people as they make comments across the web and see those comments as a sort of stream:



The alerts feature is very cool because it tells you when the keywords of your selection appear in comments -- this is great news for people who want real time issues tracking as comments don't get spidered well, or at least quickly.

As I mentioned earlier, the concept really grew on me over time. I can totally see the appeal of a service that allows us to track people of like interests -- or indeed Internet celebs -- as they speak out online. Give it a whirl and I bet it'll catch you in its addictive web as well!

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Heartland Payment Systems is Vewy Sorry

A credit card processor called Heartland Payment Systems apparently had a security breach, affecting more than ONE HUNDRED MILLION transactions. This makes it the largest such breach in history. Here's the part of their press release I love:

"Heartland apologizes for any inconvenience this situation has caused," continued Baldwin. "Heartland is deeply committed to maintaining the security of cardholder data, and we will continue doing everything reasonably possible to achieve this objective."

Deeply committed, yet somehow unable to do the job. I love PR language like "everything reasonably possible," as if...these things happen. Move along people...nothing to see here...Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job.

They've created a website called 2008BREACH.com to provide info. They believe the breach is now "contained." To ONE HUNDRED MILLION TRANSACTIONS.

On a completely separate totally unrelated note, all humans reading this should note that global warming is contained...to Earth.

But the good news! They're changing their logo! I'd make a joke about the way they are changing the face of payments, but it's just too easy.



The Consumerist had these things to say (two separate excerpts):

The "good" news is that the criminals were only capturing credit card numbers, the names on the cards, and expiration dates—the info encoded onto the magnetic strip on the card. Because no addresses, SSNs or PINs were stolen, the prospect of full-blown identity theft is pretty small—which must explain why Heartland isn't offering any sort of credit monitoring package as compensation. Instead, their CFO says, "We recognize and feel badly about the inconvenience this is going to cause consumers."

It's clear that Heartland is in the business of servicing other businesses, not consumers, and as such they're pretty much pretending we don't exist. The Washington Post also points out that Heartland chose an interesting day to release the news, considering there's a big Obamavent happening to provide distraction.

On that last bit, I suppose there is no better day to "take out the trash" than 1/20/2009. I hope this post helps in some small way to ensure more people see the trash in this case and (you didn't think i could entirely resist, did ya?) that "changing the future of payments" is perhaps the teeniest bit akin to Nixon claiming to "widen the war in order to narrow it."

Snark snark snark. ;-)

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Digital Marketing Factoid Of The Day: Let Them Buy Cake

Comscore data show that rich people spent more than in past years online this Christmas, but lower and middle income people spent significantly less.



Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Bushisms: The End Of An Era

We Can't All Just Get Along

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Heineken And The Walk In Fridge

Slide Rocket: RIP PowerPoint

As someone who spends about 9 hours a day making PowerPoint charts, I am always on the lookout for new ways to make presentations better.

And I am usually disappointed.

But SlideRocket is the exception that makes years of exploring for alternatives worth the trouble.

SlideRocket is a web based service that lets you make gorgeous animated presentations that can then be offered in online environments like a web page or blog. It offers absolutely beautiful animations by easily integrating an incredible range of Flash and other technologies. Using Slide Rocket, you can author content and import a verity of media into the show. Slide Rocket makes it easy. Stupid easy and I mean that as a great compliment.

Here's an intro video from Fast Company:



So what can you import?

Photos
Movies
Flash animations
Graphics
Other multimedia



And the other great strength of the service is that file sizes -- which can be a massive problem when you try to incorporate video or other large assets into a PowerPoint -- are managed through the cloud. (I have been waiting to say managed through the cloud for months!)

Does Slide Rocket make all presentations better? Nope. But it empowers you to do things that PowerPoint can only hint at.

And for those who are resistant to change, you can actually author your preso in PPT and then move it to Slide Rocket to make it all shiny and gorgeous and better communicating.

There have been other web based presentation tools, and acceptance has been modest because they required an Internet connection to show the presentation. Not so with Slide Rocket. You can show the presentation offline, and soon you will be able to author without a connection as well.

The service also offers great controls so that, for example, Marketing can control versioning so that the company speaks with one voice.

Give this a whirl. It's awesome! At least go to their site and see some demos. If that don't convince ya...

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

LaLa: The Music Pusher - First One's Free...

Don't take my headline as criticism, because I am really impressed by LaLa, the online music service that lets you buy pro and pro-am songs for as little as ten cents. I call them a pusher, because the first play of any song is free.

