Rick's shared items in Google Reader

Electronic Arts Launches Scrabble, Starts Buying Installs

2008-07-15T16:35:43Z

Last week there was a lot of buzz about the new version of Scrabble launching on Facebook. This week the application went live and it looks like Electronic Arts and Hasbro are putting significant resources into driving traffic to the application. Yesterday I checkout the application and it had 70 active users and around 250 total installs. Today, the application has 1,838 active daily users. My guess is that we’ll see this number increase over the coming days.

The real question is if the application can reach the more than half a million active users that Scrabulous has every day. Rather than spend the money on lawyers to sue the Scrabulous team, Electronic Arts and Hasbro decided to build their own version and try to compete directly with the Scrabulous team. It will take a few weeks before we find out how well the company is competing but my guess is that they have a chance.

I definitely don’t think the company will be able to beat them though. The new version of Scrabble is flash based and a lot slicker than the original Scrabulous, but Rajat and Jayant (the developers of Scrabulous) have done a great job building a solid user base that returns regularly to the game. Do you think Electronic Arts has a chance of challenging the Scrabulous team?

New Zimbra Version Utilizes iPhone’s Active Sync

2008-07-12T00:34:24Z

As Apple layers in iPhone support for Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, and iWork in order to make the device more appealing to business users, Zimbra’s latest release hopes to take advantage of this and help the iPhone become a savvy mobile business tool across the board.

The open source provider of cross-device email, calendar and contact synchronization has launched its iPhone 2.0 software optimized versions of its entire Zimbra Collaboration Suite, Network Edition Standard and Professional, reaping the benefits of the new active sync for enhanced business application use. An added perk of Zimbra’s iPhone optimization is the integration of over-the-air (OTA) synchronization of photos on your mobile device as well.

Push-email is perhaps one of the most recognizable defining factors of smart phones, but the added capabilities of increased document support make such devices all the more useful for business purposes. Aside from the support that Apple has added, will applications such as Zimbra help the iPhone better compete with established smartphones like the Blackberry? Apple’s iPhone has dominated the mobile market as far as media and mobile Web browsing go, and if Apple is looking to spread its dominance to the business sector as well, apps such as Zimbra’s could certainly help towards these efforts.

---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

Zimbra Optimized for Your iPhone
Zimbra Desktop Version 0.5 Now Available for Download
Yahoo Acquiring Open-Source Email Client Zimbra
Zimbra Attributes Google Docs to its Growth
Zimbra Going for Every College Campus; 200 and Counting
Zimbra Releases Collaboration Suite 5.0
TrailGuide Offers Basecamp on Your Mobile

Early YouTube Engineer Tells All

2008-07-12T10:55:31Z

Insights from inside YouTube

Early YouTube Engineer Tells All

2008-07-12T04:00:10Z

When we recently heard about the history of YouTube’s growth strategy from CEO Chad Hurley’s point of view, he described it as “hanging onto a rocket.” But an engineer’s take is always going to be a bit less rose-colored and a bit more about the terrifying situations you brained your way out of. So we were particularly interested to tune in to a talk at YouTube’s developer conference Thursday by Cuong Do, an early software engineer who’s now manager of the site’s Core Product Engineering group.

Do’s talk was titled “Behind the scenes: a look into YouTube’s infrastructure,” and he didn’t disappoint, with harrowing tales of outages; gory details about the specific languages, architectures, and tools YouTube users; and a flow-chart level view on the way the site handles uploads and video delivery while undergoing the massive usage it sees on a daily basis.

“One of the key phrases we had in the early days was ‘These are good problems to have,’” Do said. “And after a while we’re like, I’m going to kill the next person who says that.”

YouTube promised it would post video from the talk on its site eventually, but I don’t see it there yet, so check out the version from my handheld camera.

This story was originally posted on our parent site GigaOM.

Facebook Gives Tips to Social Ads Advertisers

2008-07-09T10:33:23Z

In order to help advertisers use Facebook’s Social Ads service more effectively, Facebook recently sent the first edition of the Facebook Ads newsletter to owners of Facebook advertising accounts.

