Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Where Does Brand Experience Begin and End?

2009-07-02T12:30:06Z

We often think of user and brand experience in the online space. But what happens when that experience exits the digital realm? I recently came across two pieces of work by two distinctly different agencies that successfully took the user experience off the safe path. One was driven by the brand. The other by the consumers.

Brand-Directed Paths
eView360 focuses on the reach of a brand experience and how it should touch print and interactive, and then carry over into physical space. One pointed example is seamless brand experience Tessera Executive Search in Dubai presents from print to web to office.

eView360 is a unique agency that employs a multidisciplinary approach that includes print, web, interior and architectural design. When creating a branded experience for their clients, they carry their design cues into the physical office environment. For Tessera Exectutive Search, the color schemes on the Tessera website carry over to the wood stains in the office or the seats in the waiting room. The environment "feels" Tessera in all the areas where you interact with the company.

Consumer-Created Paths
Mazda 3 used an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) in Quebec, Canada to build awareness around its launch. Called the 33 keys project, it enticed users to find 33 keys in a scavenger hunt across various mediums. The ultimate prize? A real vehicle. A TV spot created awareness, and seeded through blogs and guerilla marketing. There were a number of web properties built for the campaign including a website, a Facebook group and a blog.

Over the course of play, the game changed and players reached out to each other through social media channels outside of the established properties. With this change in strategy, the brand was forced to change how they supported the game. They also worked with bloggers and Facebook group owners to seed clues. Their flexibility only added to the excitement of the game and encouraged more participation. Overall, it was a very successful campaign.

Managing the Experience
Both presentations got me thinking about how all-encompassing a user or brand experience can be. Seeing how the 33 keys project grew organically from their own properties to blogs and social networks, I wondered if it's even possible to manage the experience. Also, seeing how eView360 carries the brand through to physical spaces, I thought about how quickly a brand can be lost once outside the print or web space.

So, how do we help users experience a brand through multiple mediums?

• Create continuity. Consider all the places where your customers interact with your brand and make sure they're consistent.

• Think about your leitmotif. What cues can your customers feel that let them know when they're in your space, be that physical, cyber or print?

• Plan for change. As with 33keys, customers may pick up on your brand and run with it.

• Generate novel ideas. What would you do (or have you tried)?

Anthony Viviano
Sarah Jo Sautter

Does Your Lifestyle Match Your City?

2009-07-01T13:58:24Z

While checking out award-winning work, I came across a cool (no pun intended) financial management site: Mint.

Mint is a free service and provides budgeting tools directly tied to all of your bank accounts. Once you set up your accounts, Mint will pull this information every time you log in, and categorize it by expense type. You can even add tags to expenses, like Reimbursable, Tax-related, Vacation, etc., so you can keep your expenses organized. Mint also displays your expenses by percentages in a clickable pie chart that lets you click down to the basic categories and then expand details on what your actual expenses were. This is great because it gives you a visual tool for analyzing how much you're spending on, say Food -- What percentage is on Restaurants, on Groceries or on... (gasp!) Fast Food!

Two other cool features in Mint are the ability to set budget amounts for yourself and see where you are at with expenses (how much you've exceed or are under budget in a given month), and the ability to see how much you spend in a given category compared to others in a selected city. So you can easily figure out if your lifestyle matches the city you're living in, whether another city might better fit your spending lifestyle, or whether-since your neighbors are doing it-you shouldn't feel guilty spending a little more on this or that!

Other features on Mint.com include savings and investment tools, so you can see what you're saving and invest it wisely - all within the same online application. All in all, Mint is a great online tool, especially if you have bank accounts at different banks and want to manage your overall budget in the same place.

Stephanie Jorgl

Buy on the tweet, sell on the fact

2009-06-30T15:10:55Z

Tapping into the herd through social media has been a goal for investors for some time. Collective Intellect (founded in 2005 for this sole purpose) and Dow Jones Insights are listening platforms that specialize in this area. Late last year Stocktwits became the first Twitter based service based on investment discussion and has been driving change in the way that many day traders discuss and evaluate stocks. But if there was any question about social media having a measurable impact on trading, that has been quashed with the latest announcement that StreamBase Systems is integrating Twitter with its Complex Event Processing (CEP) platform for money managers and traders.

