Monthly Archives: March 2007

Learning from website polls

Game platform preferences. Source: nzherald.co.nz

I love website polls, and not just for their entertainment value. When well designed and interpreted with caution, they can tell you something about the users of a site.

There’s a good example on nzherald.co.nz today. Responses to the poll suggests that almost half of the site’s readers aren’t into gaming.

The beauty of this is that the editor who created the poll did not exclude non-gamers and, as a result, learned something useful about the site’s readers.

The poll could be improved by adding more response options, e.g. for people who prefer an “other” platform, and for people who are into gaming but don’t have a preference.

Read More

Copper thieves take CFUN off air

A Vancouver radio station was knocked off the air when thieves stole parts of its transmitter yesterday.

CFUN, an AM talk station, was reduced to broadcasting via the web for about four hours after the break-in at its transmitter site.

Station programme director Stu Ferguson told Canadian Press the thieves were probably after copper wiring. They must have known what they were doing, in order to get the wiring without getting electrocuted.

Read More

Activists sue Viacom over removal of YouTube video

It must be a wonderful time to be a copyright lawyer.

Just a week after Viacom began suing YouTube and its parent Google, alleging copyright infringment, two activist groups have launched a suit against Viacom, claiming that the cable network had no right to ask YouTube to remove a parody video which used portions of Viacom’s Colbert Report.

The activists say their use of Colbert was permitted under “fair use” provisions of copyright legislation. Viacom says it did not request removal of the video from YouTube and has no problem with it staying on YouTube.

It’s unclear whether the video was, in fact, ever removed from YouTube. It’s on the site now.

I can’t quite figure out its purpose though. The Colbert Report is already a parody. It’s sharp, funny and it’s a hit. The activists’ video, by comparision, just makes them look like they don’t get the joke.

Read More

Ganging up against YouTube

NBC and News Corp say they’ll supply video content, with commercials, to be distributed by MySpace, Yahoo, MSN and AOL. The new service is to be launched in a few months.

Apparently people will prefer this to watching the same content, without commercials, on YouTube. Or, if Viacom succeeds in its lawsuit, YouTube will be prevented from carrying the networks’ content.

Wendy Davis at MediaPost reports:

…shows that will be available via the joint venture include “Heroes,” “24,” “House,” “Saturday Night Live,” and “The Simpsons.” Movies slated for free distribution include “Borat,” “Little Miss Sunshine” and “The Devil Wears Prada.” Cadbury Schweppes, Cisco, Esurance, Intel Corporation and General Motors have signed on as charter advertisers.

Could this be an attractive alternative to YouTube for the consumer? I think so. There’s certainly room to improve the user experience on YouTube, e.g. in terms of picture size, and searchability.

Read More

Television considers the pop-up ad

The ABC television network is proposing to position commercials “seamlessly” within programmes in a manner that takes product placement to a new level.

As reported by Wayne Friedman on MediaPost, ABC unveiled the idea at a program development meeting with media buyers in Los Angeles  yesterday:

For example, in According to Jim, a real commercial would appear in the living room TV of Jim and Cheryl’s suburban home. That real commercial would then run full-screen.

To those who attended, ABC used 10 examples – all comedies, such as Ugly Betty – where commercials would pop up out of media props such as TV, cell phones, and print ads in magazines. It used marketing messages of automotive, beverage, and sinus remedy brands for its sample reel.

Will TV producers go along with the idea? One person at the meeting told Friedman: “I  imagine more powerful producers would say, ‘no way, Jose’.”

Read More

Viral video creator unrepentant

[youtube 6h3G-lMZxjo]

The creator of the “1984” mash-up video, which promotes US presidential hopeful Sen Barack Obama by attacking his rival Sen Hillary Clinton, was an employee of the firm that designed the Obama website.

Philip de Vellis, a strategist with Blue State Digital had his employment “terminated” after learning he was about to be unmasked by the Huffington Post. He then defended his actions in a posting on the blog.

Read More

Free Ice

Ice 2007

Although I’m not attending this week’s ICE (Interactive Content Exchange) conference in Toronto, I was pleased to notice that the Ice website offers audio interviews with several of the conference speakers. And a very nice menu interface too.

Does it not seem strange though, that these audio clips are described as “podcasts” even though there apparently is no syndication system to deliver them? Without syndication (e.g. RSS) they’re simply downloadable audio.

Read More

Search, it’s what we do online

Search engine Google is the most popular website among New Zealanders, and by a healthy margin, according to the latest data from web tracking service Hitwise.

Google has three sites in the top 20 list, based on market share of visits by New Zealanders, giving it a combined share of almost eleven per cent of all website visits in February. If one were to include visits to Wikipedia (a searchable encyclopedia) then the search category market share would be even higher, at 11.6 per cent.

Read More

Internet company neglects website

Toronto Hydro Telecom One Zone 

Is anyone at Toronto Hydro Telecom embarrassed by – or even aware of – the woeful state of their website?

This is the company that operates One Zone, which it touts as Canada’s most extensive wireless internet system, covering six square kilometres of downtown Toronto.

In radio commercials this week, TH Telecom proclaims that the One Zone service is still free, although various charging packages are “coming soon”.

But on the TH Telecom website, you can read on one page that the free trial will end March 7 (which is almost two weeks ago) and on another page:

One Zone™ will be free to all users until mid-April 2007. After that time, three different packages will be offered:

  • A pre-paid monthly subscription priced at $29 per month
  • A daily subscription including 24 consecutive hours of use priced at $10
  • An hourly subscription at $5

It makes me wonder whether TH Telecom really knows when its free service will end. And if mid-April is correct, then why not tell everyone the exact date on the website and in the radio spots?

Read More

Feature fatigue annoys mobile users

There’s an interesting post about “feature fatigue” on mobile devices by Steve Smith at Mobile Insider, based on a study by the CMO [Chief Marketing Officer] Council.

I particularly liked this comment by Smith:

I think that mobile content would do well to get over itself. Let’s face it; having in-hand my headlines, email, games, MySpace, etc. just is not that important. Mobile data is convenient, which is different from important. Important is connecting with family and friends, which is why we learned to navigate phone interfaces to begin with, and why low-tech SMS is the mobile cash cow that mobile TV can only dream of becoming.

Smith goes on to argue for “a seamless, solution for image-sharing and posting that is baked into the operating system of a phone”.

Read More