tombrew.com | Blog

Time for an unsubscribe standard?

2010-07-13T12:35:58Z

I don’t think I’m the only one who’s begrudgingly relinquished my email address in order to access some content or buy stuff from some website only to receive a steady stream of unwanted emails from said website or its ‘carefully selected partners’. I know there’s probably a box to tick if you don’t not want to not have emails not sent to you, but they’re easy to miss and can be tricky to interpret, especially when all you want to do is get your stuff.

So when these emails start arriving, perhaps a few iterations are mildly interesting, then they just get plain annoying – deleted instantly on their arrival. I’m not talking about spam emails, everyone receives the odd email from Nigerian businessmen or ‘pharmaceutical’ retailers, but on the whole, email clients are getting pretty good at stopping spam getting though to our inboxes.

This brings me to the point of this particular rant: all email clients have a ‘Mark as Spam’ button which will prevent any emails from a particular sender/domain or with certain keywords in the subject/body from getting through in the future. Smashing. Quick, easy, one click.

So, how about a ‘Unsubscribe Me’ button which would send a message back to the sender saying joe.bloggs@email.com wants to stop receiving this email, please remove this address from your database - or even better it could remove it automagically.

I think I’m right in saying that any bulk emails sent must contain an unsubscribe link, but this is often obscure and the destinations of these links aren’t consistent: some ask for your email again, some a password (chances are you haven’t a clue what this is), some you need to read more riddles and tick new boxes. It’s just messy and off-putting.

I don’t think an unsubscribe standard is the biggest leap of faith – technologically speaking anyway. I’d say all this requires is a common API which all email marketing providers and email clients alike adopt. Perhaps the marketers wouldn’t be too keen, as it’d make it too easy for people to stop receiving their guff but in the end, isn’t the consumer always right? User privacy is a big deal and I suspect online agencies would do all they can to appease consumers.

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That little green URL

2010-05-30T10:19:25Z

So I Googled something before, in fact it was ‘sumerian’ (I’d just seen Fourth Kind – those who’ve seen it will understand). Google dutifully served up results in their usual speedy way and I instantly clicked the top result – as you do. When taken to the page I was puzzled to see that it was not the page I was after.

Hitting back, it dawned on me that I had made my decision to visit this page, not on the title or description of the result (as perhaps a normal person may) but on the little green URL. I’d just seen en.wikipedia.org and clicked. The fact it was the top result probably helped too.

But, it’s interesting that when searching for stuff online, I’m making decisions to click based on the site where the info is hosted, before I even read the title or description of the result – if at all. I’m so expectant of Google to deliver the search results I expect, that my main concern is just which website the info is on. I’m happy to let Google do the thinking and leave me to make decisions as to whether I trust the site to provide me with reliable info.

This just shows how important it is to build a website which people will trust. Even with the bazillion of possible websites competing for your click – reputation matters a lot. In fact, it would appear it’s my first consideration.

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Big brands really seem to be taking Twitter seriously

2010-05-18T21:53:21Z

Well, confessions first, this blog post has come about after a fleeting egosurfing session this evening. Hey, everyone does it! Even, it would seem, top Google Execs.

My choice of egosurfing was however on Tweet Level, one of a few websites that take your Twitter username, works some magic and then provides you with statistics on how ~~well~~ badly you ‘rank’ on Twitter. Tweet Level uses various elements of your Twitter activity to calculate how ‘important’ you are on Twitter, from simply totting up your followers and follow-ees to determining your Involvement Index which “calculates a score based upon how an indivdual engages with their community.” Posh.

It’s this analysis of engagement which has caught my eye though, as Twitter is often lauded as the new medium for customer support. It’s interesting to see that when you view the top 20 Twitterers on Tweet Level by their Engagement Score (essentially how active they participate within their community), six of the highest ranking entries are those of global brands. At the time of writing, T-Mobile USA was third, O2 tenth and Coca-Cola thirteenth:

Perhaps you could argue thirteenth isn’t particularly amazing, but I think these companies have done well to adopt Twitter in the way they have. I can only see this list getting more saturated with big brands as both consumer and organisation realise that real-time, personal communication is simply going to become the norm.

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Search online for…

2010-03-23T20:48:00Z

Recently, I’ve noticed a lot of TV adverts for big brands’ products or services really make a point of directing those watching to search online for a brand name, event or even just keywords. Often, this is in place of their own web address. For example, the other day I caught a TV ad for Sony Ericsson’s new mobile phone, the Vivaz. Just as the ad was finishing, the nice voiceover lady said something along the lines of “...search one for Sony Ericsson Vivaz.” Which led me to think, “hmm?”

Everyone knows that TV ads (well, the good ones anyway and not ones involving particular comparison websites and annoying singing waiters) are meticulously thought out. Shedloads of effort is obviously put into their visual style and what message they’re trying to convey and to whom, but what isn’t so clear is so why many are starting to do undertake this practice of directing viewers to search online instead of blurting out their web address.