"Users of StreamBase's Twitter adapter can combine Twitter with market data and build data management applications, says StreamBase CTO Richard Tibbetts. In particular, Twitter can be used as a crowd sourcing tool to help gauge people's sentiment towards a particular event or stock. "It's really useful for sentiment analysis, which traders can then use to help them make trading decisions," he adds. Nasir Zubairi, former product manager for algorithmic trading and FX E-commerce, RBS, points out that as Twitter continues to gain sweeping adoption across the globe, it will increasingly become a key medium to convey information to the financial world too."

Now the question becomes: What impact will this have on stock values?

Will more information make the markets more efficient? The lightening speed of information transfer on Twitter will allow traders to price in news more quickly. Case in point, both Michael Jackson's passing and civil unrest in Iran were all over Twitter before there was any news coverage that would appear in a trader's feed from Bloomberg or Reuters.

Or will misinformation and group think lead to more volatility? If traders act on the earliest rumors the impact on market value of stocks becomes self reinforcing and may amplify the natural tendency of the market to bubble and bust.

Regardless of the answer, it is guaranteed that day traders not plugged into social media will be at a disadvantage.

Thanks to Fang-Lu Lin for the link.

Russ Hopkinson

Let Ford Recycle Your Ride

2009-06-29T16:22:55Z

Ford is responding to the recent Cash for Clunkers legislation with a mini-site that provides information on the program. More importantly, they have a selector that will help you determine whether your current vehicle qualifies as a clunker. If it does qualify they display the Ford vehicles that will achieve MPG gains to get the $4500 and $3500 payouts. http://www.letfordrecycleyourride.com/ Beautiful? No, probably not. Useful? Absolutely. Within minutes (or less) I knew if my car qualified and what Ford vehicles I should consider to qualify for the for clunker payout. For this program, that is the critical info consumers need. Richard Liechty

ThreeMinds Weekly Digest 06.26.09

2009-06-26T14:20:14Z

This week was the week of social media rumors. When the King of Pop died, Twitter's usefulness shined as links to the latest news stories were shared. So much conversation was going on that it consumed 30% of the tweets that hour. However, with the good information came the bad. All the sudden the twitter feed was filled with fake stories about the demise of other celebrities. Other misinformation was propagated this week as journalists (despite being transparent) failed to understand the exact motivations and implications of Facebook adding public content sharing. In the end, it looks like a lot less is changing than some had feared and others had hoped. Users can choice to make certain updates available to the wide wide public, but that will not be the default choice. More rumors... What is Twitter's plan for monetization? Is it shopping recommendations (@EV says no no no) or added services for corporate accounts? And what is the deal with this upcoming Facebook Movie? Michael Cera as Mark Zuckerberg? Let's hope that one stays a rumor. Marta Strickland

The Prototype Experience pulls your Facebook data... and pulls you in deep

2009-06-25T19:03:00Z

As the shimmering waters of Facebook, Twitter and other social spheres are opened, many marketers are diving in the shallow end head first and hoping that the API waterwings their social media guru has supplied will keep them afloat.

I blogged about a few of these examples here, listing some brands gasping for air as their Twitter API "strategy" gets pulled from their lungs, and others just treading water.

Enter Prototype-Experience.com, a console game site (the Mitch Buchanan of this metaphor), where users link the Prototype trailer with their social graph and assets via Facebook Connect.

Users are bombarded by a seamless mashup of Prototype's character, "Alex's" monologue, brooding and hunting for purpose, deftly injected with their own Facebook biography, photos and friends. It should be noted, too, that some of the user's friends, relatives and sons and daughters faces are "erased" using face recognition and a creepy scratching animation.

The effect was experienced by several Organics, spurring much conversation:

Dean McRobie states, "I did NOT enjoying watching the experience scribble tentacles across my 7 year old daughters face," but asks, "What happens when this kind of social presence mashup gets applied to something like BigStage. Real time, 3d models of you, superimposed on movies, commercials, tv shows? Will your social graph end up staring in things you watch? Will marketers what to have your best friend sell you stuff? Is a digital version of you, created in someone else's social media space really you? In 2 years, will we be able to tell?"

