• Sketchnotes: Agile training day at Made by Many

    Over the last couple of weeks we’ve put everyone at Made by Many through a day of Agile Training with Simon Baker and Gus Power from Energized Work.

    These guys really are the Penn and Teller of agile software development, and I thought the session was excellent. Most of us here have been trying to work in agile ways for  five years or more but this was an opportunity to get better at it by broadening our knowledge and understanding. Another post follows containing some more considered takeaways, but I wanted to share these sketch-notes I made during the day. They petered out towards the end of the day as proceedings became more discursive.

    There are 10 pages in total, including a ‘page of evil’ where I tried to capture all of the things that we decided one way or another were EVIL.

    Picture 49

    Picture 40

    Picture 41

    See the whole set —-> Read full post

    No Comments

    0
    Tim Malbon By Tim Malbon

    30th July 10

    0 comments

     Made by Many

    agile

  • Wikileaks, news, and the stories within the story

    At the start of this month I suggested that Rolling Stone’s McChrystal expose was the story of the year. I was wrong. Whistleblowing website Wikileaks’s release of more than 75,000 classified military documents — collectively referred to as the Afghanistan war logs — is now the story everyone is talking about, and it is unlikely this will change anytime soon.

    A security breach/freeing of information (as you like) such as this is pretty much unprecedented, although many are comparing it to the 1971 publication of the Pentagon Papers (including Daniel Ellsberg, the man behind that leak).

    Just as with the Pentagon Papers, the leak and the subsequent publication of previously classified information are just part of a complex knot of stories. Who leaked this? What do we make of what we read? What next for Afghanistan, for the US military and indeed for ISAF as a whole? — these are only the immediate questions.

    Last night I attended the Frontline Club’s sell-out Q and A with Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks. I wanted to get closer to the story and explore a few of my own questions, specifically — How does a leak like this affect the life cycle of a story and the role of the press? What next for news and investigative journalism if Wikileaks steps in as the official sourcer of unofficial facts? Further, what are the ethics around what Wikileaks is doing — both Assange as an individual and the organisation as a whole?

    I don’t believe in censorship and I do believe in freedom of information, but no matter how I look at this, none of it is black and white.

    Read full post

    9 Comments

    9
    Sara Williams By Sara Williams

    28th July 10

    9 comments

     Uncategorized

    opinion

    publishing

  • Collaborative working. New approaches.

    We’re working on a side project, the details of which can wait for another post, and the very nature of it has prompted us to devise new methods for team collaboration.

    Without giving too much away (I’m a bit over-excited and secretive about it) the service we’re designing consists of two parts: a website and an iPhone app strung together with an API. There are dependencies between each part of the service. Things that happen on the iPhone app need to be reflected on the site and vice versa. There are other nuances but at that’s the core of it, a simultaneous broadcast / receive from app to site and back.

    Working out where to begin wireframing the service proved tricky. With so many interdependencies it all became a bit chicken and egg.

    I could work on two things at once. I could go as far as possible with the mobile bit, then switch. And then back again. But it just didn’t feel comfortable. I thought I’d end up re-doing things over and over.

    Why not, though, recruit another team member and work simultaneously?

    Read full post

    1 Comment

    1
    Simon I'Anson By Simon I'Anson

    23rd July 10

    1 comment

     Uncategorized

  • 5 things I’m thinking about right now

    A somewhat intentionally late entry to the question of “5 things you’re thinking about right now“:

    1. The Opposite of Foursquare

    Foursquare is huge, check-ins are big, but I wouldn’t play that game or use that service. Whilst the idea is sound and people will still use the service, I find the concept of what the network looks like to FourSquare so much more interesting. When I check-in on Foursquare, what does that look like? And how does the map of London, for example, change during the day as people check in and drop offline.

    Given that a lot of people are not going to use Foursquare because each contact with the network compromises their privacy and reveals more and more information about them, I think there’s a hard limit to how successful the idea can be. However, the opposite of foursquare, focussing on the shape of the network rather than the individuals connecting to it, removes that limit. Each time I check in, rather than just appending my +1 to a long list of identical entries, I disrupt the fabric of the network and make it better. I think a lot about the way “massively multiplayer” games are anything but, and flatter to deceive on the promise of joining a virtual, alternate world. Flipping the idea of Foursquare and looking at the network as a constantly evolving organism has a lot of potential for fun, games and stories, and that’s what I’m thinking about right now.

    2. The Half Life of Hardware

    Specifically, of course, games hardware. Consoles. We’re at a point where the Xbox 360, Wii, DS and PS3 have been on sale for around five years and there are no signs of a subsequent generation of hardware being released. Clearly, launching an expensive piece of hardware at the current time would be foolish, not least because it would fragment the games market and potentially ruin the huge community that has built up around the online services offered by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. However, all the major consoles must be close to the end of their expected lifetimes, and given that there are no clear plans for new hardware to come out, it’s interesting to see how the manufacturers are responding as their consoles go beyond the red line, as it were.

