‘A Personally Branded Recommendation Channel’
By hand-picking ads only for products and services that you’ve actually used and liked, it stops being an ad feed and starts being a personally branded recommendations channel. It’s closer to an affiliate relationship with the advertiser – like the millions of people that mention a book in a blog post and then link to amazon with their affiliate ID.
Ultimately, the only value in advertising (from the consumer’s perspective, so we’ll ignore brand reinforcement) is product discovery. But ad targeting sucks (push model) compared to recommendations from humans with whom you have a proven track record of common taste and interest (pull model – I choose to read waxy.org). When a friend recommends a new product to me, it doesn’t feel like an ad, it feels like news.
If every online “publisher” (ezines, blogs, etc) were to adopt the same “only products I’ve used and liked” model, advertising would start to become a valuable part of the publication – enough so that it would be to our benefit to NOT run AdBlock. Afterall, you don’t run PostBlock, because you believe you’ll be interested in what that author has to say.
Here’s my point in a nutshell. I friggin hate advertising, but capitalists defend it with “how else can companies inform consumers about new products?” This is the practical alternative, and I’m all for it.
This is the most brilliant thing I’ve read about advertising. Ever.
Nerds are suckers for information. And the really gargantuan nerds love to find out information about other nerd’s nerdery.
All the gargantuan nerds in the house need to check out Chris Bowler’s behind-the-scenes look at Fusion. Without Chris, our workflow would be strewn across multiple applications with no clearly defined purpose. Not so anymore — in fact, we even have an internal document that defines specifically how we do what we do (or at least it’s on my todo list).
It’s pretty obvious who won the desktop vs. web app debate though…
One of my most favouritest blogs is back online. This is without a doubt the most genuine man on the Internet, folks.
The good folks at the Iconfactory shipped Twitterrific 2.0 for iPhone today.
It’s gorgeous. I especially like the “Raven” theme as well as the little lights that appear along the sides of the screen when you select a tweet. It should also be commended for adding some innovative features that haven’t been done before — like Marks (private favourites) and Profile notes.
The most debatable concept (at least in my mind) is the “action” menu. In an attempt to keep the UI simple, Twitterrific 2 shoves everything you can do with a tweet into a single menu, allowing you to select any tweet in your timeline and preform actions based on it.
This is compared to Tweetie for iPhone which has many of the same features, but whose implementation feels more organic. With Twitterrific, I feel as if I have to know what every button does, compared to Tweetie, where I find buttons for what I want to do right where they should be.
I can visualize Tweetie’s hierarchy in my mind. It all make sense. It’s like Spaces on the desktop — I’m not just switching virtual desktops, I’m moving up, down, left, and right.
Twitterrific definitely has the looks, but Tweetie still feels better. And that’s all Tweetie ever had going for it.
The Forgotten Web Standard: Slides in 3 Minutes
As one of those people that wishes they had the opportunity to use Keynote more than they actually get to, I found this timelapse from Mike Kus absolutely hypnotizing. This ain’t your parent’s PowerPoint presentation.
(Via Noah)
Mark Jardine on designing Convertbot -
Our goal was to make unit conversions fun and enjoyable. I wanted to separate the conversion steps into little tasks that need to be completed. It gives a sense of satisfaction when you’ve completed a unit selection sequence or shock if you press the wrong button. It’s like a game. Regardless of whether the feedback is positive or negative, it brings out emotion in the user and that was my goal. Once you get used to it, there’s a sense of satisfaction and rhythm to the process. It’s very subliminal, but it’s there.
Part of what I love about Tapbots’ vision as a company is their conviction to make mundane tasks beautiful and — dare I say? — fun.
Some would argue that the interfaces of apps like Convertbot and Time Machine are unnecessary and take too many clicks to navigate. But really, at the end of the day I’m not counting the clicks. An app’s real value is whether or not it can add a little bit of pleasure — a little fun to the seemingly mundane tasks of my day.
And I think Tapbots nailed it.
(Via Sophia Teutschler)
The Big Picture has put together another awe-inspiring collection of before and after images during Earth Hour 2009 . Simply click the images to watch the lights fade out. Number fifeteen is by far my favourite.
The feed reader is the fast food joint of the reading experience, but I want the farmer’s market, the slow-cooked greens, the home-baked bread. I don’t want to feed, I want to eat, with all the attendant history that word evokes—the flavor, the company, the time.
Mandy Brown masterfully articulates how feed reading and unread counts have turned reading into a rushed chore, rather than something to savour and enjoy.
HOWTO: 149 Surprising Ways to Turbocharge Your Blog With Credibility! -
If you haven’t had the chance to listen to Merlin Mann and John Gruber’s 60 minute talk from SxSW, you’re missing out on one of the best pro-creativity, anti-social media-y talks of the year. Filled with all sorts of inspirational goodness (like not actually having anything to do with its title), I highly recommend it for all creative types out there — whether you publish a weblog or not.
I’ll leave you with a single tidbit:
“If everything is what you want to do, then you’re not really doing a thing. How do you know that you’ve reached the right person if you tried to reach everybody?”
And of course, it automatically sounds 142% more intelligent coming from the mouth of Gruber.
You know there’s something absolutely crazy going on when a puny link on my modest weblog leads to an all-out dieting competition between Viddler’s technology evangelist and a squash-playing Canadian musician.
Kyle claims to have found iPhone OS 3.0′s best new feature. I tend to agree with him.
Confessions: The Internet and My Ego Disorder -
“The truth is that in the real world I am just like everybody else. The riders of public transit, my fellow patrons in the coffee shops, every pedestrian I pass—I am fundamentally no less anonymous and nameless than they are. In the real world nobody is asking for my opinion; I am not the keynote speaker; I am not even a good author. In fact, I am nothing that anybody else really wants to be. Hence I flee from reality. Oh sweet Internet domain, come stroke my fragile ego with your soothing readership stats!”
Yikes. Something tells me there’s a little bit of this in each of us that we need to get rid of.
(Via Pat)