Well, in true rhetorical blogging style, I’ve got a couple of ideas:

This one’s probably a bit unlikely. Advertisers could have deals in place with certain search engines so that some kind of mutual benefit is gained depending on the level of traffic or number of search queries their TV ads generate. Or, and perhaps more realistically, is that advertisers have some kind of partnership going one with a search engine to direct consumers to their particular search engine. If so, we might start hearing more nice voiceover ladies instructing us to, just “Google this”? or “Bing that” or “Yah...” ...maybe not the last one.

The other reason, and the one that’s most likely in my opinion, is that advertisers are really, really putting faith in social media to promote their products or services. Say for example a TV ad tells me to search online for Dave’s Parrot Hire, and I do (who wouldn’t?) my search results would probably contain a link to Dave’s Parrot Hire’s corporate pages, but there would also be a myriad of links to blogs, twitter/facebook updates, forums, review sites all talking about Dave’s Parrot Hire. Potentially pretty powerful stuff when you think about it, as Dave could really leverage the positive things people are saying about his parrot hire service on the net and let his consumers do the promoting for him using super viral social media. However, you’d have to be quite prepared to take the risk of directing your would-be consumers to possible negative opinions about your product, but this is all part of the social media marketing game.

If you haven’t noticed this “search online for...” stuff getting mentioned at the end of TV ads then congrats for being immune to the advertiser’s propaganda, but I’d try and look out for it and see what you think.

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Google Chrome OS. Shiny! Literally.

2009-07-08T19:23:51Z

So, who else is a little bit excited? Is it sad that I turned on Twitter SMS alerts today just so I could receive news about Google’s latest bombshell?

That’s a yes, then.

Anyway, I thought I’d add my two-penneth to the already Chrome soaked blogosphere.

Ok, so the news is that Google are officially working on Chrome OS. A Google Operating System – I know, good eh? Will this be the first real Cloud OS?

Chrome OS will be jam packed with Google’s web apps and will try and get the user into a browser as quickly as possibly so, you never know, they might click on a couple of conveniently placed Google ads… after all, expect Chrome OS to be free.

I have to say I think this is a good thing. For a while now I’ve been slowly trying to convert my computing experience into a cloud based one. I use my own web server as cloud storage, Meebo Instant messaging, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Gmail and Chrome Applications for various other favourite webapps – all tucked away neatly in my taskbar. Gone are those old-skool icons for MS Office, Outlook etc.

If the Chrome browser is anything to go by, we’re set for a quick booting, secure and solid OS. My only concern is that for the likes of graphic designers/video producers etc. whose bread and butter apps are resource hungry monsters, there aren’t likely to be any web apps which can replace them around any time soon.

I do wonder though, will Chrome OS have to bundle Internet Explorer in the EU? That’ll be irony.

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3G and Last FM to kill FM Radio? - I tested it out

2009-03-19T18:04:56Z

It’s pretty obvious to see that mobile broadband is set to reach its tipping point any time now. As part of their respective upcoming digital dividends, many European countries are working together to clear complementary parts of their spectrum to make way for more mobile broadband type services. Once this happens, economies of scale will kick into action big time. Mobile internet devices will become cheaper to both manufacture and buy and roaming, in particular data roaming, across Europe will become much cheaper.

Couple this with a general consensus that telecommunications holds the key to dragging us out of this ~~banking balls-up~~ economic crisis and I would expect some serious innovation in terms of mobile broadband in the near future.

Now, I’ve started my own little trial of the capabilities of mobile broadband...ok so the trial consists of me buying an iPhone and ragging my monthly data limit but it’s a start.

I’m a big Last.fm fan, have been for a while now so it was the first app I installed on my iPhone. It’s just like radio but without adverts, annoying DJs and rubbish RnB. I listen to a lot of radio in the car and it got me thinking, wouldn’t it be good to be able to listen to Last FM in the car?

So I grabbed my iPod car FM transmittery thing (technical term) and gave it a go to and from work today - a sort of qualitative user-experience type of test. The result was pleasingly...pleasing:

The Manx Telecom 3G connection is fast enough (about 3Mbps I believe) to not frustrate you when buffering the first stream and subsequent tracks follow seamlessly. Sound quality is awesome because its streamed at 128kbps - it’s actually better sounding than my Radio 1 FM reception and there were no stutters, corruptions or re-bufferings. Of course, the app is easy to use and having the album art and band info displayed is just cool...if not a little distracting…

So, as mobile broadband, not just 3G but other evolutions such as LTE and WiMax, becomes more ubiquitous why couldn’t it mark the demise of traditional FM/LW radio etc as a “broadcast” platform? Just think of all the possibilities - high bandwidth, highly interactive, synchronous devices in every house, car, pocket. I’m sure radio shows as we know them now will continue, but they’ll be delivered be over IP rather than FM.

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My thoughts for Adobe Photoshop CS5 - CSS

2008-11-12T14:21:32Z

I’ve been a Photoshop user for what seems like forever. It’s an incredible program and an essential tool in the web designer’s Start Menu/Dock and with each new revision, Adobe seem to be able to improve Photoshop in some way which you’d never expect, but there’s one thing that’d make a designer’s life much easier.