    As computer processors got faster and faster, CPU manufacturers were involved in a Gigahertz race until they went about as fast as they could before it became a fruitless task. At which point they branched out into multiple cores, faster RAM, smarter graphics and anything else that differentiated themselves from one another. Nintendo, with the Wii console, took the first step in pulling back from the race to better graphics fidelity and branched out with a different input mechanism (the Wii-mote), as well as creating a hugely successful, truly mainstream gaming device in the shaped of the DS, and were rewarded massively for doing so.

    Now, as Sony and Microsoft look to emulate the success of the Wiimote controller with their own Kinect and Move products, the DS has fragmented their product line with the DS, DSi, DSi XL and 3DS. Either they’re one step ahead of the game again, or they’re about to introduce massive confusion into their product line.

    3. Practical, Physical Things

    At a recent Made By Many get-together almost everyone expressed an interest in making physical, connected things. Fun devices like the s2h watch have influenced our thinking, and from reading the other 5 things lists, we’re not alone in that.

    However, once you break down what the connected things you want to build should do, it’s hard not to build an iPhone/Android app instead. A smartphone houses so many sensors these days, and comes with distribution and payment platforms as part of the infrastructure, that it would be foolish to build something that attempts to compete on just one of those feature sets. But then there are games like Rock Band, Guitar Hero and my personal favourite, Buzz!, a game which ships with a big, red, game-show buzzer.

    Physical, connected devices are still exciting, and there’s reason to keep thinking about building something with them, but it might just end up as a big, obvious button that connects to something more interesting, a MacGuffin for play.

    4. Casual, Responsible Gambling

    A personal interest, and specifically in Europe. My guess is that the gambling companies are looking at rise of sharing, social applications on the internet and are trying to figure out how to tap into that. It’s not about building the Twitter/Facebook/Foursquare of betting, but the niche networks of friends that exist across those services, and the competitiveness that arises when you make things personal.

    Moreover, with gambling banned in the US, it’s a great opportunity for startups in Europe, such as Smarkets, to iterate their ideas and build themselves into a significant force. When, and not if, the US legalises gambling, the same European start-ups will be in a great position to take advantage of a huge market with a well-tested gambling platform.

    5. The Return to the Internet as a Delivery Mechanism

    Rather than the Internet as the destination, that is. I think we’re reaching a point where the need to be “online, all the time” has faded. Perhaps it’s the novelty, but I’d like to think that we’re going to exhaust the desire to be as up-to-date on everything as possible, to be consistently ahead of the news and to know everything your friends are doing as soon as they make it public.

    From here on in though, maybe we’ll all be connected whilst doing something else. It’s Reverse Continuous Partial Attention – the opposite of being online first and foremost, and doing everything else in the moments in-between. It would be nice to think that in future we’ll be more involved in doing things in the real world, and pervasively connecting to the internet only to update ourselves and our friends. The real-time internet got plenty of attention, but asynchronous just works better and fits ourlives. I think this connects with 1 too, imagine everbody offline and doing things but checking in and disrupting things.

    Bonus ball, Health Apps

    I’m not really thinking about this, but someone smarter than I mentioned that the demise of Woolworths will hit the health and fitness DVD market hard. And that makes sense – it’s a seasonal business with most of the DVDs sold in January as people plan to get fit again, but with no Woolworths on every high street to (glumly) sell them, where are people going to buy them?

    I’d love to know if all of the C-list celebrities who tend to film these DVDs have been told not to put on their lycra leggings this year. Maybe all fitness filming sessions have been canned for the time being. I suspect not, though, because I imagine we’ll see a huge influx of health and fitness apps on the iPhone and iPad to compete with the already large number of fitness ‘games’ available on the Wii come the New Year.

