Archive for July, 2007
Networks and Their Limits
I love this video from Lee Lefever that explains social networking, because I could show it to my dad and he’d understand it.
That said, it got me thinking about the limits of social networking.
As the video points out, the connections between people are valuable, and social networking is a way to make them [...]
Help Your Customer; Help Yourself
The other day, I was talking to a client (let’s call her Andrea) about a project that I’m working on when she made an off-hand remark. We had been talking about how soon her team was going to be able to provide me with some critical content for my project, when Andrea said, “We’re so [...]
Beware of Blogstorms in the Weather Report
If you trolled around Blogland last weekend, you would have the impression that Apple and AT&T’s iPhone activation process was a disaster. Assorted bloggers shared their tales of woe (very real); perhaps the most unfortunate was Josh Hallett of Hyku, whose activation took days. People who should know better cited web polls showing nearly 40% [...]
Marketing the Rockets’ Red Glare
The Fourth of July is one of those holidays that you’ve just got to love.
It’s summertime. It involves fireworks. It requires minimal shopping (other than hot dogs and watermelon). Other than making sure that you’re wearing red and/or white and/or blue, you don’t need to get dressed up. (Note to self: Once again, see if [...]
The Wisdom of Meritocracy
Last week I wrote about one of the inherent problems with brain-dead content gathering systems like Digg - they’re easy to game, because they’re dumb by design. But this is actually a bigger Web 2.0 issue; there’s a mythology of the “wisdom of crowds” informing the ideas behind a lot of social networking and [...]
Nintendo Wii Goes Gray
Nintendo’s doing something fun and interesting with Wii, and that’s introducing it to the elderly, which was reported on in a recent Boston Globe article by Robbie Brown.
Hoping to up the demographic boundaries of its products, Nintendo rolled out Wii in a retirement community in the Boston suburb of Hingham. The residents (average age: 77) [...]
