Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Looking for MIT brilliance as UK burns
August 10th, 2011
We could all do with some decent PR distraction during the UK riots. Tony Blair and Alasdair Campbell were masters of this tactic. But I look around and can’t easily see the objects that would take people’s minds off the awfulness of our situation in the UK.
So, instead, I looked to the United States, a strange and terrifying place that refined the culture of Debt and made it Good. But at the same time it bursts with ideas and energy that always suggest hope, belief and progress.
Give you an example. I’ve been following the development of new battery technologies at MIT, from the announcement in 2009 of a liquid battery that could provide the solution to storing energy captured by solar panel farms.
The MIT all-liquid battery: discharged (left), charging (middle), and charged (right). Molten magnesium (blue) is the top electrode, in the middle is the electrolyte (green), and molten antimony (yellow) is the bottom electrode. Image credit: Arthur Mount.
Unlike conventional batteries, the prototype was made of all-liquid active materials. Donald Sadoway, a materials chemistry professor at MIT, and his team built first versions of the liquid battery, and showed that the materials could quickly absorb large amounts of electricity, as required for solar energy storage.
It could be an answer to the biggest challenge facing large-scale solar-power energy - finding an effective way to store the energy, essential for using the electricity at night or on cloudy days, from large-scale solar farms.
The researchers hope to bring the liquid battery to market over the next five years. Connecting the batteries into a giant pack to supply electricity for a big city would require nearly 60,000 square metres of land. Such a pack could store energy from enormous solar farms, which would replace current power plants and transmission lines as they become obsolescent.
MIT is also racing ahead with nearer-term battery solutions such as fast-charging battery technology for cars, and amazing progress in the development of lithium-air (lithium-oxygen) batteries that should replace current rechargeable units (think tablets, mobile handsets) because they can hold much more energy.
These are examples of brilliance that will help to change the way we live, developed by teams of committed academics in an environment that supports, rewards and pushes for success at every level.
They are Big Ideas, not only because they are brilliant but also because they are socially focused and make you very glad to be alive.
Could Camo PR come up with positive distractions like this in the UK? I do hope so.
It’s official! Facebook does not rot your brain
August 8th, 2011
A very black week indeed for millions of us across the world but I did see a scintilla of light at the weekend because it’s official – Facebook does not make you brain dead, autistic, sociopathic, psychopathic or any other –“ic”. Hooray!
The incredibly productive Jamie Doward (and Nick Boyle) told us in the Observer newspaper that “Logging on to computers helps us get out more, insist economists … Internet’s social networks and access to information bring people together and keep us sociable, not lonely”.
Three economists - Stefan Bauernschuster, Oliver Falck and Ludger Woessmann of the Ifo Institute in Munich - reject the claim that the internet isolates people and erodes traditional social foundations. They will explain in detail through their paper presented at the Lindau Meetings towards the end of this month (August 2011).
The trio say their work demonstrates the internet is actually making us more socially active. The study shows that a home broadband connection positively influences social activities of adults as well as children.
Yet, less than 28 weeks ago we were being reliably informed that social networking was well dodgy, as tide of cyber-scepticism swept the US and here, (but in an understated British way). The coverage around Twitter and Facebook suggested that a rising number of academics believe that social networks don’t connect people – they isolate them from reality.
These academics pointed to the way in which people frantically communicate online via Twitter, Facebook and instant messaging which could be seen as a form of modern madness.
The story rolled out a leading American sociologist, MIT professor Sherry Turkle who was quoted at the time as saying: “A behaviour that has become typical may still express the problems that once caused us to see it as pathological.”
Mind you, she was publicising her book, Alone Together, apparently was “leading an attack on the information age.”
Madness? Pathological behaviour? Hardly. I agree with the three economists – the internet is a force for social good. Other networks, ooh let’s say, the financial global networks, are a force for bad. These are the networks that rot our brains, make us feel powerless and stupid.
They are weapons of mass destruction and they will kill us all, slowly but surely. Perhaps Professor Turkle and her Facebook-fearful colleagues might want to turn their forensic gaze towards these networks and leave the socialising to us?
