Internet « Corneel is online

Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

Sick of Tag clouds

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

I need to say it! I can’t hold it! I need to get it off my chest.

Before I insult anyone or sound like a pretentious web-know-it-all:
I’ve been guilty of doing some amateur information architecture and in that time I made many mistakes (believe me, there are pro’s who almost killed me for that). I love to be able to make mistakes, they deliver their own insights and ideas. So, let me be clear about this, I’m all about experimenting and playing around with novel concepts but their is a time to look back and learn from what we’ve done.

As the title suggests my rant is about tagclouds (or weighted lists). Like many others I was seduced by these cool looking things and being an enthusiastic person I used them. But some time ago I started realizing something about them and I seem to be on my own about it.

They’re a lazy solution and cheap-ass excuse for a navigation!
Never use them if you want your users to navigate though your tags. Really, check your analytics, people rarely use it.  I love the concept of weighted tags but the difference in size makes the tags very hard to read or scan, try it, it gives you migraines.
There are many other ways to navigate tags. What about oldskool alphabetical dropdowns + numbers to show the amount of items? I’m sure those rich-interface-flex-guru-types also have some great alternatives.
Using them to make your website look 2.0 is also not done (I’m not going into the 2.0-look thing, that could be a rant on it’s own). FYI, they have been around for some time now and they lost all of their novelty value, it’s as hip and bold like wearing jeans in church these days. At least try to do something new and make new mistakes.

I have to admit, they’re not all bad. They’re great to quickly “feel” the subjects on a blog or other sites that have no fixed topic. Having one for that reason is OK, (and while it’s there the tags might as well be clickable). Just know that no person in their right mind really “navigates” on these random-topic sites.

Anyway, a tag cloud is a data visualization thing, not a navigation thing.

Posted in Internet, Opinion, Work | 2 Comments »

The next General web cashcow

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

Conversational Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Quisque sed mauris id quam aliquam tristique. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nam et risus quis risus dignissim hendrerit. Mauris facilisis congue enim. Phasellus Social network service gravida lacus et mi. Duis euismod scelerisque metus. In varius purus ut nibh. Nullam ac felis. Praesent nec arcu et lectus iaculis volutpat. Pellentesque nisi neque, IPTV vs IDTV blandit vitae, fermentum ut, fringilla eu, ipsum.

Phasellus est lectus, user distributed content tincidunt blandit, bibendum id, vehicula a, leo. Nullam eget ante et ipsum hendrerit aliquam. Nullam vel libero. Vivamus tincidunt eros a the long tail ligula. Cras nec quam. Mauris pede lorem, crowd sourcing sollicitudin et, volutpat vitae, varius nec, diam.

Curabitur aliquam Semantic web enabled sollicitudin est. Aliquam cloud computing purus tellus, tempus ut, scelerisque quis, mollis sit amet, nulla. Etiam posuere fermentum metus. Nunc ut dolor. Phasellus non est et nisi dapibus tincidunt. Mobile maecenas et purus non nisi tincidunt mollis. Behavioral targeted fusce faucibus nulla ac sem. Mauris arcu enim, tempor mattis, tempor vitae, dignissim ac, tortor. Morbi eu mauris eu mi pulvinar pulvinar unique user experience.

Posted in Internet, Marketing, Satire | 1 Comment »

Your Social network

Wednesday, March 26th, 2008

Update: Could also have used this graph but I don’t like to point fingers.

Posted in Internet, Opinion, Visual | 1 Comment »

EU is about to criminalize file sharing

Thursday, January 4th, 2007

The P2P Blog posted that heise.de reported that 2 French members of the EU parliament want to broaden criminal enforcement rules against copyright infringement. They want copyright infringers to be treated the same way as any other “commercial infringer” or in other words “thief”. (with fines of at least 600.000 Euro)

To give you a clue where these 2 picked up the idea to do this: One of them is Janelly Fourtou, she is married to the CEO of Vivendi a French media giant who makes money with music, television, film, publishing, telecommunications, the Internet and video games. It is a company that would have lots of financial gain if these extra amendments turn in to law.
She is using the votes she got from the public to push and idea to support the few (her husband and friends) instead of the many. This is pure lobbying!

