internet « ‘Cross The Breeze

Ignore everybody!

22 05 2009

One of the perks of being unemployed is that you actually have time for a few things that you didn`t really have time for before… like reading books for instance, so that`s what I`m doing… well one of the things I`m doing – looking for work is another one ;) One book I read a couple of days ago was Hugh MacLeod`s upcoming “Ignore Everybody” of which I had received an advance copy thanks to Hugh and the fine people at Penguin Group.

ignoreeverybody

Long time ago – while reading something on Hugh`s blog – I stumbled onto a series of posts/writings that were all tagged with “How to be creative”. It was a good read, so finding out it the content was also available on a free PDF on changethis.com made it even better. More than 1 million downloads don`t lie of course, I still have a printed copy of that PDF right here. When Hugh mentioned he got a book deal on this which involved writing some extra chapters I was a bit sceptical though. I totally loved the series but all of that stuff had come about quite organically, there`s a difference when you write things when you think about them basically whenever you feel like it… or when you have to write chapters for a book. Hugh proved me wrong about being sceptical, there`s now way you could tell which chapters where there first or which ones are new, the book is rock solid. It`s an easy read in the typical style of Hugh MacLeod – unique, smart and funny – and with a good dose of cartoons in them. My favorite one in the book? Especially while jobhunting… is this one (from 2006):

thefuturebelongs219

So pre-order the book now, you won`t regret.

Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: book, cartoon, gapingvoid, hughmacleod, ignoreeverybody
Categories : books, inspiration, internet, marketing

Dirty something

20 04 2009

Keeping a little tradition going here …

Kudos to Evan for the great photo btw.

Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: justbecause, wishlist
Categories : internet

Internet to overtake TV in June 2010

8 04 2009

Traditional TV to be correct. Over the last few weeks and months we have been studying a number of European statistics coming from our own services as well as external data and that resulted in some interesting findings, one of which that says that by June 2010 people on average will spend more time online than watching traditional television. Here’s a graph with several possible scenarios:

I wasn’t involved in the project (at least not in the research part) but did get an early view at the data which led me to create this presentation that offer a quick look at some key stats. The full report is available as PDF and can be downloaded from Scribd right here.

Amongst these statistics you will learn that 50% of all Europeans are now connected to the internet but that there’s a clear north/south divide showing the Nordic countries with an internet penetration rate of 76% versus 45% in Southern Europe. Here’s the presentation:

Something I also found rather interesting, and which I had also noted during the live blogging of the Reality Bites event (where he was a speaker) is this comment from Jeffrey Cole:

“Broadband has changed everything. And it’s not speed of access that has made the biggest impact, its having a direct connection that is always on. This has changed the internet experience dramatically. It’s no longer a disruptive experience where people have their PC in the backroom of the house and where they use a dial-up connection a couple times a day to do some specific tasks. Now, the PC has moved to centre stage in the kitchen or living room where it does not interfere in the family conversation or TV viewing but is integrated into everything we do.”

You would sometimes forget that broadband changed the internet indeed a lot more than just making it faster. Going back to dial-up would not be just going back to a slower internet, it would be equal to going back to planning tasks for when you will log on. Fundamentally different :)

Comments : 33 Comments »

Categories : internet

Love your content, set it free

7 04 2009

I’ve been working on a theory that relates a lot to the content of this presentation. The theory is something I need to blog about later (once I get it all nicely lined up) so take a look at this in the meantime.

Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: content, free, presentation
Categories : ageofconversation, consumer, internet, presentation

The Garden of Tweetdom

23 03 2009

Since Marcus decided (on purpose!) to have his little event in London pretty much the only week I wasn’t in town…. just kidding, I will have to share the slides with all of you who have missed it just like me.

Watch what happened when God created Twitter and be the witness of the first conversations between Adam, Eve and the snake!

Here’s some video footage from the event.

