The Cyberchase Reading List

Mashup: Gawker Stalker

2007-06-29T10:33:00.002+00:00

GawkerStalker is a mashup between Google Maps and people's sightings of celebrities.

The useful web: Walk it

2007-06-29T10:27:00.000+00:00

Walkit.com is a lovely little site that encourages people to walk more.
It produces a map to get you to your destination as well as information about how long it will take you, how many calories you'll use and how much CO2 you'll avoid.

Mashup: Trippermap

2007-06-29T10:21:00.000+00:00

Trippermap.com is a "web service that allows you to put a flash based world map on your own website or blog. Trippermap will then automatically search your photos at Flickr for location information and plot the photos on your own Trippermap, on your own website."

Mashup: News Map

2007-06-29T10:13:00.001+00:00

Newsmap visually demonstrates the ever changing landscape of Google News (a news aggregator.)

Newsmap: "It divides information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe."

Mashups

2007-06-29T10:11:00.001+00:00

Mashups is a phrase for something that has used an existing popular web tool (such as Google APIs or Flickr APIS ) and combined it with another level of functionalilty (e.g. adding an estate agent service to Google Maps).

The Wikipedia explanation: A mashup is a website or application that combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience.

Find out How to create a Mashup
Discover the principles for making a good Mashup

Digg

2007-06-22T11:17:00.001+00:00

Digg is a site that acts as a filter for the mass of web content. It allows people to submit interesting things that they've found online, the content is then rated by the Digg community, allowing the most popular content to surface to the home page. Essentially, it's about harnessing the power of communities to edit the enws.

Del.icio.us

2007-06-22T11:09:00.001+00:00

Del.icio.us is a system for storing links and then sharing them. It was created by a Joshua Schactter, who was working as an analyst on Wall Street. He also wrote a blog in his spare time. In order to keep on top of all the links that he got sent, he created a database in which to store them. He made this database accessable by a web page and allowed links to be tagged to make everything super findable.

LastFM

2007-06-22T10:58:00.000+00:00

Last FM finds out what music you like (based on what you play) and then recommends other music that you might want to check out. It allows people to share their music with friends and create a sort of personalised radio show.

Wikipedia

2007-06-22T10:51:00.000+00:00

Jimmy Wales, the creator of Wikipedia, says of that 'the fundamental idea of Wikipedia is to create and give away a freely licensed encylopaedia in every langauge in the world'.

Anyone can edit a Wikipedia article. And at its core, the site is about community.

It now has over 1.4 million articles and has, in a report by Nature, to be found to be about as accurate as the Encyclopaedia Brittanica.

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

2007-06-22T10:50:00.000+00:00

Buzz: tweet volume

2007-06-13T15:14:00.001+00:00

Twitter is a bit like having a mini blog from which you can tell the your friends what you're up to. You could almost think of it as a digital postcard. Sign up and give it a go (you can even use it inconjunction with Facebook).

Tweetvolume is a service that lets you see what people have been talking about on Twitter - it's an interesting way of seeing what phrases are buzzing.

Buzz: finding out what's being said on forums

2007-06-07T17:07:00.000+00:00

Boardreader:
Find out what people are saying on messageboards. This service lets you search under your keyword, directing you to forums where talking about the brand you're researching.

Buzz: searching podcasts and YouTube

2007-06-07T17:03:00.000+00:00

Podzinger:
This service lets you searches podcasts and You Tube for keywords that you enter. This could give you an interesting audio & video selection of top content that people are creating that references the brand you're researching.

Buzz: use the online community for quick polls

2007-06-07T16:48:00.001+00:00

Yahoo Answers:
Ask a question to a responsive and broad community of people. This service can be used as a sort of online focus group and is great for testing out a hypothesis or getting a steer on perceptions. Depending on the question, you could make interesting graphs and support them with nice quotes.(A little tip, the simpler the questions, the better response rates).

Buzz: listening to what's being said on blogs

2007-06-07T16:32:00.000+00:00

Blogpulse:
A brilliant service, this super easy to use. It enables you to assess blog buzz and contrast different terms. You can select a date range from one month to six months. You can also link off to blogs that refer to the terms you entered to find out a bit more about what the blogger is saying.

