These are my links for July 23rd through July 27th:

  • The Subjective Web: Semantic Evolution – A nice, easy to understand article on what the Semantic Web will mean for searching and finding information online, by Raymond Bentinck.
  • International SEO – An informative 26-page e-book by Hallam Internet which gives some great advice on considering your options for an international website – considering different trends in search, findability and language.
  • Facebook to launch PayPal-style ‘Credits’ in September – I'm sure we've been here before but it seems that Facebook will be launching their own credit system, going head to head with Paypal to allow users to pay for physical and virtual goods within the network. If anyone can take on PayPal it's Facebook – but the jury is out as to how many of it's users will adopt it. If this works well for micropayments this could be a big step in allowing all kinds of transaction models.
  • Companies Throw Their Weight Behind Online Video – State-side, we're seeing more and more growth in online video, with the vast majority of Top 50 retail companies now using video for product advertising and video blogging. The growth of video for marketing looks set to continue onwards and upwards.
  • Reality Check: Just Six Percent Of TV Viewing Is Non-Linear – As us people of the future wax lyrical about time-shifted TV and video-on-demand, the stark reality is that although many people do watch VOD channels, it only accounts for 6% of TV viewing time. It seems people are happy, after all, with scheduled TV.
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These are my links for May 4th through May 9th:

  • Interview With Will Page, Music Industry Economist – Great in-depth interview with a very clever man, Mr Wil Page, the Economist of the UK's Peforming Rights Society (music collection agency) on the importance of UK's successful digital sales industry, the weakness of the 'Long Tail Model' and why Spotify and Trent Reznor are worth investigating.
  • Digital Strategy: How To Develop a Digital Strategy: Part 1 – Great article by Rich Nadworny on the processes (methodologies and thought processes) he uses as a digital strategist. These basically form into two phases: research and intelligence gathering, followed by setting goals and objectives. For my own work I use a variation of these tools – essentially focusing on people and the organisation, followed by intelligence gathering then goal setting/measuring. I'll be blogging more on my own methodologies soon, in meantime sign up to Rich's blog for Part 2.
  • 7 things people get wrong about the Internet and TV – An interesting take on why the internet is not killing TV: far from it, video/web TV needs the maturity of the TV model to succeed. I also read a report this week that suggest that when people are surveyed about their media viewing habits they usually underestimate TV hours viewed, and over-estimate web video. All in all, David Lynch was wrong – TV isn't dead (yet).
  • Digital Strategy: How To Develop a Digital Strategy: Part 1 – "Digital strategy, simply put, is a plan to use digital, two-way media to communicate with other people. The keys in that sentence are: plan, digital, two-way." Great article by Rich Nadworthy neatly summarising exactly what digital strategy is about: different areas of detailed research followed by setting goals and objectives.
  • Strategy’s Golden Rule – The one golden rule of strategy: don't try and beat the competition incrementally, but find out what they do badly, then aim to be great at that. Using the example of Apple's bad customer service and others, this is a strong lessons in reinventing the rules of disruptive innovation.
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These are my links for April 30th through May 3rd:

  • Wooshii – the new place to buy, sell and view rich media and online video – Another 'marketplace' service where you can specifically buy video, animation, music and rich media services for web. Looks like there's a good spread of international producers active here – couild be useful if you're producing rich media product on a tight timescale and budget.
  • Emotional Interface Design: The Gateway to Passionate Users – Another super articles from the web development gurus over at Carsonified (a rare example of an international, outward facing UK digital co) looking at how personal branding and positive emotional connection can be made through good design, including examples like 'Feathers', the tweeting bird that changes colour as your reach your character limit. Relating online user needs to Maslow's Hierachy of Needs, we need to be reaching not just functional but pleasurable services for users.
  • Audio Hosting Sites for Web Series Producers – Audio doesn't have that one stop 'destination' feel like video has with the mighty YouTube, which makes it hard for audio producers to know where is the best place for them to host (or podcast) their audio. Storygas gives their view on the benefits of several audio hosting services with demo videos (the irony!). It seems far more nowadays that audio producer have to create their own audiences, although there is still demand on YouTube for audio only streaming (or 'radio with pictures' as I heard one radio producer call it).
  • What can TV’s Embarrassing Bodies teach the healthcare industry? – Here's an article I wrote for the Healthcare Engagement Strategy e-journal about the Channel 4 TV show and website Embarrassing Bodies, which was extremely successful at engaging TV and web audiences in important medical issues. I interviewed Channel 4 Commissioner Adam Gee and Maverick Television's Jonnie Turpie.
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These are my links for March 29th from 01:03 to 01:35:

