I have blogged a few times lately about attempts publishers are making the price of content on the internet (here and here, if you’re interested). Traditional media sources and content producers have always struggled with creating a profitable online model, and the rise of the smartphone and the tablet both highlights the issues they are facing, and presents new opportunities for a solution.  Two more attempts at this solution have been getting publicity recently. First, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has announced it’s plans for a new, national US publication designed specifically for the iPad. The publication is will feature short, snappy news stories (take this to mean lots of pictures, little in the way of analysis) and has been created with the goal of “having young people read newspapers”.   The second thing which got me thinking about it was a story about a series of new magazines created specifically for tablets, called Nomad Editions. Basically, the idea behind is that they’ll produce 5 “editions” around specific topics (food, movies, surfing, viral video, etc), published weekly, which users will be able to subscribe to. It will be built using an interesting technology called Treesaver , which allows users to view ther same content, using the same addresses, on their desktop or mobile device.

These are both nice ideas, but they both seem inspired by a premise I’m not sure I agree with. Mark Edmiston, CEO of Nomad, claimed that Nomad was borne of that fact that “…people reading on their iPads, they’re reading a different way”. Rupert Murdoch made similar claims about his national newspaper concept. The implication in both cases is that the new technology necessitates new content, as well as new content delivery. (more…)

If you are involved in a product driven business, you can’t afford to not be on the ecommerce bandwagon. I’ll try to clarify a few things.. Where did ecommerce come from, where is it going and how your business can get the most out of it now!

To some, ecommerce is relatively new; but to most adept internet users it’s been predominant for about 10 or so years, appearing around the infamous ‘bubble’ period. For many, eBay was the first real glimpse into the time saving marvels of maxing out a credit card without leaving your IBM 386 (complete with turbo button), but these days whether or not to sell it’s second nature to sell your products online.

According to Forrester, this year US online commerce is expected to reach $173b USD and by 2014, $248b USD with 8% market share of all USretail.

This may seem very impressive, but it’s been a long time coming. Let’s look back over the history of ecommerce and we start to get an idea about how long it has taken to arrive at this turning point.

Ready to make the plunge? Then read on..

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When this 2010 election campaign is over,  Tony Abbott’s stumbling performance on last night’s 7.30 report may well be remembered as a costly moment for the Liberal’s campaign. Abbott was unimpressive generally, but in particular in his  response to questioning about the details of his party’s broadband plan. Abbott struggled with questions about the detail of the plan, then attempted to pass off his ineptitude by saying “I’m no tech head” .

What was stunning about this wasn’t  Abbott  ignorance of the detail of the policy, but the flippancy and complete lack of embarrassment with which he dealt with his lack of knowledge. By saying he “wasn’t Bill Gates”, he was implying, by proxy that technical issues were the concern of computer nerds, and that the details of the policy were beneath hin Which is stunning in both it’s arrogance and Abbott’s lack of understanding of how the real world works.

What Abbott doesn’t understand is about broadband speed is the question isn’t who in the electorate will be affected, but who won’t. What Australian business doesn’t now have a web presence? What person doesn’t pay bills or manage their finances online? What student doesn’t use the internet for study? In fact, who doesn’t go online as part of their day to day life?

The answer, evidently, is career politicians who have advisors to handle that sort of thing for them, and have never had to place an order, or pay a bill, or book a cab, or find a plumber online.  Rather than being the reserve of “tech heads”,  issues relating to broadband speed are part of mainstream life in Australia, and will only become more important.

To put the inappropriateness of the statement in context, imagine if Kerry O’Brien had asked Abbott a question about the wheat industry, and Abbott, unable to answer, had joked “Well, how would I know, I’m not Old McDonald?” Or if he had been asked an economic question and responded with “Who do I look like, Ben Bernanke? Ask a number cruncher, why don’t you?” Unthinkable.

Abbott can take some comfort in one thing, however. The man the ALP have entrusted to take him to task over this howler is Stephen Conroy.

As a Digital Producer one of the most common questions I’m asked (after explaining  that no, I don’t make movies) is “what’s the deal with Twitter?”  Clients  in particular will acknowledge Twitter’s importance as a tool for their organisation, but express a slight bewilderment at how or why it is useful to them on a personal level.  Someone recently said  “I can see why WE need to be using it, but why should I be using it?”pretty much summing the conundrum up. Almost as common are people who flirt with it for a few weeks, then lose interest. The most common reason?  “Oh, I started using it, but couldn’t think of anything to say so I stopped.