Icerocket:
Again this allows you to search blogs and rather nicely, what's being said on MySpace.

Buzz: measuring Search

2007-06-07T16:00:00.002+00:00

Google Trends:
Enables you to look at volume of searches on different search terms. It plots them along a time line with news stories relevant to the keywords you input. By presenting this on a timeline, you can look at any trends over time. You can also compare different search terms and see what cities & regions people where people are searching from

Yahoo Resource Centre:
Another interesting way to look at what people are searching for. You can different search terms to see what people are looking for when they think about the brand.

For example look at the types of related terms people are using. Can you see any trends here - are they drilling down to specific products or are they more likely to search for a competitors product?

Go the here, then click on the term 'Keyword Search' in the right hand navigation.

GoogleFight:
A quick way of showing 'fame' online. Use this to make a direct comparison between two brands or products.

Buzz: Snakes on Plane

2007-05-30T11:35:00.000+00:00

Read about the online phenomenum of 'Snakes on a Plane', here.

Tutorial: Buzz monitoring with Netvibes

2007-05-27T03:18:00.000+00:00

Technorati advanced search
Use the 'Blog search directory' at the bottom of the page to find good blogs

BBC news search
Any search on the BBC site can be used as an RSS feed. This is a great way to get live news updates on a brand, campaing or issue.

BlogPulse
An automated trend discovery system for blogs from Nielson Net Ratings.

Add the 'BA Buzz' tab to your netvibes page using this button

Add the 'Nokia Buzz' tab to your netvibes page using this button

Viral Marketing

2007-05-24T17:12:00.001+00:00

Looks like a handy place to learn about buzz

How to do a Skype Conference Call

2007-05-16T23:04:00.001+00:00

7 Top Podcasts

2007-04-27T15:24:00.000+00:00

Hello here is a list of some top podcasts:
1. Johnnie Moore (Great for marketing related interviews)

2. TED (podcasts on inspiration subjects such as 'How the mind works' and 'Evolutions Genius'

3. Aurgasm (new music)

4. The Guardian (top quality podcasts on a wide range of subjects from culture, news, media)

5. Boing Boing - Get illuminated (interviews with creative people)

6. Spout (interesting movie reviews)

7. AskaNinja (Send your questions to the Ninja)

Ricky Gervais

2007-04-27T15:06:00.000+00:00

Multi-award-winning writer/comedian Ricky Gervais has done some pretty popular podcasts. In fact, 'The Ricky Gervais Show' podcasts were so popular, they entered the Guniness Book of World Records as the most downloaded.

Find out more about Ricky's podcasting exploits, here.

Podcasting

2007-04-27T14:52:00.000+00:00

Some notes from Wikipedia's defintition of Podcasting:

Podcasting's initial appeal was to allow individuals to distribute their own "radio shows," but the system quickly became used in a wide variety of other ways, including distribution of school lessons, official and unofficial audio tours of museums, conference meeting alerts and updates, and by police departments to distribute public safety messages.

Make your own Semacode

2007-04-26T10:36:00.000+00:00

To make your own Semacode (or 2D Barcode as they are also known), take a look at the service delivered by Shotcode. Have a go, make your own offline web link and download the Shotcode application to your phone to enable you to read shotcodes too.

Here's one we've created for the PAA site.

What do people really do with their mobile?

2007-04-25T17:32:00.000+00:00

Research from Nokia shows that the mobile is the indispensable gadget. 94% of people intend to have one in the future, and one in five say that they would prefer to lose their wedding ring. A mobile is not all about talk:

73% don't wear a watch or have a separate alarm clock
67% would like the mobile to be their mp3 player
68% would like to be able to control household appliances with their mobile

Having always gained hero points on all camping holidays with the torch mode of my K750i. I was wondering what other unusual things make a mobile the swiss army knife of gadgets. I really expected to find a plethora of surprises, but only cooking an egg was really unexpected.

Suggestions welcome, the list needs to made....