They’re pretty basic tips, especially for advertisers experienced with SEM or contextual targeting. The highlights:

Use Keywords - Narrow your audience to people who have interests that are related to your product or service by including keywords in your targeting. Keywords are taken from interests and other favorites (like movies, music, and books) that Facebook users include in their profiles. Try including some of the keywords in your ad text too. Your ads will appear more relevant and be more likely to perform strongly.

Stand out - Write clear, concise ads that speak directly to your targeted audience. Be sure to highlight any special offers or sales that are available and end your ad with a strong call to action like “Click here for more info” or “Shop and order online.” Oh, and include your brand or company name and an image of your product!

Optimize - Don’t be afraid to experiment with different ads and targeting. Be sure to check in on your ads regularly to monitor their performance. Try new combination of targeting, creative, or bid amounts using the data available in your Ad Manager from past ads to help guide your edits.

I wonder if Facebook will create an API for third parties to optimize bidding? Advertisers interested in trying out Social Ads can check out the Facebook Ads page.

Interesting Stuff 09.07.08: BBC Annual Report word cloud

2008-07-09T13:18:02Z

The BBC Annual Report was published yesterday. Media Guardian has a useful summary of the digital bit. (Update 5.36 pm - The Register has its own distinctive take here)

The BBC's Dan Taylor has put together two "word clouds" of the Annual Report at Fabric of Folly. Here's one:

A few stats:

bbc.co.uk

3.6bn page impressions a month
33m unique weekly global users
12m British adult users a week

BBCi (red button services)

annual weekly reach: 11m adults
3m watched Wimbledon 2007 on bbci
2.6m viewed Glastonbury interactive

BBC iPlayer

42m programmes accessed on iPlayer between January and March 2008. The most streamed programme in the last financial year was an episode of The Apprentice and Louis Theroux: Behind Bars.

7.7m UK people downloaded BBC podcasts in March 2008 (16.4m around the world)

Nick Reynolds is editor BBC internet blog

Learning from "bad" UI

2008-07-09T16:52:00Z

When Gruber first linked the TripLog/1040 UI by Stevens Creek, I wasn’t kind either. Bright colors, controls seemingly placed at random. It was the opposite of what designers strive for in our circles. A mess. Soon the Flickr page was a schoolyard of insults. And then something interesting happened. TripLog’s designer Steve Patt posted a comment amidst the bile to share the rationale behind his design. The many who chose not to listen to him won’t learn anything, but the rest of us may find fruit in Mr. Patt’s thoughtful explanation and twenty years of software experience.

The first charge against TripLog is “clutter,” that there’s too much on the screen at once. We’ll get to clutter, but first we have to talk about speed. Patt explains that the #1 purpose of TripLog is to help people track their deductible or reimbursable mileage. If people can’t enter their trips very quickly, the friction of entering data will overpower the motivation to track. For customers, untracked data means miles that aren’t reimbursed. So speed is Patt’s top priority.

What does speed have to do with clutter? I once saw Tufte give a workshop in Chicago where he introduced a valuable concept. He said information may be displayed adjacent in space or stacked in time. Take a book for example. If two dots are on the same spread, they are adjacent in space. All it takes to switch between them is movement of your eye. Compare that to a dot on one page stacked above a dot on another page. You can’t see them at once. You have to flip back and forth between pages to see one dot versus the other.

The trade-offs between elements adjacent in space versus stacked in time are always in the mind of a UI designer. Placing many elements on the same screen reduces the need for navigation and gives users a comprehensive feeling of “it’s all at my command.” Moving focus from one element to another is instant and seamless. On the flip side, separating elements onto different screens slows things down with navigation while increasing clarity. There is more room for explanation and luxurious space when fewer elements occupy the page. The eye has less to filter through. The course of action is more obvious.

So did Patt put too many elements adjacent in space on one screen when he should have separated them out in time? Is his UI “cluttered?” To answer that we should pull ourselves out of the computer and sink our feet firmly in the customer’s shoes. Patt explains that customers load the application for two reasons:

They want to log miles they just drove
They want to double-check that they logged a recent trip

The first is obvious. Patt explains the second:

There’s a very simple reason, which we know because we’ve been selling our Athlete’s Diary software for logging a different kind of mileage for nearly 20 years. It’s because when you start up the software, half the time you’ll be scratching your head saying, “Did I remember to enter yesterday’s ride (or run)?” ... You want to be able to answer that question immediately, with just a quick glance down to the bottom of the screen.