Tomas Roldan gushed, "I found this use of social media integration to be the first truly engaging online digital experience I have had in years... The cleverly simulated horror of seeing my loved ones and my personal information embedded in a sci-fi horror action-game ad was very well done."

Chad Stoller reminded us of Dr. Awesome on the iPhone, personalizing gameplay with address book data, "These types of elements always tend to work to enhance the experience and prolong game play."

Madi Benjamin wondered if the "real game does the same thing or am I just this "Alex" character and all this funky personalization is lost? Seems like a waste to hook you in like that and then not to follow-up on that promise... Part of the intrigue for me would have been where and when someone or something I recognize would pop up."

The bottom line? The execution of the API hook fits the story of the game, and the "jarring" experience of seeing one's personal info embedded in the trailer along with friends' faces being ripped from photos hits the target market.

This is one exceptional experience that uses the Facebook API effectively and authentically. Users expect nothing less, after all, they're swimming laps in the deep end of social media -- marketers are the ones in the shallow end.

Craig Ritchie

Tweets, Volleys, and Layers: How Top Creatives Go Head To Head

2009-06-25T13:56:42Z

Have you heard of Layer Tennis? In short it's two creatives going head to head in battle of skills. The match involves both combatants swapping a single file back & forth in realtime with 15 minutes to complete their "volley". After each volley, commentary is provided by an independent 3rd party. Winners are determined by voting via Twitter by including the #LYT hastah + the contestant of choice. Friday's match featured Shaun Inman vs. Aaron Scamihorn, and was won by Shaun Inman with his final "volley": Sheep Not Found aka Layer 10. If you're interested the semi-finals are scheduled to kick off tomorrow, June 26th, and the finals will be on July 10th. Very fun to follow along. Also - as an FYI, Layer Tennis is sponsored by Adobe Creative Suite 4. Patrick Dunphy

Hunch, A New Kind Of Search Engine

2009-06-24T14:00:02Z

Caterina Fake, who previously cofounded the photo-sharing site Flickr has cofounded a new search engine named Hunch, which launched Monday 6/15/09.

What differentiates Hunch from other search engines is that rather than focusing on delivering an answer to specific questions (Where can I get Chinese takeout, 10018) Hunch seeks to deliver recommendations to less defined questions (What should I make for dinner tonight?).

Hunch starts off by asking you a few multiple choice questions to develop your profile. You can create an account and save your profile, or the Hunch site can keep track of your answers via cookies (of course you'll need to answer the questions again if you use another computer). If you create an account, you have the opportunity to "Teach Hunch About You" by answering even more questions. This information is used to help Hunch make recommendations that are relevant to you and your preferences. Once Hunch makes its recommendations, you can let the engine know if the recommendations were good or not. This data is also saved and used to adjust future recommendations. Hunch uses all this information to group people based on their answers. The next time you ask a question. It will try to give you recommendations based on the group's answers.

Besides the profile questions, when you start your search you have to answer a series of survey question on the topic you are searching. "Do you like spicy food?", "Are you a vegetarian?", etc. These are used to determine your final recommendations. Hunch recommended I make Jambalaya, which I thought was a great recommendation (even though I decided I didn't want to cook at all last night).

While the site offers an interesting approach to search, it will take many users who will have to literally answer hundreds of questions, for the engine's algorithms to be robust enough to actually offer relevant answers - I stopped just after answering my 200th question, and there was no indication of how many more questions there were. Though it might be cool to get recommendations based on what other people - with similar profiles - have answered... is it worth the hours you'll spend creating a profile when you can chat with a friend?

Hunch has also declared it won't share this data, but if the site takes off, it would be interesting to see what other uses this data might be applicable to. Information like this could make targeted ads VERY targeted...

Madi Benjamin

Yahoo Mail Is Stepping It Up

2009-06-23T13:54:15Z

When new CEO Carol Bartz took the reign at Yahoo she promised to shake things up a bit and she held true to her promise. For the past several month, Yahoo has improved their UI and discontinued less popular services like the 'briefcase". Last week they launched access to "applications" right from your Yahoo inbox. I love the direction they are going. I have been using Yahoo Mail for as long as I can think and must admit I never got used to the Gmail interface. I might be a bit old fashioned that way.

