4mations

September 30, 2008 | 1 Comment

4mations

Channel 4 have partnered with Aardman to create 4mations, a site that allows users to upload their content (videos & games) and then earn money from it if their content proves to be the most popular.  stay with me because it sounded a little dirty to me at first too but they do reign it back.  The site allows the more creative users to upload their videos, animations or games and in turn if they are amongst the top viewed that month they could earn up to £250 and the potential to pitch your ideas apparently.  A clever way to get talented people to generate lots of page impressions whilst you reap the rewards in advertising revenue but at least 4mations make an attempt to give something back.

Posted by Jamie Coomber | Filed Under Animaton, Blog, Community 

Spinvox saves my relationships

September 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment

spinvox

I hate voicemails in quite a strong way.  When I want to pick up a message it doesn’t always go through the first time so I have to hang up and redial.  When I do get through I have to listen to the woman with a plum in her mouth, talk about how many messages I have, which message she is going to hit me with first, and then when it was sent.  I am a product of the digital age, I am notorious for having a short attention span so it is unfair to expect me to answer every voicemail when this is the ritual I have to go through.  I had been seeing Mr James Whatley (Whatleydude) twittering about a company he works for called Spinvox and decided to see what he actually did for a living to justify being on Twitter more than I am (props BTW).  Spinvox takes your voicemail messages, turns them into text messages and delivers them directly to your phone as a text message.  Golden!  I tend to go to a lot of conferences and it’s so annoying when people leave voicemails during the day and are then put out when I don’t answer them immediately, so having them converted into text message that can easily be accessed if going to save a lot of my relationships.  I think one of the great things that Spinvox has done is to really focus on their brand by employing someone specifically to promote the service across various social media, establishing a relationship with those who are most likely to take up the service before it hits the mainstream.  Thanks James :)

Posted by Jamie Coomber | Filed Under Blog, Mobile, Social Interaction, Technology 

GPS Film

September 11, 2008 | 3 Comments


GPSFILM “The Using Of” from GPSFILM on Vimeo.

GPS Film is a really innovative way of watching a movie that’s based on the users location.  Using GPS-enabled PDA or mobile phone, clips are served to the user based on their location telling stories by exploring their environment. The first film is Nine Lives, and is available from the website.  Creator Scott Hessels explains “i’m interested in how a mcahine that changes recording, assembling, presenting, or context of film can radically change the experience and the ways that stories are told.”

Posted by Jamie Coomber | Filed Under Blog, Innovation, Mobile, Video 

dConstruct 2008 highlights

September 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment

dConstruct 2008: Designing the Social Web On Friday I attended dConstruct in Brighton which is a great conference looking at designing the social web.  For the keynote speech Steven Johnson from Outside.In spoke on the Urban Web.  He recalled a story of a cholera outbreaks in London’s Soho in the 1850’s, which were found to be centered around one particular pump on Broad Street by investigator John Snow and local reverend Henry Whitehead.  Whitehead spent time networking with locals and knew the majority of people in the area, he was able to collect first-hand information as to what pumps households were using in a time when information wasn’t readily available positioning the reverend as the social hub.  He then went on to talk about Radar, a tool that monitors conversations around your local area.  The demonstration was quite impressive so I would advise going to have a look.

Next up was Aleks Krotoski talking about similarities between the gaming industry and the web design industry.  She described types of systems that shape the industry like controlled systems that games designers use to keep the interest of the player i.e. give more as people play more, different levels, unlocking clues etc.

Joshua Porter spoke next focusing on leveraging cognitive bias in social design.  His talk was absolutely fascinating describing how now, designers need to add social psychology tools to their skill set in order to create stickiness.  He described the bandwagon effect whereby users tend to follow others when little information is given to understand a problem.  He also focused on ownership bias, where people will tend to place a higher value of things if they feel a sense of ownership first.  For example, when you visit a website and it allows you to create something from when you first land, you are much more likely to register with that site because you have already invested time.  He gave examples of Geni and Fresh Books both as companies who are using social psychology techniques well within their homepages.

Daniel Burka, Creative Director at Digg and co-founder of Pownce talked about designing for interaction.  He talked about encouraging positive participation by encouraging users to sign up for a site as they encourage trust within a service.   He referenced the site Get Satisfaction who ask their users “How do they feel?” through the use of faces users can use to rate their postings.  He also made the point that when building a site, try to avoid negative competition which is something they found originally with Digg when the same people would always appear to be the top diggers by digging existing content.  He also made the great point that sites have to allow for flexible participation to enable the site to adapt to different data as it develops.

Tantek Celik then spoke about social network portability and also published his presentation here so you can read it first hand.

The highly entertaining Matt Jones and Matt Biddulph then spoke on designing for the coral reef (yes you read that right).  They described Dopplr as a social physics engine, a piece of software that underlines the physics of the world in terms of how things behave.

Lastly Jeremy Keith talked about the systems of the world.  This talk was absolutely fascinating and the podcast will be available soon so I would advise you to go and listen to it as there was far too much information within it to write.

Posted by Jamie Coomber | Filed Under Blog, Events, Social network 

The browsers are lined with Chrome

September 3, 2008 | 2 Comments

chrome

Last night I downloaded Chrome to see what all the fuss was about.  For those who missed it, yesterday Google released a Beta version (aren’t they all Beta?) of a new open-source web browser which promises the capacity to run applications speedily, securely and simultaneously within the broswer.  Allowing each tab to run in isolation from each other.  If one tab should encounter a bug, then that tab is simply closed down leaving all other tabs running which is great and I also like the way your browsing history is displayed when a new tab is opened.  I haven’t managed to get my application shortcuts working yet, and can’t see how I can integrate Delicious within the tool bar which is annoying, but I am sure I will find it once I spend time having a proper play.  For those who want to know more, Google have put together a comic book explaining the features behind Chrome which you can view here.

Posted by Jamie Coomber | Filed Under Blog, Innovation, Internet 

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