Philip Sheldrake

Category: Website/New Media (page 6 of 7)

10 June 2008 / 1 Comment

Searching harder – search panel at Being Digital

Just watched Giles Palmer's presentation on search trends here at Being Digital. His company, Magpie, is one of those I'm including in my upcoming eBook on Social Web Analytics (pushed back a week or so due to better than expected social life... yes, I have one).

[Simon Grice listens in to Giles Palmers presentation].

Currently Microsoft's Jeff Kelisky (ex-Multimap CEO)  is talking about Microsoft search being an online representation of the real world... 3D search if you like. He's showing a video of 3D cityscapes, but I can't see much search going on. Hang on, no, that's just a virtual Earth 3D demo. Mmmm, looks like Jeff doesn't know if he's in search or mapping. Or perhaps both, but as he's pointed out, we've had the panel on location today.

Jeff has also been keen to big up MIcrosoft's cashback search I posted about recently. Read more

2 June 2008 / 0 Comments

The B2B Social Web – B2B video programming

My last post described the first half of my interview with Ecommerce Times. The second half of our interview focused on B2B video programming, or what the publication described as TV Media Relations. B2B multimedia is one of my favourite topics, so I plunged straight in...

Forget "Pop Idol" and "The Apprentice", B2B programming is the new hot programming. We're within sight of bespoke TV shows dedicated to your industry, your profession.  Coming to a screen near you, a whole raft of new productions with names like Logistics Insights Live, The Coronary Care Beat, Patent Law Update, IT Compliance Bulletin.

But where is this "screen near you"? What is TV?

Read more

22 May 2008 / 1 Comment

Buying market share – when all else fails, get your wallet out

Six searches are conducted via Google for every two on Yahoo and one on Microsoft Live. That's not how Microsoft would like it. So the news from Microsoft last night (well, by British Summer Time anyway), CASHBACK!

Here's how it's worked so far.  The search engines deliver paid-for results alongside so-called organic (not paid for) search results.  When someone clicks on one of these paid-for results / aka "sponsored links" / aka "ads", the search engine charges the advertiser.  If these ads were served on an affiliate site, the affiliate site owner gets a share of that revenue.

So everyone is a winner.  The search engine makes serious revenue (Google made $1.31 billion on revenues of $5.19 billion in the last quarter, the majority from search related ads), searchers see ads relevant to their search query, and the advertisers attract relevant visitors to their websites. Read more

16 May 2008 / 0 Comments

A Rolling Stone gathers no location based information

Ron Wood - Guitar Player - The Rolling Stones....
Image via Wikipedia

I met Ronnie Wood this week. He sat down next to me in a bar and bought me a drink. That ranks him in my book as a very nice chap. And I got a 90 minute window into living life as a globally famous rock star, an insight that confirmed my relief, as if the situation could be otherwise, that I'm not a 'celebrity'...

  • "Is that Ronnie Wood? Ronnie Wood? Rolling Stones? Ronnie Wood?"
  • "I don't believe it... is that really you? We're big fans of......"
  • "I've got all your albums."
  • "Could I have your autograph and a picture with you?"
  • "I don't believe it, is it really you?"

Although Ronnie has had four decades to come up with witty ripostes, I particularly liked his response to the last one... "Actually, I only came fifth in a Ronnie Wood lookalike competition." From what I saw, he has a lovely way in dealing with the countless people that approach him; what the rest of us would call invading our space.

We got talking about my line of work having danced through the ages of music technology, from the vinyl and 8-track of the mid-60s, through compact cassette and CD to mp3. Not unexpectedly, Ronnie mourns the passing of the physical format, but loves the idea that music has returned to the 60s notion that it's all about the music, having been distracted in between times by the huge music marketing machine. The 80s and 90s were all about shifting massive volumes of records and CDs, and gigging was just a distraction. Read more

5 May 2008 / 0 Comments

Zattoo… live content TV broadcast on your PC

I'm at RIPE56 today and tomorrow. RIPE (Réseaux IP Européens) is a collaborative forum open to all parties interested in wide area IP networks in Europe and beyond, and RIPE56 is, you've guess it, the 56th meeting.

