Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

image credit: johilton (Flickr)

We've seen it in the movies, future interfaces that leave us amused and yet enthralled. As science fiction as they seem, how would the people of the past feel if they had somehow stumbled upon an iPhone? It might have looked like an alien device, but the concepts of what it does might not have seemed so foreign. They had, after all, predicted online shopping and bill paying back in 1969. But, it's those interfaces that seem so... future-y.

In a three-part series, I will examine interface technology that is just poking through the surface of technology culture and separate science fact from science fiction.

The first trend I am going to be looking at is this notion that future interfaces will be more natural.

Ever since that monkey picked up that first bone and used it as a weapon (if we are going off of the documentary film, 2001: A Space Odyssey), we have been moving towards a culture of tools. We use hammers to build houses. We use pens to write. And we use a keyboard and mouse to enter the virtual world. But a strange and fascinating thing has been happening. For the first time, we're evolving beyond tools.

Am I now getting too sci-fi? Think about this. For the children of tomorrow there will be no more wires. There will be no more "input devices". It will be natural gestures in front of a virtual world. Will they understand how data gets from one place to the next? Will they even understand this as a "tool"? Or for them will it be simply another way to communicate, another language deeply connected and rooted in their physical world?

2001: A Space Odyssey introduced us to artificial intelligence gone wrong. Ever since then, self-aware technology has been part of mass culture, from science fiction to horror to even an episode of the X-files. It's become cliché. But, however much we try and shake it away as the 21st century boogeyman, each of us wonders deep down inside, could that really happen?

In part two of this three-part series, I am going to be looking at is this notion that future interfaces will be more intelligent.

Artificial intelligence isn't something we should be totally scared about. It is already part of our daily lives. Amazon guesses what products you'd like to buy and those are the first things you see when you visit the site. The primary way Netflix displays ratings is not by what everyone else things, but what they think you'd think based on what everyone else thinks.

Real artificial intelligence is based on watching user behavior over time, watching community behavior over time, and guessing the preferred result to an action. It's not that different than the way any living creature learns over time, only that we have the option to change that action into a non-preferred result. So until Google starts sending me bad results on purpose, because they are holding a grudge that I'm still using Hotmail, I don't think we have anything to worry about

The classic example of future interfaces that technology buffs like to bring up is Minority Report. While the touch-screen wall of glass seemed a bit extreme at the time, there is no denying that touch-screen going to be a big part of our future. Other famous moments of that movie included Tom Cruises run around the city with video ads playing on the city walls and sidewalk. There were videos ads on the back of cereal boxes, personalized video messages at department stores, and electronic newspapers.

In final part of this series, I am going to be looking at is this notion that future interfaces will be everywhere.

This has been one of the most fun areas for people to theorize. With the mainstream adoption of wifi services, the idea that anything, including an umbrella or a refrigerator, to become internet-enabled is a possibility. So what is the true way we sift the mainstream from the somewhat ridiculous? The big question is, does it fill a need that is wide enough for everyone to understand why they need it in their lives?

image credit: GraphJam

August has ended. Technically, fall is upon us. We won't have another holiday off until Thanksgiving. I figured for the first ThreeMinds post back from Labor Day weekend, we all could use a laugh. And one form of data visualization that has really came into its own in the past few years is graph humor.

The king of the graph humor is Demetri Martin. Demetri is famous for his contributions to the Daily Show and he has appeared on everything from Conan O'Brien to Flight of the Concords. But it was back in his 2004 Comedy Central special where his unique brand of graph humor really shined.

Of course, there are many other varieties of graph humor...

Since we're all already drawing or gesturing all day on our iPhones, Palms, WinMos, (and Newtons), perhaps this is a good time to introduce the gesture as a way of navigating the web. Sure its been attempted before, but Hello Monday (hellomonday.com), who developed the site, really makes it all very seamless and quite intuitive. Draw a right arrow to go right, a left arrow to go left, and 'M' for menu. It's fun. It's easy. Check it out. Draw it out.

Oh, and buy some nifty clothes while you're at it.

http://www.red-issue.com/

.lau ardelean

This year, with the release of Apple's Safari browser along with the latest releases of iTunes, the Windows-based browser eco-system got quite a shake up. Yesterday, along came Google Chrome. Based on the same rendering technology as Safari, Google Chrome will change many things in the land of web browsers and the way people access the Internet.

There are three significant experiential changes in Chrome: 1) a single "do everything" box that searches, browses, and navigates; 2) web page isolation in processes (so web page crashes don't take out your whole browser); and 3) a lightning fast JavaScript engine that actually complies code and manages memory efficiently (one of the major bugbears with the complex JavaScript that is possible today). Of those three things, the first is very much inline with the latest release of Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3. The second element is most intriguing. It focuses primarily on the poor memory management and bad behavior of browser components. This may just be the single biggest reason for PC users to switch or at least try Chrome. The third element will make a big difference for highly interactive sites and significantly improve performance of Javascript libraries.

