Web 2.0 and social media technology solutions began with wide appeal and are rapidly evolving to server specific business functions. One critical business problem is data overload. A recently released Workplace Productivity Survey, commissioned by LexisNexis notes “…seven out of 10 office workers in the United States feel overwhelmed by information in the workplace, and more than two in five say they are headed for a data ‘breaking point’.”
If you could change a headline, graphic, or promotional text on your website and increase click-through or conversion rates, would you do it? Of course you would. However, knowing what to change can be a challenge. Even more challenging is tracking which changes have the most effect. This was a daunting task, until now. Google’s Website Optimizer gives you the ability to make changes that create alternative layouts on your site. You are then able to track site visitor’s actions from one page to another based on the different scenarios you created. For instance, if you wanted to see if changing a certain graphic increased conversion rates, you could set the Optimizer to change from the original graphic to the new graphic and then track the different layouts to see which one has the better success. Continue reading »
For some reason I was having some issues publishing content on a social network so I copied the link and decided to try the function using the Flock browser. It worked fine, and within a few minutes I discovered several exciting things that have me considering a switch. Here are the 3 initial reason’s why I’m switching (for now).
John Maeda, author of best selling book “The laws of simplicity” discusses designing a custom Reebok shoe. Maeda is a computer scientist, MIT professor, and Esquire magazine “21 Geniuses” award winner, who creates graphics using algorithms and programming codes, specializing in digital media and motion graphics. What’s unique about this design is the inside of the shoe is imprinted with the handwritten code that generated the graphic design that is printed on the outside of the shoe.
The limited edition shoe went on sale November 12 and sold-out all 100 pairs the same day.
Ariel Shamir of the Efi Arazi School of Computer Science in Israel has developed a promising technology that enables image resizing that is much more intelligent than rescaling or cropping. See the amazing video for details. Hopefully this tool will find its way into Adobe CS4.
The TED organization (TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design) runs an invitation-only conference every year for the famous, brilliant and well connected. I’ve been on the waiting list for a few years. Last I subscribed (iTunes Link) to the TED conference video podcasts and have been enjoying the 20 minute presentations each morning on the tread mill. The conferences have featured such an amazing array of speakers; Bill Clinton, Bono, Rick Warren and many authors, designers, business leaders etc. In April TED launched a new, brilliantly designed website with amazing content.
The site is a great example of using both Flash and browser technology to create a rich experience. The home page features a brilliant Flash based navigation element that allows you to select your view either by visualization or list and drill down by theme. In visualization mode the view presents images that represent topics, as you roll over the images a flyout panel provides a description and list of videos. By default the thumbnail sizes are determined by the most recently updated. You can change that view to size up by ‘ most talks’, ‘ most emailed’, or ‘ most discussed’. As you adjust the visualization the view animates to the new settings.
Once you click down to the video level this page displays a full description of the talk and speaker, and all the social computing features to embed the video, share, email etc.
*Click the images to enlarge
The video player provides a chapter navigation on the scrub bar.
The ratings tool is also quite unique providing the ability to quickly checkbox tags and rate the video which then displays a tag cloud.
Jeff Han presented his Multi-Touch sensing work at the TED Conference 2006 and it looks like Microsoft has turned it into a product. At the D: All Things Digital conference Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled Microsoft Surface, the first in a new category of surface computing products from Microsoft that will “break down traditional barriers between people and technology”.
A Surface computer is able to recognize physical objects from a paintbrush to a cell phone and allows hands-on, direct control of content such as photos, music and maps. Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a dynamic surface that provides interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects.
With Web 2.0 there’s so many ‘ Long Tail’ possibilities for content that you can result in too many visual elements on the screen. Print, email, bookmarks, comments, trackbacks, tags and metadata. Applying Ajax creatively can allow for a much more focused experience.
Social bookmarking sites are popular these days, allowing alternative (to email) ways to share content. You could potentially display dozens of icons to sites like del.icio.us., digg, furl, Newsvine etc. Scroll to the bottom of the and see how the “Share this” icon reveals a bunch of social bookmarking icons, and email tab. Other tabs could be ‘blog this’ or ‘get code’… Nice way to add a lot of functionality without cluttering the page.
Thanks to Alex King for the ‘Share This’ plug-in for Wordpress.
An early pioneer in interactive media, Dean Whitney is a Web 2.0 and Social media technology evangelist. Start-up veteran, President of Garfield Group Interactive a Boston-based digital agency.