Twitter ye not … the end of social media as we know it
August 1st, 2011
Blimey! This is a long post for which I apologise. Hope you have time to read and get something from it because it’s about the end of social media as we know it. There. I’ve said it.
I scribbled this because a man who I’ve never met or engaged with online wrote a post about social media that, frankly, was a little discombobulating. Whether it deserved this post is moot, but there we are.
In his post on ELEARNSPACE George Siemens says:
“Google+ was a bit of a breaking point for me. After recreating my online social network (largely based on blogs from early 2000) in Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Quora, G+ was a chore.
“I spent a few weeks of responding to G+ friend requests, trying to engage with a few people, posting a few random links, all the while trying to upkeep (occasionally) Twitter and (almost never) Facebook.
“I’ve concluded that most of the hype around social media is nonsense and that people, particularly the self-proclaimed social media elite are clothing-less.
“Sure, I’ll still continue to participate in those spaces periodically – as soon as this post is done, I’ll tweet it and share it on G+. Beyond that, however, social media is getting credit for things it’s merely flowing, not actually creating.
“Merely flowing, not creating” – now there is an inchoate phrase wrapped around a relative truth.
He makes a reasoned argument for his dystopian focus:
“A few things over the last few weeks have helped to crystallize this view. First, I saw this very silly post by Jeff Jarvis, pretending that a hashtag was the equivalent of a power movement. For me, this was a threshold moment where the noise of social media and the actual impact were starkly contrasted.
“The notion that a hashtag=power or the no one owns a hashtag appeal to power and fairness is absolute and utter nonsense. And reveals just how vacuous power social media users are in their orientation.
“We are left then, with a small group elitist new media users, trying to build consultancy around the tools, and telling others how wonderful they are. What has social media actually done? Very, very little. The reason? Social media is about flow, not substance.”
You should read the full post but meanwhile I’d add some thoughts and hope they are useful. First, he is positive about how online engagement has played an important part in his life, a feeling that we all draw on from time to time.
He drifts into personal contradictions as he pursues the central idea that social media is less than we think it is. Being online has helped him, social media sucks as a conduit and enabler of change. Contradictions are the way we progress so that’s a benefit.
He separates social media, which he describes as “emotion” from blogging, writing and transparent scholarship, which he equates with “intellect”.
Isn’t that where the argument dissolves?
Maybe I have misunderstood the function of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and SuckOnThis (sorry, I made that last one up).
But I thought that these platforms were now being used, whatever their antecedence, as a head of a funnel, a way to say “LOOK AT THIS. IT’S VERY IMPORTANT”. These are a first-base promotional opportunity, whether you want to share ideas around self-ventilating hats or the crisis in global economy,
Now, given the sceptical natures of the great majority of people on social networks, aided and abetted by the extraordinary numbers of social messages, the only differential is authority. And that is hard earned by being useful, relevant, positive, forward-thinking and sometimes right.
Twitter is the new Headline, backed by a degree of authority and trust. Facebook is the new Features, Gossip and Op-Ed pages, and LinkedIn is the new Business pages, to use imprecise analogies (aren’t they all?).
The new forms of constructed, detailed, thoughtful, edited, curated and often wrong information are being created as you read this. Same as it ever was … but with a twist. They will almost certainly not be the final form. Indeed, the social web works against any form of dominance in the means of communication. And that, alone, is a perfect joy.
Agreed on the hashtag, though. That was a big DUH!
George blogs regularly on ELEARNSPACE and on his connectivism site from time to time. He’s with the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca University and you can follow him on Twitter @gsiemens.
Content curation – the mobile apps developer challenge from Scoop.it
July 30th, 2011
I do like the idea behind Scoop.it a multimedia content curation publication platform currently in beta. Its introductory video also shows once again the power of the medium to explain concepts and market new companies.
Scoop.it turns everyone into editors/curators, slashing the time needed to create a useful, relevant web page resource. You don’t even need to tear your hair out writing blog texts about your favourite ideas and things or area of expertise, just choose, edit if needed and publish.