    4 Comments

    4
    Duncan Gough By duncan

    23rd July 10

    4 comments

     innovation

    technology

  • Co-opting the introverts

    Papa Sangre (http://www.papasangre.com/), being a “video game with no video” is just the kind of obtuse idea that I like. Furthermore, it appears to be closing in on a public release, and having read a short preview of the game (http://www.casualgaming.biz/blog/314/Extremely-casual) I’m excited to see that there are ideas under the skin. Real ideas, too. Something that might make you think about more than just the social or game-play dynamics. Ideas that make you think. The games industry is incredible self-referential, to the point of obsessive cloning and stagnation, so it’s refreshing to see a game with a new approach, not just from the point of view of innovative games, but also in terms of passive, immersive and somewhat asynchronous experiences.
    Listen to, if you will, the video below:
    The idea of accessorising just to play a game is fun, and it’s not too ungainly a request to make of the player. In fact, this is the reason why I find Papa Sangre so intriguing. The idea of taking a very commonplace action, that of wearing headphones, and turning it into a game. Whilst the core idea isn’t unique, it’s the act of turning such a private experience into a playful one that really appeals. Listening to music through headphones is a very personal, introverted experience. Shutting yourself off to the conversations of passengers on the train, or pedestrians on the street, is almost selfish. Yet it’s something I do each day, and, like Fox Mulder, I often carry two pairs of headphones as I got tired of losing one.
    Turning such a private experience, where everyone on a train carriage can be immersed in different musical, narrative or fictive worlds, and turning it into a playful one whilst respecting that privacy sounds fun, intelligent and well thought-out. There are already plenty of augmented reality apps that, in practive, either don’t work or don’t provide anything nearly compelling enough. Moreover, no-one is going to play a game that makes them look stupid, standing on the pavement waving a smartphone around in order to interact with a virtual world layered over the real one. They might, ahem (http://pmog.com), be inclined to do something similar on the web though.
    “From the texture of the ground between your feet to the passing wind and distant creating signs, every detail is in place, and the experience is remarkable. A few moments into the sample levels I played, and the experience was akin to reading a great book, with enough going to quickly build a visual representation of the world around you.”
    Again, that’s something I find very interesting. Reading is contract between the reader and the author, where the former assembles their own vision of the world in their imagination. These fictive worlds (http://suttree.com/2009/11/03/fictive-worlds/) are richer and more personal than anything a video game can produce. There’s a good change that the stories coming out of these imagination-driven experiences and going to be more detailed and memorable that those prescribed by the visual cues of visuals-drive game. If we believe that games can tell stories, that games can be artistic expressions, then we need to leave an emotional imprint on the player. Whilst the most graphic murder simulators might achieve that, it’s not the direction games should be taking. More complex emotions than just rage and fear need to be elicited in players, and perhaps an audio-driven game is the way to do that.
    The way that Papa Sangre turns the obvious, uneventful habit of wearing headphones into something more than a trivial activity is exciting, and most importantly, new. It’s co-opting an introverted activity for play, and I think there’s a great deal of fun to be had there, and a lot of X to be Y’d for the idea. It’s a polite, humanistic approach to making a game that people can play without asking too much from the player, and I like that.

    Papa Sangre, being a “video game with no video” is just the kind of obtuse idea that I like. Furthermore, it appears to be closing in on a public release, and having read a short preview of the game, I’m excited to see that there are ideas under the skin. Real ideas, too. Something that might make you wonder about more than just the social or playful dynamics. Ideas that are worth thinking about.

    The games industry is incredible self-referential, to the point of obsessive cloning and stagnation, so it’s refreshing to see a game with a new approach, not just from the point of view of innovative games, but also in terms of immersive experiences. Listen to, if you will, the video below:

    Entering the Palace of Bones from Papa Sangre on Vimeo.

    And, from the preview, here’s where things get interesting:

    “Played with head phones, Papa Sangre builds ambitious 3D worlds purely from sound. Using your fingers as a pair of feat [sic] on the iPhone screens, you must run, walk and creep through these worlds, moving with complete 360 degree freedom, using various visual clues to outwit foes and find objects.”

    The idea of accessorising just to play a game is fun, and it’s not too ungainly a request to make of the player. It’s the reason I find Papa Sangre so intriguing – the idea of taking a very commonplace action, that of wearing headphones, and turning it into a game. Whilst the core idea isn’t unique, it’s the act of turning such a private experience into a playful one that really appeals. Listening to music through headphones is a very personal, introverted experience. Shutting yourself off to the conversations of passengers on the train, or pedestrians on the street, is almost selfish. Yet it’s something I do each day, and, like Fox Mulder, I often carry two pairs of headphones as I got tired of losing one.

    Turning such a private experience, where everyone on a train carriage can be immersed in different musical, narrative or fictive worlds, and turning it into a playful one whilst respecting that privacy sounds fun, intelligent and well thought-out. There are already plenty of augmented reality apps that, in practice, either don’t work or don’t provide anything nearly compelling enough. Moreover, no-one is going to play a game that makes them look stupid, standing on the pavement waving a smartphone around in order to interact with a virtual world layered over the real one. Although they might, ahem, be inclined to do something similar on the web. Anyway…

    “From the texture of the ground between your feet to the passing wind and distant creating signs, every detail is in place, and the experience is remarkable. A few moments into the sample levels I played, and the experience was akin to reading a great book, with enough going to quickly build a visual representation of the world around you.”

