Internet Detox
Are you wishing the internet was never born? Like a newborn child that gives joy and misery in equal measure, you can’t stand the noise, but find the noise irresistible?
Do you really care that your close friends are ‘waiting for a Facebook friend invitation’ or Twittring that they’d like a coffee?
10 steps to a better life:
- Delete your inbox. Do it now. Delete it all. None of it matters.
- Set your out of office to : “I’m not reading emails until 4pm everyday. If it’s from someone I know, addressed to me (and not CC’d) I might read it, but can’t guarantee because I get 3000 emails a day. If it’s an emergency, call my cell phone + xxxxxx. Please note an emergency is an emergency, not please can you check out my facebook profile.
- Limit your internet activity to 3 dedicated tasks per day - no mindless browsing of daft things - max time 20 minutes
- Leave all Web 2.0 sites (Facebook etc) - wait for web 3.0! Web 3.0 will be so smart, you won’t have to tell anyone you’re sitting at home there’ll be a Googlebot telling the world you’d like a cup of tea.
- Look at your partner when you’re talking to them, no texting or emailing. They don’t like it.
- Don’t upgrade your phone when the contract’s due for renewal. Ask for a cash refund - you don’t need another phone, let alone one with 3G, 10 Megapixel cameras and 50GB of MP3 storage. To be honest you don’t need this phone. Talk to the person next to you.
- Don’t ever signup for a monthly subscription for anything. If it’s that useful, pay for it when you need it.
- Change your email address. You don’t need all the spam you’ve signed up for.
- Reply to your emails with firm instructions - don’t allow a conversation to emerge.
- Never text anybody, it hurts your fingers too much.
37Signals rejects Photoshop
Great post on the 37Signals Blog - Photoshop and elaborate mockups just don’t work for building good UI (user-interface). And they should know Basecamp etc are benchmarks in UI design.
Don’t accept the finished item from your web designer, insist on getting launched straightaway, and then iterate and iterate.
Chitika Premium Units - AdSense watch out!
I’m really impressed with Chitika’s behavioural targeted Ads. The Ads show in the context of the blog, and only show when the blog/content is directly relevant. This makes AdSense look like a scatter-gun approach, and surprisingly ham-fisted.
Chitika’s model is based on much less traffic, but it is highly targeted. Moreover, the quality of the click is higher, because the traffic hasn’t been irritated by lots of other irrelevant advertising. This is a bright future for context advertising - where you only get the advertising you want.
Nice to see Google’s monopoly being challenged. If I was Google, I’d do even more with Google Checkout, and make sure that adverts are only served to those likely to buy, so that Ads are served not just on context but on your previous buying patterns. Then you’d only get really useful ads when you need them. You don’t need a holiday ad when you’ve just got back from holiday.
You can see the Chitika Premium Unit in action on this page, by clicking http://baldysblog.com/#chitikatest=mortgage
Meatball Sundae becomes a crime in the UK
The Times Online reports a huge shake-up in the UK’s consumer protection laws. The new laws cover a wide range of on- and off-line activity, and surprisingly specifically mentions fake blogs, such as those perpetrated by Walmart, L’Oreal and Coca-Cola.
Under the new legislation, companies that create fictional blogs could be fined as much as £5000. Added to which adding spammy comments on other blogs praising your company could also attract a fine of £5000.
It remains to be seen how this legislation will be enforced, but I’d much rather see market forces punishing the perpetrators of Meatball Sundaes
What Google knows about web spam
Matt Cutts is a software engineer at Google who blogs. He specialises in preventing spam in the Google index. His recent presentation at Web 2.0 is a must see.
Key points
- Good content always wins
- Backlink quality is important
- Search engine optimization is not considered as spam - good companies using SEO are determined and valid in Google’s eyes.
- Spammers leave footprints by accident - <!– insert your hidden text here –> so Google knows its a spammed template website.
Surviving Facebook
Facebook is approaching 50 million users, 4 million of them are in the UK, and the site’s growing by 3% a week. At this rate, it will hit 200 million by Christmas.Facebook is a mature social network site (aka Web 2.0), it draws inspiration from Flickr, YouTube, and MySpace. Perhaps it’s smartest move is a gloriously open API that encourages developers to contribute applications that immediately tap into the community. Scrabulous (no prizes for guessing what this is) wallowed in anonymity until it accelerated through its tipping point on Facebook.On November 8th I’ll be speaking at Jersey Tourism’s annual conference on the threats and opportunities of Web 2.0. For the hospitality industry, networking sites like Facebook (and more pertinent still; Trip Advisor) demand attention. I was visiting the Movenpick hotel in Geneva recently, and was impressed to see their home page linking to TripAdvisor comments.For good businesses, the social networking space represents huge opportunity. Bad business will be more easily exposed in this new world of near-perfect information. But all business will need to engage in this new space. Pretending its not happening is not an option.