Here’s the intro video:
The publication platform then allows users to this content on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as well as blogs like WordPress and Tumblr.
Scoop.it has just launched a Developer Challenge for software developers to create iPhone, Android, and iPad applications. There’s a $1,000 waiting for the winner or an HTC Desire S phone for the runner-up.
Developers need to submit their app before Thursday September 15th and Scoop.it has released its API. Applications will be judged upon stability, originality, quality and effectiveness.
The applications must be equally useful for the curation of as well as the exploration of topics.
The winners will be announced on Wednesday September 28th. For record, neither Liberate Media nor me are commercially involved with Scoop.it. Best of luck!
Content curation means Quality through the essential human touch
April 27th, 2011
Content curation ha been a constant discussion at Liberate Media since we first saw its expression through Brian Solis in April 2009. To be frank, the position Brian described then was inchoate.
We’ve followed and engaged in the online content curation discussions since then without feeling that we had found that unique moment when everything is revealed and made pristine.
We’ve worked with any number of online free and commercial tools over the past five years that have first measured, dissected and then sought to provide the marketing answers around online content creation and curation that businesses crave.
Wikipedia is not much help in our struggle to understand precisely the commercial goals and processes. The world of the mind, in this instance, gives little guidance but is worth a reference:
“Digital curation is the selection, preservation, maintenance, collection and archiving of digital assets. Digital curation is the process of establishing and developing long term repositories of digital assets for current and future reference by researchers, scientists, and historians, and scholars generally.” link
Many commercial contributors feel, like Pete Codella that: “The challenge is to think of what you share online as storytelling. What story do you want to tell? What are the key messages to be conveyed? What’s the best way to tell that story, and how do you do it in such a way as to encourage others to voluntarily share your story?
“This is where the whole concept of content curation has come from. It’s like a museum curator preparing an exhibit. Careful thought and planning go into every detail from the room’s lighting and colour to the arrangement of the artwork to exhibit publicity.
“Coupled with the strategy of effective storytelling is understanding search optimisation. It’s incumbent upon business communicators (not just web developers) to understand how things like page titles, meta data, description, keyword, header and ALT tags, and RSS feeds impact search placement. Not only is developing content a strategic exercise, strategy is front-and-centre for how that content is packaged for the Web.”
Discussion with our academic and commercial partners over the past week has convinced me, finally, that online content curation equates with Quality in the commercial sphere. And the only way to add quality to content currently is through human intervention.
In my view (and this is open space for discussion) the human touch is, and will be for some time, the crucial difference that adds social and economic worth to any online social object.
The current dominant model for content curation is: “Organising and sharing the most relevant content on a finite subject.”
Right there is the definitive problem, for me. No subject is finite, by nature. The definition fails, not only because it is, of itself, contradictory, but also because the online medium in which it sits does not recognise “finite”.
Finite is, for me, commercial shorthand for automation. The only reason for making a form of online content finite is to appease the needs of measurement companies that seek to contain the parameters for their work, to produce quantifiable results, through code, with a froth topping of human analysis.
Curation = quality. Spread is no longer a useful metric. Quality of content curation will deliver connections that are far more useful, relevant and so commercially beneficial. The only way to fulfil the equation is to have people, experienced, savvy and fully engaged who can develop these connections, reshape the content for specific audiences, monitor and respond and so maintain the social objects they curate.
If a social object curation agency delivers 10 rock-solid leads to a brand each week, then it is a winner. It has harnessed the best automated measurement processes, interpreted by humans, who also drive the engagement, conversion and delivery processes.
The human touch = lead quality.
This equation means that brands that are serious about gaining a competitive edge need to understand that full automation, and so cost reduction, is no longer available in the medium-term, if ever.
Serious brands need to allocate the cash that will give them the results they want. Humans are more expensive than robots. They are also absolutely essential.
Quality in this form is measurable and so worth the money. The other qualitative outcomes from the human touch are immeasurable.