Half the time people want to add new entries. Another half of the time, people want to verify a recent entry. On top of that, people also like to confirm the accuracy of data after they submit it. These factors together form a motivation to place the “add an entry” and “verify recent entries” features adjacent in space. It’s a decision to optimize for instant access to both features at the cost of showing more elements on screen at one time.

Beyond first impressions

When we talk about “usable” or “intuitive” interfaces, Apple devotees and the web app crowd (myself included) tend to bias toward the first-time user. The idea is an interface is easy to use if new users can figure it out and get running quickly. Or an interface is “clear” if all the parts and functions can be immediately parsed upon eye contact. Typically this means stacking features in time so that each screen has fewer elements and is easier to digest. TripLog, while far from perfect, has a different focus. Rather than first-impressions, Patt is thinking about repetition. Spatial memory and adjacency play a major role in repetitive tasks. How many of you keep an assortment of pens, papers, and peripherals on your desk in specific positions instead of moving them in and out of drawers every day?

Patt’s bias for adjacency and speed continues inside the “Add an entry” block. There are two ways to log a trip: manually enter data in the fields or choose user-defined presets called “Frequent Trips.” Both methods are exposed. However everything can’t be exposed all the times. There are some features stacked in time too. Choosing a date “Other” than Today or Yesterday, selecting a different Car (for IRS purposes), and editing the Frequent Trips list are all behind the time wall and require navigation.

So what did we learn?

The fact that a screen is “cluttered” doesn’t automatically mean it is poorly designed or ill-conceived. To many of us, screens thick with adjacent elements are like cold water we prefer not to step into. The very fact that TripLog is no feast for the eyes attests to the difficulty of bringing clarity and order to a screen relying too heavily on adjacent features. It would be a fun exercise to redesign TripLog for more visual clarity without removing any elements.

However before we criticize we should look for successes. Where TripLog fails on style it may well win on speed and pragmatics. Patt has thought about his work and designed a product intentionally. Following fashion and the status quo is easy. Thinking about your users’ lives and creating something practical is much harder. Patt can work on his colors and alignment, and hopefully please his user base with a helpful tool. Meanwhile the rest of us would be wise to work on the quality and value of our criticism.

Ruby and Tarik: Ruby wonders on words..

2008-07-09T14:38:00Z

Tarik dear, what is a 'chief' exactly?

It's just an idiot really, someone stupid, it's a nicer way of saying dickhead...

What's 'peng' then?

Peng originates from weed, but like, it kind of crosses over in to everything else, like to describe a good looking girl, or good weather, anything positive really... it's peng outside today! You can say anything, so leng, deng, weng, anything...

Butters?

It's Buttaz, with an 'a' and an 'z' - it's the opposite of peng

Shubz? Did I spell it right?

That's how I spell it... It's a party... but usually a house party, but not like, in a club, 'cos that would be a rave...

So I'm going to this shubz tonight, are you going to reach?

(laughs) jokes... that's so live...

Why are you always saying 'buzz' poppet?

Buzz is just um, taking the piss really, like - I'm buzzin' off someone, taking the piss out of someone...

Tarik, I've got to roll now...

You're a chief!

As in boss? Yes, yes, I am. Super. Loving chatting shit with you old chap

Lovely chattin' wet with you too... I'm bussing up...

myAWOL: A Music Label For The Digital Age

2008-07-09T20:57:26Z

The big music labels have made it patently obvious that they don’t know how to deal with the internet. Revenues are down, the market is fragmented, and indie artists that manage to gain a following find that they have little need for the labels in the first place - they can sell their music online through sites like AmieStreet and iTunes.

myAWOL (My Artists Without Labels) is looking to show the big four how it’s done. The site is taking a multi-pronged approach to tackle the music industry with the web: first, it will roll out a professional database to help establish itself as an authority in the space. Then, this Fall, it will introduce a consumer site that will function as a mix between a music community, online television channel, and independent music label.

Lofty goals to be sure, but the people associated with myAWOL may have the backing and experience to pull it off. The site is the brainchild of Andrew Bentley, an entrepreneur with a head-turning resume that includes stints as the CFO of Virgin Media, the CFO of EMI, and the CEO of EMI Music/Asia Pacific (before they went on a lawsuit spree). And you can be sure that during his time as a music executive, he’s made some friends.