As a web designer myself, my workflow is probably very similar to many:

Design in Photoshop
Build HTML template
Write CSS

And I’m sure you’ll all agree that setting the styles of fonts, links, borders etc with CSS is so easy it hurts and changes are made throughout the page instantly (provided you’ve done it right that is).

Now, wouldn’t it be great in Photoshop if, alongside your page design, you could tag elements with CSS code such as ‘a’, ‘h1’ etc. Any changes could then be made to the whole design with a few keystrokes as opposed to fiddling around selecting various layers and text boxes...?

And wouldn’t it be just ace if you could then export that style sheet into the likes of Dreamweaver and have your site’s CSS already half completed?!

Just a thought...if you’re listening, Adobe.

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Cloud OS. What’s all this then?

2008-10-21T13:28:54Z

So, it seems Microsoft are taking their battle for Web supremacy to the next level. Apparently, they are soon to release an operating system specifically for the ‘cloud’, rumoured to be called Windows Strata.

Now, I was a bit dubious about this name. On first impressions it sounds ‘cloudy’ but a quick bit of googling revealed that I wasn’t alone. Strata actually describes layers of rock, as opposed to Stratus, which is a type of cloud formation…

Anyway, I digress.

I’m curious as to how a Cloud OS would actually work. Is Windows ~~Strata~~ Stratus eventually meant to supersede the likes of XP and Vista? Well, probably not because that’s Windows 7’s job, right?

So in order to access a cloud-based OS, surely you need another OS running locally? A browser would probably be handy too.

This got me thinking, I wonder if/when we’ll see a day where computers are not bought with an OS pre-installed, but instead run some variant of browser software through which an OS could be instantly accessed.

This is where I can see a cloud based OS really working: A platform independent, subscription based OS, able to run any manner of applications online. Storage and processing will be carried out remotely in ‘computing power stations’ and any updating or patching would be discretely performed in the background (imagine that, Windows Users.)

Maybe I’ve just got cloud-fever, but its interesting thought…

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Shiny new social/web 2.0/blog site: Done.

2008-10-13T14:22:30Z

So, its taken nearly two solid weeks of picture-drawing and bracket-typing but it’s here - my new website.

One of the main reasons for its revamp was to remove its reliance on the nemesis of Google and the iPod/iPhone, Flash. I wonder when they’ll be friends?

Anyway, I wanted the new site to be a bit more interactive and lively than simply a static presence. So I’ve squeezed in:

Last.fm latest track feed
Last.fm top album feed
Twitter feed
a Blog
a shiny lightbox style image gallery

I’ve also been somewhat obsessed with the W3C code validator built into the Firefox web developer toolbar...so it’s fully XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 compliant.

Although it was often frustrating meeting all the demands, I think its important that websites are written properly. Besides, what’s the point in putting all the effort into a website design if it doesn’t look the same on every browser? (Yes, even IE6!)

Right so, with a new social/2.0/blog site comes immense responsibility to keep it erm, 2.0-ey. I must get my thinking cap on and write a decent blog eh?

If you’re reading this, thanks. Let me know what you think, Cheers.

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City Space from LivePlace - Photorealistic Virtual World

2008-08-13T10:12:07Z

Well, this is insane!

It has been a while since I have seen something on the Net which has impressed me so much.

LivePlace have created a photo-realistic virtual world, City Space. Its rendering engine is built using OTOY and all computing is done in ‘the cloud’. It is claimed that the application will run on ANY browser on ANY spec device (mobiles included) with a plugin.

I suppose the premise is pretty much the same as Second Life etc. A virtual world where you can own spaces, customise them and make friends, but the graphics alone in this video of City Space are so engaging that it far outweighs secondlife. While secondlife brings interaction, City Space adds realism, and I think this is crucial. If we are to adopt virtual worlds, like many believe we will, they need to be erm…real.

Take 15mins out to watch this video. It is worth it.

Full report on City Space from TechCrunch

If this doesn’t get your EBIN juices flowing…then I quite simply don’t know what will!

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Another Cuil Search Engine?

2008-07-28T19:43:17Z

Cuil, pronounced ‘Cool’ apparently, is an attempt by ex-Google employees to overtake their former paymasters as the best search engine on the Web. They claim that their algorithms do a better job of understanding the content on the page, rather than basing its value on the number and quality of its links.

This type of ’semantic search’ isn’t a particularly new thing, many have tried and failed, but I do think that the future of the Web searching is going to be built around understanding the meaning of the information.

Its search results page is, err different. OK it’s not Google, so maybe that’s putting me off… But I get the feeling that they are deliberately trying to do everything different to Google; from the layout of search results, to the fact that they claim to not store individual search history - even the colour scheme is pretty much the opposite.

I’m not sure on this one yet. Competition is obviously a good thing but will they have the balls to muscle in on Google’s market share? It’s proven quite difficult so far…

I wonder what Google think? What do you think?

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