www.nickhodge.com

Uncle Mike talked about this last week: why you tag your pho­tos (cc) and geotag your photos.

Unlike other large cor­por­a­tions who have mis-used (cc) licensed pho­tos, Schmap cor­rectly asked and obtained per­mis­sion to use one of my pho­tos on their site:

Schmap Christ­ch­urch Third Edi­tion: Photo Inclusion

Hi Nick,
I am delighted to let you know that your two sub­mit­ted pho­tos have been selec­ted for inclu­sion in the newly released third edi­tion of our Schmap Christ­ch­urch Guide:
God­ley Head
www.schmap.com/christchurch/sights_attractions/p=174111/i=174111_2.jpg
God­ley Head
www.schmap.com/christchurch/sights_attractions/p=174111/i=174111_3.jpg
If you like the guide and have a web­site, blog or per­sonal page, then please also check out our schmap­plets — cus­tom­iz­able wid­get­ized ver­sions of our Schmap Christ­ch­urch Guide, com­plete with your pub­lished pho­tos:
www.schmap.com/schmapplets/p=37473564N00/c=SE51033694
Thanks so much for let­ting us include your pho­tos — please enjoy the guide!

Like all pic­tures, there is a back story, too.

Note: 11^th September

(cc) Cre­at­ive Com­mons Aus­tralia has fur­ther discussion

Present­a­tion (.pptx) for Aus­tralian Insti­tute of Man­age­ment (AIM) present­a­tion on Web 2.0, eCommerce.

• Power­Point 2003 ver­sion of the presentation
• Power­Point 2007 ver­sion of the presentation

Just as a note: Down­load Com­pat­ib­il­ity Pack for pre­vi­ous ver­sions of Office

By installing the Com­pat­ib­il­ity Pack in addi­tion to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and Power­Point 2007. The Com­pat­ib­il­ity Pack can also be used in con­junc­tion with the Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, and Power­Point Viewer 2003 to view files saved in these new formats. For more inform­a­tion about the Com­pat­ib­il­ity Pack, see Know­ledge Base art­icle 924074.

What is the Web 2.0 World Say­ing about you, now?

I strongly recom­mend any Marketing/PR per­son just start­ing out to down­load and install Particls: http://particls.com/. You can use Particls to watch the inter­net for you. Enter the phrases and words that are your products and brands, and watch the con­ver­sa­tion that ensues.

It is wise to start your online jour­ney by enga­ging the exist­ing con­ver­sa­tions and exist­ing com­munit­ies, rather than attempt­ing to start your own lonely blog and talk to noone.

Social Net­work­ing use by Marketing/PR

Social net­work using MySpace/Face­book/MSN Live/Linkedin/Bebo etc etc etc is a per­fect mech­an­ism for cre­at­ing a com­munity; and more import­antly: stay­ing connected.

Note that people are largely engaged in these com­munit­ies for per­sonal social reas­ons, not to have a product shoved down their throat. The rule of authen­tic voice applies.

Second­Life use by Marketing/PR:

Know who and where of your audi­ence. Des­pite heavy hype in the tra­di­tional media, the num­ber of people logged in to Second­Life always seems low. (25000 to 40000)

There is some­thing enti­cing about a com­pletely immers­ive 3D world, where in a dream-like state you can fly any­where and build any­thing. It demos well, and the allure of “instant mil­lions” attrac­ted a cer­tain “type” of ini­tial user.

The web was like this in 1994/5. Not much out there, much hype and a lim­ited few had the hard­ware and ‘band­width’ to par­ti­cip­ate. I would highly recom­mend doing deep research prior to sig­ni­fic­ant investment.

Fully immers­ive worlds such as World-of-Warcraft (note: you prob­ably can­not mar­ket here) are very suc­cess­ful; and the future of end-user gen­er­ated immers­ive worlds is large.

Twit­ter use by Marketing/PR:

http://gdayworld.thepodcastnetwork.com/2007/08/23/gday-world-281-melbourne-twitter-lunch/

@Froosh expressed it best: Twit­ter is micro-blogging: thoughts in 140 char­ac­ters. It is also more instant. What is hap­pen­ing now.  An organisation’s exist­ing blog strategy should also cover Twitter.

Run­ning 2 bots (http://twitter.com/NeilFinn and http://twitter.com/Elv15) and an event alias (http://twitter.com/auremix07) my assess­ment is that Twit­ter­ers are look­ing for real people, not chat bots at the other end of the line. Twit­ter­spam such as “go visit this link” and the like causes mass unsub­scribes. “Our product x is now ship­ping” the same.

What the Twitter-verse is look­ing for is the instant human reac­tion and feel­ing from events that pre­cedes the formal cycle.

