Web Business

Internet / Web Business — No Comments
4
Aug 09

Delicious gets serious upgrade, world makes another cup of tea

Fashion… what a wicked mistress you are. Back in the day (2005), Delicious was gravitational – objects gyrated around it, and you were nothing without a cooler Delicious bookmarks page than the next delusional geek.

Four years (and one Yahoo buy-out) later, fewer objects gyrate around Planet D. Firefox probably didn’t help (why stick your bookmarks into a public cloud, when a mix of the Awesome Bar and Weave reduces the whole tagging concept to dust?). And also, we kind of just… forgot about it. Phrases such ‘where links go to die’ didn’t help.

But hey, today’s a D-Day. Delicious has just enjoyed a serious splash of paint. Better recommendations, better tagging, better search… all good. Now all I need to do is care.

Journalism / Web Business — No Comments
2
Aug 09

Why charging may be good for journalism

So the European Court of Justice decides that even a snippet of text from a newspaper can be enough to break the law, in the same week that The Associated Press decides to take aggressive steps to protect its content.

First, here’s the predictable response that the web’s most vocal analysts are barking to anyone who’ll listen: the traditional news agencies are waging a war that’s already lost. The music and movie industries have spent the last five or more years learning that lesson, and have now decided that it’s easier (and more rewarding) to piss from within the tent.

And those entertainment industries arguably didn’t face the oversupply issue that news faces today: the day of the release of a new Eminem album didn’t coincide with the launch of 52,000 beat-for-beat photocopies of the same thing (well, not 52,000, anyway). A corner store owner will tell you that you can only sell so many bean cans to so many people. Get the supply of tins to meet demand, and you’re in the money. News is not in short supply. Continue reading →

Advertising / Internet — 1 Comment
31
Jul 09

‘I’m the best Bing since Bing Cosby’

This isn’t a puppet.

It’s Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s insightful, experienced business leader, giving a considered evaluation of the recent Microsoft / Yahoo search deal. It’s always slightly awkward when an icon such as Ballmer opens up to the camera in this way, so it make make painful viewing for the more sensitive among you.

‘I took your search business,’ says Ballmer, obviously aware of the significance of the deal for the web competitive landscape. ‘YOUR SEARCH BUSINESS. YOUR SEARCH BUSINESS.’ Indeed, Steve, you did.

Life / Web Business — No Comments
3
Apr 08

A message to United Airlines

You can usually tell when a company has wandered off the path. It’s the atmosphere in the reception, a shared look on the face of the staff, or maybe an indiscrete comment from one of the juniors on the team.

I’ve just arrived in Las Vegas from London, having flown via San Francisco with United Airlines. I chose United because of the price: it was lower than any rival fare. After booking the flight and hotel through Expedia, a little research revealed that I could upgrade my United seat through their Economy Plus Access scheme – $349 would buy more legroom for myself and one other passenger. I’m 6ft 4in tall and my son’s a good 6ft, so we paid.

I arrived at Heathrow to see the longest damn queue I’ve ever witnessed – hundreds and hundreds of United passengers weaving through Terminal 3. Continue reading →

Advertising / Life — No Comments
2
Apr 08

Classic Mac ad: the way it should have been

Internet / Web Business — No Comments
31
Mar 08

Woopra: the live stats addicition starts here


GBTV #337 | Introducing Woopra from Neal Campbell on Vimeo.

Now this I want. I’ve long been a fan of Google Analytics – it’s simple enough to scan-read in seconds, yet clever enough to provide the kind of insights that change the way you work.

But Woopra takes the whole game to a strange new level by going… live. That’s right – unlike Google, Woopra presents a real-time dashboard, showing numbers of users, even incoming search terms from Google.

For a self-confessed stat addict such as myself, Woopra’s as good as handing a vampire an all-night pass to the blood bank. I’m putting the order in for the bank of screens tomorrow morning, one for each site in our portfolio.

The thing’s in private beta right now, but grab your camp bed and join the orderly queue.

Music Stuff / Social Media / Web Business — No Comments
28
Mar 08

Last.FM: life after the big buy-out

Internet / Web Business — No Comments
6
Jan 08

Last year, social. This year, knowledge

Ex-IBM boss Irving Wladawsky-Berger reckons an IT-based knowledge economy will be the most significant trend of 2008, grabbing the cool baton from social networking.

I confess to struggling with the concept at first. IWB points to a recent Business Week piece on ‘cloud computing’ – basically, server networks that can number in the hundreds of thousands that hold invaluable services and wells of know-how. Continue reading →

Search News / Web Business — No Comments
27
Sep 07

New Live.com: fighting relevance battles

Live.com.png

So today, we have a new Live.com, with Microsoft attempting to steal some Google turf by primarily focusing on relevancy of search returns.

Sensible enough: apparently, many billions of hours of analysis by people with large foreheads revealed that most people want to find things.

Being a person, I thought I’d give it a totally unreasonable test – one search query – and compare the big G with the big, er, L. As you’ll plainly see, Google is the infinitely better thing: Stuff.tv is clearly the right thing to return when you search for ‘stuff’. Live, on the other hand, has decided that you want some kind of English course. Blagh. Anyway, in total fairness to Microsoft, many millions of queries from humans around this fair planet of ours will settle the debate. Let battle commence.Google.png

Web Business — No Comments
26
Sep 07

Facebook: a fall is predicted

Marketing Shift has a principal analyst at Ovum foretelling rough times ahead for Facebook. He bases his argument on background legal action by the founder, the potential for identity theft and a possible crack-down on the use of the site in offices.I can see the latter beginning to cut in soon. Facebook profile pages are a common sight on screens as you wander offices these days – usually at lunchtime, admittedly, but you have to wonder how many bosses are running checks on total usage during the working day.Facebook Could Burst Web 2.0 Bubble

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