MediaCatalyst
the irresistible force
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RSS FEED IDEMS: MediaCatalyst
- The semantic web gets a little closer
Yahoo Pipes looks AMAZING.
Haven't had the chance to play with this properly yet, but I am going to love this.
A modular synthesizer for information: define a source, filter it, mash the output with another few parameters... and gimme the results!
Very. Excited. Indeed.
And what a lovely interface.
Thu, 08 Feb 2007 14:14:00 +0100 - The revolution will be linked
Thanks to Lee Lefever of www.commoncraft.com for pointing out this touching little vid from Michael Wesch, Assistant professor of Cultural Anthropology, Kansas State University.
Tue, 06 Feb 2007 12:38:00 +0100 - Open source creativity: there is a limit
Falling squarely in the "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" bracket, is www.amillionpenguins.com - an experiment by Penguin books and Leicester's de Montfort University, which poses questions like:
"Can a collective create a believable fictional voice? How does a plot find any sort of coherent trajectory when different people have a different idea about how a story should end or even begin? And, perhaps most importantly, can writers really leave their egos at the door?"
Unfortunately, the answer to all these questions - and more! - is a resounding no. The first paragraph is punishingly oblique, and it was all I could manage to skim through the rest of chapter one. Overwritten, nonsensical, riddled with grammatical errors and no coherent narrative.
I'll stick with Saki for now, thanks very much.
Mon, 05 Feb 2007 13:11:00 +0100 - Think 'n' Stink #2 - Thriving online communities
A tad too long ago to justify posting this only now, Ben, Olly, Timi and I sat together for yet another Think ‘n’ Stink on web-based communities. This time we were fortunate to be joined by our Front-end Developer/One-Man-Band/Tortured Writer Bas, our Content Manager/Gamer/Queen-of-the-Google-Search Kimberlee, and our System Administrator/DJ/Man-of-Much-Hidden-Knowledge Dayan.
If we look behind the passionate discussions that jumped around several topics, there seemed to be one prevalent topic: Thriving Web Communities.
In specific, there were two living and lively communities that took our attention. And while both of these were thriving long before the internet (a fact that surely adds to their on-line success), we had some opinions about what we could learn from them:
Music communities
It has been said that music is a universal language that brings people together. And many define themselves through their music. Sites such as MySpace have clearly caught on to this and caused a chain reaction of music service sites that have been popping up in an attempt to ride the wave. But there are also thriving communities, such as Pandora and Last.fm that are doing something correctly.
Gaming communities
Talk about a sub-culture. Decades ago this community fraternized in front of arcade games and video games. Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong became places to meet your match and leave your mark – she or he with a high score and a catching nickname became a legend at your local pizza parlor. A desired Atari video game was the social lubricant for forming after-school friendships. And Dungeons & Dragons offered everyone a chance to truly take on a new identity and live out their fantasies.
Nowadays, gaming has transcended sub-culture into the realm of supra-culture. Sites such as World of Warcraft have been extremely influential in feeding the rapid development of these communities. Some of our very own colleagues have met their husbands, been offered jobs and made friends via on-line gaming sites. Others have achieved awe-inspiring superiority in these communities – moving from simple high-score posting to gaining online ‘e-peen’ status.
And here’s what we think can be learned from both of these communities:
- Put control into the hands of the community. Strong sites such as Pandora and Last.fm don’t just push music into user’s faces. They provide members a chance to choose the music they want to listen to and use that as a base to build loyalty.
- Let members create their own identities. Offer a platform where members can introduce, define and in some cases re-define themselves.
- Give members the opportunity to connect with others based on common preferences. Offer e-mail sharing tools. Proactively introduce members to each other. Allow them to discover more music or games through intelligent searches and links. WoW basically just provide all the tools their members need to let them create their own alter egos - and leave it up to the community to do the rest.
- Actively and personally participate in the community. Pandora actively maintains a blog that consistently asks members for their opinions, advice or suggestions, or news from the music scene in general. Further, they send personal e-mails to members offering suggestions based on the member’s own radio stations.
- Put it in reach. The M-BUZZ mobile music service (which I may be so humble to add is a product of our own labour) introduces unsigned artists with streaming audio and video and not only allows e-mail sharing and track ratings, but offers mobile access – bringing the whole experience outside, into the real world.
