Seeing as it’s one of my first projects since joining Absolute Radio, and it’s the first iPhone project I’ve worked on, it’s been great to return from holiday to find this:

Absolute Radio LiveAmp - Top Ten Paid iPhone app

Yep, that’s the Absolute Radio LiveAmp at number 7 in the list ofthe Top Ten Music Apps in the iTunes store. For just 59p you get photos, videos, event info and a Twitter stream from the best live events in the UK.

Now to crack the top five!

I neglected to write about my fellow speakers at the ALPSP event, mainly because I was enjoying a bit of time off for the last week.

There were great presentations from Ros Lawler of Random House, Phil Archer from the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, Steve Paxhia of Beacon Hill Strategic Solutions (With whom I got absolute soaked in the storms that hit en route to the station), and Gail Robinson from TSL Education Ltd.

But the one presentation that really kept me thinking was by Alex Evans from MediaMolecule (The developers of LittleBigPlanet for the PS3). It was interesting as a videogamer, someone interested in game theory, someone interested in encouraging user generated content, and someone interested in developing business and revenues in the changing economy.

But he also highlighted a very important law – one which was applied to programming, but in my mind applies equally to marketing, PR, and to almost every aspect of a business.

It is:

…organizations which design systems … are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations

Conways Law was originally introduced in 1968, by Melvin Conway. And for me it encapsulates a lot of the challenges I’ve encountered, whether it’s been for a large company, a group of volunteers, or in my current role.

As much as a system designed may mirror communication structures – communications will mirror them just as much. That’s why things tended to be more rigid and evolve more slowly in a larger, more traditional company which was constructed around a defined hierachy.

It’s also why a flat structure of volunteers led to challenges that seem to have proved even more insurmoutable since I left – trying to encourage business attributes from non-businesslike creative people.

And it’s why I relish my new challenge – listening and engaging with a team packed full of ideas, and then herding those cats into the most effective order.

You might want to sit down, but I’ve just spent some money on physical entertainment media. Or to put it another way, I bought some books and DVDs for the first time in ages.

I’d actually been looking for a work-related book which doesn’t seem to be available in bookshops, so that will be an online purchase, but in the meantime, I though I’d treat myself.

Interestingly, I’d spent a while choosing the unavailable book, so was at a bit of a loose end, and ended up coming out with three purchases – and as far as I’m consciously aware, I hadn’t seen advertising or media reviews etc of any of them:

Buyology: How Everything We Believe About Why We Buy is Wrong by Martin Lindstrom was bought mainly on the strength of the topic, and the foreword written by Paco Underhill, whose book on Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping I’ve previously read and enjoyed.

Code: Version 2.0 by Lawrence Lessig was purely chosen on the articles I’ve read by him and interviews I’ve watched with him.

And from the non ‘tech geek’ world, I also picked up:
Lukas Moodysson Presents (4 Disc Box Set) [DVD] - I’ve already seen three of the four films, but wanted to watch the fourth, and revisit the first two (Lilya 4-Ever is a well-made film, but is the most relentlessly bleak film I think I’ve ever seen). I’m also using it to improve my Swedish language abilities, and be able to lend ‘Show Me Love’ (the original title is better but far more offensive!) and Tilsammens to the rest of my family – and they all understand DVDs!

I thought I was all done, but there wasn’t any peer recommendation to prove this whole social media thing.

Until I got home.

The first I heard about the Xbox Live only release of Battlefield 1943 was via two friends of mine as we chatted. I hadn’t been online on the Xbox for a while due to the work/commuting/family combination, and as a result, I hadn’t been looking at gaming sites.

And within 10 minutes, I’d paid 1200 Microsoft points (About £10 or so), and downloaded the game.

It’s having a number of server issues at the moment, but the basic game is pretty good, and the online distribution of a ‘full’ game is interesting.

It’s being followed up today by the release via Xbox Live of 1 vs 100, which is an online gaming show with real prizes, which should be interesting.

Peer recommendations and loyalty aren’t new, of course. But generally they’d be prompted for me by either an event (my plumbing has broke, who can fix it?), or by media awareness (this game is coming out, is anyone else buying it?).

It seems as if the weighting has now changed, and the peer/loyalty aspect is what then might result in someone sharing a helpful media review, or just leading me straight to a purchase.

Apparently TheWayoftheWeb has been listed as one of Cision’s Top 10 UK PR blogs.