    Again, that’s something I find very interesting. Reading is contract between the reader and the author, where the former assembles their own vision of the world in their imagination. These fictive worlds are richer and more personal than anything a video game can produce, and hint at what the future of games might resemble. There’s a good chance that the stories coming out of these imagination-driven experiences are going to be more detailed and memorable than those prescribed by the visual cues of graphics-drive games. If we believe that games can tell stories, that games can be a form of artistic expression, then we need to leave an emotional imprint on the player.

    Whilst the most graphic murder simulators might achieve that, it’s not the direction games should be taking (and it’s up to us to correct that, but more on that another time, perhaps). More complex emotions than just rage and hatred need to be elicited in players, and perhaps an audio-driven game will help us pull back from violent eye candy towards enriching and engaging experiences of play.

    Still, the way that Papa Sangre turns the obvious, uneventful habit of wearing headphones into something more than a trivial activity is exciting. Co-opting an introverted activity for play is new, to me, and it’s a polite, humanistic approach to making a game, and I like that.

    2 Comments

    2
    Duncan Gough By duncan

    22nd July 10

    2 comments

     play

  • Service principles for the post-modern news organisation

    Service principles illustrate the way a service creates, captures and sustains value for customers and shareholders.
    They’re a useful benchmark in making decisions, (eg. ‘‘Should we retain a proprietary or open service platform?’. ‘Does this process deliver value to the customer or simply make life easier for the business?’).
    This is a heavily adapted set of service principles we created for a client, a specialist financial newspaper behind a paywall (hence the first two principles) which we think might work for any news organisation making the treacherous journey from industrial to post-modern media. We’ve called this organisation The Newspaper.
    The list must have lots of holes – are there any big ones? – and is much too long – how should we shorten it?  - and shifts between strategic and tactical issues – does that matter?
    1. Shape the business model to sustain print subscriptions, but not at the cost of standing still
    OK, this is very specific to subscription services, and reflects the reality that print circulation and advertising still account for the vast majority of revenue. How do you make the transition to new revenue streams without killing the old ones. Digital revenues tend to cannibalise print revenues, yet you need to demonstrate the explicit value of digital. Ask Rupert. There’s more than one answer though: charging a stupidly small amount of money for print for a short period of time is one way, or a stupidly high amount for premium online services is another. However the latter only works in a niche market with exclusive value. Here’s an example of the no brainer ‘get print too’ deal (not our client).
    2. Launch against yourself (in a strictly controlled way)
    The Newspaper brand strengthens our ability to create new revenue streams, but The Newspaper legacy restricts our scope for action. We should act to limit these restrictions by thinking creatively, changing culture and ‘failing fast’ in a Laboratory environment (cf.); this will enable The Newspaper to confront digital native start-ups at lower risk to our existing business. Here’s another example of what we mean, from the same source:
    3. Establish online and mobile as integral components of The Newspaper’s valued services, not just an add-on.
    This principle has implications for everything we do and especially the way we organise and reward individuals and teams. The value of online content and commercial revenues should be re-evaluated and the status of achieving online financial and editorial success raised.  (In other words, don’t save the story for the front page, get it online; and stop the ad team giving away free online ads to sell juicy full page print display)
    4. Make regular assessments of what lies inside or outside the paywall
    Things move quickly on the internet and what’s exclusive to The Newspaper one day may not be the next. When charging for content or services, ask: Is it essential for its intended audience? Is it exclusively or first available at The Newspaper? Is it conveniently delivered; does it enable the audience to create value themselves? If none of these apply then the offer has become commodified – put it outside the paywall.
    5. The Newspaper online is a service as well as a product, and this means treating readers as partners, not consumers
    Service-not-product means that the brand, the services, the organisation (especially journalists and editors) come into more direct and frequent contact with customers and should act as a solicitous and considerate host; it means that The Newspaper is involved in more parts of the value chain between a customer’s desires and their fulfillment, including interactions in which the customer is a participant, not a consumer. This has an impact on design, culture and on resources, especially editorial culture and resources. Here’s an example of services (in green) around different content types (in pink) and their valuable bi-produts (in blue). Remember, the value is in the service around the content, not the content itself.
    6. Users may create the most valued content for each other.
    So give them the tools to make it. And add services to your content that enable your customers to increase its value – as above.
    7. Give customers a voice; their voice has value.
    Services that enable customers to express opinion (vote, rate, comment, share) create trend data and customer data with value in its own right that can be played back to the audience and/or sold on to premium subscribers, advertisers or corporate customers. And likewise, we no longer have a monopoly of privileged sources or information: our readers may no more than we do, better than we do.
    8. Services that enable users to personalize and store data encourage loyalty
    The audience has invested time to obtain utility, as well as generating useful customer information with value to advertisers. They won’t want to waste that effort.
    9. Creating valued niche products is vital to online success
    The Newspaper as one big package doesn’t translate online. The Newspaper online need not be one thing for all customers. Digital enables products and services to be packaged and sold and deconstructed with infinite variety, according to need, to niche markets; The Newspaper can and should vary the scope, scale and voice of the proposition for different audiences within the boundaries of quality set by the brand.
    10. Foster synergies between channels and recognise channel differences
    The Newspaper is the brand champion; the web has infinite depth and breadth; mobile offers ubiquity and convenience. Each product niche can exploit multiple channels. Each channel should point to the others (eg. a permalink for every newspaper page).
    11. The Newspaper is not of itself merely ‘a newspaper’ – The Newspaper is a brand.
    The brand offers information and products for the financial professional, the business manager, the private investor and the corporation. The brand can be extended into any area where its qualities – such as inside knowledge, professional network, good with money – have value
    12. Protect and build the value of The Newspaper brand
    There’s a tried and tested set of commercial and professional standards in newspapers – everyone knew the rules (around the separation of advertising and editorial, for example) that preserve the integrity of the editorial product. New principles are needed, and especially around commercial recommendations. Readers don’t mind being sold too, but they’ll buy because they trust you, so it better be the best. Don’t enter into partnerships that destroy the value of the brand.
    13. Print web first It’s not sustainable to behave as though the newspaper is the one and only place that important news can be published.
    14. We have unlimited space online, use it
    This means opening up the filing cabinet, replacing the news pyramid with the news iceberg – it goes deep down into the waters. Use the web to publish or link to everything you have: background, archive, source material, images – become a curator of themes.
    15. Connect to the rest of the web openly
    The Newspaper’s content and tools will live as effectively outside its URL as inside. If we make our content available widely, paid or unpaid, we raise our profile and increase our reach internationally and domestically; we also undercut clippings agencies and other copiers. Remember, the value is in the service around the content, not the content itself. So, use rss, third party feeds, The Newspaper API(s) and widgets to give people access to The Newspaper outside The Newspaper.com. And if in doubt, give it out.
    Our competition isn’t just other newspapers
    We’re up against every source of news over every channel and many news organisations act very differently to traditional newspapers, and so we will too, which leads us to…
    17. Treat competitors as partners
    This is how the rest of the web works. What makes us so different that we don’t have to give, share and collaborate?