Within the next month, the site will be rolling out a professional-facing music database (an “imdb for music”). The goal of the site is to become an authoritative resource for everyone in the music industry, from studio musicians and equipment managers to studio execs. Bentley says that while this portion of the site may not have much appeal to consumers, it will help the site gain credibility while offering a much-needed service to the industry.

myAWOL’s consumer-facing site is where the real excitement will lie, and while it won’t be launching until early September, it may well be worth the wait. Unlike many music sites that effectively serve as storefronts for artists (leaving little reason for users to come back), myAWOL is focusing on content creation. The site will produce daily content for what amounts to an online television channel, where it will feature concerts, interviews, and TRL-like daily programming that will be distributed both online and through podcasts. Footage will come from submitted tapes, studio filming, and concerts put on by the site (there’s a myAWOL concert at The Roxy later this month).

The purpose of the internet TV channel is to help myAWOL’s fledging artists gain exposure, with the ultimate goal of getting the best ones signed to myAWOL’s music label (artists are under no obligation to do so - there is no exclusivity contract associated with appearing on the site). Each music artist will have their own profile page (similar to MySpace Music), from which they can stream their songs for free or sell tracks in a 70/30 rev-share agreement. Featured artists will be hand picked by myAWOL’s judges, who will be constantly searching through artist profiles for the next big hit.

With myAWOL’s consumer launch still a few months away, it’s far too early to hail it as the second coming of online music. The music space is very crowded, and myAWOL’s expensive ventures in content production could wind up going totally unnoticed, especially alongside offerings from MySpace, which has a huge following in the music space. That said, with Bentley’s experience and funding from a number of rock legends, myAWOL will be one to watch.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

OTOY Developing Server-Side 3D Rendering Technology

2008-07-09T21:00:55Z

Imagine you could play video games - and immerse yourself in virtual worlds - with 3D graphics comparable to those found in blockbuster films like Transformers or WALL•E. And then imagine you could experience and control those graphics in real-time from any internet-enabled device, whether it be a desktop computer, set-top box or even iPhone.

Sound far-fetched? It doesn’t to Jules Urbach, founder and CEO of a Los Angeles-based company called OTOY, who has been working with microprocessor manufacturer AMD since 2006 to make the idea of server-side graphics processing a reality. If all goes as planned, 3D rendering will become just another computer task that jumps from the client to the cloud. Call it gaming as a service (GaaS) if you will. No more Xboxes, no more PlayStations, and no more souped-up PC towers. Just a monitor, some controls, and a way to receive and display frames generated by a powerful server farm.

But let’s take a step back for a second. Before it’s even possible to deliver movie-quality graphics through a thin client, there must be a way to produce those graphics - and in real-time. Movie producers have the luxury of knowing ahead of time just how they want their frames to look. Visual effects studios like Industrial Light and Magic don’t have to respond to user inputs, so they can spend hours rendering each and every frame. Game producers, however, rely on engines that must respond quickly to user behavior and serve up graphics at near-instantaneous speeds. That reliance constitutes perhaps the main reason why in-game graphics have lagged behind their big-screen counterparts for years.

Just the other week, however, AMD announced an initiative called Cinema 2.0 that promises to narrow the gap between movies and games with a new RV770 GPU. To demonstrate the power of AMD’s new consumer graphics cards, Urbach and his art teams in Spain, Canada and the US pulled together a set of videos that approximate the CGI you’d expect from movies. He took us through an overview of that work here:

Most of his demos focus on recreating Autobots and Decepticons from the Transformers movie. And the results are very impressive, even if they don’t quite match those found on the big screen. The stills at the bottom of this post are from voxel-based animations that were rendered in real-time, such as the one embedded at the top of this post.

But the rendering of machinery poses far fewer challenges than producing humanoid models that suspend disbelief. To achieve the organic in addition to the inorganic, Jules has worked on a project called LightStage that takes panoramic shots of real humans in motion and turns them into animated 3D models. Watch below as Jules explains how the Lightstage works:

All of this is just an extension of what has been done by technologists so far to mimic reality within virtual experiences. Urbach’s bold and particularly innovative proposal is that he can deliver these experiences through the browser. While we’ve seen 3D games delivered through the browser before, this time it’s very different.