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Tags: event, marcusbrown, presentation, thekaiser, tweetdom, twitter
Categories : ageofconversation, community, fun, inspiration, internet, presentation

The history of the internet

23 03 2009

The team behind IE8 released this video last week to go with the launch of Internet Explorer 8, worth a look.

Bonus link – Lifehacker posted about the “surprising” search tools in IE8, making the web searching/surfing experience quite a bit easier.

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Tags: browser, ie8, internet, internetexplorer, microsoft, search
Categories : internet, marketing, microsoft, software, video

Microsoft Advertising

5 03 2009

Although most of my work is related to some of Microsoft’s biggest consumer brands such as Windows Live, MSN, etc I also do (more and more actually) work for Microsoft Advertising. What does Microsoft have to offer to advertisers? Many of you might remember “Bring The Love Back”, today we have created another little 90 seconds video that explains a bit more what it is we do at Microsoft Advertising, check it out:

I’ve also set up a Twitter account for Microsoft Advertising Europe, offering another way to get in touch with us so follow us in case you are interested in advertising and curious about what we have to offer.

Comments : 6 Comments »
Tags: advertising, bringtheloveback, microsoft, video
Categories : advertising, bringtheloveback, community, internet, marketing, microsoft, social media, video

What I got out of Twitter – Part II

27 02 2009

About a year ago I wrote my first (and probably only) post about Twitter so far, it was based around what I had learned from using the service up to the time of writing. During a conversation I had last week I thought about this post again and decided to look it up again… only to notice that much of it hasn’t changed at all.

It still are the Twitter users that make the service better both in adding features, applications and services. Think about features such as hashtags, RT, … mostly incorporated into most clients now. Some of you will be using Tweetdeck, I still hang on to Twhirl (that new search ‘activate’ feature is a killer!) but there are many many others. And finally things like Twitter Remote or Mr. Tweet are really powerful services. The last service is also good proof it really is the community that makes things better here, have you ever taken a look at Twitter’s own Suggested Users Feature?

People still focus too much on quantity vs. quality with constant chatter about number of followers, number of tweets, … and I still believe like I said back then that you don’t make better conversations by following everybody back. It’s just not true… and it’s therefore not all that suprising to see that people like Loic are actually cutting back on that.

Has nothing changed then? Sure it has. We’ve started to re-tweet aka RT, something I like and then again not. Sometimes a RT is expanding the network on a good topic which is good, sometimes it feels like the sender just wants you to know they’ve seen ‘it’ as well. And often it feels like the Retweeter’s reasoning is more to make sure the sender of the initial message notices you versus you actually trying to share interesting stuff to your audience. Like an alternative to an @reply almost.

Another personal change is that I’ve now (via the Live Writer add-on) linked my blog feed to my Twitter account, something I said a year ago is not done. I guess I was wrong, although it’s mainly the notion that people start putting something like {blogpost} in front of such tweets that got me convinced there’s a right way in doing this.

What else has changed? We got spam, auto-DM’s and a lot more tricks that try and build audiences by following and immediate unfollowing etc. Not sure who thinks that stuff really works but just like many other popular services there are some annoyances that we’ll just have to deal with.

Still very much hooked, so that hasn’t changed at all ;)

Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: hashtag, rt, tweetdeck, twhirl, twitter
Categories : blogging, community, internet, social media, technology

Enhancing search

26 02 2009

Just installed WebMynd Firefox extension today, based on the post about it on digital inspiration. I like what it does, when I search now I get some additional search results from other services right there next to the main results – like this:

And yes I used a little vanity search as an example, you gotta use something right :). You can easily add other services you want to have in that right column, from the list of services available on top of it. Since you always get the additional WebMynd powered results when you do a search, you don’t have to go to another URL or anything, just using type the query in your browser’s search box and this is what you get. Very nice. Worth giving a try, as is Live Search by the way ;)

Update: There is an IE plugin for WebMynd as well, just open the browser of choice and you’ll get the right download option.