    Service principles encapsulate the way a service creates, captures and sustains value for customers and shareholders.

    They’re a useful benchmark in making decisions in unfamiliar territory, (eg. ‘‘Should we retain a proprietary or open service platform?’. ‘Does this process deliver value to the customer or simply make life easier for the business?’, ‘What limit should we place on advertising that interrupts the customer experience?).

    This is a remade set of service principles we originally created for a client, a specialist financial newspaper behind a paywall (hence the first and second in the list, which we shouldn’t get too hung up about) and which we’ve since adapted quite heavily to work for a generic organisation we’ve called The Newspaper embarking on the treacherous journey from industrial to post-modern media.

    See what you think. The list must have lots of holes – are there any big ones? – and it’s much too long at an unmemorable 15! – how should we shorten it?  - and it shifts between strategic and tactical issues – does that matter? How should we reorder them to reflect importance? It’s an unformed lump of clay, published on the principle ‘just get it out there’. Please weigh in, feel free. Here goes:

    1. Shape the business model to sustain print subscriptions and build new revenue sources

    This is very specific to paid subscription services where there’s a print legacy, and it’s hard to do; it reflects the reality that print circulation matters hugely because it determines the value of the biggest source of advertising revenue. How do you make the transition to new revenue streams without killing the old ones? Digital revenues tend to cannibalise print revenues, yet you might need to demonstrate the explicit value of digital. Ask Rupert. There’s more than one answer as to how to do it: charging a stupidly small amount of money for print for a short period of time is one way, or a stupidly high amount for premium online services is another. . Here’s an example of the no brainer ‘get print too’ deal (not our client).

    FT subscription ad

    2. Make regular assessments of what should be inside or outside the paywall

    Paid-for news services only work in a niche market with exclusive value. Things move quickly on the internet and what’s exclusive to The Newspaper one day may not be the next. When charging for content or services, ask: Is it essential for its intended audience? Is it exclusively or first available at The Newspaper? Is it more conveniently delivered; does it enable the audience to create value themselves? If none of these apply then the offer has become commodified – put it outside the paywall.

    3. Launch against yourself (in a controlled way)

    The Newspaper brand strengthens our ability to create new revenue streams, but The Newspaper legacy restricts our scope for action. We should act to limit these restrictions by thinking creatively, changing culture and ‘failing fast’ in a Laboratory environment; this will enable The Newspaper to confront digital native start-ups at lower risk to our existing business.

