Minority Report UI?
17 February 2006
A very cool looking touch screen interface, reminiscent of Minority Report. The photo stuff is particularly good... see how simply and intuitively the guy moves and resizes his images. Follow the link to see the video.YouTube - Multi-Touch Interaction Research:
Posted by Nick Warren at 12:10 PM
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Simplicity... it just works
15 February 2006
Back in October last year Steve Jobs, the Apple CEO, introduced the new iMac... along with Front Row, Apple's Media Software. Jobs is a great presenter, but there was one slide that stood out. He showed the new Apple Remote (6 buttons) with two others for Windows Media Centre (40-somthing buttons). This, he said, typified what Apple was about... power and simplicity.
Although I have no doubt that Apple does strive for these things the comparion was unfair to Microsoft, whose Media Centre does way more than Apple's Front Row. (Note: I'm not saying that you couldn't design a vastly better remote, just that Jobs was, forgive me, comparing Apples with Oranges).
But yesterday something came along that brings the message home in a real way. By way of Signal vs. Noise we see that Jonathan 'Wolf' Rentzsch has been comparing the toolbars for Apple's Safari web browser, and the recent beta for Internet Explorer 7... a much better comparison. Notice anything?
Posted by Nick Warren at 9:02 AM
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Is advertising dead? Part Two.
05 February 2006
Last week I wrote a short post about why Semantic has never advertised. But I also said I was starting to consider having a crack.Over the past few months I've begun clicking on the Adwords that crop up next to Google Search results. That's a big deal because I pretty much ignore other forms of web advertising... and so do most of the people I know. So what's going on with Adwords?
I think they work for two reasons:
1) They arrive when I am looking for something (i.e. searching on Google)
2) They are often very relevant to my search.
If these two vectors were laid out on a map the point where they cross would have a little picture of a gold mine next to to it... because they're the reason Google is worth a trillion million gazillion dollars. Adwords quietly deliver what the user wants, at the exact moment they want it.
Naturally I've been looking into it... and I like what I see.
Before I tell you why allow me to simplify the advertising process to a point where experts will be chewing off their arms and legs.
1) an ad is created (either by you, or by your ad agency)
2) the ad is placed where your target demographic hang out (either by you, or your media buying agency)
3) you wait to see what happens.
I can hear the knives being sharpened as I write, but you can see why someone like me might consider advertising a bit of a lottery. Sure you can stack the deck with clever, creative and surprising ads. You can hire famous people to tell the world how great you are. You can test a campaign extensively. And so on and so on and so on... but in the end you have to wait to see what happens.
Adwords changes that* because you only pay for a result. If you don't click on my ad I pay nothing! That's a pretty big difference right there.
But there's more. Adwords are vastly more flexible than traditional advertising.
If I want to advertise in my local paper I need to get the ad in four days before it goes on sale. To appear in the Yellow Pages I must commit to the same ad for a whole year! If I am a big advertiser I might spend months working on a campaign... so I better hope my competitor doesn't come out with something twice as fast and half the cost the day before my campaign runs... because the time and the money are gone already.
But with Adwords you can create, change or remove a campaign in a few moments... which is like throwing a hand-grenade into the middle of traditional advertising... and it solves a lot of the problems I have with playing with the medium.
Actually there's loads of stuff that makes me want to try Adwords. I can set budgets and know that my costs will not be exceeded. I can test groups of ads against each other and see what works. I just love the fact that Google rewards successful ads with higher placement.
(Your position in the Adwords listing is a multiple of your bid on a particular keyword and your click-through ratio. Not surprising really that Google would want 'popular' ads near the top, as that's how they get paid. But the promotion of effective ads is a win/win scenario... and at the other end of the scale ads that are clicked less than 1/200 appearances are usually aborted by Google. As usual for those guys it's all about the relevance).
So here I am intrigued by Adwords, although those of you who follow Semantic will have realised the flaw in my plan.
I have no product to advertise.
Semantic is full. We haven't really needed to advertise for 8 years, and these days we really really don't need to. We have plenty of work between now and the summer, and setting farther targets than that goes against my Flexibility principle.
So for the moment they'll be no Adwords from Semantic, although I am itching to try it out. I do have one thought about something we could market online, but that's a story for another post.
*I am aware that Adwords is squarely camped on ground trail-blazed by Overture, but as I haven't used Yahoo for years I am sticking to Adwords for this :-)
Posted by Nick Warren at 4:12 PM
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In case you missed it...
Back in June last year Seth Godin wrote a post on his blog called Small is the new big. It was pure Semantic. In fact it's very similar to a piece I wrote for Business 2.0* magazine years ago.I'm not saying I pre-dated Godin with this stuff, because I don't know, and because in many ways it's kind of obvious. But it is cool that I covered much the same ground as him, particularly as I now hear he is using the post to introduce his next book. Read the post if you have a moment... it gets right to the heart of why Semantic works.
As an aside...
As well as being being creative and interesting Godin is a nice guy. A few years ago when I was talking with the Sunday Times about writing something I sent him a 'fancy a chat' email, to which he quickly and affirmatively replied. The Sunday Times weren't interested (their loss), but it left a cool impression.
----------------------------------------
*Actually it might have been Internet Works magazine, honestly I can't remember.
Posted by Nick Warren at 2:24 PM
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Semantic's Big Race
04 February 2006
Last night we played to lose.As I mentioned last week, Semantic was the Official Sponsor of the (ahem) Semantic Hurdles at a fund-raising evening my son's school held yesterday.
It was great fun, and in return for sponsoring the race we got to show a few slides about what we do and for whom. This was all fine with me, although I was again reminded of just why advertising is not really for us. (This all plays into the whole 'Is advertising dead?' thread, about which I have not forgotten).
It was the classic example of why traditional advertising is just not subtle enough to communicate the Semantic message. But that was okay, I was glad to be able to contribute.
In fact the basic goodness of that feeling has reminded me of something I was thinking about last year when we were talking with Starlight, that I should set up some kind of gift fund. Maybe we can spread our success around some...
Wendy and I also bought a horse in the Semantic race. It fell at the third :-)
Posted by Nick Warren at 2:18 PM
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New USBAH site live.
03 February 2006
The Usborne Books at Home site we've been working on for the last couple of months is now live. Thanks to Mark Franklin and the team at USBAH for making the project such a pleasure. Most of the content is actually behind the login box, so sorry for those of you who are non-Organisers.Anyway it's the latest Semantic work to go live, you can see it at:
www.usbornebooksathome.co.uk
Posted by Nick Warren at 1:41 PM
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Back from Bristol
02 February 2006
The e-Conference presentation went well yesterday, although my Mum got the biggest laugh.... which wasn't what I suspected. I told them about my MumTech Standard... i.e. when my mum (63) starts using a technology it is officially mainstream. I've been telling a 'My mum buys on Amazon' story for a while now. But recently I spent a couple of hours clearing out her garage. Towards the end she brought me out a cup of tea, and we stood drinking, looking at this pile of rubbish on the drive. "Maybe I should ebay it", she said.The conference delegates loved that.
The new USBAH site got great feedback from the delegates, especially the Organiser Only area. They also seemed very receptive to USBAH's overall Internet Strategy... which was the area I specifically talked about. I also learned that Stephen Cartwright actually lived at Apple Tree Farm... which will mean something to anyone who knows Farmyard Tales.
Posted by Nick Warren at 8:54 AM
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