So, just Twit­ter­ing to get a “mes­sage through” or hype a product/event does not work. What is needed is an authen­tic, hon­est voice of a real per­son. It is part of your Word-of-mouth, viral strategy.

In a Write/ReWrite/Read Web, People mat­ter. Not Messages

I think Particls just changed my life. I’ve replaced my Microsoft Win­dows Vista Side­bar with this new ver­sion of Particls. Hav­ing Particls watch the web for me keeps me on-the-ball, more than caf­feine. Well, almost.

Hav­ing inter­viewed Chris and Ash­ley from Particls, and vis­ited their lair in Bris­ve­gas, I knew these guys where onto something.

Upon return­ing from my 2 weeks off work on hol­i­day, I had a couple of thou­sand feed items all demand­ing my instant atten­tion. Hol­i­days are a mech­an­ism for adjust­ing your per­sonal APML. Along with two cats and a bag full of wash­ing: it was dif­fi­cult to pri­or­it­ize what was/was not important.

Chris Saad let me into their secret: a new Sidebar-focused ver­sion of Particls

Feed­ing the moun­tain through Particls, the import­ant stuff popped onto the top.

Liv­ing my work­ing life online in the intar­webs, it is way too easy to lose those nug­gets and jew­els in the streams and tubes.

Why turn off the Vista Side­bar? On my laptop, screen real-estate is pre­cious, and what is most import­ant needs to be flow­ing in front of me to grab my atten­tion. My eyes move focus to move­ment (think hunter, not gatherer) — and with Particls ‘mov­ing’ items as they flow in, it grabs my attention.

Gad­gets that I have used in Vista have been static inform­a­tion; or at least some­thing that I am happy to view once per hour or so.

So, these static pieces of inform­a­tion can stay in Inter­net Explorer as favour­ites, Win­dows Live, and there­fore in online services.

Particls is no gad­get. It is now a must-have desktop applic­a­tion with the screen space it deserves.

The Microsoft Pop­Fly alpha can make you lose three days. In a good way. I haven’t had so much fun since, well, Pho­toshop maybe.

I’ve cre­ated a pub­lic Pop­Fly “Block” called Neil­FinnLyr­ics (now shared) this is bare, bare bones. It simply uses the new REST inter­face to the Ran­dom Neil Finn Lyric Server.  The Lyric Server sup­ports SOAP/WSDL, and nor­mal image insertion.

Pop­Fly is social pro­gram­ming: drag and drop blocks onto the page, and cre­ate your own mashups of data. Adding Neil Finn’s Lyr­ics to the data that can be mashed up is just another step in get­ting the words out there. My love for Neil Finn knows almost no bounds.

Writ­ing a Block with the cur­rent Alpha requires know­ledge of JavaS­cript and XML. And a little bit of patience.

Come have a chat at ReMIX to dis­cuss where you may also profit from Pop­Fly. The first thing that should be cre­ated is a branded Pop­Fly Super­an­nu­ation Block. Thoughts?

Hav­ing grown up on a farm, I saw what my Dad did every day. I saw it grow; and helped around. I learnt how to read clouds and the sky to determ­ine the weather, and what the time was without a watch. From memory, at about 12 years old pretty much any­thing that could be driven on the farm I’d driven.

In 2000 on the Adobe Pho­toshop 6.0 Road­show, Liam and Avril atten­ded a night ses­sion of my “1980s Music Trivia Pho­toshop Tech­nical Ses­sion”. No sales and mar­ket­ing here; dis­cus­sion of JPEG vs GIF, arte­facts and Flock of Seagulls.

In the IT industry, it’s tough to show your kids what you do for a liv­ing. So hav­ing Liam and Avril attend was a major buzz.

Liam then real­ised what I did for a crust.

Now he is teach­ing me about this online stuff. Strange world!

So, how do you explain to your Mum what your day job is?

Read­ing this Social Media White Paper from the Aus­tralian Blog, Bet­ter Com­mu­nic­a­tion Res­ults will help out. Send it to your Mum, too.

After a series of present­a­tions I gave to Prin­cipals of Vic­torian schools, I had described my role at Microsoft as a digital dip­lo­mat. This per­fectly describes a part of my job as a bridge between the digital immig­rants and digital nat­ives. (Pren­sky, Marc: 2001)

Now Frank Arrigo, my man­ager, has entered that into the internal Microsoft address/HR sys­tem as my title. What a laugh!

I won­der if I can claim dip­lo­matic immunity when I go feral?

addi­tional: … maybe not as feral as David Lemphers!

Twitter.com being down forced Sydney’s web geeks to get together. My first Web­Jam, and it r0x0red. Needed more cash to pur­chase the t-shirt. Sorry, ’bout that.

Andrew Muller from Builder.com.au on the night.

Stephen Collins on Web­Jam 3

GO WEBJAM Mel­bourne!