Lastly, and most importantly imho:
- Invite the community into the real world. As everyone knows, gaming companies are constantly hosting competitions and gatherings to bring their members together – even providing flights and hotels for their most dedicated and loyal. Pandora particularly does a great job here with their ‘On the Road’ tour, where they travel through the US ‘to learn about local music scenes, meet up with Pandora listeners and hear great music’. Members are alerted when they will be in town and are invited to attend gatherings and concerts and to suggest local artists for upcoming stops. And they take it even one step further – they donate funds to support music education for the young, feeding the next generation of music communities.
Thu, 25 Jan 2007 17:47:00 +0100 - Listen up! Nifty new web/ mobile music app
Here's a rather swish new release by Media Catalyst for Sony Ericsson: it's called m-buzz, and it's a music service which promotes new artists.
In a nutshell, m-buzz lets you read about new bands, hear their music, rate tracks and recommend them to friends. The clever bit is that you can enjoy it on your mobile phone as well as on the website (it's the same address - www.m-buzz.com - for both devices, by the way).
This is what the website looks like:
And here's the mobile site (left to right: homepage, latest news page, and the rss feed). Click to biggify the image.
With the market for mobile music set to go bonkers over the next few years, this is a smart move for Sony Ericsson. The new/ underground music angle is particularly suited to the mobile music platform, and - for now - it's free!
What I really like about m-buzz is the cross-platform niceness. The website's good, with a healthy flow of new music popping up all the time - and the mobile site is a really nice way to occupy yourself during a train journey and - thanks to Akamai - listening to streaming music is quick.
Best feature? RSS feeds on your mobile. You can subscribe to latest news or top user-rated tracks, and click straight through to the site to find out more and hear the music. Tight.
If you're in Cannes this week, you'll be able to see Sony Ericsson CEO Miles Flint is speaking about m-buzz and more at the Midem music industry conference.
Enough trumpet-blowing. Give it a try and let us know what you think! Please note that the mobile site is currently only available on Sony Ericsson handsets - support for other phones is coming soon.
Thu, 25 Jan 2007 11:50:00 +0100 - Flash IE6 problem with loading xml
In a recent project, we ran into a nasty problem with Flash in IE6.Nasty, not so much because it has any major impact, but more because it took a loooong time to figure out that this was the problem, and no documentation or discussion is to be found anywhere on the internet (well, at least not within a few hours...). No fancy solutions here either, since there is none to my knowledge. Nevertheless, I just wanted to post it here to see if anyone else has run into this issue?
The issue is this: the Flash player in IE6 cannot correctly load (xml) files from web servers that use HTTP compression and no caching. In other words, it does not correctly load any file that returns the following combination of the HTTP response headers:
Cache-Control: no-cache
Content-Encoding: deflateNo other browser’s Flash player has this bug, this only occurs in IE6.The problem could only be 'fixed' by either disabling HTTP compression, or by removing the no-cache header for this file and user-agent IE6.
There are mentionings of similar problems with loading files over HTTPS, but I haven't come across anyone noticing this issue with normal HTTP. Which is strange, because it doesn't seem to be such an uncommon setting...
Fri, 05 Jan 2007 12:23:00 +0100 - Think 'n' Stink #1 - Online Communities and Value
Welcome to Think 'n' Stink, part 1! Once a week, a bunch of us Catalysts meet to rant and rave about stuff, and fill our faces with bagels and smoothies. And look - we already have a logo! (Theme tune coming soon...)
Below is a roughly edited summary of our inaugural discussion - enjoy, and please weigh in with your opinions in the comments.
Online Communities and Value
Businesses are now waking up to the world of blogs, wikis, social networking and all the rest of that Web 2.0 goodness - and they want in. We predict that 2007 will be a big year for high-profile, expensive failures based on excitable "Let's start a community!" ideas (read: clueless attempts to jump on the social networking bandwagon and cash in).
As an interactive agency, we're interested in advising our clients well, producing great work, and - most pertinently here - delivering value. So, what we're wondering is this: what does it mean to "create valuable communities"? And how do you do it?Rethinking "value"
All change! In the context of Web 2.0/ social networking etc. "value" is not about increasing your bottom line, monetising your community, or forcing unwanted advertising - however well disguised - onto users.