One more point to note, setting up Flash, QuickTime, Windows media playing in browsers has always been complicated. The Google Chrome browser "just works". All of those types and pieces came integrated and working right out of the box, no complicated additional downloads, no extra setup steps. All in all, I think Google Chrome will be an interesting change for folks. It will complicate web application development, as we will now have another browser specification to build to, but ultimately it will streamline the web browsing experience for the Windows user. Will it surpass Firefox? Will it overtake IE? Will it be as revolutionary on the Mac? How will Android and mobile browsers use Chrome? These are questions only time can answer. I for one, welcome our new Google overlords to the browser party.

Dean McRobie

Sometimes--Freud noted--a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes online marketing is just online marketing. To wit, I have noticed a drastic change in marketing articles lately, shifting from what and why, to how. This is exciting. The message is finally getting out. But I do not see so many clients acting accordingly yet. It is not the size of the campaign, but how carefully it is crafted.

Is the client side still missing the point? Some questions.

Do you really know why consumers come to your site?
Do you know what they want?
Do you know how they felt about your site?
Do you know what they left with?
Do you know what they told others, if anything?

Last Sunday, more than half a million people worldwide opted to heed Nike's call and run ten kilometers. Official race events were held in 26 cities worldwide, while others were encouraged to "run anywhere" using the Nike Plus/iPod pedometer system. With online tabulation of race results for official competitors and iPod users, the event literally allowed participants to race the world, at a universally accepted distance. The promotion also involved pretty sweet micro-site action and free t-shirts.

Liking the idea of going out for a run with the world, Dawn Farrell in the San Francisco office put out the call for runners. Holiday weekends being what they are--and 10K being what it is, at more than 6.2 miles--only three of us joined the worldwide effort on Sunday. Possessing neither Nike Plus systems, nor living in one of the official race cities, we decided to freestyle it. Draw up our own courses and get at it. Three people, three stories. And a nice shared moment of zen with the planet. Viva Endorphin release. First, the words of the organizer, Dawn Farrell.

"Pacific Heights was the backdrop for my first ever 10K. My goal was to finish and I did. My course was designed to be dog friendly as my 12 year old Labrador joined me (that's 84 to you and me). She finished too, a much bigger accomplishment than anything I did that day.

I found myself far more aware of others sharing the pavement than I usually am, my competitive nature kicked in as I observed how easy they made it look, and my Nike t-shirt mandated 'Just Do It' attitude changed quickly to more of one of, 'I can totally take you.' I did managed to get myself to a more zen place at about 4K thanks to the sounds of the Rolling Stones blasting from my nano."

Confession: I am addicted to so-called "fantasy" sports (true fantasy would be me actually playing at the pro level; crunching stats and trash talking with my fellow sports nerds is reality). As such, I find myself regularly disappointed by the mind-numbing spreadsheets that pass for fantasy sports coverage by a growing number of 'zines and sites.

Along comes the August 2008 issue of ESPN The Magazine's "A College Football Fan's Guide to the Galaxy" -- a smorgasbord of "data porn" the likes of which I haven't seen in sports journalism before (or since...the September issue reverts back to tables and tables of numbers).

Each of the 28 pieces of information design in the guide combines multiple data points to communicate a single idea in an elegant and supremely legible way. It's an art, which is why you see one researcher and three designers credited on the article.

Sam Cannon

Mike Brooks just e-mailed the office to share a fascinating site:

My buddy's wife is in labor right now and he's blogging about it. I don't know what else to say other than this is amazing and engaging content. Check it out, the baby hasn't come yet. He even just did a post about the site's statistics.

Anyone can check out the Dredge Family birth in real-time at http://www.dredgefamily.com/wp/.

But the Dredge Family isn't the only one doing this. It seems to be a growing meme this month, as live births have been broadcast via uStream.TV and Twitter.

Will the old-fashion cigar give way to the superpoke?

Marta Strickland

The New York Times recently wrote a piece on lifestreaming. A lifestream is the story of your life told through an ongoing time-ordered stream of digital snippets. The most famous site for this is Twitter. And in the article, Brave New World of Digital Intimacy, they create several new vocabulary words to attach to this interesting new concept, and the way people have been connecting with each other via sharing lifestreams.

Ambient Awareness: The effect of individual bits of socialized information, which seem insignificant on their own, forming into a highly sophisticated portrait of the information provider, and allowing followers to gain a sort of ESP on the followed.

Co-presence: The effect of tiny updates in real time giving a feeling of intimacy, as if the users participating in the messaging were sitting side-by-side and acknowledging each others activity.

