sinéad's lifestream

Amazon Mobile UK for iPhone was launched recently, similar to Google Goggles on Android phones, there’s a visual search option within this application called Amazon Remembers. Esentially it allows you to take a snapshot of any item and then attempts to match it with a product listed on the Amazon website. Pretty cool, right? I tried it out extensively and it seem to work perfectly with book and DVD covers and is okay with common household items too.

Wanting to push the application to it’s limits (a.k.a break it) I started experimenting with taking photos of people, to see how much everyone was “worth” – thus turning the search into a game of Top Trumps for Faces using Amazon Remembers. Some of the search results were pretty interesting. For example, my lovely girlfriend in her dressing gown was listed as a “Dark Grey Wool Womens Winter Coat” retailing at £49.99, whereas I was listed as a “Wooden Nose shaped Spectacles holder” retailing at £9.99 which meant she was worth far more than me, so I totally lost the game! However, it was a win all round because that made us both LOL ourselves silly.

Hopefully one of these days I’ll find someone with a lower Amazon Remembers face value than myself, I tried it on my Dad and it found a “Russell Collection Long Sleeve Easycare Fitted Shirt” retailing at £17.99, doh!

Non-digital brands offering free iPhone apps isn’t something new. Back in November I posted a short “homage” to the Denny iFry (2.5 stars), and I’ve tried out quite a few of these, like the Magic Coke Bottle (2.5 stars) or Lightsaber Unleashed (2.5 stars). All of these free apps are novelty at best, as you can see by their user ratings. Personally I don’t like to clutter my iPhone with apps I don’t regularly use, so these novelty apps are usually downloaded and played with for a week, maybe less.

I would argue that the key to using free iPhone apps as an effective brand awareness exercise, or as a way to drive physical sales, is not novelty usage.

Take for example the new app from the photography accessories company Joby, who primarily sell Gorillapods – flexible tripods for cameras. They now offer these tripods for mobile devices and with the launch of their new range they’ve made a free app to accompany these accessories. The Gorillacam app has an array of features you’d expect to pay for. It’s certainly not a one trick pony. It has a shot timer, time lapse, rapid-shot mode and a bubble level. There’s this great “press anywhere” mode too, that lets you press the touchscreen anywhere in order to take a photo. This app makes self portraits and photos with your friends really easy, something that’s virtually impossible with the standard iPhone camera app.

I can see myself using the Gorillacam app over and over again. I’ve already placed it beside my other camera apps – apps which I willingly paid for. I would have paid for the GorillaCam app too. I didn’t have to pay for it and in exchange I’ll be seeing the brandname Joby over and over again. I’ll also be constantly reminded of how if I bought a Gorillapod for my iPhone, I could fully utilize the brilliant features of this free app.

I may have initially been triggered with a desire for a sausage sandwich or a can of Coke, but with no motivation to use either app over and over again, the trigger was never reinforced again. With Gorillacam, I’ll be reminded of my interest in their products every time I happily use that free app.

Now that is an effective free, branded, iPhone app.

I seem to be in a minority group that sees the potential that the new twitter re-tweet function brings. For someone that has worked on a method of highlighting Irish tweets for the benefit of non-twitter users and anyone offline for a long period of time, it’s possible that I’m able to see the potential a little more clearly.

The biggest benefit of the new retweet function is how it adds a method of highlighting localised trends. If 20 of your twitter friends retweet the same message you won’t see it 20 times, but you’ll see 20 “likes” beneath it instead, giving weight to the content of the message. It also stops your stream being diluted by the same message over and over again, which can be frustrating. And at the end of the day, if you’ve not had much time to use twitter you’ve got the “retweets” section to conveniently show you the highlights you’ve missed from your own personal stream that day.

The retweet feature also takes into consideration attribution; the original composer of the tweet appears in your stream and this is a wonderful way of discovering new twitter users. In essence it’s a solution to the fix @replies issue twitter had, everyone was so angry that they wouldn’t have an organic method of discovering new users to follow, now you do.