Rather, a valuable online community is one that sustains and feeds itself with continuous, engaging, challenging, and thought-provoking dialogue decorated with humour, surprises and most importantly human connection. In order to achieve this, the host of this community needs to understand what the community values, and support members in getting what they want. This will attract members to come together to begin with, and then keep the community running.
Nice theory, but how to actually do this? To be honest, we dont have all of the answers yet. But what we have discovered are a few things that certainly will not be valuable to a fledgling online community:
- Being told what is Valuable. Value is a personal choice. People decide for themselves what is valuable. The internet is ultimately filled with personal choices. People choose to type in a search term or a url, to select a link, to read web text, to leave a comment, or to go somewhere else. They recognize what they value and how valuable they find it.
- MBA buzz words. The internet and the social communities that grow out of it are inherently grass-roots. It is a place where people can anonymously be themselves. Unless you host an online community of MBA buzzworders and I mean those who do not have lives or interests outside of their MBAs online communities will most likely not be attracted to the same speak found in a common corporate handbook. For an example of the gulf in understanding between Web2.0 and MBA speak, look no further than the recent Craigslist meets the capitalists incident.
Creativity and ideas are currency in the digital realm, thriving in environments that nurture values such as sharing, collaboration and trust. This is the culture of online communities. This is the power of networks. If companies want to be a part of this, then they have to not only look at whats out there, but look back at themselves. Do their values coincide with those of communities? Do they believe that sharing is profitable? Are they willing to take chances in creative and unlikely combinations or partnerships? Are they ready to expose themselves to scrutiny and critique from the users?
Now we can get started. But it's not as easy as just throwing up a MySpace clone with your company logo in the corner...
How to build a community
You dont! A community builds itself. The role of the community's host is to provide the platform for this to happen. And to do that, a host has to do the following:
- Monitor successful community sites: Who's using them? How? What are they doing on there? Understand the culture!
- Become part of the community. Pick a topic and go to an existing, successful blog or community site. Visit it often. Participate. Read and learn. It takes time. And it is worth it.
- Ask yourself what your organization or company can offer that a community might find valuable. Then offer it to them. Theyll let you know right away what they think. Then take their reactions and improve what your offering based on that. Listen and adapt!
- Make a site that offers visitors something unique - info/ content which offers something nobody else does to your visitors, in a spirit of trust and sharing. Which is to say: give users what they want, don't show them what you've got, and then convince them it's great.
- Give power to the user: its not just about putting users in the centre of a project when its already done, but making sure that they were involved from the very start. User needs analysis, or simply put understanding the user is as important for development projects as interactive media ventures.
And there you have it. Let's get cracking.
Fri, 05 Jan 2007 10:46:00 +0100 - Being told what is Valuable. Value is a personal choice. People decide for themselves what is valuable. The internet is ultimately filled with personal choices. People choose to type in a search term or a url, to select a link, to read web text, to leave a comment, or to go somewhere else. They recognize what they value and how valuable they find it.
- The end is post-nigh?
Perhaps Saint John was right? Think about it for a moment...
He said that when the day of reckoning comes, we will all be judged. Those found worthy get to go up to heaven, and the rest of us end up in Hell on Earth.
Well, perhaps this has already happened? One lucky bloke who lived on top of a mountain ended going up to heaven. However, since he was a hermit, nobody realised he was missing. The rest of us got left behind and now are heading through floods and fires (global warming), torture (life in general) and the overall breakdown of society is in progress (quite possibly).
If that's true, then maybe now wasn't such a good time to give up smoking?
Thu, 04 Jan 2007 16:26:00 +0100 - Catalysts and bloggers talk Flex
At the end of November last year, Media Catalyst released more fruits of our labour in the shape of a new Product zone on the Sony Ericsson site.
Released (as usual) in multiple language versions for Sony Ericsson sites worldwide, the centrepiece - or at least, the front door to product information - is this browsing/ selection tool, which we built in Flex 1.5.
... and it's getting a bit of attention from bloggers: see discussions over at AboutNico and EMEARIA.EU.
If you're interested in hearing about this and other Flex applications we've developed, you could do worse than to get yourself down to the MMUG Belgium Flex Showcase on Jan 18th in Antwerp, where Catalysts Kees, Stefan and Joris will tell you why they chose Flex, how they convinced our clients, and which difficulties they encountered.
More later on the IA/ creative approach we used when designing the deeper, information-based pages of the Product zone...
