A little bit long and monotone, but interesting nonetheless.
Staff Blogs
Posts tagged digital planning
The use of blogs as reflective toolsDecember 22, 2009 by Dhiren
My traffic visualisedDecember 6, 2009 by Dhiren
Inspired by Hans Rosling, I’ve mapped my 2008-09′ traffic using motion charts in Google Analytics. After purchasing Rosling’s DV software, Google has incorporated it into Google Analytics and Google Spreadsheets.
Bring on the sleepless nights of toying!
Similar ramblings:
If the walls could listenNovember 14, 2009 by Dhiren
Leah Buechley from MIT has been working on a project to create interactive wallpaper that uses low-tech materials to create an amazing display.
What I like about this project is how it utilises technologies such as bluetooth: a technology that I still think is underrated and under used. What if your mobile phone could automatically send a signal to the wallpaper, instructing it to change colour in accordance with your mood?
Throughout the day many people update their Facebook or Twitter statuses with either positive or negative posts discussing how they feel. Automated sentiment analysis already exists, all we would need is a mobile app that calculated your mood by analysing your day’s social network updates.
I’m on the hunt for interactive devices that use Twitter and Facebook in more useful ways. Last year those cats at Poke put together Baker Tweet using Arduino, it would be great to see more work like this next year.
Similar ramblings:
Social Centric PlanningNovember 14, 2009 by Dhiren
View more presentations from Mindshare.
At team Invention we’re quite into the 20 slide and 6 minute presentation style called “Pecha Kucha“. Each week a member of our team gives a Pecha Kucha about something they’re passionate about in order to: ice the cake that is our monday meeting ;p
Last week my Pecha Kucha was about photography and a couple of weeks ago Luke did a great one about the sea—the Rick Stein gags haven’t stopped since.
Messing around aside, Alastair decided to pull together a Pecha Kucha-esq deck about our collective thoughts on what we call “Social Centric Planning”. It’s not meant to be a prescriptive deck and it’s still work in progress. Happy to hear your suggestions?
Similar ramblings:
Web TroisOctober 19, 2009 by Dhiren
I was called into a brainstorming session last week for a prospective client that wanted to embrace web3. Que!? I hear you say. As a digital bod I was asked for my thoughts on the components that exemplified web3.
What instantly came to mind was “asynchronist, always on, cloud stuff and utilities”.
I shared my thoughts with the team and we jointly considered technologies, applications and things that were applicable to brief and the brand. The brainstorming session and the initial question subsequently made me think: these types of questions are going to be common quite soon. How is the web evolving? Which technologies should we be keeping an eye on?
I’ve done a bit of digging around and I’m not going to try and some up “web3″ because nobody should, but here are some important things that are shaping the web:
Semantics
RDF
HTML5
“Drag and Drop” Ajax based web applications
Lifestreaming
Lifestreaming: The New Future of Blogging?
View more presentations from Erin Blaskie.
Fibre Optics
WiMax
All of the videos above might, well do, seem a bit geekish, but they all demonstrate how the web is continually evolving into a more networked and realtime environment.
Raw data will have more context around it and this will translate into more useful information; applications will move from the desktop to the cloud; search will become more social, aggregated and instantaneous; people will be social in more than one place, and this will mean lifestreams will have a greater significance.
Effects on media?
Hard to predict of course, but the first thing that springs to mind is that user destinations will change. We will be buying more media across social networks and web applications. Specialist rivals to Google, like Wolfram Alpha and Delicious, will make small scratches on their monopoly.
Improvements in our digital infrastructures will mean that we will be spending more time online and consuming more content. Entertainment will continue to be, a greater mishmash, delivered by iPlayers, Vodcasts, YouTube and Sky+.
I’m going to stop here because I don’t like prophesying and predicting, but you get the gist.
Similar ramblings:
Comedians on TwitterOctober 15, 2009 by Dhiren
I was asked to look into which comedians are on twitter and the amount of followers that each of them has.
Don’t ask, I know, I swear I do more productive things at work.
Similar ramblings:
Google incorporates collaborative filtering-ish features into search optionsMay 15, 2009 by Dhiren
I’m a big fan of collaborative filtering. Society increasingly seems to have a growing obsession with associative information and the ability to easily access and utilise trends.
I’ve written about collaborative filtering before, and over the last year I have been watching how Google have been slowly incorporating it into their insights for search tools.
Google website trends already displays related websites for a queried URL, and search options now displays related search queries for given phrases and keywords.
Now to some people this may not be a big deal, but I think it is a very valuable tool for us digital marketing folk; the ability to see associative search queries provides valuable insight for all types of planning and marketing.
For example: What other mobile phones are people considering in addition to the G1?
This list of related searches is a real-time indicator of similar products that are actually in demand. You could probably use this data to increase your competitive PPC bidding or inform content for natural search optimisation.
Another new feature in search options is the wonder wheel (stupid name btw). Now I’ve seen people get excited about this, but hold your horses! This was already done years ago by Quintura, which is a “…context-based web search client using data clustering, visualization and context management…â€.
Quintura has always been a useful tool for search planning, “wonder wheel†only betters it by providing a cleaner UI. Google’s recent developments clearly demonstrate their proactive approach to rivaling competitors and becoming a one-stop-shop for all kinds of web services, search and social.
Interesting times ahead; love how the game keeps changing!
Similar ramblings:
Some music trendsMay 4, 2009 by Dhiren
I was interested to see which music website or web application was the most popular out of all my current favourites:
Is blip.fm slowly losing the battle?
I also started researching DJ Shadow, apparently he’s quite big in Poland — I had no idea!
Similar ramblings:
ProcessingJanuary 28, 2009 by Numetrick
I’ve been tinkering with Processing recently, well trying to tinker with it. The coding skills are not quite up to scratch (I am working on it though (trying to anyway), would love to program my own DV)
It’s Open Source language for specifically creating and prototyping data visualisations, the visualisations do not render in Safari or Chrome just yet (same rendering engine); however, I’m sure the community is working on it.
From the horses mouth:
Processing is a programming language, development environment, and online community that since 2001 has promoted software literacy within the visual arts. Initially created to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context, Processing quickly developed into a tool for creating finished professional work as well.
Further fuelling my recent obsession for DV, @miketeasdale introduced me to the Google Chart API. It’s not quite as slick as processing but you get the idea, charts which look like the output of Google Trends and Ad-Planner.
Fun, Fun, Fun - No Sleep
Similar ramblings:
Collaborative filteringJanuary 22, 2009 by Numetrick
How do you look for books, new music and information? We increasingly seem to discover things via recommendation features on websites and web applications.
It’s nothing new, and I suppose most of us now see recommendation engines as standard features on websites. Ever thought about how much they shorten the buying cycle/purchase funnel?
I think recommendation engines should be plumbed into all retail websites, in many respects they must improve user experience and conversion rates.
Amazon pioneered the commercial use of collaborative filtering way back in 2000, since then things have evolved quite rapidly.
Folksonomy and self-organisation features are on every other social website and web application, enabling all of us to gain faster access to the information we require, along with associative information tagged and saved by others.
The next time you’re on your PC (or Mac 
try to take note of how many recommendation engines, and folksonomy driven websites and web applications you use. You’ll be surprised.
I’m seeing some pretty cool visualisations emerging as result of developers getting creative with data extracted via API’s and Pipes, I looking forward to seeing more creative stuff this year.