But there is a lot more to this service than just that. You can also upload your entire music collection lickety split, and then listen to it wherever there is an Internet question.

The cost of new songs can be a lot lower than with iTunes or similar services, particularly if you are willing to limit your listening to places with a connection. For those environments, the cost per song is just 10 cents. To buy songs, the rate is 89 cents.

There are six million songs available -- from a broader range of musicians than services that focus purely on major labels. And every song is compatible with either iTunes or WMP.

The service offers a huge range of music in a broad variety of genres:

Alternative
Blues
Children
Classical
Comedy
Country
Easy Listening
Electronic
Folk
Hip-Hop
Holiday Music
Jazz
Latin
Metal
New Age
Oldies
Pop
Praise & Worship
Punk
R&B
Reggae
Rock
Soul
Soundtrack
Spoken Word
World Music

I think the beauty of this is the box it puts Apple in. A service like LALA is really geared to people content to listen to music only when they have a connection. So not for current iPODs. BUT. Can a connected iPod really be that far away? And if not, will it offer a Kindle-like everywhere connection? If so, there won't be any need to buy songs when you can just get unlimited digital access for a lot less.

It's also cool that you get to listen to an entire song before buying, versus the :30 segment Apple offers. All kidding aside, the first free play makes this service a must try for any real musicophile.

And good news for the music biz -- I bet that a dime is a fee even the most committed MP3 pirate will find acceptable!

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Power.com: The Connector of Social Networks

You have have seen a press piece or three about Power.com lately. If you haven't lemme tell you about it. Basically, it is a service that interconnects presences across multiple social networks. SO you can monitor and update your presences and personal contacts from a single location. So what networks are Powerable at this point?

MySpace
Orkut
Hi5

And, according to Tech Crunch, Facebook soon. Wrote Erick Shonfeld:

Power.com lets you sign into multiple social networks and manage them from one place, but it did not use Facebook’s API or Facebook Connect. As part of the settlement, Power will access this data via Facebook Connect. Power was scraping the data from Facebook and caching it, which it won’t be allowed to do with Facebook Connect.

Facebook is very particular about how it wants other Websites to access its user data. Facebook had similar problems with Google’s Friend Connect, although it simply banned Google from using its API rather than bring a lawsuit.

For Websites and services that want to tap into Facebook’s rich trove of user data (it now has 150 million active users worldwide), it has to do so by Facebook’s rules. But one of those rules, in particular, many partners are finding restrictive. They are not allowed to cache any data, so they cannot build their own user profiles or make their services smarter over time. There are good privacy reasons for not allowing other (possibly unscrupulous) sites to cache the data, but it also serves to limit innovation.

Here's part of what Claire Cain Miller's Bits blog at the NYT has to say about Power:

Venture capitalists have turned a cold shoulder to new social networks. Many of those still interested in Web 2.0 investments are seeking ways to streamline the social Web.

“We’ve been looking at this overarching question of where does social networking go in the longer term,” said Andreas Stavropoulos, the Draper managing director who led the investment in Power.com. “A lot of properties, like Facebook, MySpace and others, become these islands unto themselves. What we saw in Power was a way of opening up these islands and connecting them.”

Once a user enters his or her log-in information for a social network, Power.com accesses the site as if it was the user. Power.com does not have permission from the social networks to use their sites in this way. Mr. Vachani compared it with the way social networks import users’ e-mail address books to connect them with their friends, or the way Meebo, also backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, accesses users’ instant message accounts.

Most of the time Power.com displays the user’s social networking pages without changing them, keeping the original advertisements. But in some instances users can read and respond to a message received at one of those sites without actually visiting the site. That could potentially irritate sites that do not want to sacrifice page views.

Power is based in Brazil and has great backing from VCs. As they have already attracted more then 5 million members, it's clear that there is a tremendous consumer need to simplify this world of closed gardens into a cohesive whole. We need ways to bring us closer to all our contacts, not separate us with arbitrary walls. Power.com is doing just that, and by all acocunts doing it very well, indeed.

Otalo: The Business of Finding Just The Right Vacay Rental

Last August I was looking for a house to rent for two weeks in a pretty, very rural place. Over the course of three weeks I search until my ears bled on site after site after site, finding the same listings, incomplete info, and (I found out by making some calls) wildly inaccurate info as to "Allows pets" and other such criteria.

I wish I had known then about Otalo, the new search engine that aggregates the listings of lots of vacation rental sites into one easy to use search engine.