  • Taking The Tablet: 15 Ways Publishers Are Re-Imagining The Magazine – Great set of video and text articles looking at how publishers are creating new work and experiences for tablet readers (including Adobe AIR and iPad) which provide rich, multimedia ways for users to interact with texts and advertisements to create enhanced experiences which complement the high value and branding associated with the magazines. The aim being not merely to provide content but experiences which can be monteized.
  • The Democratization of Video Content Creation – Visible Gains, the monetizing video service, sing the praises of cheap, portable HD cameras like Kodak Zi6 and Flip as a source for creating competitive advantage in the organisation: "buy handheld high-definition cameras and distribute them to your best spokespeople and writers. Today’s evolving marketplace requires that you create compelling content to engage your clients and prospects. These are wonderful tools that jump-start the process." My own HD camera weapon of choice is the affordable Kodak Zi6 (c.£70), an HD camera recommended to me by several video bloggers. With free edit software included, there really is no excuse needed to star video blogging and reporting on what your business does.
  • Mediacamp Nottingham: social reporting from CreativeNottingham.com – Yesterday I was live reporting the Medicamp Nottingham (a digital media barcamp) event for my online community site CreativeNottingham.com. This was my first experiment in 'social reporting' – using online tools to capture and disseminate an event. Our experiment was all about real-time reporting – capturing as close to live reports as possible. This included using 'CoverItLive' to live blog key talks (which were updated in realtime on the website), very quick event reports (my the end of the day I'd worked out how to report, photograph the room and upload the blog post by the end of each session), short audio and video interviews with speakers and delegates and photographs uploaded throughout the day. We used our community website www.creativenottingham.posterous.com as a repository for media content. A good (tiring) day, lots of lessons learnt as to how to do it better next time.
  • Does The Times’s New Paywall Add Up? – June 2010 (presumably after the election) will see a landmark event in UK online publishing: The Times will sit all their content behind a paywall costing online readers £1 day (the same cost as the print edition. Ouch). Commentator Nick Thomas at Forrester Research looks at the economics, which is likely to see a reduction in readership to a tiny 60,000. The Times believe the niche, commited readership will still attract quality advertisers. This is a significant event as other news publishers will be likely to either follow suite or move to freemium based models (under discussion for The Independent) embracing building larger pools of readers and online audiences. Murdoch may be a brave fool with this move, yet he may also have hit on a way to change the online economy – force those who value to pay.
  • Women in TV: the missing 5,000 – A shocking report from the Edinburgh TV festival showing that 5,000 women left the TV industry last year, versus 750 men. The festival's panellists irated the audience by suggesting freelancers should pull themselves together, whereas many women feel the inflexible working practices mean that women are simply forced out of the industry when they want to start a family. The TV crisis is unlikely to see any major changes in working practices but hopefully sparking a debate will put the issue at the forefront of agencies like Pact and Skillset.
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These are my links for March 23rd from 09:22 to 23:16:

  • Scrolling and Attention – Jacob Nielsen, usability legend, with some very interesting research on user experience tracking in relation to below-the-fold content: 80% of users ONLY read what's above the fold, but some layout that encourage scrolling can still command attention.
  • 5 days until Mediacamp, Nottingham’s first barcamp for creative media March 27 – If you're not following me on Twitter (please do, I'm @susioneill) I may have been remise to inform you that we're once again hosting another Mediacamp in Nottingham this Saturday. It's a day long energised discussion, presentation and exploration barcamp to discuss all aspects of how digital media is rocking our world. I'll be experimenting with social reporting, capturing highlights of the day for our website www.creativenottingham.com, and hosting a session to talk about the CreativeNottingham project and our plans. <br />
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    The event is currently sold out – if you *really* want to come email me (susi@digitalconsultant.co.uk) and I'll see if I can help, otherwise they'll be live streaming of the main hall and live reporting on CreativeNottingham.com.
  • How to build Augmented Reality into your digital strategy – Augmented reality – building in a layer of digital information and content into real world places – is the next real innovation from the future that's already hitting our world through services like Google Goggles and Layar. This article talks about how you can bring AR into your brand's digital strategy.
  • Project Canvas is open and standardised – and great for consumers – The CEO of video-on-demand service Blinkbox counteracts Sky's claims that Project Canvas, providing a standardised broadband to TV service, will be bad for business. He counteracts that producers are aggregators will be able to delivery pay-as-you-watch programming and in will generative innovative 'apps' like for the iphone to provided added value services through the open network. I can't wait – this could be yet another exciting platform for technologies and video producers.
  • Creative funding database – Although I'm sure this is probably the same data as the funding database on Business Link site, this creative funding/business support from the excellent Creative Choices skills website works very well, it's easy to use and seems to be pretty comprehensive.
  • Conservatives’ ‘Cash Gordon’ web campaign backfires – And in the blue corner, the Tories have made a pigs ear of their latest venture to discredit Brown. 'Cash Gordon' site had a rent-a-crowd vibe, and was based on a back-end system used by right-wing lobbying groups against healthcare reform in the US. Trolls quickly hacked the site and used the unmoderated hashtag's on the site's display to make a disparaging remark or two. Well done Tories for going web 2.0, poor show on making such a #hashtag of it. Lessons learnt: although an election is a fast and furious thing, it's essential to allow time for user-testing of a site launch, rather than a very public flop.
  • Brown outlines advanced UK digital strategy – As we're all on tenderhooks for the notice of the UK election date, the parties are lining up their policies. In the red corner, Brown the encumbent plans to introduce two new bodies to advance the digital economy, An Institute fo Web Science headed up by web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, and a digital public service unit led by Last Minute.com founder and digital inclusion champion Martha Lane-Fox (one has to have double-barrelled names to succeed nowadays in government). Whilst creating two new quangos, Brown dashes against the rest, replacing 'first gen' e-government with an integrated MyGov portal (cue expensive new makeover). It will be interesting to see how the development of this policy unfolds, particularly in line with the forthcoming digital economy bill and whether this does progress through parliament despite public uproar.
  • Direct Marketing 2.0 – You are what you click – Net Imperative article briefing on how user insight and split-run testing can help to build better return on investment as part of a digital strategy. Some important lessons here like 'rubbish in, rubbish out' data sources, and the idea of an A-Z rather than A-B, testing iteratively all aspects of a campaign or conversion web page as an ongoing beta.
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