First of all, OTOY-powered graphics can potentially go far beyond those found on any consumer device because they aren’t actually rendered by whatever hardware is sitting on your desk, resting in your hand, or laying on your living room floor. In the video below, Urbach shows how AMD graphics cards installed on the server (rather than the client) can be hooked up to work in parallel and deliver highly complex graphics from afar, in the form of pure frames.

The main limitations are bandwidth and server power (i.e. how fast the client can receive frames generated by the server, and how fast the server can generate those frames for all its concurrent users). Urbach claims that his technology can deliver up to 220 frames per second (fps), which is overkill for most monitors and the human eye. As for lag, he experiences 12-17 milliseconds on the west coast (where his current test server is located) and 100 ms in Japan. The compression codec used to deliver these levels of performance was developed internally, although with help from AMD’s engineering team.

The second main difference is that Urbach’s technology doesn’t require any browser plugin whatsoever (although it can take advantage of those, too). OTOY-powered graphics can be delivered via Ajax, Flash, Java, or ActiveX. Surprisingly, the Ajax-powered version in Safari works fastest. That’s good news for future iPhone 3G owners since this graphics delivery system is compatible with that mobile device (and any other device with a full-featured browser, such as Android). The possibilities here make one wonder whether the days of PSPs and other portable gaming devices are limited. And they suggest that the future of the web-enabled cell phone is bright indeed.

Expect one of the first commercial implementations of LightStage and this server-side rendering technology to come in the form of a virtual world. Urbach also plans to release a full suite of developer tools to those who want to leverage OTOY for their own applications.

OTOY is privately funded, although much of its GPU-based hardware will be provided by AMD. More stills from real-time renders and LightStage results are provided below.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Argh. A wasted opportunity for an ARG

2008-07-06T20:34:25Z

Considering that season two of Torchwood had an accompanying Alternate Reality Game, I was excited to see what was apparently a mobile phone number prominently featured in the penultimate episode of Dr Who.

It even completely filled the screen for a few moments.

Considering the amount of screen time given to something that was ostensibly Dr Who’s mobile number, it seems more incredible that this wasn’t the beginning of an ARG. It turns out to be one of the telephone numbers reserved by Ofcom for drama purposes.

Bah. What a wasted opportunity. That was a rabbit hole waiting to happen.

Google Testing New iGoogle, No OpenSocial Support (Yet)

2008-06-27T21:14:42Z

If you haven’t tried iGoogle, Google’s personalized homepage, you’re not alone. But Google’s looking to spiff up their customizable homepages and testing has already begun, as Google Operating System reports—and it looks like they’re trying to make our foretelling of iGoogle as social network come true.

The old iGoogle featured tabbed navigation across the top of the page; the new iGoogle moves it to a left-hand sidebar. The new iGoogle will also feature a feed of friends’ actions—reminiscent of Facebook’s Mini-Feed—including “stories shared by your contacts in Google Reader, recent photos uploaded to Picasa Web Albums, Google Talk status messages, shared iGoogle themes and gadgets.”

Sounding a little social-y? Oh yeah. It gets better, according to GOS:

Another change is that gadgets have an expanded interface, called canvas view. Gadgets authors will take advantage of this to display more information and make their gadgets more interactive, while your feeds can be read in a Google Reader-like interface. In the future, iGoogle will support OpenSocial applications [capability due "later this summer"] and the transformation to a social site will be complete.

Canvas view was announced earlier this week.

Apparently, Google didn’t get our letter six months ago. You know, the one that started, “Dear Google, My friends are scary. Can I opt-out?” Last time I checked (and it’s been a while, since I stopped using GTalk for this reason), Google adds anyone that you email as a friend or contact, putting the onus on the user to manually delete someone that they’re not really “friends” with (every single time they email them?).

But I guess the easiest way to opt out here is just to do what everyone else does—not use iGoogle.

Pilgrim’s Update: Learn online reputation management skills directly from Andy Beal. Attend the Online Reputation Management Workshop and save $400 when you register today!

iPlayer Beta Round-Up

2008-06-27T18:02:24Z

Just in case you hadn't noticed, the beta of the new version of the BBC iPlayer is here.