So there is still some time left?! I was not aware that the EU did not yet have any clear guidelines for these copyright issues. Somehow guidelines are necessary to protect creators but the amendments handed in by Fourtou and Fontaine is a bit to one-sided. Apparently we EU citizens have a chance to prevent the downhill movement of our personal freedom with culture by giving more power to the dominant media giants.

We saw this before in the states. US lobbyists with the same dark agenda got their wishes turned in law resulting in a power-driven strangulation of our culture. The one thing lead to the other and now they are ruining net neutrality (covered before) trying to control the data distribution over the internet.

What the members of the European parliament should keep in mind is the fact that there are more content creators outside the media monopoly than the ones inside of it. These independent people benefit from filesharing and net neutrality, it’s their way to get an audience. With these radical amendments approved it would be impossible for these people to get an audience, they will loose their voice ans so will you…

Lawrence Lessig (professor of law) described in his book “Free Culture” (download audiobook or pdf) a realistic model for copyright protection that would protect the creators and also enable our culture to grow further instead of being controlled by a few people with an agenda.
Here is a video explaining a bit of his ideas (via)
We still have time, the amendments could bring alive a discussion among the members of the EU parliament, but they need to be informed well. (I think we should get organized)
If a fair discussion is brought alive this could all end in a progressive modern copyright law fit for the digital content era in a society of free speech.

Image source

Posted in Internet, Opinion, Torrent | 1 Comment »

Power to the peers: the movie

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

Matt Hanson (filmmaker) initiated a project called “A swarm of angels” to create the first peer produced film. This means everything about the film will be created by a community. (Full story on torrentfreak)

Even without the Hollywood machine, this non-corp production is already a potential blockbuster. Other films have been created with citizen initiative, take Star Wreck for instance.
This star trek fan movie got distributed via file sharing (bit torrent) and in no time got millions of downloads and became Finland’s most popular movie ever! A real blockbuster…
Discovering things like this really make my day. It proofs that power of the peers really exists outside the world of software. It shows us that we don’t need big and dominant media companies to create and distribute content.
If you have good content you don’t need banners, billboards or 30 seconds spots. People will distribute your content for you. Content is king.
Now, what Matt Hanson tries is something totally new for the film industry. What he wants to prove is that not only peers move your content but you can also trust them to create it. It will be the first time that a movie is created just like open source software is.

The thing that makes it even more exiting is that the people will be able to do with it whatever they want because the license on the movie will be a creative commons license. It has only 2 restrictions: you need permission to use it and you to license the same if you redistribute its content. Since this project gets lots of respect from most “commonists” I’m sure the many results will be very interesting. Finally, a new piece of free culture!

But only the sun rises for free so Matt needs money to do this the good way. He’s a man with a plan, he aims for 50.000 people to join the project who will each contribute £25 (€37.5). This gives him a budget of €1.875.000, it is possible but this is still a small budget to roll it big (example: to make The Matrix you need $63.000.000).
He discovered a new model _a small step for men, but a big step for mankind_. Lots of professionals are in search for a new content production business model. Matt gets his money from the peers but I like to think that we should avoid billing the people in this new model. You need money? That’s what advertiser are for .
I wander if Matt has thought about branding his movie with product placement or other innovative (people friendly) techniques. Advertisers are also in need to try out some new techniques because the 30 second spot is not that efficient anymore.

Either way, Matt might not have found the new business model but he is pioneering a democratic way to create movies. There is no big media corp involved and it’s extremely fileshare-friendly. It’s way ahead of the traditional way to create a movie, I bet we’ll soon see more initiatives like this.

Posted in Internet, Marketing, Torrent | No Comments »

A series on A Series Of Tubes

Thursday, July 27th, 2006

As I explained some Time ago Ted Stevens (US senator) fired up a discussion about net neutrality. By now you should have heard about his speech he gave in congress to explain why he is against net neutrality. If not, here it is in text, mp3 or video. His quotes like “it’s not a truck, it’s a series of tubes”, “a internet was send to me”, and loads of other stupid things are to good to ignore.
People were shocked that a man like this could have so much influence on this topic, they reacted massively and so this “A series of tubes” became a internet legend just like “All your base is belong to us” and “The flying spaghetti monster“.