This week-long event brings together the best minds on IP networks, and I'm here working predominantly on the issues of IPv4 depletion and IPv6 uptake. This is a complex issue requiring some deft communications.

Right now however, I'm in a very interesting presentation by Thomas Billeter and Fredy Kuenzler of Zattoo. From their website: Read more

11 April 2008 / 0 Comments

Internet Best Practice Challenge – recognition for your Internet leadership

Nominet is running their Best Practice Challenge for the second year.  The awards recognise organisations, groups or individuals that have worked to deliver a safer, more accessible, diverse and open Internet experience.

The six award categories for 2008 are:

  • Best development project
  • Best security initiative
  • Raising industry standards
  • Personal safety online
  • Internet for all
  • Open Internet

If you think your organisation, or your client's, should be recognised for leadership in any of these categories, you have until 25th April 2008 to get your entry in!  Winners and runners-up get some significant international exposure feeding in to the UN's Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and the newly formed UKIGF.

The 2007 winners included Computer Aid International, Netcraft, Childnet, mySociety, CEOP and Internet Watch Foundation.

3 April 2008 / 0 Comments

Twingly in private beta – "a next-generation blog search engine"

I've signed up and will let you know what I find when I'm allowed in! From their press release today...

Today we launch a next-generation blog search engine at Twingly.com. Participate in the invite-only beta by getting invited or signing up at beta.twingly.com. So what’s cool with the new Twingly.com?

Spam free, social search

Twingly takes a zero-spam approach to blog search using an algorithmically expanding white list instead of the traditional blacklist. Powerful moderation tools allows us to win the fight against spam by one-click removal of clusters of tens of thousands of spam blogs. Fat tail manual moderation yields quality input to long tail algorithmic filtering.

Social search features allows users to share quality content with each other and the community as a whole.

Powerful search language and tech plan Digg

Twingly provides the world’s most powerful search language for blogs, where search filters can be combined in new ways.

But we’re not done by far! Participate in voting on our tech plan by signing up for the beta. JSON api? OPML import or APML export? Help us decide what’s next!

UPDATE

Well I've got my invite and I've logged in to take a look. Read more

7 March 2008 / 0 Comments

Write-off reading and writing. The three R's are dead; long live the three M's

Despite the hammerings of educationalists, the so-called three R's are far from sacrosanct: reading, writing and arithmetic. I’m talking specifically about the first two of these.

(OK, I’m not talking about them, I am actually writing and that irony isn’t lost on me. But then I am future gazing, and I could after all have podcast this post.)

Reading and writing have been bedrocks of civilisation, some would say the foundation, and it is only relatively recently that they have had competition as a media for non-synchronous communication. The 20th Century triumphs of broadcast radio, broadcast TV and semiotics compensated slightly for an individual’s illiteracy, but they were far from a perfect substitute and entirely useless when that individual wished to communicate back.

The 21st Century hasn’t taken long however to present a cornucopia of communication possibilities. Whilst applications of the Internet were dominated just a few years ago by text, and lots and lots of it, new applications pivot massively around the audio-visual. "Radio" and "TV" over IP / Narrowcasting / Podcasting / Moblogging / Vlogging / On Demand / Voice over IP / Video conferencing... Read more

25 February 2008 / 0 Comments

Convergence Conversation: The 21st century classroom – opportunities for digital education

The second convergence conversation of 2008 will be on the potential impact of converging technologies on education.

What's being talked about?

Jim Knight, the schools' minister, recently announced that he wanted to allow parents to access 'frequently-updated information on children's achievement, progress, attendance, behaviour and special needs wherever, whenever parents want, using password-protected, secure, online systems'.

Here then is the potential impact of convergence on the delivery of education. Read more

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