Help and frequently asked questions for the beta are here.

As well as leaving comments on the Internet Blog you can always go to the iPlayer message board.

Anthony Rose has in-depth detail about the thinking behind the beta, while Mark Friend outlines improvements in listening quality for radio. James Cridland gives even more detail on codecs and bitrates (and James relaxes enough on his personal blog to say he likes the beta). Ian Forrester highlights the RSS feeds on Backstage. The promotional video is on this post from Erik Huggers.

There's plenty of feedback on various blogs [Technorati search | Google Blogs search].

When you're in the middle of a launch of a major BBC product, it's sometimes hard to keep perspective. But a blogger will always provide some. In this case, it's John Dowdell in San Francisco:

Two significant projects hit the web this week. Both were played pretty low-key, but I suspect their longterm significance will be greater.

(One project is the iPlayer beta. The other is "the premiere destination for following live baseball on the Internet".)

Photo from B Tal on Flickr. Nick Reynolds is editor, BBC Internet Blog

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: June 25, 2008

2008-06-25T09:07:53Z

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an Industry Analyst.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my analysis, and click link to dive in for more.

You can subscribe to this digest tag only, which filters only these posts tagged digest.

Web Strategy Summary
This week’s focus delivers more on data and web usage, primarily after the launch of Google’s “Trends” tool, which offers a way to track activity on all websites. More reports on the growth of social networks, it’s funny how bloggers twist it each month, just a few weeks ago people were talking about the decline or lull of social network activity.

Nokia acquires Plazes
Although Nokia has been experimenting with mobile software such as maps, and other social applicaitons (I recently was briefed by one of their teams) they’ve acquired mobile based Plazes, a social network.

Web Usage: Friendster shows Growth
I see conflicting data all the time, so it’s very hard for me to determine who the actual leader is, or sometimes to be more accurate, the intrepretations of data are often different. Great pieces by Eric at VentureBeat who does analysis to show how Friendster has growth in Asia.

Web Usage: Facebook and MySpace
Although I see many different graphs and patterns about the ‘top’ website, Andrew Chen breaks down that Facebook is growing faster via vistiors in Australia over MySpace, and has more growth internationally, on the other hand, he demonstrates that most ad revenues are in the US, an interesting way of thinking about where the ROI could lay.

Web Usage: 25% Use Social Networks
The Consumer Internet Barometer, a sample size of 1000 in North America found that a quarter of North Americans use social networks. For North American adults, this is very similar to what Forrester’s own data says, glad to see correlation.

Upgrade: NYT adds social features to site
Much in the theme of the future of the web is that the web will become connected to your personal networks, in this case the NYT (who has been innovating) is developing new ways for the content of their site to become social with Times People Beta.

Intranet: Microsoft leans on Townsquare
Although only a prototype, Microsoft office labs are working on a new intranet product that has social features, called TownSquare.

Vertical: Intel launches site for family caretakers
This community site which is for those that are managing ill or elderly family members provides a connection for others, who may need a support group that may not have been able to connect prior.

Revenues: Facebook Developers Get Paid
The company social media, essentially an advertising network for widget developers has paid out $8million to developers who are involved in their network over the last year, there are 5000 apps, for about 100 developers, although there’s apparently a curve, some cashed in and some did not.

eCommerce: How shopping is a social activity
eWeek picks up a story (I’ve a quote in it) that outlines how Pluck’s module based white label social network can embed social interactions into an eCommerce experience –a certain future trend.

Education: Social networks spur learning
This summary of a study indicating that students from a variety of backgrounds were able to learn from social networks, improving social and technology skills, more details from this article. From colleague Jennifer Doctor

Web Usage: Facebook king of the globe
Comscore reports that Facebook’s Global Traffic the king, I see different takes at data from different companies, so I can never quite be sure of who’s interpretations –or data set to rely on. Therefore, I watch trends, not specifics.

China: Facebook, Tencent launch against Xiaonei
Chinese versions of Facebook and Tencent are now launched in China, to reach to one of the world’s largest online populations. The dominating player, Xiaonei has 22 million users, still a long way off from Facebook –but watch growth.

Valuation: How to value social networks
Techcrunch does an interesting analysis quantifying social network value –by looking at several values based around user size and valuation.