    4. Establish online and mobile as integral components of The Newspaper’s valued services, not just an add-on.

    This principle has implications for everything we do and especially the way we organise and reward individuals and teams. The value of online content and commercial revenues should be re-evaluated and the status of achieving online financial and editorial success raised.  (In other words, don’t save the story for the front page, get it online; and stop the ad team giving away free online ads to sell juicy full page print display)

    5. The Newspaper online is a service as well as a product, and this means treating readers as partners, not consumers

    Service-not-product means that the brand, the services, the organisation (especially journalists and editors) come into more direct and frequent contact with customers and they should act as solicitous and considerate hosts; it means that The Newspaper is involved in more parts of the value chain between a customer’s desires and their fulfillment, including interactions in which the customer is a participant, not a consumer. This has an impact on design, culture and on resources, especially the editorial culture that says “put the copy on the spike and move on”. Here’s an example of services (in green) around different content types (in pink) and their valuable bi-produts (in blue). Remember, value lies in the service around the content, not just the content itself.

    News services

    6. Users may create the most valued content for each other.

    So give them the tools to make it. And add services to our content that enable our customers to increase its value – as above.

    7. Give customers a voice; their voice has value.

    Services that enable customers to express opinion (vote, rate, comment, share) create trend data and customer data with value in its own right that can be played back to the audience and/or sold on to premium subscribers, advertisers or corporate customers. And likewise, we no longer have a monopoly of privileged sources or information: our readers may know more than we do or better than we do, let’s use their knowledge.

    8. Services that enable users to personalize and store data encourage loyalty

    The audience has invested time to obtain utility, as well as generating useful customer information with value to advertisers. They won’t want to waste that effort.

    9. Creating valued niche products is vital to online success

    The Newspaper as one big package doesn’t translate online. The Newspaper online need not and should not be one thing for all customers. Digital enables products and services to be packaged and sold and deconstructed with infinite variety, according to need, to niche markets; The Newspaper can and should vary the scope, scale and voice of the proposition for different audiences within the boundaries of quality set by the brand. We might want to create a portfolio of service brands to reflect this.

    10. Foster synergies between channels and recognise channel differences

    The print edition is the brand champion; the web has infinite depth and breadth; mobile offers ubiquity and convenience. So each product niche can exploit multiple channels and each channel can point to the others (eg. a permalink for every newspaper page).

    11. The Newspaper is not of itself merely ‘a newspaper’ – The Newspaper is a brand and that’s where its value lies.

    We’ve built a reputation that represents a point of view and a set of values over the past [insert number] years. Under our imprint and around our content we offer all sorts of products and services that fit with our point of view and values. The brand can be extended into any area where its qualities – such as, for example, inside knowledge, professional network, good with money, political nouse – have value. So funnily enough it’s not content that’s king, it’s the brand.

    12. Protect and build the value of The Newspaper brand

    There’s a tried and tested set of commercial and professional standards in newspapers. Everyone knows the rules (around the separation of advertising and editorial, for example) that preserved the integrity of the old editorial product. In digital, where fact and opinion and product and purchase start to merge dangerously into each other, new principles are needed and especially around commercial recommendations. Readers don’t mind being sold too if they’ve chosen to express an interest, and they’ll buy because they trust us so long as what we sell fits with how they perceive us at our best. In short, we mustn’t enter into partnerships that make short term commercial sense but destroy the value of our reputation (it’s amazing how often companies do this, especially where individuals are paid commissions for short term gain).

    13. Print web first

    It’s not sustainable to behave as though the newspaper is the one and only place where important news can be published.

    14. We have unlimited space online, use it

    This means opening up the filing cabinet and putting it online, replacing the news pyramid with the news iceberg that goes deep down into the waters. Use the web to publish or link to everything we have: background, archive, source material, images – become a curator of stories and themes.

    15. Connect to the rest of the web openly

    The Newspaper’s content and tools will live as effectively outside its URL as inside. If we make our content available widely, paid or unpaid, we raise our profile and increase our reach internationally and domestically; we also undercut clippings agencies and other copier/reusers. Remember, the value is in the service around the content, not just the content itself. So, use rss, third party feeds, The Newspaper API(s) and widgets to give people access to The Newspaper, paid for or free, as we decide, outside The Newspaper.com. If in doubt, we give it out, because we treat people who share and re-use our content as friends not threats.

    That’s enough principles [Ed.]

    1 Comment

    1
    William Owen By William Owen

    22nd July 10

    1 comment

     Uncategorized

    innovation

  • Antennagate: Can Schopenhauer Help?