Y! Mail also launched the "Connections Bar" a few weeks ago, but it seems to be removed from the interface now. I believe it is an attempt to integrate popular social networking features into your mailbox. The only issue is that you have to invite people to become connections and then it just seems like a filter for your inbox. Hopefully they have some more ideas to make this feature more valuable.

I like that they are making an effort to improve their services. I did, however, notice that Yahoo has a tendency to launch buggy services. Maybe they put more emphasis on speed to market and less on quality. I did just get a serious browser error when I tried to active my Flickr account in the application below. Generally I am a firm believer in high quality, because to me, first impressions can make or break a deal. Plus some folks may never go back and try it a second time if it hasn't worked the first time. Well...I cut the folks at Yahoo some slack because I like my Y! Mail.

How do you feel about companies being too quick to launch something that still has a few kinks?

Sonja Scharrer

Your customers may not know what your product is - and they may not care

2009-06-22T06:59:19Z

This video by Google illustrates several issues that have been plaguing product and brand managers, UxDs (user-experience designers) and IAs (information architects) and most obviously, the general public. Google asks "What is a browser," only to find that less than 8% of those polled have an understanding of the term. (It is, by the way, "a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web" - Wikipedia; e.g. Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft's Internet Explorer (The big blue 'E'))

For Branders
For those of us concerned with brand definition, the example is clear: Google checks to see if people ~~understand how Chrome is better~~ even have a basic understanding of the term "browser," and find that the confusion has hardly cleared up over the past 15 years, since graphical browser use became widespread in the mid-'90s. Back then, users thought they "used Yahoo!" to surf the information superhighway, and as we see here, they still believe the same.

For Google Chrome achieve any penetration in this market, the big G needs to focus on not only defining and demonstrating Chrome's unique value, but also educating the public on the very basic concepts of "browsing," and "applications." This is no small task, as Firefox has long been fighting this battle and making slow gains against the IE giant, mostly through word-of-mouth from passionate advocates, again illustrated in the Google video. (I, personally, have done this on many occasions, wiping IE from friends' and families' hard drives in a Firefox coup.)

For IAers
For those of us concerned with interface design, the interviews illustrate the need for simplicity. This video may make you consider an edit or two if your web site copy includes the call-to-action "Download to your browser," or similar industry-insider phrases. On a more macro level, the interviews highlight the importance of maintaining a holistic view of the web experience.

If your users don't really understand what a browser is, do they know when they are on your web site, or is your vanity URL confusing this; perhaps they're on an "unofficial" site created by a passionate fan?

If your users don't really understand what a browser is, do they think they have to come through Google or Yahoo! to reach your site? Do you show up (positively) there?

If your users don't really understand what a browser is, are they savvy enough to find their way through your site; are they stymied by nomenclature that is cloaked in your brand's jargon or Internet industry jargon?

I don't care what a browser is.

Ultimately, this video illustrates the fact that people don't really care how they get what they want online, just that they get it. The best thing your brand, product or digital experience can do is make it easy and understandable for your customers.

So for product and brand managers; UxDs and IAs, the questions become, does your market know what your brand promises? Do they know what your product does? Do they know what that button does or where that link goes?

Or, does your market make assumptions about your product, lumping it in with a lesser offering, mistaking it for your competition, or for a completely different idea?

If so, you have a lot of work to do. Maybe it's time to hit the pavement and get some real insight from real customers.

Craig Ritchie

ThreeMinds Weekly Digest 06.19.09

2009-06-19T19:07:54Z

Now the big, big news story this week was the developments surrounding the #IranElection, at its peak bringing in more than 220,000 Tweets Per Hour. But the new and profound impact of the tool Twitter is much too large for this article, which is why Bridget was kind enough to have written something specifically about it. Old Rivals, New Rivals: What Happened This Week? While Microsoft and Google have been battling it out for a while... who could woo Yahoo!, who would own the world of online documents (Google Docs or Office Live). But, now the battle has a new twist called Bing. While they will likely not overtake Google any time soon, Bing's traffic and buzz keeps growing. For a Microsoft launch, it is refreshingly positive, and that has Google shaking. Next... it seems as though the Facebook saga has closed a chapter, and opened a new one. As MySpace slashes much of its staff (signaling the end?), Facebook readies a rival to Twitter Search. Facebook continues to grow, not just getting bigger, but reaching out to an older demographic. Over 1 Billion chat messages are sent per day, and over the weekend close to 6 million people registered custom usernames. Oh yeah... and then there was something about a new phone coming out this week :) Marta Strickland

Do Social Media Marketers Dream Of Monitoring Tools?

