'Cross The Breeze

Eyetracking: practice what you preach?

August 26, 2007 by Kris Hoet 3 Comments

Am I the only one to find this ironic? Marketing Pilgrim brings good content most of the time and they’re in my RSS reader for quite a while. But when I opened one of their last posts on eyetracking in my browser, I couldn’t help wondering how serious they take their own content. The eyetracking study they talk about shows clear results (and so did other eyetracking studies in the past) about banner advertising on websites, but look at Marketing Pilgrim’s own sidebar. One third of the screen filled with ugly banner ads… that nobody looks at. Why tell other people smoking is dangerous when you’re a smoker yourself?

Technorati Tags: marketing, eyetracking, banners, advertising, irony, research

advertising, blogging, fun, research, tracking

The kids of conversation

August 24, 2007 by Kris Hoet 2 Comments

What can I say, even my kids are totally diggin’ this book as you can see… and they don’t even speak English. Just another sign the Age of Conversation is here to stay. Luckily they don’t know about the video :)

If you didn’t get the book yet then order your copy now, it’s good content and all proceeds from the book’s sales go to charity. What else do you want?

Technorati Tags: ageofconversation, ebook, book, kids, fun, craphammer

ageofconversation, books, fun

The fuzzy tail

August 24, 2007 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

David Armano created an interesting presentation this week that I wanted to share with you here as well. The presentation was submitted as a panel idea for the upcoming SXSW conference so if you’re going to the conference and you like the panel idea, then vote for it here.

I was wondering how much of this ‘being fuzzy’ is linked to being a generalist, funny enough something David wrote about a day later. On Twitter David replied that the idea of the fuzzy tail is based on being comfortable working outside of silos, being more nimble and that it’s only somewhat linked to generalists, but not limited to. And he’s right, this is indeed not limited to generalists but I can’t help thinking that it’s easier for a generalist to ‘get fuzzy’. I think generalists have a more natural interest for what other people are doing, they don’t stick to their comfort zone (or maybe their comfort zone is just really big) and that just helps to go beyond your own silo. Although this is not saying we don’t need both generalists and specialists, because we definitely do.

Coming back to the presentation, I have to share this with some of my colleagues at Microsoft. It’s probably linked with the magnitude of the organization but we do tend to work a lot in silos and I couldn’t agree more that we should go beyond these borders. But I consider myself a generalist, I want to know what other people are doing in- and outside the company so maybe it’s easier for me to do so than it is for some others – I like fuzzy :)

Technorati Tags: armano, sxsw, presentation, microsoft, long tail, generalist, specialist

community, marketing, microsoft, social media

links for 2007-08-24

August 24, 2007 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

The Workplace Blog

What is the best way to use Facebook? Can it serve as a business networking tool? Or is it just a social networking site that should be used to reconnect with personal friends?

(tags: facebook socialnetworking tips rules avenuea razorfish)
Google Apps no match for MS Office, report says | InfoWorld | News | 2007-08-23 | By Jon Brodkin, Network World

Deploying Google Apps could be a “career-limiting move for enterprise architects” if they expect too much from the software-as-a-service collaboration suite and its “rudimentary” feature set, the Burton Group consulting firm says in a new report.

(tags: application article microsoft office google appls comparison report consulting)
Phishing attack plunders Monster.com – Security – MSNBC.com

A recently disclosed fraud involving hundreds of thousands of people on the monster.com jobs Web site reveals the perils of leaving detailed personal information online, security analysts say.

(tags: monster phishing attack security identity theft virus email jobs career)

Uncategorized

Global Warming for the rich

August 23, 2007 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

Interesting ad from Lasalle Investment Management featuring my boss ;)

Copy: In times of global warming, go for gold.

[Via advertising for peanuts]

Technorati Tags: advertising, bill gates, investment, lasalle, global warming, nature, green

advertising, fun, marketing, microsoft

Who’s who?

August 23, 2007 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

tech-figures-as-simpsons-characters

Nathan Weinberg found this blog where a few well know tech guys were Simpsonized. Now I already found Simpsonizeme.com probably one of the coolest online marketing activities of the last months but I hadn’t really thought of using it this way. I think the result is pretty neat and you should be able to recognize at least 3 of them quite quickly.

If my blog would allow it, I’d write the answers upside down below this post, but unfortunately that’s not possible yet. But you can find them here.