I guess we all saw this one coming but to give you a clue on this buzz I collected the ones I passed while browsing.
The first one I saw was this PowerPoint presentation to help Ted with his explanation.
That one got followed up with a MySpace fanclub with music remix, just a few moments later a techno remix and videoclip popped up.

Funny images were being distributed, like this tube maniac, this truck and truckloads more. Or even better, when FlickrTubes got clogged they announced a colourcontest where participants need to fill some tubes (1.124 by now).
People even started to make T-shirt designs to make fun with the guy: The first one to pop up was this shirt design followed by one based on the famous tube screensaver, one based on the tubes filled with porn, one collecting votes to get printed by threadless and many more.
Also, You’re the man now dog couldn’t leave behind: they’ve got Ted in a tube, a simulation of downloading a internet and many many more.

For John Steward (Daily show) this was also a big chance to make himself more popular by making fun of Ted Stevens with this video and that sketch, youtube is full of it.
Here are some podcasters (1, 2) who jumped on the hype and a mash-up compilation.
That this old senator can’t explain the things in a clear way is obvious, but sill, we need to cut him some slack. Even a genius like Einstein also didn’t know how to explain some things, take a look at this explanation on the telegraph, did you know that it is a very long cat?
I have the feeling that I could on like this for ever and that why I’ll quit the collection here, feel free to post others in the comments if you see a new or another “tube” joke.

Posted in Fun, Internet, Satire, linkdump | 1 Comment »

What Materazzi really said to Zidane

Wednesday, July 12th, 2006

Guess yourself what Materazzi said to Zidane. Write your own subtitles for the famous video fragment right here. This initiative by Belgian communication agency mortierbrigade rewards the best written entry with an internship as copywriter. Small detail: the site was conceived in the morning and was ready by 5pm on the same day.

Posted in Fun, Interactive, Internet, Video, online entertainment | 6 Comments »

Are you an online or an offline person?

Tuesday, July 11th, 2006

Lately, I have been getting the impression, by meeting all kinds of people within the advertising and internet community, that there is such a thing as ‘online people’ and ‘offline people’. With online people, I don’t mean people that are online, but people that are thinking, interacting and living in an online way. These are, according to my experiences, some of the characteristics of online-shaped or online-minded people:

1. Online people are always on

Online people are always connected. Somehow, somewhere. Whether it is through skype, mobile, a blog, a community space, email, msn, whatever. These people are easily and quickly accessible, no matter how important they are or what function they occupy. Firstly because there are many ways to reach them, secondly because they are very aware that interaction and dialogue are crucial in building relationships.

2. Online people love sharing

Online people believe in the virtues and benefits of sharing. They believe information and knowledge can only grow by being shared. They understand the value of community platforms, and the constantly interlinked internet environment. Offline people on the contrary, believe in the individual as the creative god, anxious to share their output with anyone because these might steal their divine thoughts or ideas. Online people believe in bottom-up, rather than in top-down. They believe that brands should give power and control to their consumers and customers.

3. Online people realize that everything is constantly evolving

Online people realize things change as quickly as they appear. In an internet world where brands can be built on a worldwide scale within the period of a single year, and where viral effects are felt within hours, there is no time to wait, finetune and plan for too long. “Fail fast, learn fast, fix fast” is their motto.

4. Online people write and speak in a more open and transparant way

If you read blogs, you will notice that the writing style of a blog is totally different than the writing style of a newspaper, a print ad, or just any offline execution. Online language is more raw, more direct, more personal, more witty. It’s almost like a personal conversation. Writing for the Web is about allowing and inviting people to interact and comment, it’s about constantly linking to others and sharing thoughts. And as Ariana Huffington once said: the rule for bloggers is: ‘First thoughts, best thoughts’. Robert Scoble and Shel Israel used the term ‘naked conversations’ as the title of their book on blogging, which captures it perfectly, I think.

Can you think of other characteristics of ‘online people’? Or don’t you believe in this distinction? Let me know

Posted in Internet | 5 Comments »

Save the internet, save us!