In Australia,  the stats back up the anecdotes. There are currently around 277,000 users, or roughly 1.5 % of the population. In the US, the following is far greater(a detailed breakdown of the numbers, with an incorrect headline, here), but still nothing like the level that Facebook’s are or MySpace’s were. The uptake experience of people I’ve talked to mirrors the stats as well. An estimate 40% of users drop off in the first month.

For professionals and businesses, there’s not really much debate anymore about Twitter’s worth. It has proven itself  an outstanding means by which to build a brand,  for business to business communication, and to speak directly to those interested in your band. If you’re already a celebrity, all the better – the opportunity for to connect with fans and to build your fame by giving them a taste of your fabulous celebrity lifestyle, at no cost to yourself, is just outstanding.  If you’re a tech person, or a media professional, or work in an agency, again, the benefits and uses are obvious and immediate.

But what about the average person, you ask? How do they make Twitter more than just “that website with the bird”? Pretty easily. Here are igloo’s tips on making Twitter work for you:

1. Don’t assume you have to say anything.

As  I mentioned, people often express their reservations about Twitter by asking “But what would I write about?”. The answer I usually give is don’t write anything.  (more…)

It was just one remarkable factor in a remarkable campaign, but it’s still surprising just how effectively Barack Obama was able to utilise social media and digital campaigning in his 2008 presidential campaign. He pushed his message and brand, generated support and mobilised financial backers. He attacked and diminished his opponent, without cheapening himself or tarnishing his image. Through this success in the “new media” he was also able to highlight the age difference between himself and his opponent, and add credence to his message of being the harbinger of change and innovation.

In considering the lessons this offers for the upcoming Australian election, there are a few qualifiers. The Obama social media campaign, particularly My Barack Obama, were primarily fund raising exercises. As well as financial factors, the length of the American campaign and the reliance on volunteers to facilitate their campaign rallies (occasionally quite elaborate affairs), so mobilization of supporters is vital just to keep the campaign running smoothly. As well, the Australian campaign is (mercifully) significantly shorter than it’s American equivalent and at a set time, which brings significant planning advantages.

Despite this, there’s a lot both sides can learn from Obama’s campaign, and from what’s happened since. Here, then, are the 5 tips we would give both parties, should they ask, about how they should conduct themselves digitally during the campaign. We are offering the advice to both parties because we are wise and benevolent like King Solomon and Quentin Bryce.

1. The Normal Rules of Twitter Don’t Apply (for the campaign period only)

I’m going to get slightly controversial with this one. For the next week or so, before the campaign hots up, expect to see several stories about Gillard and Abbott’s presence on Twitter. 90% of these will be bookended by a quote from a “social media expert” of some description, who’ll advise them that they are “broadcasting” too much, and that they need to “engage in conversation” (never “have more conversations”, for some reason) with their followers. Ordinarily, fine and sensible advice. Post-election, it’s just what they should be doing.  But right now, I’m not so sure. (more…)

In my post last week, I mentioned a report which blamed the lack of spending on internet advertising in part on the low quality of online advertising campaigns. It’s a claim that you hear from time to time working in the field,  either in the form of stray”I hate those pop up things” comments,  or from serious sources like this 2009 article from TechCrunch, which claims that “the internet is about freedom… and a truly free population will not be forced to watch ads”

The comment stayed with me through the week. I knew it was wrong and could thing of a lot of reasons, but didn’t post about it as I couldn’t think of a succinct way to explain it. Then the Old Spice Man exploded, and it dawned on me. It’s wrong because people LOVE internet advertising.

If you’ve been in a sleeping pill induced coma for the past week, the Old Spice Man is a deodorant campaign which has exploded. It’s mildly amusing bit in the Chuck Norris/ Barry “The Cougar” Dawson vein (you could almost call the humour Anchorman-lite)  which has exploded across the internet. It has 55 million YouTube views, and the campaign’s been given legs with the having the character uploading personal responses to users from various social media sources, answering questions on Yahoo, and so on.

The campaign’s not a great one, but it shows just how deeply internet advertising can penetrate if it is popular – or more correctly, how deeply a popular campaign can disseminate with proper integration and some momentum. This is advertiser created content as a legitimate entertainment source – people are engaging because they like the campaign in and of itself, not the product. Advertisements – not advertiser funded content, advertisements – are now a legitimate form of entertainment. (more…)

As I live in the outer south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, my working week involves a fair amount of traveling. Train travel to be specific. To keep myself busy/sane on the daily commute I usually either read a good crime novel, check the latest headlines on my trusty N95 or listen to a recent episode of one my podcasts. While flicking through some old podcast episodes the other day  I came across this one from the hanselminutes podcast by Scott Hanselman. The episode talks about a new project called ASP.NET Web Forms MVP and it really caught my attention. On the project’s website, the two Australian  creators state:

The ASP.NET Web Forms MVP project is about bringing the love back to Web Forms through a renewed approach to using it – an approach that facilitates separation of concerns and testability whilst maintaining the rapid development that Web Forms was built to deliver.

