Just had to share this. We’ve all had dollar bills before that had writing on them, usually someone’s phone number or something. I had a dollar yesterday that had an ad on it pointing me to the website where I can track where my dollar has traveled lately. The site is called WheresGeorge.com. It worked on me, though I’m wondering exactly how legal this is.

And because you’re dying to know, according to the site my dollar has traveled 204 miles in 251 days with an average of .81 miles per day, starting in Turtletown, TN. I was bummed out to find that the site doesn’t allow your dollar to rank its speed vs. other dollars. Or maybe I’m just looking for some new kind of competition since my NCAA pool is already lost after day 1.

Playstation just announced their new Social Networking tool for the PS3 gaming console called “Home”. The new offering will be found within every console in the “cross media bar” and will give the users a Second Life experience within the PS3 world.

As a member you can personalize your avatar, customize your own apartment within your Private Space, purchase premium items to decorate and even play “your” media on a Sony Bravia television. These are all things that are currently available within Second Life, but the new offerings that I find personally interesting are within the “Public Spaces.”

These Public Spaces house everything from virtual arcades to movie theatres, where you can watch HD quality movies and even user generated content. The social media content is being provided by Grouper; so it should be interesting how they feed in and filter the content. Even future non-social content within Home is not only about Sony, but also game publishers, developers and even non-industry corporations (Starbucks anyone?).

With Sony’s new effort to dive into the virtual world marketplace, it makes me wonder about the audience that it will attract to this experience. Second Life has a free experience (less the $600 needed for a console) with 4.5 million people from around the world. But with Sony’s 2 million consoles sold in 2006, it seems that they are not too far behind.

This said, I do not see Home being as much a competitor to Second Life as they are simply emulating their environment to create a better sense of community. What really matters is that Microsoft has over 1 million subscribers to their online community, Xbox Live, and has already entered into the media gateway for your household entertainment, communications and storage.

Now that consoles are becoming gateways into whole home media centers, it will only be a matter of time when your favorite movies, your virtual conference call, your vacation slide show and all of your entertainment, will be available to you and “your friends” at the touch of a button.

So sit back, relax, and watch Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony battle it out within their community games.

To learn a litle more, check our Sony’s Video Presentation about Home (wait for the commercial to pass, the presenation is very informative).

The other day, I finally did something I’ve wanted to do for a while now.  I bought The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell.  I had first read his book, Blink, which talks about the power of the human subconscious and I had heard The Tipping Point was one of those “must reads”.  So I read it.  Well, I didn’t actually read it, but I listened to the book on CD. 

It was pretty interesting.   If you haven’t read it, the basic premise is that there are a few key factors that cause all epidemics in the world.  These epidemics can be viral diseases, the explosion of a popular product or even the adoption of a new technology.  The factors he talks about all tend to work together, but he explains that epidemics all tend to start with a collection of little things that have a compounding effect and collectively make a big difference.  Eventually when an epidemic spreads, there is a “tipping point” in which the small movement becomes a large one, seemingly overnight.

In my opinion, usability issues can have this same progression. One issue is no big deal; a second issue adds to that. But as the number of issues a user encounters increases, the rate in which they get frustrated and leave grows exponentially.  As a business, we may not put much stock in each individual issue because, isolated, it is “not that big of a deal”.  Often, however, it’s not that one issue causes a user to have usability problems.  It’s the compounding effect of small issues that builds and burns a negative impression in the user’s mind. 

As these issues compound, they eventually come to their own “tipping point”, when a user will decide that the cognitive effort involved in utilizing your website or product is too great to provide a positive return on their time and mental investment.  This tipping point can occur early in a session (i.e. if someone’s patience level is already low) or mid-way through.  They may even complete a transaction with you this time, but when contemplating a return to your site, they will recall that negative association and chose an alternative.

So the next time you’re thinking of dismissing a simple usability fix because you don’t think it’s a big deal, you may want to consider the full impact it can have.

Alright, so the nursery rhyme goes slightly differently. Regardless, I couldn’t resist talking more to the Agile process; since another big dogs has realized the benefit. Adobe (of all folk) has announced the success of using an iterative process in the development of CS3.

Clearly, no one process will rule all. But I still reassert that I like the idea of incremental process.