Thursday, July 6th, 2006

The internet is about to be killed by greedy people!
So, what is the fuzz about? some time ago Edward Whitacre (big boss of AT&T) said bandwidth-intensive applications (like google or skype) have forced his company to continually upgrade its network to accommodate demand. Last year alone, he said, AT&T spent $11.5 billion on capital expenditures for its wireline network, as well as for upgrades to Cingular Wireless, in which AT&T has a 60 percent stake.
He thinks that these big application providers shouldn’t get a free ride on his pipes while they are making that much money. quote: “they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain’t going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it” So, They should pay more if they want their service delivered with the same speeds as it is delivered now.
As things go in the States the 2 big cable and telephone company’s started a million dollar lobbying campaign in congress to allow them to make the internet into a private network. Basically this would enable them to charge more money to the big players in the current market if they still want to deliver a fast surface.

Yet, this really doesn’t make sense because both the surfer and the publisher need to pay for the data they pump through those pipes, Mr. Edward just thinks that those people (like skype or google) should pay more… unfair.
Also, the pipes to witch he refers as “his pipes” are not really his, the USA tax payer paid for those pipes, they are just there to put them in the right place and maintain them. View this video to get a and easy quick overview of the case.

Actually, I can understand why he wants to charge more or give some kinds of data-streams a premium pipe. They probably want to make a commercial field open for IPTV (needs allot of bandwidth…). And quite frankly, I think Google can easily come up with the money. Edward just wants to make some money, who doesn’t?
But what about startups and innovative applications? It wouldn’t be possible for them to come up with that kind of money, innovation would get killed… The internet business would slowly become a duopoly (like the current Telco’s in the States) that isn’t a healthy situation for an internet that runs on openness and freedom.

Even worse, they could also could abuse this new power. They could slow down, speed up or even block data on the internet in favor of corporate competition. This is against internet’s first amendment aka Net Neutrality. Here is a video that explains it.
Net neutrality concept, to put it as simple as possible, -Equal Opportunity Access For Every Publisher On The Net-.
So without Net neutrality we as users could not decide anymore what we want to see, the Internet service providers (ISP’s) would decide that for us. Here is a nice video to illustrate…
If the senate votes in favor of the Telco’s, hell breaks loose… (more…)

Posted in Internet | 3 Comments »

Across the Sound – podcasting etiquette

Thursday, June 29th, 2006

I’m listening to Joseph Jaffe’s Across the Sound podcast, voted by MarketingSherpa as best podcast on the topic of marketing, on a regular basis. I think it’s quite insightful, I think Joseph is a good speaker, I like his funny accent (especially the way he says ‘year’) and he quite clearly loves podcasting, which you can hear and feel.

However, Joseph, what you don’t seem to get is that people, such as myself, do have other things to do in their lives than listen to your podcast. It is already pretty lengthy as it is; and therefore, I don’t find the time to listen to all of them. That’s why it bugs me so much that you have been answering your mobile phone several times (I’ve heard it twice; don’t recall which shows) DURING your podcast. It really irritated me, especially because it happened more than once. And because I think it’s just about basic podcasting etiquette. I really don’t get why you answer your mobile phone while almost 2.000 people (according to your own statistics) are listening to what you are saying; waiting for you to finish your highly personal call. That’s like putting 2.000 people on hold. Even if it’s just for 1 minute, that means you waisted 2.000 minutes of time. That’s amazing.

Basically, I’m not interested in the content of that call, and I don’t see why I should be. So I don’t understand why you don’t edit that piece out, which is perfectly possible. What bugs me even more is that you start talking about the content of the call once you finished it. To me, this sounds like you think I should be interested in every single thing you do, every single call you make and every single person you know. I’m not. I’m interested in your views on marketing, in your opinions about brands. That’s why I listen to your podcast. Not to hear you call with your brother.

So what I basically want to say is: although I like your podcast, I don’t feel like you’re respectful of my precious time. And in this era of content overload, this is becoming a critical issue.
For the rest, keep up the good work! I liked reading your book and me too, I am convinced that there is a life after the 30″ spot.

Posted in Internet, Marketing, podcast | 3 Comments »

Corneel is online