2009-06-19T14:06:24Z

There are a plethora of social media monitoring tools out there now. As they jostle and tousle with each other tantalizing potential clients with colorful charts, demos and trial accounts, I'm still left wondering where this technology will wind up. Will it go the way of the search engines and eventually wind up with just a few mega players? (OK, really one.)

I first started looking at social monitoring tools back in November of 2007. Since then there have been huge advances in the capabilities included in these platforms and some level of convergence in the capabilities in the top players.

Next week I will be representing Organic on an OMMA Social panel called "Choosing a Social Monitoring Tool: How to Find the Right Fit." At Organic we are are continually reviewing tools, and currently using Sysomos. In the review of numerous tools, I've created my dream list for a social monitoring tool:

1. Easy self-service set up of topics and queries.
2. Efficient filtering of topics.
3. Delivery of results in real-time.
4. Sentiment analysis.
5. Trending Data.
6. Comparison to competitive information.
7. Identification of conversation "themes" around a topic.
8. Identification of Influencers or "influential posts."
9. Demographic Information.
10. Respond to and track engagement.

But what exactly does that top 10 dream list mean?

1. Easy self-service set up of topics and queries. Some platforms require that you submit a "brief" to their customer service team to set up a new topic. Even with the most responsive of teams, this can mean a clunky time lag in getting your hands on the data. The best tools are so intuitively built that you barely need training to figure out how to set up and refine a topic. Most of us have become fairly savvy searchers from using traditional search engines, so social monitoring tools should really leverage this resident knowledge. When was the last time you needed Google training?

Beyond the set up of queries is the easy, dynamic ability to create and export analysis charts and graphs. Unfortunately, many tools have fancy-pants interfaces that do cool stuff, but need a manual to figure out how to use or get to them. In this point in the digital evolution, social media monitoring tools should not be excused from designing intuitive interfaces just because they are part of a new frontier.

2. Efficient filtering of topics. This probably seems stunningly obvious, but often it is still poorly done. The ideal tool is a combination of both depth and breadth--it scans all possible media, yet returns only the most relevant results. Recently a review comparing Scout Labs and Radian6 noted the variations in the search results the two companies returned. One provided more depth (Radian6) while the other did a better job of searching video and images (Scout Labs).

My ideal company scans the full breadth of the web--this should include the ability to turn on or off traditional media as well as include social media. Social media types should include the usual suspects: blogs, message board and forums, microblogging, wikis, social networks (the public areas), video and photo-sharing sites.

When it comes to video, note most companies are only able to crawl the tags of the video to determine relevance. Last year, I saw this ability to "read" video in a proprietary agency product I reviewed. I am looking forward to when the ability to scan actual video content is more widely available.

3. Delivery of results in real-time. A vendor who will remain nameless mentioned to me it took two weeks to a month to set up a new topic and return results (!) and I have also seen immediate set up, but a week for results to "fully populate." Or there are the services that hang for minutes, even hours if the request is for a broad topic (say "beer.") In my dream world, all results show up in seconds. Period.

4. Sentiment analysis. Scoring of positive and negative comment sentiment can get a bit controversial. Some companies do this manually, some automate and still others use some combination of the two. This is definitely is getting better, but in my estimation still needs a lot of refinement. The best automated rates for sentiment accuracy I have heard are 72%, but most companies hover in the low 60s.

Manual methods are more accurate, but of course take more time to return results. Automated results are delivered instantaneously, but the inaccuracy can turn into a lot of wasted time spent time reviewing mentions that are not relevant. The hybrid method employs an automated engine that then is corrected manually and thus "learns" to provide results that are more accurate. This "learning" model is probably the most accurate, but is most effective for ongoing monitoring (versus quick research) since the initial results can be off until the algorithm is refined.

5. Trending Data. This applies to both the topic results (number of mentions) as well as sentiment data. The ability to look at the sentiment and mentions over a period of time puts more context around a point in time snapshot. The ability to do live drill-downs into trending charts (all the way to individual mentions if you want) is a huge bonus. This can be critical in trying to determine cause and effect of other factors--like media campaigns, product announcements or scandals.

