Digital Root tag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-1775616 2011-11-21T17:58:17-08:00 Mean-Looking, Psychotic Glitter. Finding Symmetry, Beauty And Pattern In the Forgotten Known. TypePad The Mind-Language-Physiology Link tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01053619627c970c015393610fca970b 2011-11-21T17:58:17-08:00 2011-11-21T17:59:19-08:00 Knowing 10 words for the color blue helps you see more shades Brian

When I was a boy, I believed that people with blue eyes could perceive the color blue more acutely than people with brown eyes.

This research doesn't exactly prove that, but it does suggest there's a mind-language-perception link going on.

It was clearly the language system interfering with a task that was presumably purely visual: distinguishing between different colors. Categories in our thinking may go much deeper than we think.

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While not conclusive, this research indicates that having a greater definition of a given color enables perception to a more granular degree.  Its conceivable that this language-physiology link permeates our ability to think and perceive well beyond colors.

 QR Codes and That Guy Who Uses Them tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01053619627c970c0153930fc29c970b 2011-11-14T16:35:15-08:00 2011-11-14T16:35:15-08:00 Forrester released a study on QR/Barcode mobile usage. QR/2D barcode scanning is up to 5% (from 1% a year ago) for smart-phone users in the US. Earlier reports stated a total of 14MM "scanned a QR code ever", but its... Brian

 

Forrester released a study on QR/Barcode mobile usage.  QR/2D barcode scanning is up to 5% (from 1% a year ago) for smart-phone users in the US. Earlier reports stated a total of 14MM "scanned a QR code ever", but its unknown if this was a superset of smartphone or general mobile users.

Either way, it’s still a small market – 6MM people in the US, primarily in the 25-34 "affluent" demo.  Something to consider when adding QR codes (especially if its intent is solely to redirect to a URL) to print/web materials.  In fact, if you're setting up QR codes to redirect to a simply root URL, you're wasting your time.

Smartphone-market


Because these reports rarely quantify their numbers, I pulled the latest survey data from Q3'11 US Census, CITA, ITU and Nielsen data.

 

Mobile QR Code Usage in the US

Approx Mobile accounts:                 285.0MM

Approx Smart Phones:                     114.5MM

Approx QR/Barcode Users:                5.7MM

 

Over the next 24 months I'm expecting to see a shift from QR code usage to object/image recognition as redirect markers.  Most smartphones can train and recognize an image or object in the real world as a redirect or augmentive marker, rendering the insano checkerboard that is a QR code less novel.

 Agile Is Dead tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01053619627c970c015391fc13ee970b 2011-09-30T17:40:26-07:00 2011-09-30T17:55:46-07:00 Agile is the Microsoft of the process world; Bloated and misdirected, yet seemingly a favorite mechanic of the bureaucratic corporate class. Brian

3489_1745_crazy-contortionist Agile methods for planning - from software to market research - have evolved to a buzz/hype laden, heavy, and bureaucratic burden. At least in many shops that have too many people bearing spreadsheets and too few creating unit tests.

In practice I've restricted Agile/RUP/XP/etc to the minimum applicable elements necessary to get the job done consistently and humanely. Typically this means a basic sizing/risk estimate for discrete stories (oops my 1990's XP training is showing), pushing the high risk elements into early prototyping, burn/build tracking and iterative assignments. 

Generally it gives our teams what they need - projects that have the features and functions it needs, clear visibility, ability to change scope and assurance of date/budget delivery.

Applied to planning (advertising / product or research) a recent book eschews the mythos and hype around agile and boils it down to simplified experimentation. I read a good review that simplified it even further:

It's about doing the minimum amount of work needed to get to, or inspire, an idea.  It's about cutting down the waste - things like deliberating adjective soup and brand vegetables for 3 months.

It's about generating hypotheses that can be tested, not sitting in an ivory tower with a damp towel on your head waiting for the answer to appear like divine inspiration.

It's about making stuff that can be tested in the real world, not running weeks of focus groups to hear people talk about how they think they think or might behave.

It's about making as few charts as possible to explain a strategy or idea - get to the work

It's about understanding that strategy has to evolve and morph over time (whilst being aware there's a danger that this could become an excuse for superficiality).

It's a bias to doing over thinking.  

It's about doing stuff to learn stuff.

It's more like experimentation than planning as we know it.

 

 

 Topography of Infographics tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01053619627c970c015435a178ac970c 2011-09-22T16:11:10-07:00 2011-09-22T16:11:10-07:00 Topography of Infographics Brian

types of infographics

A nice topography of infograhpics.

Credits: http://www.flickr.com/people/smoy/

 Gaming YouTube tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01053619627c970c014e895daedc970d 2011-06-24T17:38:44-07:00 2011-06-24T17:38:25-07:00 With a little planning and one under utilized feature, you can push your YouTube videos to the top. Brian

Youtube is reported to be the second largest search engine in existence, placing well above Yahoo! and Bing in terms of traffic. However, unlike Google, Yahoo! or Bing, there's little you can do to drive your videos to the top placement; short of being wildly popular.  And if that's the case, you're probably not reading this blog post.  YouTube while having the second largest search volume, they have less than .1% of web pages indexed by Google, providing a dramatically less competitive environment to get placed.

Based upon various online discussions, I concluded that searches within YouTube were subject to unintended but effective optimization techniques - just like normal search engines. To prove this, I setup a test with a well known brand (name withheld) that had less than 50 videos and less than 1500 lifetime views.

Cleaning up their tags, links and descriptive text was the first step, to make sure they were consistent, but the break-through was enabling Closed Captioning (as in for the deaf closed captioning) for every one of their videos. Essentially, we created our own closed caption script and uploaded the videos with them vs. using YouTube's automatic option.

The results were impressive – a 508% sustained improvement search results.

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It appears that Youtube/Google uses the text from the closed-caption to index your video. When a user searches for a topic the words placed in your closed captioning text will be matched and placed higher in the search results.  In cases where your keywords are clouded by unrelated videos and hash tags, closed captioning may enable you to consistently place above other videos.

Optimizing search for images, videos and other rich content is untapped territory with a big payoff for relatively little effort. The simple technique of adding closed caption text to every video out performed paid sponsorships, link building and generating content.

 Bullet Time With Motion Video tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01053619627c970c01543253c969970c 2011-05-15T13:32:19-07:00 2011-05-20T17:34:44-07:00 Creating the Bullet Time effect using standard video sequences. Brian

Bullet time - the effect popularized in The Matrix - typically uses 24 still images stitched together to create a single from of video, or video-like dimensional motion. Working with the medium however, presents limitations when you want to tell a story using flowing motion and moving components.

A series of intelligent tools from Revisionfx introduces an amazingly simple, yet effective mechanism to achieve the effect of bullet time while still using video.

The particular tool, Twixtor intelligently combines sequence frames allow you to speed up or slow down the action to achieve the effect. These are two great examples of using lo-res video with Twixtor to generate cinematic effects with standard tools.