The tool allows you to search by location, number of bedrooms, max price, and whether the house allows pets, smoking and the like. You can also search specifically for concepts like "waterside."



The site is fast and the information extremely well organized. As it is new, the number of listings is modest so far -- only about 200,000 thus far. But as they add more sites to their search, I am sure that figure will grow considerably.What they have so far runs a broad gamut of amenity levels and pricing, which broadens its relevance to include virtually anyone considering a vacation rental.

News of Otalo is being received very positively. Here is part of what Michael Arrington had to say about the service on Tech Crunch:

...what the industry needed was a good central search engine for all those vacation home rentals. It’s also a pain to do lots of searches on different sites because you have to enter where and when you want to go, making it a lot more complicated that a standard search engine query.

That’s just what Otalo, which just launched, is doing. They are starting off with 200,000 listings. The company was founded by Michael Giles (the founder of Furl) and Baer Tierkel. The name Otalo comes from the Zen symbol enzo - “O” - with the Finnish word for house - “talo.”

Check out Otalo. It's pretty cool, and providing a really important service that has been largely underserved until its debut.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Digital Marketing Factoid of the Day: Phone Luddites

From Compare Cellular.com:

According to a new report by The NPD Group, a leading market research company, 45 percent of U.S. mobile phone users prefer to use their mobile phones to make calls, and not for other available multimedia features. Only 20 percent of mobile phone users prefer to use their phones as an all-in-one multimedia device for music, videos, Web surfing, and other activities beyond making phone calls.


While most U.S. consumers are aware of text messaging and the ability to change ringtones, the “Mobile Phone Usage Report” revealed that just 34 percent of mobile phone users know that their current phone’s memory can be expanded, 28 percent know that they can watch videos, and 12 percent know they can access the Internet via Wi-Fi. Nearly a quarter (23 percent) were not sure if their phone included GPS, while a similar number (21 percent) were not sure if their handsets would play music.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write

USAir Outlaws Hangers?

From the Freakonomics NYT blog:

I typed this from 10,000 feet, while on my way to the annual econ gabfest known as the ASSA meetings. I was lucky enough to score an upgrade to first class, and as I settled into my seat I was informed about the most astonishing cost-cutting measure: U.S. Airways has taken the coat hangers out of its planes.

Arriving uncrumpled used to be one of the few perks for those at the front of the plane, but now the racks behind seat 4B sit unemployed. It can’t be that these hangers had much value on the secondary market, and the number of flight attendants hasn’t changed, so I can only guess that the cost reductions come from the fuel savings that come from carrying a few less ounces. (How big could these be?)

But U.S. Airways beware: If I were an aspiring entrepreneur, I would be rushing a collapsible travel hanger onto the market; and if this occurs, passengers will simply be adding that extra weight onto their carry-on bags, undoing the airline’s cost savings. And that’s the difference between the simple accounting of cost-cutting and the economic approach, which takes account of how behavior responds to incentives.

In fact, I had a hanger in the bottom of my bag, and so I arrived in San Francisco, recognizable as the least-crumpled economist.

Rumors of charging $12 for rental of the foam seat cushions are completely unfounded, however.

Creative Portfolio You Should See

Check out John Dorca's work on Communicaiton Arts. Breathtaking design!

http://www.creativehotlist.com/portfolios/20606/portfolio.html

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Infectious: Making America's Traffic Jams SO SO SO Much Prettier!

One of the magical things about living in the Bay Area is the art car phenomenon. The rest of the world obsesses about pearlized gold exteriors -- in the city by the Bay its about self expression.

Oh, it's not totally an SF thing -- when I bought my Scion I was given the option of sticker decals in the shape of fingerprints, for one. I demured because I felt that there was something sorta sad about a mid forties dude customizing his XB. Aside: I REALLY REALLY wanted that purple light feature, but I could imagine the earthquake caused by my Anglo Saxon ancestors turning in their graves, so I decided against it. And to be honest, the Scion options were fairly limited.

Enter Infectious, a company based in SOMA that offers a huge variety of car design stickers -- beautiful designs at that! Oh, and they're not just about cars -- there's iPhone, Laptop, and Wall stickers as well.









They have a team of in house artists, but also offer an open competition that lets artists submit their designs as well.

This is clearly a company with creativity at its nexus. Here's how they explain their founding.

It all began with a gorgeous ass...