Which leads me to a related topic--historical data. Until recently, many platforms couldn't give more than about 30 days worth of retroactive data. Now I'm starting to see claims of 90 days and even years. If you are talking to monitoring vendors, definitely ask how far back their data goes--and test it out.

6. Comparison to competitive information. Trending data is great. It's even more great when I can look at the same data set for a competitive brand, product or company. When we speak to marketing managers the question is always "how are we doing in the social space?" Raw numbers or trends alone never seem to satisfy the thirst for the answer. Comparison to a rival is what really seems to have resonance. This functionality of course does not always have to have a competitive spirit; the ability to compare two issues or topics to see if their trends correlate can also be valuable.

7. Identification of conversation "themes" around a topic. This can unearth some really cool stuff. Typical methodology is the monitoring tool crawls the topic results, surfacing themes in the conversation you might not have noticed with the naked eye. For one credit card client, it was discovered that the majority of the "buzz" around their brand was driven by their sports sponsorship. It led to a recommendation that they should be doing more to leverage that natural conversation level. Without this cross indexing functionality, this insight would not likely have been discovered.

8. Identification of Influencers or "influential posts." Every monitoring company has its own algorithm how they define "Influencer" and "influential." For Influencers, it is usually some combination of relevance of their content to the topic, number of comments around the topic, number of people who view/comment on the content and the number of people who have linked to the content. A similar combination can be used for an influential post--with more focus on the number of views, comments and links related to the post. When talking to companies, I suggest pressing them for how they come up with these rankings and make sure it resonates with how you would approach it yourself.

I love "top ten" Influencers and influential posts. Being able to pinpoint Influencers can be a critical part a broader social media strategy. So the ability to easily find and target them is useful. "Influential posts" are an important addition, because in the new world order of UGC, often it is not just the "Influencers" who create the "influential posts."

9. Demographic Information. This is a welcome addition that I didn't see much of when social monitoring tools first came out. This provides the ability to slice and dice your mentions by demographic information like age, gender or even region of the country. How interesting for us to discover that most of the conversation on the web around a sensitive female condition was being conducted by young, male doctors! It led to a recommendation to consider the medical community in the social strategy.

10. Respond to and track engagement. Early on it was only the tools linked to PR agencies, but now it is common for social media monitoring tools to offer the ability to respond directly to comments, track and record responses, or even assign follow-up responsibilities to colleagues. This workflow management capability can be the key to turning a social strategy that is initially just "listening" into one that actively responds to and engages consumers.

The "community manager" role is becoming a growing need for many of our clients. This key player has the responsibility not just for our client's on site "community" but also seeks out and responds to relevant conversations across the web. The ability to track, quantify and review responses in this uncharted territory is key to tracking the success of this new media role.

I have intentionally stayed away from endorsing (or trashing) any particular tool. But I would be remiss without mentioning some of the players I have reviewed along the way: NetworkedInsights, Radian6 , CollectiveIntellect, Scout Labs, Buzzient, and TruCast. I've also had the chance to peak at some of the agency proprietary tools like Waggoner Edstrom's Narrative Networks, FutureGroup's PropheSEE. More recently I've been introduced to Techrigy, My BuzzMetrics and of course Sysomos.

This is by no means a comprehensive list. The landscape is constantly changing as evidenced by an announcement by PR Newswire earlier this month that they are launching Social Media Metrics a tool that "enables communications professionals and marketers to monitor, analyze and measure the impact of what is being said about an organization, brand, spokesperson or competitor across the social media landscape." Sounds like what we're all trying to do.

Stay tuned for an updated post after the panel discussion next week.

Anna Banks

AR on the move: SPRXmobile's Layar and Nokia's Point & Find

2009-06-18T18:00:00Z

Dutch company SPRXmobile has launched Layar - "the world's first mobile Augmented Reality browser", as they call it - for Android. However, Nokia has a similar concept, Point & Find, that we first reported on Threeminds in last December, which is now available for download (in beta) in the US and UK.