So, my rough notes from the night:

• Big­brother vot­ing style on SMS with live res­ults on screen
• shout out to funky­coda, scen­ari­ogirl, rails t-shirt geeks, mick from tangler
• Woo­hoo in crowd for everyone’s favour­ite web 2.0 in au tangler.com
• Adobe fun­ded drinks went in 20mins (thanks Claire)
• More geekier people than web 2.0, but more “off” than “on” (as Mossyb­log said, down-tools time)
• WebFS the world
• Mossyb­log heckled by rub­ber chicken lov­ers at rear of audience
• acid­labs; revolu­tion social com­put­ing nice. Hello, Stephen.  I agree: web2.0 cul­tural change in cor­por­a­tions is going to be really inter­est­ing
• single­but­ton de-thetan machine was my second favourite
• Silk Charm atten­ded and star­ted a new un-industry asso­ci­ation, with gob­lins hodge and lach­lan (first of three lach­lans) as mascots.
•  rails vs python in the crowd. I am a pythonic.
• react­ive dot net 2 global cor­por­ate chal­lenge flash google maps dot net 2 my favour­ite as it mashed everything together, web2-style.
• spice web2 geek dance. wait­ing for the <video> **win­ner**
• vjloops logo flash dir­ector loopz for videos. Noth­ing wrong with AfterEf­fects, how­ever many tools reach the same ends.
• “and you can pod­cast it“
• ai bot mod­ule for eco­m­merce sites. ask a ques­tion rather than click­ing through
• spaulds rockin’ demo. well trained by Mark Szulc.
• Yes, Prime Min­is­ter: viral mar­ket­ing from http://samesame.com.au. It appealed to my inner 14 year old.

(heads down, pplz voting)

lesli­enas­sar and I had a great chat in SCRLTT on the way home

The view down King Street at night:

(none of the above are wallflowers!)

Other com­ments:

• James Del­low, ChiefTech
• Ben Bar­ren

As people sub­scribed to my twitter.com/nickhodge feed exper­i­enced, I atten­ded the Web 2.0 Futures Con­fer­ence hos­ted by Ross Dawson at KPMG today.

Ross recently wrote an art­icle for Read/Write web on the Top 60 Web 2.0 applic­a­tions in Australia.

My ran­dom, assumptive break­down of the audi­ence of about 140 people:

• 10% < 25 years old, 80% gen-x, 10% baby boomers
• <20% female
• 45% of men in suits, 15% wear­ing ties
• 33% had money, 33% had ideas but no money, and the last 33% of us were wall­flowers watch­ing the first 66% in a subtle dance.

I met my first Web 2.0 celebrity (not includ­ing Microsoft’s Jeff Sandquist; but that’s being a little twee) — Richard Mac­Manus of Read/Write Web. I have a feel­ing he’s enjoy­ing the lat­ter slightly more than the former part of his blog (ie: more writ­ing than reading)

The first part of the day involved an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion on what is Web 2.0, and what is Aus­tralia? Is the notion of bor­ders rel­ev­ant, any­way? My assess­ment is that lan­guage and/or cul­ture are greater than timezones and bor­ders. The “digital nat­ives” see bor­ders in dif­fer­ent ways than pre­vi­ous generations.

Being that there were many VC’s in the audi­ence, and many people want­ing their star­tup fun­ded: the dis­cus­sion around rev­enue mod­els was also quickly covered.

The high­light of the day were the 5 minute demon­stra­tions from the fol­low­ing Aus­tralian Web 2.0 companies:

• Omni­d­rive
• Tan­gler (hi Mick!)
• gnoos.com (hi Ben!)
• Scouta (in closed private beta)
• Atlas­sian with Confluence

Shout out hi to Bron­wen of http://www.perthnorg.com.au, Lach­lan “Hot Geek” Hardy.

At the Hill and Know­lton “Sur­viv­ing and thriv­ing in the next dec­ade — Tech­no­logy Pub­lish­ing” Break­fast Bytes this morn­ing, a group of emin­ent pan­el­ists in pic­ture above, from the left:

• James Tuck­er­man – Pub­lish­ing Editor, Ant­Hill. New rel­at­ively magazine about ideas, money and skills. Pre­vi­ously more print than online, but adding new online pro­jects later in 2007.
• Heather Craven — Dir­ector of Mar­ket­ing & Com­mu­nic­a­tions, Cir­cu­la­tions Audit Board,
  Aus­tralian Cir­cu­la­tion Bur­eau. Sub-committee research­ing digital.
• Brian Haverty – Edit­or­ial Dir­ector, CNET Net­works Aus­tralia : Read­ers first, video and text style publishing.
• Tony Sarno – Editor, APC. Adding new online APC pro­jects later in 2007.
• Peter Roberts – Man­aging Editor, BRW. Part of the Fair­fax group, around since 1857. Noted that http://www.afr.com/ relaunched this week, and closed con­tent model AFR Access continues.
• Andrew Kirk, Hill and Know­lton: Chair

The theme from the morning’s panel and Q&A is that “there will be a mix­ture of online and print” and that “online and print” read­ers are treated as dif­fer­ent read­ers by the big-names. My per­spect­ive as a cor­por­ate online/citizen journ­al­ist is slightly different.