It was a warm Spring 2000 and I was sharing an apartment in San Francisco's Mission District with Mike, my old college buddy. Mike owned a beat-up old white Honda Civic Hatchback that looked just like the million other boring ass white hatchbacks out there. One day he decided that he wanted to have a donkey painted on it. Not just any donkey, but the one from his favorite book, Platero y Yo. Mike eventually persuaded a muralist to turn his car into this moving pastoral scene. It cost him $1000.

On many occasions I rode the streets of San Francisco in the eye-catching Platero-Mobile. It was an incredible experience. Bored kids in the back of their parents' cars jumped up and down. Strangers at intersections stopped to ask questions. The car was literally a traffic-stopper. The seeds of Infectious were sown at that moment.

Mike was onto something, but here were just a few problems. It was expensive. It was permanent. It was a donkey.

So we took all the creativity of Mike's moving canvas and remove all the negatives. And thus was born the idea of adhesive Car Art. But then we thought, why stop there... Laptops, iPhones, walls... Can't just about any surface be a canvas?

Consider this a warning to blank surfaces everywhere.

Tim Roberts
Founder of Infectious

At less than $400 for a car package, and far far far less for the other offerings, it's only natural that I expect Infectious to be very catchy, indeed. And America's roads and briefcase interiors will be all the richer for their success.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Jessica Vascellaro And Unfriending

On the off chance you were not reading the WSJ on Christmas Eve, you may have missed Jessica Vascellaro's piece on being unfriended. Thought provoking and funny. Here's an excerpt:

Unfriending online "friends" is emerging as the latest offense in the world of social networking. Sites such as Facebook and MySpace allow people to build personal profiles with photos, videos and up-to-the-minute updates about their lives, then to share them with select users, or "friends." The process has even turned the word "friend" into a verb, as in, "so-and-so just friended me on Facebook." Users agonize over whom to friend (your mom? your ex-boyfriend? your boss?), and worry about whether their friend requests will be accepted or ignored, lingering in cyberspace in what some dub "friend purgatory."
Find it here.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

LIskula Cohen's Odd Defamation Lawsuit

So this is interesting. Model Liskula Cohen is suing Google to get them to release th name of the person who owned and posted to a Blogspot presence called Skanks in NYC. skanksnyc.blogspot.com

This Daily News article will give you some of the whys and wherefores of this case.What you don't find there you can find in the Ars Technica piece here.

Now, the lawsuit puzzles me because Skanks in NYC is not what you would call a very popular bog. In fact, the blogger has made only 5 posts at the location, according to the post counter on the site. A quick trip to Quantcast confirmed what I expected -- that the site is not generating much in the way of traffic -- not enough to make data from their panel readable or reliable.



One would presume that comments like this, on a blog visited by four or so people, and I am guessing three visited by accident, might be better left to decay into invisibility in search engines and the like.

Instead, by suing, you will find if you Yahoo her name as I did that there are tons of articles and links -- chiefly relating to the LAWSUIT.

Now, what the blogger said was pretty insulting stuff. I won't repeat it here -- you can visit the link above if you are a prurience lover. But I am surprised at the strength of this reaction to a couple of blog posts. And I have to believe that Google will spend heavily to retain the anonymity of the blogger. That would seem an important principle to fall on a sword for.

But let me ask another question. WHy do you suppose the blogger cared this much about Liskula???

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

What's G! OK I'll Bite...

Cool Iris - A Leap Forward in Web-TV Convergence

The convergence of web and TV is a topic frequently discussed, with both devices making significant steps in the other's direction. Cooliris is a fascinating new service that takes web experience to another astral plane, transforming a menu of video content into a 3-D theater of TVs that are fun to access and when click provides a remarkable full screen viewing experience.I am not doing justice to the service, so here are some screens from their slide show demo:









Heck, so seeing is believing, so I give you two UGC videos of the Cooliris service and its broad feature set:





As with most such services, there are even ways to customize the appearance of your video wall, changing colors, angles, and the like.

In order to use the Cooliris service, you need to be visiting a Cooliris enabled site. But that's fast becoming a pretty big list from major soc nets to leading video sites including YouTube and Hulu.

Advertisers can get deeply in the mix. They offer three forms of sponsorship:

COLUMN ADVERTISING
Cooliris inserts advertising in columns (three ads per column) next to other media content in the 3D Wall. These ads are format agnostic and can have a zoomed in state that is larger than the thumbnail view. When a user selects content, a 300x250 px image or video ad will appear. A double click on the selected item will expand to a full-screen presentation of the ad.