Leave a comment if I’ve missed anything specific.

June 29, 2008 - London - Play The Lost Sport with me!

2008-06-16T02:10:00Z

Human Labyrinth Playtest NYC
Originally uploaded by Avant Game.

I'll be in London on Sunday June 29, 2008 to play the Lost Sport of Olympia at the Southbank Centre. We're part of the Hide and Seek festival, and it's going to be awesome. Come play with me!

I'll bring the blindfolds, the stopwatches, and the chalk... you bring your ancient strengths, and your friends!

We'll meet Sunday afternoon between 3 and 3:30 PM at the Hayward Gallery overhang (shown in orange on this PDF map!).

Sign up now -- we've already got 75 people registered, and it should be a much bigger crowd than that (we had over 150 players at our New York City last weekend!)

Get the details and register here!

And as always, you can learn the legend behind the lost sport in this Lost Sport podcast...

brave noob world

2008-06-25T19:43:13Z

Roo was doing his own videoing at Interesting and has enstucken this brilliant stuff from James Wallis on viddler. Better quality video will follow in due course / at some point / eventually. But this is perfectly watchable, so thanks to Roo and James.

James Dyson on Engineering and Design

2008-06-26T12:44:22Z

CrunchGear’s Peter Ha got a chance to spend a day at the Dyson test labs in Malmesbury where he spoke with James Dyson about his design and engineering principles. One of his most important principles? The CEO of the company shouldn’t be able to easily break the products. Watch this hilarious/stunning/crazy video and ask yourself: Would the average CE manufacturer beat up his or her product like this on camera? Heck, would the average web service publish their stress-testing stats?

Incidentally, memo to Mike: I think the entire CrunchNetwork team should now wear black jeans, t-shirts, and black and white trainers. It’s very fetching. Check out more Dyson coverage here

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Small Business Networks from American Express, Capital One, Advanta, Bank of America, QuickBooks, and HSBC

2008-06-27T00:00:41Z

Earlier this week, Visa launched its Facebook Business Network. While the first to use Facebook, several other major financial institutions have opened small biz networks on the Web in the past six months:

Advanta's Ideablob launched last September at DEMOfall (previous post here). It's a unique website with monthly contests awarding $10,000 to the best idea, as voted on by users. It's an intriguing concept with decent traction, almost 30,000 unique visitors last month according to Compete (see chart below). (Full disclosure: I just realized I'm wearing an Ideablob t-shirt; schwag can still pay off!)
American Express's OpenForum: As the name suggests, it's a business forum and resource directory, not unlike Bank of America's (see below). American Express has added posts from several prominent bloggers such as John Battelle's Searchblog and Anita Campbell's Small Biz Trends to keep the site fresh. The site has 5,400 members and monthly traffic of about 11,000 unique visitors, up threefold from a year ago.
Bank of America's Small Business Online Community, a general forum and resource directory, launched in Oct 2007 (see original post here). It's primarily a forum, with some additional articles on the side. Total membership is just under 15,000.
Capital One's Slingshot, launched in February, is primarily a business directory. But it does aim for community involvement with user-submitted business reviews and comments on certain topics.
HSBC's (UK) Business Network: Another forum-and-blog site similar to AmEx's OpenForum. So far it appears lightly used, with just six blog entries this year and 270 member profiles.
Intuit's Quickbooks Group: Although not a financial institution, the Quickbooks site is a good example of an active community with more content, including ten blogs, and as much traffic as the others combined (not including BofA which is unknown) with nearly 90,000 unique visitors, almost double the number a year ago.

Unique website visitors in May 2008 (source: Compete)