Do a little…
review…
improve…
repeat…

Most modern processes have such a concept, whether TQM, Six Sigma (DMAIC), BPI, or Lean. I couldn’t imagine going into product development anymore that would last 2 months or more without an iterative based approach. It is too easy to misinterpret, miscalculate, and misunderstand client needs and intentions.

Part of the story also speaks to “Bugalaunch” - the death march to release depriving team members of precious sleep, social lives and undoubtedly personal health. Too often it is the unceremonious end to a project to be rewarded with Bug Hell; which I think exists somewhere around the 222nd layer of the abyss.

This made me realize that it makes the job of motivating developers very difficult, since they never really get a clean, clear reward of a product delivered well and gracefully. I mean, in a traditional Waterfall approach, the chances of something going bad and erasing months of hard work is high. Why not allow for incremental “showing off?” The Agile method allows developers to demonstrate the exceptional work they do gradually. If the project does go awry (for whatever reason), the customer would now be aware of all the good work that happened before a major hurdle is reached. They will therefore be more sympathetic, appreciative and understanding of the hard work it then takes to right the project and overcome the hurdle.

Of course, my developers should beware, because I do like the 20 bug rule too.

Hm, seems like everyone thinks they are an expert in Second Life these days. Here’s an article from Adotas (one of my favorite pubs by the way) in which I have to seriously doubt that the writer knows much about this environment. Specifically, here are the points I have a problem with:

“For a Second Life marketing campaign to be a success, it has to generate word-of-mouth spillover into the Internet at-large.”

What? Did I miss something? Since when does PR from a campaign dictate the success of that campaign? Sure, the population of Second Life is not yet that large but not everyone is going for massive awareness with their campaigns. The ability to have someone interact and experience your brand on a level that is otherwise not possible can be extremely powerful. Let’s not have the tail wag the dog on this one just yet.

“Still, there is no surefire guarantee that a campaign will resonate with the blogosphere or garner mainstream attention.”

Right, as opposed to all the other marketing campaigns that DO guarantee mainstream attention. Great point, duly noted.

“There is also no way to measure a direct correlation between a marketing campaign in Second Life and sales.”

Really? You mean there’s no way to track that someone came from within Second Life to your website to make a purchase? Might want to check your facts on that one, it’s very possible.

And this is my favorite - “Aside from extra publicity, Linden Labs actually has little to gain from marketers in Second Life.”

So Linden Labs doesn’t get any benefit from marketers entering Second Life?  Let’s put aside the amount of land that marketers are buying from them (and the hosting fees every month on top of that), the amount of designers and developers that are now trained in coding for Second Life and even the PR that marketers use to push people TO Second Life.  What about the fact that marketers are showing businesses how they can enter into and possibly benefit from being in Second Life?  They’re trying to prove that Linden Labs’ creation is viable for commerce!  How can this do anything BUT help Linden Labs?

I’m not saying that Second Life is the next frontier or even that it will still exist six months from now.  But if you wanted to be one of the first people to enlighten us all about how Second Life is going to plummet without saying anything intelligent whatsoever, well you missed that boat by about six months.  If you’re focused on joining the increasing number of critics, at least bring some game.

Today is the second day of Daylight Saving Time. Odd name for it, actually… not sure how we’re ‘saving’ daylight. However it was named, there is one particular thing about it that I do not like. And, it’s not what you think. EVERY year, people (including news reporters and others who should know better) describe DST as ‘gaining an hour’ of sunlight. Wow. How’d they manage THAT. I mean, if they can pluck more sunlight out of the time-space continuum, then surely we can send a man to the moon =).

SO, get out your calculators folks, it’s time for some math. According to the Astronomical Applications Department at the U.S. Naval Observatory, on March 10, 2007 (the last day of ST) the sun rose at 6:55 AM EST and set at 18:41 PM EST (that’s 6:41 PM for you non-military types). That day, we had 11 hours and 46 minutes of daylight. On March 11, 2007 (the FIRST day of DST) the sun rose at 7:54 AM and set at 19:42 (7:42) PM. On that day we had 11 hours and 48 minutes of daylight… so where’s my hour?

In fact, the only time we ‘gain’ daylight is – well – EVERY day from December (the winter solstice and the shortest day of the year) to June (the summer solstice and the longest day of the year). We lose daylight EVERY day from June to December. So why do people continue to say “We gained an hour of daylight!”? My guess is that either they don’t really mean it, or that it’s just been said so much over time that people don’t really think about what they’re saying. It’s simply become true via repetition.