Technorati Tags: simpsons, simpsonize, tech, cartoon, fun, blog, quiz

fun, movies

Windows Live for Nokia

August 23, 2007 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

Related to the press release of tonight (it was announced at 1AM my time) I wanted to post some more pictures of the Windows Live Client for Nokia but unfortunately my internet connection died right after I posted the ‘Microsoft and Nokia join forces‘ post. Read that first in case you missed that.

Anyway, here are the pictures that I wanted to show you as well:

You can see your online/offline Messenger buddy list, a chat conversation (and some other ones open in the tabs as well) and your contact list. More images can be found here.

Technorati Tags: nokia, microsoft, windows live, messenger, hotmail, screens

community, internet, microsoft, mobile, software, technology, windows live

Nokia & Microsoft join forces!

August 22, 2007 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

I think this is some very exciting news for both Nokia and Microsoft, more specifically for Windows Live. From the press release:

“Starting today Nokia customers in eleven countries with compatible S60 devices can download the new suite enabling access to Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Contacts and Windows Live Spaces. Starting next year, customers who purchase compatible Nokia Series 40 handsets will also have access to these popular Windows Live services.”

Here are some screens of the application:

$\NOKIA\AALTO\Jun192006_170102_000040.cr2 CaptureSN: 302089.046990 Software: Capture One PRO for Windows $ $\NOKIA\AALTO\Jun192006_170102_000040.cr2 CaptureSN: 302089.046990 Software: Capture One PRO for Windows $ $\NOKIA\AALTO\Jun192006_170102_000040.cr2 CaptureSN: 302089.046990 Software: Capture One PRO for Windows $

Not only will Nokia add new devices that will get access to these services, more countries will be launching over time as well. For more information on which devices exactly as which 11 countries are included in this release:

“Nokia customers who own the Nokia N73, N80 Internet Edition, N95, N76 and the N93i can get the Windows Live services via the Download! application in the following countries; Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, UK , Sweden, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Customers can visit http://www.nokia.com/windowslive to learn more, and check if their country is on the availability list. Initially the service will be available as a free trail and then customers in select markets wishing to continue using the service may be asked to pay a monthly fee”

I’ve played a little with the Windows Live client on the Nokia and it’s a very nice experience. Especially the Live Messenger part is a very rich application that allows multiple chats, voice clips (very handy on mobile) and instant photo sharing over IM. And it’s nice to remember that you could already get Live Search on your Nokia for a while.

More information about all this on Phil Holden’s blog.

(disclaimer: I work for Windows Live)

Technorati Tags: nokia, microsoft, windows live, live messenger, im, mobile, news, release, hotmail, nseries, phone

electronics, microsoft, mobile, pr, software, technology, windows live

blogging, community, fun, internet, social media

Read what matters

August 22, 2007 by Kris Hoet 10 Comments

When I was going through my feeds today I discovered a new service called aideRSS and given my +300 subscriptions I’m always interested to find out better ways to manage these. It seemed like that is exactly what aideRSS is able to do so I checked it out immediately this morning. First thought: brilliant.

AideRSS2

There are some feeds in my reader that definitely could be skimmed down to the most interesting posts, like the del.icio.us/popular feed (image above) for instance so I gave that a try. After uploading a feed you can select to see all posts or only the good post, great posts or best posts. This is based on the PostRank feature that is propriatory to aideRSS and unfortunately the help page about that is offline for the moment as I’m curious to find out more about how they calculate that.

You can upload your whole OPML into the service, you can subscribe to a filtered feed (like all best posts from a feed) in the integrated feedreader or in your own. There are sharing widgets etc etc. And as you can see in the screenshot above, you get immediate info from del.icio.us, Digg, Technorati, … on the interaction for that post. This is something that I suggested to Technorati a few weeks ago so I obviously like that as well.

Best of all? It’s pretty amazingly fast (especially when they have a blog on record yet). And it’s there that I see the only problem for now as well, each time I did get an error it had something to do with uploading a feed that wasn’t in the system already. Hopefully they’ll fix that soon. And as said the PostRank information page gives an error as does the aideRSS blog for the moment.

Overall I think aideRSS still needs work but it offers a pretty good and fast solution with very good navigation so definitely worth a try. Sometimes it crashes when trying to add a new blog and I get the feeling there’s work to do on the PostRank score as well looking at some of the differences between blogs on that topic. I also think they have an opportunity to do some of the stuff we saw on http://share.opml.org. Anyway good stuff you guys, I would give that feedback on your forum as well if it weren’t down for the moment ;)

[Via Blogologie]

Technorati Tags: aiderss, feedreader, rss, feeds, optimization, filtering, service

blogging, community, hotlist, influence, internet, research, technology, tracking