The basic concept of both Layar, Point & Find, and Wikitude, another AR "browser" for the Android OS, is this: point your phone's camera at the real life view around you. The software then aggregates the data from the phone's compass and GPS coordinates to understand where you're standing and what you're looking at, and applies a visual information layer on top of the camera display. Layar has a few content partnerships incl. a bank, a social networking site, and a realty company which allows Layar to identify houses for sale. Nokia's Point & Find seems to focus on movies right now, allowing the user to point the camera at a movie poster and watch the trailer, check show times and read reviews. Wikitude uses Wikipedia to pull in travel information.

Layar will be available this month in The Netherlands via the Android Market, and launch later this year in the US, Germany and the UK.

UPDATE: Looks like Nokia Point & Find includes something even cooler that I forgot to mention earlier: the Nokia Point & Find Management Portal. It's an editor that lets users create their own mobile AR experiences. According to Nokia BetaLabs, the Camden Crawl music festival in London has already done so. I haven't had time to test the Portal myself yet, but if it actually works well, this is pretty great. Watch this video that introduces the Portal.

Karri Ojanen

Can Twitter Fuel A Revolution?

2009-06-18T11:27:33Z

Until recently, the buzz about Twitter had been almost entirely focused either on its explosive growth or on challenges to its cool cred (how many instances of "Twitter" can be found paired alongside "jumped the shark" in online posts? About 43,500 according to Google). Then, #IranElection happened. Now, the conversation has turned from Ashton Kutcher to how social media may supplant traditional communication channels in times of crisis or dissent. While foreign news coverage is being severely curtailed and reporters are being kicked out of Iran, satellite coverage cut off, and state news is... well... being run by the state, at least a few tech-savvy citizens on the ground are finding ways to break through government-mandated blackout via Twitter and other social media services. With its unique capability to post user reports via SMS, the Web or other applications, protesters are embracing Twitter as a tool to pass along eyewitness reports ("police are acting party on protesters side"), assist others ("Help protect the bloggers in Iran: change your settings so that your location is TEHRAN & your time zone is GMT +3.30"), and organize ("demonstration Wednesday at 4:00 pm from Enghelab Sq. to Azadi Sq."). Expats and others supporting the protesters are in turn forwarding their tweets and posting their photos and videos on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and other social media aggregators for the world to see. The Iranian government has responded by attempting to shut off access to social media properties, although many are getting through via proxies set up by others outside of Iran to access the blocked sites. Others like our very own State Department are quietly helping as well, requesting that Twitter delay scheduled maintenance earlier in the week to avoid disrupting communications in Iran. Whether this will make the difference for Iranians hoping for democratic legitimacy or greater freedoms remains to be seen. While protesters are so far successfully transmitting their message to the world, the world may have a difficult time interpreting what it all means. The sheer number of posts (#iranelection is the top trending Twitter topic) are mostly unverifiable without an independent press. Anonymous or third party posters make it almost impossible to know who to trust. And the messages that are getting out are deeply local and personal rather than analytical or contextual in nature. All of this makes it easy for the world to get caught up in the rush of events, but makes it difficult to assess actual impact. Can Twitter fuel a revolution? For more analysis and information on how the post-election protests are being waged via social media, check out the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/5446 Bridget McKinley

More prototyping

2009-06-17T14:00:00Z

Adobe has joined the list of companies making tools for rapid prototyping with the Flash Catalyst. Formerly known by its codename Thermo, Catalyst - according to Adobe - is "a design tool for user interface designers" that will enable them to develop rich UI.

Currently available for download in beta, Catalyst first appears like a Flash version of Axure. But there is a major difference: where in Axure you most likely create prototypes out of wireframe-style templates, drawings, and widgets, in Catalyst you can import actual design files created in Illustrator or Photoshop, create interactions, and then send the file off to a developer who can work with the same file to create the final product. Of course, you could choose to work in Catalyst with wireframe-style visuals at an earlier stage of development, but clearly Adobe has had just the visual designer and developer in mind, without thinking of throwing a dedicated Experience Architect in the mix.

Catalyst generates MXML, the XML-based language that is used to describe Flex content, and, according to Adobe, the code is very clean and human-readable so that developers will indeed be able to work with it without having to clean it up first.

I've downloaded the beta version and have played around with it a couple times. It's an interesting concept that I will follow up with, but I'm a little sceptic about the way Adobe seems to see the design process.

Karri Ojanen