    Ever since the media eruption over the iPhone 4’s antenna design, I’ve been thinking about how we assign meanings and experience real emotions in response to representations, or illusions.

    iphone_bars.jpg
    Adapted from a photo by Jamais Cascio

    Take the bars on your mobile phone. We are completely used to telling the person on the other end of the line that we “don’t have many bars”. Yet “bars” are just a way that mobile phones have of indicating how good a signal they have, not an actual measure of anything real. But by now we’re so used to them that we use them as though they were the actual thing rather than a representation of it, and we can have furious arguments about “dropping bars”.

    Think about the way that Steve Jobs presented the way that the iPhone 4 and other smartphones suffer from signal attenuation when gripped in specific ways. He compared the upper limit of the number of bars displayed when gripped as recommended by the manufacturer against the lower limit of bars displayed when held “wrong”. Never did he mention the actual signal degradation in dBm, only ever the way that the phone manufacturer had chosen to represent them in terms of bars displayed. In one telling moment, he pointed out that the Android phone only used four bars, and yet he didn’t take the next logical step and conclude that we can say nothing meaningful about actual signal loss by looking at an abstract representation.

    There was a storm of protest (from me too, I confess) when Apple published a “letter” explaining that the algorithm they used to calculate the number of bars to display was flawed and exaggerated the level of signal. We complained that this was simply deckchair rearrangement: the problem was a loss of signal, we insisted. What were Apple going to do about that? And yet the only evidence we had for the “loss of signal” was the representation – the bars themselves! That reaction occurred because we couldn’t handle the idea that the representation had been unhelpful because we do not see it as representation.

    Read full post

    3 Comments

    3
    James Higgs By James Higgs

    21st July 10

    3 comments

     opinion

  • In Conversation With John McCrea

    McCrea.Large

    Before his current role as General Manager of Tunerfish, a service that describes itself as a ’social discovery engine for TV, movies and online video’ that was incubated as a skunkworks within Comcast Interactive Media in the US, John McCrea was Vice-President, Marketing at Plaxo. A couple of years ago he wrote about Facebook Connect and OpenID for TechCrunch, and his own post on the topic was mentioned by Wired as a ‘must-read’. He’s been involved with the web since 1994 and co-hosts a weekly internet TV show on subjects related to the social web at SocialWeb.TV with Chris Messina, Joseph Smarr and David Recordon.

    We were hoping to catch up with him at SXSW this year, but in the meleé of the event weren’t able to. Recently however, John kindly agreed to answer a few short questions for us via email.

    You’ve been active in the web since 1994 – that’s a long time by web standards! Thinking back, what was the most used service or application for you then, and what is it now?

    In the very earliest days of the web, the killer app was the browser, specifically Netscape Navigator, and among the first killer sites was Yahoo, which was then a directory of websites. The web would evolve to support many different kinds of activities, but then and now, I’ve always been most attracted to one particular aspect – that it is, among many other things, a new medium.

    The social web is one of your passions. As Facebook and Twitter came in a few years ago, you’ve seen it explode, with the power of networks becoming stronger and stronger over time. What’s your personal opinion of Dunbar’s number, and do you think that number is less meaningful now than it would have been a few years ago?

    I have always thought that all the chatter about Dunbar’s number in the context of the social web was complete and utter nonsense. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and many other services make it possible to maintain and nurture a much larger number of relationships than was previously possible.

    You were at Plaxo for over 4 years. As a service, what are Plaxo’s strengths? How did the introduction of Google Profiles and the evolution of LinkedIn affect Plaxo?

    Plaxo is the granddaddy of the social web, introducing many of its basic concepts years before the rise of social networks. Plaxo has evolved over its eight years as a consumer Internet service, but its core strength has always been working toward the vision of a truly smart, socially-aware, and pervasive address book. And that’s a problem space that has gotten more interesting with the rise of many different services where you can update your profile.

    Picture 1

    You recently moved to Tunerfish as General Manager. Tell us about the service, what’s unique about it, and what growth plans you have for the business.

    Tunerfish is an exciting new service in what is becoming a very hot space, right at the intersection of social and entertainment. It is a social discovery engine for TV, movies, and online video, that makes it easy, fun, and rewarding to share what you’re watching. Our most unique aspect is our game system, which we are developing in collaboration with the TV networks. Today, Tunerfish is just a website, but we have mobile version coming soon, and ultimately plan to take Tunerfish to the TV itself.

    How does Tunerfish hope to challenge what Hulu and YouTube are doing in the online video space, including initiatives like YouTube’s Screening Room?

    We are in no way competitive with sites for video viewing. Quite the contrary, we are a logical partner for a site, service, or device that lets people watch entertainment.

    On Tunerfish, users can ‘earn points and awards’. With the growth of services like Foursquare that offer badges as reward mechanisms, how do you see Tunerfish’s reward system being different?

