January 2006 - Posts

• Form over Substance

  Steve Rubel's immediate response to Yahoo's apparent acknowledgement of Google' s unassailable ascendancy in the sphere of search was to proclaim: "That's it...I have no interest in using a product that the company doesn't aspire to make best of breed." Read More... Posted 31 January 2006 11:51 by Guy Howard | 0 Comments

• Windows Live Updates

  MSN's presentation facility in Great Pulteney Street has been done up to resemble the sort of compact swimming pool you tend to find in Docklands apartment blocks, c omplete with navy and white mosaic around the borders, porthole windows and carpet tiles Read More... Posted 27 January 2006 11:15 by Guy Howard | 0 Comments

• Media Mash-Up

  There was an interesting article in the New York Times today about convergence . Not so long ago this term usually conjured up images of strange hardware hybrids, but now that the masses are themselves becoming an increasingly vibrant part of the mass Read More... Posted 26 January 2006 17:22 by Guy Howard | 0 Comments

• First Impressions

  An article in Nature this week suggests that we make up our minds about websites within 50 milliseconds of viewing them. These brief glimpses can have a lasting impact known as the "halo effect" whereby minor faults are thereafter overlooked. As we tend Read More... Posted 19 January 2006 15:52 by Guy Howard | 1 Comments

• Consumer-generated media guide

  There's a handy guide to consumer-generated media in this months' CorpComms magazine, sponsored by us. It's a non-threatening introduction to the world of blogs, podcasts and community media, written specifically for the corporate communicator. We hope Read More... Posted 16 January 2006 14:31 by Niall Cook | 0 Comments

• Not quite the Real Thing

  Kevin Kelly's decade-old but still seminal book Out of Control explained why it is so tricky to artificially assemble organic complexity. Describing how scientists sought to re-establish a lost prairie, the co-founder of Wired outlined why the web of Read More... Posted 13 January 2006 11:42 by Guy Howard | 0 Comments

• Scholar Generated Media

  It is instructive to follow the debate in academic circles about the impact of migrating to online publishing models, particularly because it demonstrates a grown-up appreciation of what might be lost as well as of what is there to be gained. There's Read More... Posted 13 January 2006 11:16 by Guy Howard | 0 Comments

• Embracing the Zero

  If we can have real taste with zero sugar, why can't we have a big money blog marketing campaign with zero credibility ? It's hardly surprising that comments are so scanty here when you read the inspirational message beneath the Post Comment button: "We're Read More... Posted 12 January 2006 12:22 by Guy Howard | 0 Comments

• The End of Cyberspace

  There's an interesting new blog hosting a public reserach project called The End of Cyberspace which champions the idea that going online will increasingly feel less and less like travel to a separate virtual world − especially now that always-on devices Read More... Posted 11 January 2006 13:47 by Guy Howard | 0 Comments

• Amazon dis-Connect

  Amazon Connect is a new facility open to "a select group of authors". Given that it allows authors to post messages on their book and profile pages it has been touted as a blog, but as it lacks both comments and an RSS feed it is as yet but a toe in the Read More... Posted 10 January 2006 17:20 by Guy Howard | 0 Comments

• Challenges for Blog Analysts

  "Blogs are a long tail" Chris Anderson recently observed, in a post otherwise dedicated to explaining why so many people are uncomfortable with systems that depend on the "alien logic" of probabilistic statistics such as Google and Wikipedia . What he Read More... Posted 10 January 2006 12:30 by Guy Howard | 2 Comments

• Who reads blogs anyway?

  Jeff Nolan asks whether business decision makers read blogs , on behalf of his CMO. In the comments, I argue that it doesn't matter: You're right Jeff, this is an important question that deserves answering. I'd argue it's the wrong question though, and Read More... Posted 10 January 2006 11:03 by Niall Cook | 2 Comments Filed under: Blogging