Archive for the 'web' Category

First Mover Advantage: When Copycat Doesn’t Work

Published on 1 February 2011 in Google, opportunity and web. 0 Comments

How perceptions of Being Bigger may not always play out in reality.

First Mover Advantage. A popular adage in this era of perennial web startups. Equally as strong has been the thought that established players – the big fish – can simply move in on the small fry’s niche patch and bring it to the mass market – the Free Rider effect.

Groupon is arguably a case in point. Out of nowhere the young gun from Chicago has been described as the world’s fastest growing company and a $6bn gamble, only for such heavyweights as Google and Facebook to begin to muscle in on it’s coupon territory, sensing their already huge ecosystems will at least make the new guy irrelevant.

This is the textbook case. What happens when the innovator is somewhat higher up the foodchain? We may be about to find out.

Continue reading ‘First Mover Advantage: When Copycat Doesn’t Work’

Understanding Typography

Published on 24 January 2011 in information media and web. 0 Comments

I thought I knew what typography was about before. I mean, I never claimed to understand the need to appear obsessed over it. But in general, yeah sure, some types are easier to read than others. Some have a character of their own. Don’t choose comic sans. And a few other heuristics that steered you in a generally correct direction.

However as someone who takes a pretty guerilla approach to the matter I’ve never been exposed to anything approaching the Zeitgeist of typographic design. Continue reading ‘Understanding Typography’

Faux Data: Infographics

Published on 4 January 2011 in data, information media and web. 0 Comments

The theoretical physicist Geoffrey West criticised existing accepted thought in urban theory before coming up with a set of constants that defined the relationship between city size and the output of it’s citizens (Each time a city doubles in size it’s per capita innovation, income, etc increases by 15% – and likewise the negative social actions of crime, pollution…). Previously he found a similar efficiency in biology where the larger an organism was the less energy per unit mass it required to go about it’s life.

It’s this track record in reducing a problem domain to a simple set of rules & constraints that is so impressive. The way in which theoretical physics practitioners go about solving for x – the sense of minimalism that drives the crunching of gigs of data and seemingly chaotic environment into understandable, predictable systems. It’s raw data visualisation in it’s purest form.

And then we have the humble infographic. Continue reading ‘Faux Data: Infographics’

Government Information Flow Online

Published on 15 December 2010 in Big Society, information media and web. 0 Comments

A grand title, considering the relatively niche aspect of government communications that piqued my interest in the subject. But it’s something that should perhaps be given much greater emphasis as society increasingly interacts with the state online.

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How to Opt Out of Targeted Behavioural Advertising

Published on 26 October 2010 in data, Tech Labours and web. 0 Comments

Behavioural advertising involves the tracking of a web user’s surfing and displaying advertising that matches this data. I find the tracking of my surf history unnecessarily obtrusive personally and today found the online tool that will prevent marketing companies from collecting this data and profiting from it:

http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp

Incidentally I came by this information by way of Rapleaf, Continue reading ‘How to Opt Out of Targeted Behavioural Advertising’

When to do Real Time

Published on 10 October 2010 in data, Google, information media and web. 0 Comments

Image courtesy jayce 31

Google has done two ‘real-time’ things lately, one good one not so good: Real Time web indexing and real time web search.

With ‘er, hang-on a minute…‘ moments now surfacing in the public domain I find the contrast between the two to be especially important. Google in their traditional engineer style expound the benefits of both in shaving seconds of search: ’11 user hours saved globally each second’; ’50% faster indexing rate of content’; figures that prove the mantra – machines search better than humans.

Machines definitely do the donkey work better than humans. Continue reading ‘When to do Real Time’

Google & It’s Search For a Social Graph

Published on 12 July 2010 in Facebook, Google and web. 1 Comment

image courtesy Tantek

Techcrunch lead on a $100m investment by Google in Zynga the social network gaming company. It’s the latest in a long line of Google failures in a vital area of capturing web traffic – or, “organising the world’s information” as Google diplomatically puts it.

Canny move or desperation?

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Browse with Confidence?

Published on 21 June 2010 in Tech Labours and web. 0 Comments

Perhaps, when attempting to convince users your browser is rock solid haxor-proof, it’d be advisable to demonstrate to them that your sites can detect which browser they’re currently running?

SEO No Go

Published on 24 April 2010 in Facebook and web. 0 Comments

I get asked quite a bit if sites can use their facebook page to create inbound links to their homepage for Search Engine Optimisation purposes.

First off I point out that although FB Pages are public, Facebook adds rel=”nofollow” to all external links posted on users & pages walls, meaning no benefit for seo.
However I have seen a number of SEO-sites claim that adding one of the many RSS feed apps to their fb page and configuring it to auto publish their target site feed will result in the fb link juice flowing back to them.

not so.
Continue reading ‘SEO No Go’