    The Tunerfish game system will seem familiar to those who use Foursquare, but the domain of entertainment is really different from location. There can only be one “Mayor” of a restaurant (and there are only so many people who fit inside it). With TV shows, millions of people can watch, and some people can influence thousands to change the channel. So, we’re exploring rewards in the rich realm of influence.

    Where do you see the social web going next – what services do you think are on the brink of breaking new ground?

    Among the things that I think will be interesting to see are the new crop of “social web natives” (like Foursquare and Tunerfish) which take social as a given and apply it to a vertical or horizontal market opportunity. Expect to see “checking in” go really mainstream and to apply to a wide variety of human activities.

    ———

    Thanks, John!

    No Comments

    0
    Anjali Ramachandran By Anjali Ramachandran

    19th July 10

    0 comments

     Social Web

    interview

  • Backing The Bucket (Follow The Twitter List)

    bucketbrigade.full

    Bud Caddell’s collaborative Kickstarter project has three days to go but his backers have more than doubled the initial target amount $5k. I just upped my contribution to $100 so that I can fully participate in the adventure.

    $100 gets you full Editorial Board Membership, a voice in the evolution of the book and access to full interview transcripts. Bud also promises to “set up a place where we can chat together”. A very interesting micro-community of digital thinkers has already gathered around the Kickstarter page, and so I thought it would be useful to create a Twitter List and feed from the backers – it’s called ‘Backing The Bucket’ (sorry for those few who had followed it when I was calling it #imbackingbud – I thought the new name would work better and be more consistent with Bud’s blog posts at What Consumes Me).

    You can follow the list at: http://twitter.com/malbonster/backingthebucket

    The exercise of creating the list prompted a few thoughts:

    1. The greater proportion of the people backing Bud have joined Kickstarter specifically to do so
    2. Although Kickstarter allows users to add a biog, avatar and linkage (including Twitter names) to their profiles most people have not – although it wasn’t that hard tracking them down using Twitter’s Find People search: most of them are *tweeting hard*
    3. The way in which a community is naturally forming around Bud’s ’cause’ demonstrates the power of Kickstarter projects to create really meaningful – action-oriented – social connections. However, this is currently under-exploited by Kickstarter who could try harder to persuade people to complete their profiles (think about the way LinkedIn nags you for years to do this). I also think that a button that allows you to follow all the backers of a Kickstarter project who are on Twitter would be an excellent and presumably very simple enhancement to make – in other words, auto-creating a Twitter list for each project (where users are sharing their Twitter details).
    4. There is a massive collective desire to ‘do something’ and not just talk about it – Bud’s project is a lightning rod for this networked inclination.

    I apologise if you are a backer and have not made it into the list at this stage – that’s because a few people (around 20) proved too difficult to track down. Please send me your details and I’ll add you.

    For those who are new to the idea, I’ll quote Bud – and you should read his various blog posts about it too.

    This book will be for anyone interested in creating products that are not just market exchanges, but cultural exchanges – for anyone that wants to build or reshape an organization for doing business in a world gone digital – and for anyone just finding their footing in the marketing industry today. Ultimately, I want the book to serve as the how, not just the why or what, for transformational growth at a time when a commitment to strategic change will reshape the entire business landscape. At the core of the book will be ten new principles for creating, promoting, and distributing products in the future – my ten new commandments for brands and marketers.

    It’s a really exciting and I’m looking forward to learning a lot and having fun. If you haven’t yet backed him, you’ve got 3 days!

    9 Comments

    9
    Tim Malbon By Tim Malbon

    19th July 10

    9 comments

     innovation

    publishing

  • Suggest a space on Ready for Ten

    We’re very excited here at Made by Many to announce the second release of Ready for Ten. It’s got a new look and plenty of exciting new features!

    Ready for Ten, a parent-powered website for mums and dads of 6-9 year olds, was created in January 2010. It started as a blogging platform stacked with tips, conversation and support for parents. In the past few weeks we worked on growing the platform, developing new features and evolving the look.

    The Skillscape campaign is the most exciting feature of all. The aim of this campaign is to create a map of the UK’s best spaces for kids to play and practise their skills, from parks and playgrounds to sports clubs.

    Skillscape homepage

    This page gives users detailed information about the campaign. It shows how many places have already been submitted to the Skillscape and encourages users to suggest a new space.

    While designing this page I wanted to make it look friendly and inviting. It is important that users feel welcomed and that they immediately get the sense of what they can do there and what they can achieve by taking part.

    I’ll go through the design process here: Read full post

    No Comments

    0
    By Julia Wojcicka

    9th July 10

    0 comments

     Britvic

    design

« Older Entries

Our latest tweets

Categories

Archives

Find us on the web