The other great thing about retweets is that it adds an extra dimension to keeping track of the tweets YOU find most interesting. If like me you use the favorite feature in twitter for something else entirely than the ability to view “retweets by you” will help keep track of the tweets you found important enough to share.

Overall I’ve enjoyed watching the evolution of the service and will continue to do so. I find it most interesting how, just like with Facebook users, change is scary and new but after awhile everyone gets used to it and moves on to being mad about something else entirely.

A few weeks ago I had my first experience of running a Facebook Page, as we wanted to set one up for Culch.ie.

The primary goals of the Facebook Page were going to be the same as our Twitter account:

1. drive traffic to the site by informing followers/fans that a new blog post had been published,

2. tweet/update-status with exclusive competitions,

3. and interact with followers/fans with a little bit of fun and frolics.

These goals have been easily succeeded on Twitter, but the Facebook Page has been far more difficult and it has been a serious source of frustration for me. All of my Facebook Page energy has been spent trying to achieve the first goal. Something easily achieved on Twitter, thanks to Twitterfeed. Twitterfeed syncs our RSS feed with our Twitter account, so every time  one of our many authors updates the blog, the title and a link to the post  is tweeted. A significant amount of traffic for the site comes from Twitter (this is partially down to followers retweeting links) and we had hoped to achieve same on Facebook.

Facebook offers a number of applications for user profiles, but the majority of these will not work with Facebook Pages, including the Twitter application (and other popular apps like Tweetsync). Initially I discovered that the only solution to goal no.1 was to allow Facebook to import blog posts into their notes functionality, but by having your blog posts imported into Facebook your content is being copied into their walled garden, I’ve discussed before about the negative repercussions of this and have been reluctant to allow this to continue. It also gives rise to privacy and content rights concerns.

After trying and testing numerous Facebook applications I finally stumbled upon one that actually works with Facebook Pages, though it requires a less than direct approach.

The Selective Twitter Status application is designed to allow you to update your Facebook status, but only with a tweet ending/starting with the hashtag “#fb”. This proves quite useful when combined with the Twitterfeed option of adding a piece of text to every autotweet. For example you can set it so the text “New Blog Post…” appears at the beginning of each autotweet (so your followers know the link is to your own blog). However, by setting it to post “#fb” to each autotweet, Selective Twitter Status will then recognise the hashtag and push the tweet to your Facebook status. Also, so as to not pollute our main Twitter account with a hashtag meaningless to our followers, a seperate Twitter account was set up for this rss feed alone.

Now that goal no.1 has been succeeded with the Culch.ie Facebook Page there will be far more time/energy for goals 2 and 3, and I’m hoping the fan numbers will soon rival that of the Twitter account.

This is exactly the kind of problem solving I thrive on, so at least the frustration ended in a solution as well as few lesson about Facebook and Twitter along the way. I hope this is of some help to other frustrated Facebook Page users.

Over coffee yesterday Darragh pointed out that he didn’t “Do the Flickr thing.” and I tried to explain why I thought he should. For someone that takes at least one photo a day and posts it to Twitter via a mobile photo sharing site he could greatly benefit from having somewhere like Flickr to permanently store and share his photos.  If it’s interesting enough to tweet then it shouldn’t be allowed to get lost and unshared after the tweet has washed away in the stream.

I myself have been using Twitpic to post the occasional interesting photo from my iPhone, but only when I’m on the move and I usually post these same photos to Flickr at a later date. Recently I’ve had much more free time to take photos with my “real” camera, and many of these photos are now on Flickr. Sometimes I’ll post a favourite photo to my blog and then link to the rest (rather than posting all of them as a long blog post). The reason I do this is the ability to tag, edit, archive and view stats – but there is so much more to it than that.

Flickr allows me to have a space online independent from my blog, my twitter, and my social networking. I have control on how they are displayed and archived (and can be as meticulous about this as I need), I can tell stories that go with the images, I can make notes to focus your attention to something special hidden within, and when I’m feeling nostalgic I can go back and review my own photostream based on tags I’ve created (see my tagcloud here). I can upload the well taken photos, and the badly taken ones too – if they say something that should be retold, they belong on my photostream.