Orange mobile app scheme, Slates with Intel and the threat of rising content costs
December 10th, 2010
Ronan Shields has posted a strong opinion article on New Media Age around the challenges and opportunities offered by the new Orange Partner Connect Scheme, which point the way for mobile operators to insert themselves into, and own, the mobile app buyer chain.
The scheme is fuelled by Orange embedding its app shop on the Android devices it sells to subscribers. Brands can also harness the Orange reach into 32 markets and it will enable brands to charge for downloads through the phone bill.
The Orange billing USP is clearly a winner. Who wants to key in their card details on mobile?
Does it also offer network operators a wider opportunity of providing mobile payment systems for consumer shopping through a single monthly bill? The logistics would be a challenge but nothing is impossible.
That also points to wider questions about mobile consumer and usability/confidence.
Brands will need to engage much more closely next year with their customers to convince them that mobile shopping is secure. The just-announced OFT initiative reflects that, as does recent mobile research by client Tamar.
Meanwhile, at the developer layer, the Wholesale Applications Community is gearing up to provide members with new specifications that will enable them to write applications that can be deployed across multiple platforms and operators.
WAC believes that this will help to reach a potential global market of 3.5 billion customers. It expects to release version 2 of its spec early next year while continuing its aim to sign up all the industry’s major device vendors as members.
At the same time, this week, Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced that manufacturers such as Dell, Asus, Lenovo and Toshiba have agreed to use Intel chips in 35 Tablet models, including a few already on the market. Caveat here – as in my previous post, the term Tablet can refer to a wide range of devices, not simply the Slates we know as iPad and Samsung Galaxy.
Paul called Intel’s pursuit of the smartphone market “a marathon, not a sprint,” and said that the company’s second-generation Medfield smartphone chip is now being sampled by customers and should ship next year.
He said: “You will see smartphones from premier branded vendors in the second half of 2011 with Intel silicon inside them …The consumer [tablet] products will roll out over the first half of next year,”
That’s very good news for the expanding Smartphone market and the nascent Slate sector.
On the other side of the mobile universe, European mobile network operators have demanded this week that companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook should pay to help them keep up with growing demand for data on their networks.
Bloomberg News reported that France Telecom-Orange, Telecom Italia, and Vodafone Group would like to charge content providers fees linked to usage to help cover the cost of upgrading wireless broadband networks.
France Telecom-Orange Chief Executive Officer Stephane Richard discussed the issue at the “Le Web” conference in Paris on Wednesday. Stephane said the current mismatch between revenue and investment for Internet infrastructure providers is not sustainable.
All network operators are facing the same challenge – falling revenues and rising costs.
IDC estimates that the number of mobile data connections in Western Europe is expected to grow 15 per cent a year to 270 million in 2014. By then revenue is expected to fall 1 per cent. Meanwhile, carriers are expected to increase capital spending by 28 per cent to $3.7 billion, according to Canalys.
Does this signal the end of the “free ride” for content providers, and if so, how will the increased delivery costs distort the content market over the next 2-3 years? The network operators are also losing patience with the flat-fee model and are discussing ways to implement the more flexible, “pay-per-use” model.
It seems that the people who own the mobile highways are about to place a range of toll booths along the network, which means that the commodity of information is about to become much more expensive in 2011.
I’ll leave you with this rather splendid, and relevant track from Elastica. Have a good weekend, all.
Social media, vampires and the Telegraph
November 23rd, 2010
Milo Yiannopoulos had a hissy fit at the Telegraph this week. [click on hissy} Strange, because he usually walks the sometimes intelligent middle line. He spluttered, raged and nearly cursed against the “blood-sucking social media gurus” that have inserted themselves, much like a virus, into the corporate body of UK business since 2007.
The immediate antecedents and provocations that engineered his rant are open to discussion as is his key point that purveyors of social media expertise are salespeople that use snake oil to shower daily.
There is no doubt that there are many, often young, inexperienced, people in the UK now who have seen the promised land in much the same way that people saw a similar online chimera in the mid to late 1990s. And in a similar way, they have nothing to offer.
That Milo mentioned a single company, which in his eyes, is doing the right thing in social media is confusing but no matter. More important is the insertion of his influential, if emotive, ideas into the commercial body of the UK at a time when the right ideas about social media engagement are sorely needed.