I picked up on the list from the #1 blog, the excellent NevilleHobson.com, and all ten blogs are definitely worth reading. It’s interesting to be included as the preface to the list reads:

‘Covering the latest developments in communications technology, the impact of the web on political dialogue and the convergence of PR with other communications activity, the blogs listed below represent the most visible, engaged and social of the UK PR blogosphere.’

It’s interesting because I’m a marketeer, journalist and blogger, but I’ve never officially been in PR – although obviously I’ve worked closely with a large number of PR agencies and people over the years.And I’ve helped out with writing the occasional press release.

But I am interested in where it’s possible to distinguish between PR and Marketing, and the methods and effects of good and bad PR, as it’s a huge element of success in my marketing role. And I’m learning as much from the incredibly talented PR team at Absolute Radio as hopefully I’m able to share with them.

What’s interesting has been discussing how the methods they’ve used for great success with mainstream print and digitial media are pretty much identical to the methods I use for non-mainstream digital media (blogs, forums, social networks etc).

It’s also why I’ve thought for a while about the simplest way to describe what I do as a whole, including both my professional career, and my independant digital endeavours, and it basically comes down to specialising in ‘content creation and distribution’, which sounds far less sexy than PR, Marketing, or Social Media. But basically I enjoy coming up with ideas for content (text, audio, video), putting it together (writing, recording, editing, crowdsourcing, implementing ways for UGC to be encouraged), and then getting it to relevant people (digital publishing, SEO, blogger and forum relations, linking, seeding, etc).

It’s not the tightest definition, considering the amount of roles and workload that it covers, but it seems to be the one that works as I look at my skills and interests.

I was invited to speak about ‘Building online communities to support successful media brands’ on Tuesday by the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, as part of an event covering what Scholarly Publishing can learn from other industries.

As the opening act, and with a subject so huge, I opted to go for a fairly general overview to hopefully inspire more people to give it a go without worrying about the ‘correct’ way to do things – because I’ve found that beyond some simple principles, the most important thing is tailoring what you do to your specific community.

In retrospect I probably could have included some more specific case studies – for instance Absolute Radio on Twitter and Facebook! But that’s why I subtitled it ‘a work in progess’ because anything on online communities is going to need constant revision and updating, and I intend to create v2.0, v3.0 etc and hopefully involve some more people to create a more comprehensive guide.

I honestly don’t know where to begin with this one. Paid Content UK has revealed Johnston Press is banning employee access to Facebook, requiring journalists to ask permission from their department head, and contact the IT department.

Apparently it’s due to Facebook comprising more than half of the company’s outbound internet traffic. (They’re by no means alone in this…I can vouch for plenty of media and non-media business with the same traffic ratios).

PaidContent raises two important points – journalists are finding the site incredibly useful for their work, and Johnston titles run their own Facebook pages already!

In addition, I’d remind Johnston that it’s a media/content company, and everyone in the company should be able to not only use Facebook for work-related tasks, but also to be thinking about how Johnston will exist in the networked world.

And I’d see how many people in the Johnstone offices are now checking their mobiles more often…

It makes a smuch sense as banning people from reading printed news.

When technological advancements such as the printing press, telegraph or the car were invented, it took a while to get going. Even something as simple as sliced bread took a good few years before becoming widely adopted.

And yet the increasing pace of change means what seemed a novelty just a short time ago soon becomes expected.

The free wifi on National Express trains is one case in point.

When it was first introduced, it seemed like a minor miracle that I could now access the internet and get work done whilst travelling, for no extra charge, even in standard class.

But within a couple of years I’m amazed that other trains don’t have it, and I’m immensely frustrated and disappointed that the speed and reliability hasn’t improved. In fact it’s got much, much worse as more and more people are using laptops and netbooks on the train.

Mobile broadband is similar. It took a while for the mobile phone to become widely adopted, but now mobile internet access is becoming a standard and expected part of any new mobile device. And it’s data costs and anything less than 100% access that become the talking points, rather than the fact I can access the web from something in the palm of my hand.

And that frustration we feel is because we don’t just become accustomed to this access.

We come to rely on it.

For work, home, and everywhere in between.

Postscript:

Just remembered that apparently, 53% of British mobile phone users suffer ‘no mobile phobia’, or nomophobia, ‘with 48 per cent of women and 58 per cent of men questioned admitting to experiencing feelings of anxiety when they run out of battery or credit, lose their phone or have no network coverage.’ (HT Textually.org).