However, what I really want to do with Flickr is share my photos, and see yours too. Today for instance I checked up on David’s travels in Beijing, Rory’s travels in Japan, I also met John’s gorgeous family, laughed at the bizarre mannequin Steph spotted, day-dreamed about Killiney Bay and wondered about the mind of an artist. Flickr can be a wonderful sneak peek into the lives of people you know and even strangers you might one day meet.

At the moment I only have 56 contacts (compare this to the almost 300 people I follow on twitter). I want more.  I want to follow your interesting lives, I want to comment on the things you’ve done and places you’ve seen. Almost every day I login to Flickr and check my contact’s uploads, the same way I login to Google Reader to check my RSS feeds – the difference is, photos can tell a totally different story, and can share the stories we don’t have the time to tell. Many of us lead busy lives, leaving us with not enough time or patience to blog as regularly as we would like, photoblogging is a taken a bit too seriously, but Flickr is a great way of sharing your life online without too much of a time or energy strain.

Plenty of bloggers that I read regularly will occasionally post their photos, but I always wonder about the photos that weren’t “good enough” for a blog post. Also, some bloggers are far better photographers than they realise and it’s a travesty that their incredible photos can disappear, lost in their blog post archives.

If you’re reading this and use Flickr add me. If you’re reading this and you post photos somewhere else, open a Flickr account and let us follow your life, taking a peek with each new upload.

These things usually start out with “I don’t normally do this” but to be honest I liked getting tagged, not because I want/need things to blog about, but because I think it’s a sweet thing to be thought of. Besides, sometimes you learn new and interesting facts about people from a simple meme.

This one involves the number 8, which for the Chinese is a lucky number – because it sounds similar to the word which means “wealth” in Chinese. Not at all like the number 4, which sounds exactly like “death” – I learned this many years ago when I worked in retail, Chinese customers never wanted a phone number with a number 4 anywhere in the digits. Always found that interesting. In some Asian countries there isn’t even a floor no. 4…

This is the 8 things meme…

Eight things I like:

1. Photos.
2. One to one conversations.
3. Really strong coffee.
#. Working with my hands.
5. Learning new words.
6. Solving a problem.
7. Thoughtfulness.
8. Dancing in the kitchen.

Eight things I did yesterday:

1. Got on a train at 7am.
2. Participated in a student showcase.
3. Had lunch with a good friend.
#. Felt bipolar.
5. Talked to a stranger.
6. Thumbed through 100’s of comics.
7. Put together a Chinese 3D wooden puzzle.
8. Laughed so hard I got a stitch in my side.

Eight things I wish I could do:

1. Go into Space.
2. Go Whale Watching.
3. Write a novel.
#. Swim every day.
5. Live in the City.
6. Be my own boss.
7. Remember the lyrics to songs.
8. Have a conversation with my grandparents.

Eight things I don’t like:

1. Personality being used as an excuse for negative behaviour.
2. My groundhog days.
3. Materialism.
#. Nightclubs.
5. Cut and paste personalities.
6. Accidentally drinking cold coffee.
7. Not being taken seriously.
8. Not knowing what’s going to happen next.

Tagging… Curlydena, because she’s new to my rss feed (and twitter!) and I’d like to learn more about the Curly one.

I’ve been a daily user of Google Reader for the past year, using it to keep track of all the blogs I read. Daily use has meant that I’ve been acutely aware of each new feature that has been gradually added over the last few months. Usually these are welcome, but as Google attempts to add more social features I fear they are reducing the ability of authors and readers to follow conversations spawned from blog posts – which is considered a traditional and necessary feature of the blogosphere. That’s not to say that Google are the only ones doing this, both Facebook and Twitter have elements to them that is contributing to this.