In my experience, companies are uncertain, scared and unwilling to engage socially with the very thing they must engage with – the consumer who is in control.
Milo’s exposition may win friends on the conservative side of business who intuitively feel the need to regain control of the relationship with consumers. This is not a practical view because that level of control has gone, forever.
It would have been more positive for Milo to rage against the ‘chimerists’ but at the same time to place social media more strongly at the centre of developing UK commerce, which is where it belongs; more, where it actually is.
Interestingly for me, he does not offer a new path, methodology or explanation of social media. Put simply, he rages but does not explain. If Milo was serious about the need for ways to engage with social media, he should have enriched his bluster with effective ideas.
Does that mean he dismisses social media? Apparently not. He points out the pathfinder quite clearly but does not go any further. That is a shame.
I’m with Milo on the dissolution of the insidious snake oilers, and this will certainly happen. But I’d hope he would look wider and see the many, many people who are working to engage, make stronger connections and build UK businesses through social media.
A propos of little, here’s one of my top five songs. It may have bearing on the trifle above, more likely not.
Rockmelt, mobile web and how the new browser wars will play out in 2011
November 19th, 2010
If nothing else, the social browser team at RockMelt, has given us a new word. How that will enter the language and be defined is our responsibility. That, in itself, is excellent but Marc Andresson and his rockmelters have also given us good reason to examine this new approach to web communications.
We know that Marc defined Web 1.0 but his Netscape project was dissolved in the acid of established-player motivations. They used market muscle to (poorly) imitate, grab share and push innovative thinkers out of the market space. Netscape’s demise in 2008 was, for me, a defining moment in the evolution of the web.
It signalled that the truly innovative first period, common to all new ideas, was dead. And in that wonderfully creative first space, the commercial imperatives that drive all companies had taken hold.
So I welcome the return of Marc to the visible web market space and hope that this time, his ideas and those of his very creative team, can bear fruit (ie revenues).
Marc was quoted this week: “This is a chance for us to build a browser all over again. These are all things we would have done (at Netscape) if we had known how people were going to use the Web.”
Knowledge is everything and I hope that RockMelt leads the way in how we engage online over the next year.
I’ve been testing RockMelt for the past two days and it’s too early to give a considered response but right now, for all the right and wrong reasons, I love it. RockMelt has the edge and approach that differentiates it from Firefox, Chrome and Explorer.
How Marc and his team address the key focus for 2011 – mobile – is yet to be seen. But, with all heart, I wish them well.
You should check out the video and decide whether to sign up:
Brian Solis and Chris Beck define the future of being social
August 27th, 2010
I’ve been following the series of video conversations between Brian Solis and Chris Beck, which are extraordinary in their breadth and depth. They are ‘must see’ for anyone involved with social media PR and indeed for anyone who is interested in the future of online communication.
What strikes me is the clarity of thought, the strategic minds at work here. These guys inhabit ‘social’ but also understand the commercial imperatives that underlie many online conversations. My favourite is the discussion on privacy and what constitutes the ‘online self’.
At a time when some commentators are questioning the existence and value of social networks, Brian and Chris offer a positive, inspiring view of the possibilities. Is social media dead? No. Does it present problems? Yes. Can we rise to the challenge? Take a look at these videos and make up your own mind. Personally, I’d say that with people like Brian and Chris leading the discussion, we’re in very safe hands.
You can see the complete series on Brian’s website
David McCandless explains the power of infographics
August 26th, 2010
Here’s a treat - David McCandless explaining the power of visual information design/infographics at the recent TED Global conference in Oxford. There’s plenty of good for thought in his lively talk and he shows some wonderful examples of how complex data from different sources can be presented in a way that makes it more graspable. He also shows how new understanding can come from the process - and so change the ways we think.
My only concern is that the adage “garbage in, garbage out” applies even more to the production of infographics. There has to be a way of assessing the quality of the research data - and as Ben Goldacre proves every week in his Bad Science Guardian column, there is no shortage of questionable data online.