I’ve long been a fan of Mark Earls, and his writing on ‘herd theory’, which suggests that we tend to follow what other people do, rather than following the logical, rational decisions we often claim after the fact.

And I’m reminded of that theory every day on my commute to London. First comes the ‘Finsbury Park Standing Experiment’, whereby the first person to stand up in an attempt to gain a couple of vital minutes between leaving the train and joining the queue for the London Underground suddenly inspires everyone to fill the aisle of the carriage for the last 10-15 minutes of the journey. Despite the logical problem that after the first handful of ‘standers’, the rest of the queue fail to gain much time, if any. And people like me stay seated and working and then tend to be sat near the door anyway.

And if I don’t head underground, I then get to watch the ‘traffic light lemmings’. With any large group waiting to cross a road in the morning, it takes just one or two people to begin to cross, and the herd will follow, regardless of whether the lights are red, green, or there is a large lorry hurtling towards them with the lights on and horn blaring.

Meanwhile I undergo a strange transformation:

While I cycle to the station, I find myself becoming irritated by cars and pedestrians..

While I’m on the train, I miss not travelling by car/motorcycle – especially when the wifi fails.

When I’m walking to work, it’s cars and cyclists that cause problems.

Who I perceive to be causing problems and irritation is entirely dependant on which form of transport I’m using at the time, even in the space of the same journey. Am I herding myself into the mass view of that form of transit, or just setting myself apart from the stereotype of each mass transport group?

It could be a great time to run a newspaper soon, if Judge Richard Posner has his way.

He has suggested that linking to copyright material should be outlawed,

‘Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent . . .’

You can read his blog post, or the appropriate level of disbelief in Erik Schonfeld’s coverage, as he rightly points out this idea would outlaw public discourse, freedom of speech and fair use rights.

Jeff Jarvis mentions a column by Connie Schultz which proposes content would be available only on the originators website for the first 24 hours.

If either law ever came into existence, I have the perfect way to create a hugely successful news source.

Licence it all under Creative Commons.

While the rest of the newspaper sites are struggling to understand that they can’t coerce people into only linking to them in the correct, legal, or desired way, a Creative Commons site would clean up in inbound links and traffic until it was the only one standing!

What about when the subjects we cover start to control the news?

An interesting series of articles is just starting over on Nieman Journalism Lab, discussing what happens when Sports Leagues are able to become media moguls and control the news.

In the U.S., Major League Baseball has launched it’s own cable TV channel MLB Network, which is the focus of the first of the four part series.

But it isn’t just leagues that can afford TV which offer a threat.

It’s every organisation or business which is now able to reach consumers/fans directly via Facebook, Twitter, Email etc. All enabling them to reach an ever-increasing audience to distribute their beliefs, opinions and news.

Whether or not that content is well-received is another matter, but the simple fact is that it’s out there, and increasing daily. And will only increase for every bit of evidence that can indicate it’s more effective in driving transactional revenue than straight advertising.

Every media business needs to be planning for what happens if and when the subjects of your stories (and advertisers) start telling them for themselves.

In amongst my normal RSS fest and occasional work-related reading, I’ve actually been doing some reading for pure pleasure over the last few weeks.

The main reason is child-proofing the house for a one-year-old who is learning to walk, throw things, and hurl himself at every possible object. Which has meant moving as many things as possible to positions outside of the main toddler thoroughfares.

And as a closet librarian, rediscovering probably 200+ books has meant that I couldn’t possibly put them into the loff/charity shop/ebay without quickly skimming through one last time to check I remember them correctly.

Added to that, I’ve also been given a couple of books on Sweden by friends and family who presume that I still need help despite being in a relationship with a Swede for decade…

At the moment I’m engrossed in Fishing in Utopia: Sweden and the Future That Disappeared selected by the aggregator of Sunday broadsheet book reviews known as my mother.  It’s interesting to read about the Sweden that existed before I ever became aware of it, and puts more and more of the current country into perspective – which is where the shorter and skimmable In The Secret Garden of Sweden comes in handy.

Meanwhile I’m also making the most of reading to my son at bedtimes, with the exploits of Alfons Aberg improving my Swedish at the same time as entertaining him.

And the original Swedish Kurt Wallander is making an appearance on BBC 3 or 4 tonight.

No real point to make, or social media/publishing/web 2.0 connection. Although the fact one of my new colleagues owns a house in Sweden, and the new office is right by the Nordic Bakery in London is showing some type of subconscious trend.