The article struck a cord with some of the Organics who are on Twitter, but especially those who have yet to join.

"I have two small kids, and I barely have time to send an email note, and even those are getting shorter and shorter. It seems silly to send such short notes by email, so I wait until I have time to either call or write a longer note -- but then I end up not connecting at all. My best intent of connecting is backfiring.

For me, what stuck out about Twitter was the view on the connectedness with friends via little snippets over time that aggregate into an awareness and/or presence with people."
Ellen Nearman

The article turned Ellen from a Twitter-skeptic into a Twitter-hopeful. But she wasn't the only one affected. Many of us frequent Twitterers felt inspired to come up with a few of our own vocabulary words...

The Twitter Tabloid

"It's a little addictive. I mean, if I follow Britney Spears on twitter, I might feel closer to her, but I'm not. It's no different than reading about her in a magazine or in Perez Hilton's blog. But it feels personal because it's on my phone or my twitter page. I feel a bit like I'm in a virtual version of Rear Window. I know they left the curtains open and all but am I really supposed to be looking?"
Tracy Cote

Tweepsourcing

"Recently, I was at a Mashable party and everyone is Twitter about it. It was a great way to see how people felt about the party and whether or not you wanted to invest more time or not. At the same time, people were also Twittering (or Tweeting) about 2 other parties happening in SF that night. It was a great way to see if you were at the coolest party. It was such a great utility. Of course, maybe this just happens in SF."
Marita Scarfi

While I haven't experienced the draw of the Twitter Tabloid, I just recently Tweepsourced my vacation out to the Northwest with great results. It all comes back to the magic of "weak ties". I might only have a few close friends who have been to Portland and Vancouver, let alone know it well enough to make recommendations. But with the power of Twitter and social networks, my social circle is far larger and more diverse than it ever has been.

Marta Strickland

CNN is running a really great banner ad by Apple. Check it out, and make sure you have your sound turned on!

It might seem like a mistake to put "really great" and "banner ad" in the same sentence, but in truth there is a lot of work and thought that goes into them, at least the ones that are good. Many users on the CNN site might consider banner ad greatness on a measure of which ones annoy them the least, or in the case of Apple, which one might have made them laugh, distracted them for a moment, before they went back to their daily routine.

But for the people that work behind the scenes, the Apple banner registered as "great" on a whole different level.

"I'm not a Flash guy, but I can tell you that the pieces would have to come in under a certain file size (I think under 100K for most rich media like this - 30K or less in non-rich media situations). So, considering how impactful the ad is, that's pretty impressive on the part of whoever built this ad.

Looking at the code on the page really quickly, it's two separate embed commands, one for the top SWF, and the second for the side SWF - each of which I would assume has a piece of video embedded within it. How they are able to interact with each other by starting at the same time, however, I have no idea."
Daryl Brewer, Engineering

"Well, the idea of having two banners communicate is not particularly new. People have been doing it for years. But this apple concept is pretty cool. What's interesting is if you check the two ads out of context. The top ad has no sound whatsoever and the bottom ad does.

You can see a couple of browser pops, where the ads are speaking to each other, I assume with localConnect. The issue usually revolves around the communication aspect. Since all browsers behave differently, it used to be a crap shot on whether or not it would work. But they've gotten around it and it works pretty flawlessly."
Hugh Elliott, Integrated Media

Marta Strickland

The ideas are out there... waiting to be harnessed. We just have to make the time to brainstorm, to talk, to have dinner, and in the process, to capture all those ideas we generate but usually disregard for whatever reason.

This article made me think about how I always come up with various random ideas, and a year or so later, someone else comes up with the same idea and does something with it (think about it...how many people wished for seat warmers in their cars before someone just sat down and decided to make it happen?!). Some ideas are just sitting there waiting for someone to call them out and make them real... at least, that's what Malcolm Gladwell is implying in his latest article:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_gladwell

How many dinosaur bones are we all walking over without seeing them?

Tracy Cote

Be Warned: the site above is littered with foul language and disturbing images. Those that are easily offended stay away. With that said - the site is genius.

Surfing from home the other night I stumbled upon www.martin-h.com, a site that really got it's hooks into me. Rarely do I sit through an entire site's content - but I did for this one.

The storytelling was done in a fun & unusual way that I've not seen before. The non-traditional cellophane pill packet navigation takes the user through each phase of the main character's story in a compelling and personal way. We've seen the spiral effect countless times in page transitions but in this design it really works. Take the pill, got for a spin & load new content.

Also, the large amount of content that actually speaks to the user (ie. videos/avatars) is what kept me engaged throughout the site. One of the big themes of 2008 is using video more in interactive work. This site uses it extensively, but not in the traditional means you'd expect. It's not separate movies, it's integrated into the experience.