INLINE ADVERTISING
Cooliris will insert advertising next to other media content in the 3D wall. These ads are format agnostic and can have a zoomed in state that is larger than the thumbnail view. When a user selects content, a 300x250 px image or video ad will appear. A double click on the selected item will expand to a full-screen presentation of the ad.

SPONSORSHIP OF DISCOVER CHANNEL
Cooliris will create a new, time-limited, sponsored channel in Discover. Upon launch of Discover, the user will see a branded wall with a customizable background, logo, and content provided by the advertiser. Content is fully customizable and can link to an external website, including an e-commerce destination.

It appears to be all user activated, which must do wonders for the appeal of the platform. It'd be interesting to see some data on how consumers interact with this stuff. For advertisers the service also offers reporting that gives you the key viewership measures.

It's cool, especially if you are a videophile. And the ad options could provide a whole new set of contact points for markeitng messages to reach consumers.

Thanks for reading and don't forget to write.

MixedInk and the Crowd Doc!

Now here's a product I totally believe in. And yet also find a little scary, though for reasons that relate to my control freak nature, not because of flaws in the concept. MixedInk allows large groups of people to collaborate on a single document.A few months ago I wrote about a service called Zoho, but that solution is geared to small teams, typically less than ten people.

MixedInk is geared toward groups larger than 10. As Jason Kincaid described in his post on the company...

MixedInk is taking a different approach to collaboration, allowing users to draft their documents using a Digg-like voting system. Instead of constantly editing the same document, users are invited to submit their own versions, which can then be voted on and rated by their peers. As they they read drafts submitted by others, users can mouse-over the passages they like most and incorporate them into their own submissions (the system will also suggest popular passages as you write using keyword detection). Over time, the most popular passages and versions float to the top until the entire group is satisfied and voting ends.

The piece goes on to say that Slate is a charter user, allowing their thousands of visitors to create a collaborative Inauguration speech. So I thought I would use that as an example and serve you up some screens and comments










As you can see, the system essentially compartmentalizes sections or chunks of content people have submitted, and the collective audience votes on which option is best for a particular chunk of the document. The two levels of participation will add significantly to uptake of this concept since there are people who like to participate deeply, and those who want to be heard but with less time and creative commitments.

I found it compelling and addictive. First, because I love words and ideas, and second because the design is so pleasant and intuitive. Submit, read, vote, it's all pretty darned rewarding and entertaining. based upon the activity level I saw on the Slate site, it appears as if the concept is compelling to more than just me.

MixedInk just launched to the public, and it seems to be pretty robust and nonbuggy, which is a refreshing change from the coterie of 2.0ey crap that comes out of the gate broken and incomplete. Thanks for getting things more or less right before going public, MixedInk!

Back to how this jibes with my control freak nature. Would I like using this service extensively? Hmm, I think...that depends. Am I futzing with your doc, or are you editing mine? Your document belongs in this platform. Mine is better served by me retaining absolute control. ;-)

Seriously, MixedInk is positively nifty, and you should go RIGHT NOW and check it out.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Animoto Makes Your Home Office MGM

As the video revolution continues, more and more people are getting in on the act of production. But there really are skills to making a strong video presentation. Or at least there used to be skills required, until Animoto came along.

Essentially, Animoto is a superb video editing technology that takes your images and music selection and weaves them together into a marvelous looking piece of film. The editor actually analyzes your components in order to match images to beat, and a host of other aspects of making a strong presentation. Here's how Animoto describes their technology:

The heart of Animoto is its newly developed Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology that thinks like an actual director and editor. It analyzes and combines user-selected images and music with the same sophisticated post-production skills & techniques that are used in television and film.

Animoto also offers a fairly extensive library of music you can use if you don't have the track you want.

Here's the promo vid:



It's a great service, and one that is sure to improve the quality of the average vid on YouTube et al.Get vidding today at Animoto.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Get Satisfaction: A Bold New Way To Get Answers and Feedback

You know your in trouble when the customer service organization of a company or a site assigns you a job ticket. Like, HELLO, I don't want my question answered in the order it was received. I wanted it answered now, thank you very much. And if you have so many issues that you need a job ticket process, well I am not sure I want to do business with you.

Now, flip that nickel over and see the issues facing product people and marketers. There are all these thousands or millions of people forming impressions and stating them to the world and the person that often has the most difficult time finding out what they think is the person that can actually make a difference in the product or in the user's experience.

Get Satisfaction changes the closed, inefficient, and insular customer service process by creating a forum where people and companies can ask questions, get answers, and share opinions about products and services.