Links for 2008-05-25

2008-05-25T22:59:53Z

bowblog: What is Speechification? - Steve describes Speechfication. “we roam the corridors of the BBC’s archive selecting the stuff we think is really excellent, unusual or important and putting it on display”
Wikiscanner reveals amusing HP-on-IBM vandalism - http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr is great, and helped me spot this cute litte edit from 2006. “Dell have now bought IBM”. http://ws.arin.net/whois/?queryinput=15.203.169.125 tells me that creative vandalism was someone with a Hewlett-Packard IP address. Nice.
BuzzMachine: Twitter as the canary in the news coalmine - Jeff Jarvis on Twiter and news gathering. This is his draft (when the Guardian printed it they chopped it a little).
Twitter Technology Blog: Twittering About Architecture - Twitter HQ on current architectural problems: “We’re planning for a gradual transition; our existing system will be maintained while new parts are built, and old parts swapped out for new as they’re completed.” The sooner the better, but good luck to them
russell davies: BlackBoardPro - I saw this in the flesh (um, paint) recently. It’s great.
The Encyclopedia of Business Cliches - Welcome to my world. Seth Godwin got the ball rolling, now anyone can add their own. Great list.
How To Delete Your Plaxo Account - “If you want to delete your Plaxo account you must follow these two simple steps:”
IBM Lotus Connections Evangelist now works at Jive - Gia Lyons will be missed at big blue
Interesting 2008: an incomplete list of interesting speakers - Speaker list looks amazing. I’m proud to be on there too. (”Roo’s going to do three minutes about Lego”).
Energy Monitor comparison chart - Comparison of some of the devices on the market.
plus six: Counting the Cost - Another one joins the CurrentCost gang. “I now have the unit connected to my Mac. It turns out that the data cable has a converter chip in it, and that the signals are 3.3V”
COPE: James Wallis levels with you » Current fun - “you can put down your crimpers and Maplin catalogue because Current Cost sell data-cables to those in the know. Send a cheque or purchase order for £11.12 per cable” James has some interesting thoughts about power monitoring + games too.
twistori - “This is the first step in an ongoing social experiment, based on twitter” [via:Ian Smith]
NodeBox - “NodeBox is a Mac OS X application that lets you create 2D visuals (static, animated or interactive) using Python programming code and export them as a PDF or a QuickTime movie.”

Links for 2008-05-31

2008-05-31T22:59:41Z

Robokill - Lovely top-down robot RPG shooter game [via:waxy
Tegaki blog - "It's easy to create handwriting blog by mouse!"
BBC: Sound Index - "The Sound Index is a massive index of the hottest bands and tracks that are being talked about on the internet right now." ... "IBM's Semantic Super Computing is used to crawl and analyse our partners' sites." [via:alicebartlett]
Jennifer Government: NationStates - “NationStates is a free nation simulation game. Build a nation and run it according to your own warped political ideals. Create a Utopian paradise for society’s less fortunate or a totalitarian corporate police state.” [via:dominiccampbell]
Six Degrees of Wikipedia - “The centre of Wikipedia is ‘2007′ From this article, it takes on average 3.45 clicks to get to any of the 2111479 articles reachable from it. The top 10 articles are…”
YouTube - Hipster Olympics - “A battle of apathetic grandeur” [via @aneel]
dale lane: A daily CurrentCost ‘bill’ - Dale calculates a daily cost and emails it himself. Here’s how.
Bruce F. Webster - The Wetware Crisis: the Dead Sea effect - “the more talented and effective IT engineers are the ones most likely to leave … to evaporate, if you will. … What tends to remain behind is the ‘residue’”
Virtual Worlds News: MPEG Issues Call for Requirements for “Information exchange with Virtual Worlds” Interoperability Project - “the ISO MPEG working group on the Information Exchange with Virtual Worlds project, or MPEG-V” … “now looking to create a standard for architecture, interfaces between virtual worlds, and interfaces between the virtual world and the physical world”
MuxFind: Search for Muxtapes - Search front-end for Muxtape.com
Haikurious - “It’s Haikurious! / All of today’s Internet / Wrapped in a Haiku”
Paul Carr: Show e-pirates some respect - Paul Carr being amusing about piracy in 2003. “the only way Sony (or anyone else) is going to convince me and my fellow file thieves to go straight is to make their new legal services much more convenient to use than the existing illegal ones. “
Go Big Always - Get your scary software out of my workplace - “It’s clearly used for goofing off. The last thing I want are my employees wasting my money emailing/cybersurfing/chatting/networking with each other. What’s the use case for email at work? What’s the ROI? Who else is doing it?”
kybernetikos.com: Hurricane, Charity and the New Stone Age - “no one man can mine both the copper and the tin he needs to cast a simple bronze blade. For the bronze age to come about, there had to be trade and sharing of knowledge between diverse and separated cultures.”