The initial questions that popped up in my head after reading the project summary on their website was: How is this different to the MVC framework and can they be used in unison? Facilitating separation of concerns and improving testability could easily be used to describe MVC so at a glance it would look like they are trying to create a competing framework. However after listening to the podcast episode and reading a bit more about the capabilities of the framework it seems that it’s more about improving the current webforms development processes than competing with MVC or other processes. Both frameworks lend themselves well in different situations. Sometimes one is more suited then the other and sometimes maybe a mixture of both is the best approach.

Our latest website project, the redevelopment of the Mazda Australia website (mazda.com.au), was built using the Sitecore CMS web platform. The Sitecore framework is built on top of the ASP.NET Web Forms which means that you are more or less ‘stuck’ using the webforms model. As someone that has worked with Web Forms for quite a while I am happy to see that someone is making an effort to put the fun back in webforms development. I think this framework could be a very useful addition to the development toolbox here at Igloo as we gear up to tackle our next big website project.

Check out theese links if you are interested in learning more about this framework:

• Visit the website
• Listen to what one of the creators (Tatham Oddie) has to say about it on the hanselminutes podcast or the TalkingShopDownUnder podcast
• Watch a discussion from TechEd 2009 by the creators Tatham Oddie and Damian Edwards

How do you chose which framework to use in your website projects?

When you hear the phrase “Queen of the Internet”, you’re probably inclined to think of Lady Gaga or, if you are a traditionalist Tia Tequila.  But the title’s also been given to Mary Meeker , a Managing Director at investment bank Morgan Stanley. Meeker, who heads up the bank’s global technology research team, earned the title after the publication of her ground breaking  if unimaginatively titled  The Internet Report in 1995. The report successfully predicted much of the dot.com boom, and despite the bubble’s bursting in 2000, has been highly regarded and closely followed by investors and the tech industry every since.

Meeker’s 2010 Report was released to the public last month, and again, it’s full of fascinating information.  It’s particularly strong on the rise and rise of mobile computing and the flow on effect this boom is having on innovation and customer expectation. It finds:

- The growth of mobile internet is unprecedented, with the inflection point where the number of smart phones shipped surpasses PCs predicted to be reached as soon as 2012. Smart phones shipments have already overtaken feature phones in the USA. They have been the biggest growth drivers of computing devices in history. The report notes that wireless options are growing rapidly to meet this demand, and that the demands of wireless consumers have expanded massively year on year since the device’s launch. (more…)

With the latest release of the Safari 5 browser, there is now support for browser extensions akin to Google Chrome and Firefox.

Here’s some info on how to install Safari Extensions

And here’s a few awesome Safari extensions so far!

Google fonts in safari
Change your fonts to all google fonts, Droid Serif is a personal favourite

Built With - right click to check out the stats of how a site is built… view info on which Analytics and Tracking are installed, Advertising, Widgets and more

Gmail checker
Displays your unread msg’s count in the toolbar

Live CSS Editing – edit your css on the fly

Cloudpreview – provides all movie files with a HTML5 compatible preview

Would be great to hear anymore awesome Safari 5 extensions people have tracked down!

Do make use of Sitecore Pipelines

Sitecore Pipelines are one of the most powerful features of Sitecore and give you the ability to add custom functionality to each user request, publishing task, or even simple Sitecore UI events. Some careful thought is required when implementing pipelines, as inefficient or redundant pipelines can slow down your website.

We utilised several pipelines for the mazda.com.au project, including functionality to save and categorise article content for SEO benefits and processing uploaded video content.

Don’t use XSLT renderings when there is a better alternative.

Deciding whether to use XSLT or C# Web Controls is quite a common occurrence when building a Sitecore website. Does the page require lots of content that maps directly to items and fields in the site hierarchy? Or is there some crazy business logic that requires content to be conditionally retrieved from various sources?

Whilst both technologies have their place in the page lifecycle, XSLTs tend to be more effective when used for smaller content chunks, or for when interacting with the data in the Sitecore XSL boilerplate is needed. For these simple renderings, XSLTs often require fewer lines of code compared to their C# counterparts, but the power of C# is key when more complex logic is required.

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