And it's easy peasy to play. Check out this simple visual explanation:



What's really cool about the service is that employees can join and help companies make a more positive impression. Now, they could be paid to participate, or simply feel like evangelizing for your offerings.

Companies can feature a "feedback" widget on their site to alert consumers to the Get Satisfaction offering -- a feature that is sure to add both to GS's membership and in overall good feelings from customers.For example, on the day I visited there were 11 active Apple employees answering Qs such as this:



I absolutely loved my visit to the site, and even asked a question about a service I was disappointed in! The site offers a sense of communal wonderfulness that I liked -- the idea that we are not all alone on the Sprint "help" line about to encounter someone that hates their job and has no training or means of actually helping.

And imagine the possibilities of a company asking for feedback on a new product or concept. Actually hearing from actual users in real time. Incredible!

Give Get Satisfaction a try -- as a consumer or a company. You will be very glad you did!

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Minted: May The Best Card Designs Win!

Democratization of opportunity is a big theme of today's digital environment, and Minted, a customized greeting card marketplace, is an excellent example of the concept in action.

The way it works is that artists submit card designs that site visitors can peruse and buy. Similar in some ways to a CafePress, the most popular designs obviously rise to the top, enabling their creators to make a solid living doing what they love to do. And of course enabling consumers to get better card designs than may be available in their local grocery store or whatnot.





I must say, many of the designs are gorgeous, and definitely not things you'll find at the local Gold Crown Store.

But actually, there's room for both sorts of businesses. Minted is geared to orders of multiple cards -- wedding invitations, birth announcements, that sort of thing. And their focus is on custom designs rather than 100% prefab cards.

Prices are in keeping with what one would pay for quality cards -- this is not a company specializing in 99 cent specials. But that focus on a middle to higher end market is an essential component to the model, of course -- the artists -- and Minted -- need to make a living, of course.

I am quite impressed by this service as it offers cards you simply couldn't get anywhere else. And the idea of more creative people being able to make a living on their artwork makes Minted a wonderful concept indeed!

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

I Heart Netbooks

There was an interesting piece on Tech Crunch a couple weeks ago that I have been thinking about since. The premise is that with lower cost netbooks selling well, Intel is suffering. That's because these low cost low tech machines don't need big ass computing power from a top of the line dual core processor. They do just fine on a (much cheaper and lower margin) Intel chip. Here's an excerpt:

That means that for the most part, every Netbook sold is one less Dual Core that Intel can sell at a higher price and higher margin. Which explains exactly why the company has been publicly criticizing the performance of the machines. “If you’ve ever used a Netbook and used a 10-inch screen size–it’s fine for an hour. It’s not something you’re going to use day in and day out,” said Intel VP Stu Pann at an event last year.

Intel also wants to keep Netbooks at 10 inches or less. Some PC companies we’ve spoken with say that Intel doesn’t want Atom chips in devices bigger than 10 inches, and puts incredible pressure on them to keep Netbooks at 10 inches or less.

I had the good fortune to be able to play with a friend's tiny Asus netbook last weekend, and I liked it loads. Yes, there are limitations, but the thing is, I generally don't play twitch games with a bajillion polygon rendering; I don't try to run TV through my PC. I don't use much beyond Word, Excel, and PPT, and would be happy to use stable, lighter facsimiles to save hundreds -- and indeed to be able to open my computer on a plane.

So to me, the real question is, are we at a crossroads where the classic tradeup for more power and speed just plain isn't relevant anymore? When a person's gaming world is solitaire or online bejewelled, and when 65% of what they do on a computer is email and Google, why SHOULD they buy high end PCs? One some level, one could ask the same thing about 60 inch TVs, though. Not necessary, but (for many) pleasant.

I think the PC market is going to be fascinating over the next 18 months. I foresee a giant netbook business exploding at the forefront, and high end PCs doing just fine with gamers and the like. It's the $1000 midmarket PCs that are going to suffer, and suffer bigtime.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Bloggers Going to Prison: Film at 11

The Committee to Protect Jounalists has reported that 45% of the journalists imprisoned are Internet based, meaning that you are more likely to be jailed if you are a digital journalist than a Print or TV one.

See Ars Technica graphic below:



Now I can see a lot of resons for this -- one being that Internet journalism is largely citizen journalism -- without legal departments to censor the skank comments.

But whether explainable or not, it is a troubling trend in that Internet journalism is the only category not dominated in the US by five media giants. Silencing this channel would strike a terrible blow to having a truly informed society.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.