For a long time Google Reader has allowed users to share blog posts of interest to friends  that were also using GR and slowly but surely I am starting to build up a list of friends that I share with and they reciprocate in kind. This is a form of social bookmarking, but unlike sites like Digg the author of the blog post cannot track how many times their work is shared, or by whom. GR also now features the ability to leave comments on blog posts and – at least from a blog author’s perspective – is unwelcome, because these conversations are kept private. Private social bookmarking and private blog commenting has negative implications because trackbacks and blog comments are an integral part of the blogging experience and can reinforce an author’s motivation and drive to continue writing.

Facebook and Twitter also provide you with the ability to social bookmark and comment, but again without  direct trackback links, so a blog author can never tell who is linking to their work, and misses out on many of the conversations spawned.

The lack of trackbacks and private blog comment conversations on Google Reader, Facebook and Twitter is  completely irresponsible but is in no way the fault of the reader. Google and Facebook especially understand the value of user generated content, today the most prolific of which is the simple conversation – as demonstrated by the rise of Twitter. By poaching blog comments and putting them behind private walls they are of course trying to keep their users within their own walled networks, which in the long run, could discourage bloggers from continuing to write.

Yes some of us write for ourselves, but many write for an audience, and it would be tragic for a blogger to stop writing because their audience had started privately, rather than publically, encouraging them.

I’ve been following Stephen Fry on twitter, much to my own amusement, and to celebrate reaching 50,000 followers he is running a very Fry like competition, it’s wonderfully complicated and devilishly playful.

“L=50 in Roman. The best tweet containing exactly 50 Ls will win. All tweets to contain the tag #L and none to exceed 140 character limit SF” (link)

The Roman numeral for 50 is L, so the task is to use 50 letter Ls in one 140 character tweet. Quite the challenge. Directly after the tweet posted by Stephen Fry someone else in my stream posted a link to the Ryanair baggage story from this week and thus my first attempt was born.

Ryanair left my leather luggage in limbo with little likelihood of lawful retrieval. Lovely challenge #L

Unfortunately, this only contained 15 letters L. After much consultation with various online dictionaries I found a few prize words with numerous Ls, callipygian being my absolute favourite. Somehow the tweet evolved into a completely different monster and thus, my final tweet reads like a little story that could have been taken directly out of Stephen Fry’s autobiography.

Parallel multiple syllabic callipygian lads.Willfully polysyllabically lulled.Lawful release?Little likelihood.Lullllllllllilllllllllloo! #L (link)

Translation: Numerous young men with beautiful bums, sitting an equal distance apart from one another. They have a taste for syllables, and allow themselves to be calmed down by words with many syllables. Their release from prison very unlikely. “Lulliloo!” cried Stephen, joyfully welcoming them.

If you’re interested in entering the competition, it’s open to entries until Saturday the 24th of January at midday. Also, the twitter user ghijklmno has created a great utility to double check your entry. You can track the competition entries using the assigned hashtag of #L. The majority of them make little sense (not that mine does!), but I’ve found a few creative, witty and interesting entries. Looking forward to seeing which vocabulary genius from the twitterverse wins this one.

I posted my initial thoughts about blog navigation here and from it came a survey that asked some simple questions such as “On a scale of 1 to 5 how easy do you think navigating a blog is?”. In total there were 47 respondents, directed to the survey via my blog, Twitter and Facebook (the sample could be considered an experienced group of Internet users).

Obviously from the results above none of the survey respondents indicated that navigating a blog was very difficult. However I would consider the most interesting statistic from the survey that 30% think it’s neither difficult OR easy, and 9% think it’s difficult. It would have been quite easy to assume that a majority would consider navigating a blog to be very easy, which isn’t the case. It’s surprising considering the high possibility that the survey respondants were experienced users.

The other 4 question results, and comments from bloggers/readers are discussed below. Continue Reading

This is a follow-up to my previous post regarding how easy or how hard it might be for internet users to navigate standard blog designs.

To help answer the question I’ve created a short 5 question survey, which I’d be delighted if you would fill out. I’ll keep it open for a week and post the results here and provided some commentary. If you have anything you’d like to add on the topic of blog navigation and design, please add your comments here.