Like the quint­es­sen­tial invest­ig­at­ive journ­al­ists: Wood­ward and Bern­stein learnt: fol­low the money. In the above list­ing of pan­el­ists, notice where their stated invest­ment is going. It’s online.

From a tra­di­tional publisher’s per­spect­ive, the busi­ness is about employ­ing journ­al­ists to gather hid­den facts, con­nect, ana­lyse and write stor­ies. People buy the paper (atoms) to read the stor­ies and maybe their eye­balls will stray onto an advert­ise­ment. The mar­ket­ing groups of com­pan­ies buy these pos­i­tions on the paper in the hope that the right eye­balls are enthralled by the product and/or ser­vice — and buy the product. The core of a publisher’s job is man­aging the com­pel­ling con­tent such that a spe­cific audi­ence is cre­ated that advert­isers value.

The web is no dif­fer­ent, except that any­one can be a pub­lisher, and out­source the rev­enue side (advert­ising) to Microsoft or Google. Large pub­lish­ers, such as Fair­fax, are unhappy that their expens­ive infra­struc­ture is sub­ver­ted online: Peter Roberts men­tioned twice that Google made $200 mil­lion in Aus­tralia without invest­ing in the content-side.

Peter Roberts also com­men­ted on one of his com­pet­it­ors, Alan Kohler’s Eureka Report, hav­ing only an online mech­an­ism but suc­cess­ful busi­ness model. My per­spect­ive is that Alan’s busi­ness is suc­cess­ful as he is seen as a respec­ted and inde­pend­ent entity within Australia’s fin­an­cial com­munity. Alan Kohler is a trus­ted brand.

The Gad­get Guy, Peter Blasina’s ques­tion near the end sum­mar­ised the morn­ing for me: What does the future really look like? Each of the rep­res­en­ted panelist’s organ­isa­tions (maybe with the excep­tion of cnet) have their busi­ness strategies weighted toward print, and the brand-value that print brings.

Peter Blas­ina comes at this with cred­ib­il­ity as a true multi-channel brand and per­son­al­ity: print, online and TV — and sur­mised that the com­ing gen­er­a­tion will change the face of the print publisher’s world. And they know it.

The future for pub­lish­ers is where the eye­balls are. And eye­balls are not going to be in print, it is going to be online. Eye­balls stay longer where this is trus­ted value, and most import­antly where there is a com­munity. Read­ing a magazine is an almost high-latency feed­back medium; where two-way inter­ac­tion is slow if attemp­ted at all.

Demo­graph­ics of the eye­balls are chan­ging to more online: younger read­ers being digit­ally nat­ive and older gen­er­a­tions hav­ing more time to explore online; with more females than males desir­ing a com­munity and inter­ac­tion rather than pass­ive accept­ance; high band­width con­nec­tion to per­mit TV, Radio and Print being equal online mediums.

Whilst I have no research to back this up, I am going to state it here. A com­mon refrain from print pub­lish­ers is that “Radio did not replace news­pa­pers, and TV did not replace radio” as their back­wards look­ing per­spect­ive on why online will not replace these old media. My argu­ment is that the inter­net can replace the media styles: with web pages, pod­casts and vid­casts. As Rupert Mur­doch is quoted as say­ing: “Big media no longer con­trols the conversation” 

James Tuck­er­man knows his read­ers, and I think has a plan to cre­ate value in Anthill’s com­munity. He under­stands the emo­tional con­nec­tion that he has with his read­er­ship. James also stated there are “pop­u­la­tion lumps” at birth-years of 1949, 1974 and 1985. Accord­ing to the ABS, there is another pop­u­la­tion lump in the 2005–7 range too. My sug­ges­tion is to watch Ant­hill as a pub­lisher. They are start­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with their community.

A Ques­tion about Second­Life, the cur­rent “craze” in Aus­tralia poten­tially due to a visit in meat­space by a Linden Labs per­sona, res­ul­ted in Tony Sarno say­ing that “many PBL man­age­ment have vis­ited Second­Life”. I fear it is because of the gambling dens rather than the com­munity aspect. About 20% of the audi­ence of largely PR and tech­no­logy industry attendees had logged into Second­Life, of which most had logged in once.

So, in industry par­lance, what is the tip-on for online? It’s the com­munity. Com­munity is the new Brand.