From the opening video where you see the guy playing with his dog I was hooked. I wanted to see more... and that is a rarity these days.

Patrick Dunphy

You remember that old saying "you get what you pay for". Well, it seems somewhat appropriate in this case.

Michael Moore decided to release his new movie "Slacker Uprising" online. The film documents Moore's "get out and vote" 62-city tour during the 2004 U.S. presidential election. And if you sign up now at slackeruprising.com, you'll be able to download the entire movie for FREE on September 23rd.

But, why free? According to Michael Moore:

"This is being done entirely as a gift to my fans. The only return any of us are hoping for is the largest turnout of young voters ever at the polls in November."

For those of us who have seen the movie, we have some other theories:

Review by Michael White
The best thing I can say about CAPTAIN MIKE is that it looked incredibly sharp on the digital projection system here at the Toronto International Film Festival. This film--also known by the better title SLACKER UPRISING--is something of a half-hearted sequel to Moore's FAHRENHEIT 9/11, documenting Moore's "Slacker Uprising" tour of 2004 in which the filmmaker attempted to lessen the number of "red states" on the political map of the U.S. by encouraging voter registration and turnout.

Unfortunately, seeing all of the folks in CAPTAIN MIKE serves as a reminder to just how close we came to dethroning our unelected president and how much this failure has hurt us in the years hence. It's a bit like seeing interviews with the geeks in line for STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE who have no idea about the world of hurt they're about to enter.

The myriad shots of Moore shambling onto various stages across the country keeps begging the question, "Just how many baseball caps does this guy have, anyway?" After a while, the film feels too sad to stand. There are times when the "Slacker Uprising" tour seems as though it should be called "Michael Moore's Ego Trip Across America." It seems that the less of Moore on screen the better. With that equation in mind, CAPTAIN MIKE has Moore on screen one way or another through approximately 95% of the film. You do the math.

With a review like that many could say that Slacker Uprising would have never made any return on a theater release. With a price tag of free, there is a lowered expectation on the quality of the content. Releasing it on the internet became a wise move on Moore's part to save face and actually get his message across to a wide audience.

Alex Churchill

I'm back from vacation, and ready to report on this week's social media news. Why so much focus on social media, you might ask? We'll, I'm obsessed for one, but for two, I really think that social media is changing the world we live in today. Did you know...

"Six degrees of separation has fallen to three due to the impact of social networking and developments in technology," according to a study carried out by O2.

We are closer together than ever!! And even though 58% of people don't know what "social networking" means, that doesn't get me down. It's just a matter of time before those people's lives become affected by social media, too. In fact, what they don't even know is that they probably already are.

What's Been Happening This Week...

Big Network Power, Small Network Growth
Proving the power of the masses this week, Facebook activism continues to rise and the US Department of Homeland Security used MySpace to link people to up-to-date hurricane alerts.

As for small networks, Ning has been quite successful, enabling the launch of over 400,000 niche communities. Developers have taken notice and two Ning-competitors launched over the last week. Webjam, a UK based company, launches as a direct competitor to Ning, hoping to win over users with DIY web services and widgets. Groupsites hopes to be to productivity and collaboration as Ning has been to a more casual and leisurely networking experience.

Microblogging Advances Further Mainstream
Speaking of productivity, it might not be a word you'd commonly associate with a microblogging platform such as Twitter, but to much surprise to many, the winner of this year's TechCrunch50 was Twitter-for-business start-up Yammer.

It's not just the early adopter blogs buzzing about tweeting. There were inspiring articles on both NYTimes and BusinessWeek recently about the power of Twitter.

And despite the recent drama with AMC and Twitter, old media channels are starting to embrace the channel. Even CNN has been heavily promoting their use on the air, calling from replies from their audience.

Old Media Playing Nice With New Media
CNN isn't the only old media + new media love fest that has been happening lately. Google has decided to archive and index one of the oldest forms of media, newspapers. And while digital is going after old, old is also becoming more digital. You might have seen the earlier piece this week about Esquire's new issue complete with a blinky e-ink cover.

But it isn't just about playing nice. As Mashable points out, new media might actually save old media and it's advertising-based revenue stream. The argument goes something like this. As TV shows become more and more interactive, allowing you to Twitter to your news anchor in real time or vote on what happens next, there will be a bigger draw to actually watch IN REAL TIME. Real time means, for those of us who have long succumbed to the magic of DVR, no fast-forwarding through commercials.

Some of you might have just shuddered at the thought of returning to a life of TV commercials. If only the traditional broadcast advertising industry can also embrace the power of interactivity, then maybe we wouldn't mind watching them so much.

Marta Strickland