Thu, 04 Jan 2007 12:30:00 +0100 - Marketing through social networks
All I can say to this is: "Yes! I'll take two please, gift wrapped":
"MySpace has turned into a massive zit full of marketing puss... Every PR organization and marketing arm is leeching onto MySpace like a blood thirsty vampire. Problem is that vampires kill their prey...
...I'm very worried about how, unregulated, spamming and over-advertising will kill even the coolest social hangouts. I keep wondering what the regulation solution will have to be. (Is it law or code cuz it ain't gonna be market or social norms?)"
Quote courtesy of Apophenia
The web enables the creation of infinite new space to play in. As marketing floods these spaces, the population moves on to new places. Rather like animal herds migrating to new grasslands as they deplete the supplies of their current location. And teenagers can move faster than marketeers (fortunately). The 'creatives' will keep looking for new places to advertise...
However regulation isn't going to work imho. At least not law. The law moves far too slowly, in the emerging world of 2 week agile launch cycles, features can appear and morph faster than you can say 'restraining order'. As for code regulation... tougher question but perhaps. After all, if people don't like advertising and they have a choice between an advertising-saturated platform and an advertising-free platform, they should vote with their feet (eyeballs?).
I'd love to see this. As Naomi Klein put it: "unbranded space would be the new luxury item". It's not a big leap of commercial logic for businesses to realise that if what consumers really want is unbranded space, providing that to them will do more for your brand than any amount of intrusive advertising. The hard sell is going to be with the advertisers themselves however: after all, who wants to talk themselves out of a job?
Thu, 04 Jan 2007 11:31:00 +0100 - Finally, someone says something sensible about "Digital"
(Ahem, I meant to post this a few weeks back...)
Russell Davies in Campaign (Dec 1st issue - for some reason it takes at least a week for post to reach Amsterdam from London. Perhaps they walk it over?).
"The internet will not be the last great thing we'll ever invent. And the pace of invention won't slow down."
Bad news, as Russell goes on to point out, for the dinosaurs who want to "rebuild their village" in the new media environment.
"This is exciting. We're at the front edge of a permanent revolution, not halfway through a blip, and the chaotic world that we're entering will be positively drenched in opportunity."
Quite so!
See also Russell's blog for other such idea-mongering.
See also forthcoming posts on this blog right here for more about what we Catalysts predict 2007 holds for all things interactive and Web 2.0...
Wed, 03 Jan 2007 17:53:00 +0100 - How to make your very own Speculaaspop
As promised in our Xmas mailout, here's the recipe to make your own speculaaspop.
As you know, speculaas is a Dutch cookie made with almonds and special spices. So you know what you're aiming at, It's pretty close in flavour and texture to gingerbread. For non-imperialists, a teaspoon is equivalent to 5ml, and a tablespoon is 15ml.
Ingredients:
- 250g (9oz ) softened butter
- 250g (9oz ) brown sugar
- 2 whole eggs
- 160g (5 1/2oz) almonds (unblanched and ground)
- 2 tablespoons cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon of each: cloves, ginger, cardamom, mace, salt
- 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
- 1 tablespoon grated lemon zest (use an unwaxed lemon)
- 500g (1lb 2oz) flour
- Thinly sliced almonds
- Milk
Here's how you do it:
Stir the softened butter with sugar and eggs until creamy. Add the ground almonds and spices, then beat in the flour until it's all nicely mixed up. Leave the resultant dough to rest in a cool place at least for one hour.
Now you have to roll it out and cut it into shapes prior to baking it, so preheat your oven now to 180°C.
Roll out about 1/8" thick, using flour if necessary, to prevent it sticking, then press the dough into your speculaas moulds. Didn't I mention? You need some carved wooden planks to make your cookies the size and form you want. You can always use the modern method if you like, and get busy with some festively shaped cookie cutters.
Once your cookies are cut or moulded, place the little fellas on a well buttered baking sheet, sprinkle them with thinly shaved almonds and brush lightly with milk. Now stick them in the oven and bake until crisp (anywhere from 15 minutes upwards). They're done when the the bottoms start turning dark. Remove from the oven and turn out onto wire cooling racks. You can store them in airtight tins for a few weeks.
Et voilà!
Eet smaakelijk!
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Please hold this cake
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PostSecret
Updated every sunday with more homemade secret postcardey things. Great stuff, check it out.
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justcurio.us
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