I encounter this phenomenon a lot in my job. Something that starts out true gets twisted and/or becomes not true anymore. The most prominent example is ‘customers don’t want more than three clicks to get to their information’. Whether this has ever been true, I don’t know. But I do remember uttering those words myself because I heard or read it somewhere.

I’m sure it surfaced because that’s what the user’s SAID… not what they actually did. In fact, Jared Spool, a renowned user experience researcher with User Interface Engineering, found that users will click as much as they have to as long as each click produces relevant content. In fact, sometimes users were more successful completing tasks the more they clicked. He calls this the ‘Myth of Three Clicks’. In short, it’s about what you get and how you get it rather than how ‘long’ it took you to get there.

By the way, here are some other ‘myths’ about DST:

• Ben Franklin, often credited for starting DST, did not propose the hour change. He merely suggested that the French wake up earlier so as to enjoy more of the daylight.
• DST was first implemented during WWI (1916) in Germany, with the U.K. following suit soon after and the U.S., picking it up in 1918.
• Farmers in the U.S. did NOT like DST and it was not enacted for the agricultural industry. It was a wartime effort.
• William Willet, a builder and outdoorsmen proposed DST in 1905 because he felt it was a shame that more Londoners didn’t get up early to enjoy that part of the day and because he didn’t like having to cut short his golf game at dusk.
• Woodrow Wilson, an avid golfer, vetoed the repeal of DST in 1919.

So, essentially, we have DST because of golf. Where are my clubs? It’s supposed to be nice today…

I stumbled across a post on Fast Company’s blog about Calvin Klein’s new fragrance. Written by an authentic GenY-er, the post makes an excellent point about how tragically wrong the branding of this fragrance went. The article that got him on his hysterical Gen Y rant appeared in the New York Times Thursday Styles.

Before I launch into my own hysterical marketing rant ….. I can appreciate CK’s desperation to create a new “hit” fragrance. I mean, CK One (THE fragrance in my youth), which pulled 90 million yearly in its prime is now collecting only a third of that. They need a new hit fragrance.

The article talks about the grass-roots market research the company did; eventually leading to the trademark of (brace yourself) “TECHNOSEXUAL” to describe its target audience of “casual hookup” text messengers. Ouch. Maybe they didn’t do their homework. This same word has in the past been used to describe people who are “attracted” to machinery. (Yikes!) In the end, this intensive research yielded “in2U” … a play on GenY’s abbreviated text communication.

What is painfully obvious is how incredibly out of touch CK was when they began this initiative. Honestly … in2U? Yes, technology has advanced quickly. Yes, GenY uses text and instant messages and social media more than any generation before them. And, yes all marketers will have to respond to this shift. But, I don’t think it means patronizing their lifestyle with SILLY advertising.

Yes Silly. The article says: “A typical line from the press materials for CK in2u goes like this: ‘She likes how he blogs, her texts turn him on. It’s intense. For right now.’” Bleeeeh.

Off my rant, I have to give CK some positive marks for recognizing they need to address this audience with relevant branding. But ask any GenY-er and they’ll tell you they want nothing more than to get away from blatant advertising, let alone be the obnoxious target of it. They like to feel like they’ve uncovered their own brands and then spread it around with their peeps. Get it? Think Scion. Talk about underground marketing with a HUGE GenY following.

BUT. You never know …. I have not heard their online strategy. If they are able to effectively (quietly) infiltrate social media, they just might create a following. Because one thing is true in technology, and certainly with GenY, it’s always changing. CK might just be able to crack this egg if they can put themselves in the right places, even if the messaging is “wrong.”

I’m a picky eater. Always have been. It was a major miracle for my mother to get me to even taste a green vegetable (unless, of course, it was smothered in cheese). In fact, I only considered corn and potatoes as valid, edible veggies. God forbid she try to pawn brussel sprouts (the vegetable of the devil) or rutabaga on me. Though I eventually got over my aversion to nutrition (NOT brussel sprouts), I still maintain some of my eating oddities.

Among them is my sheer disdain for ‘Stuff in Stuff’. I’ve only found one other person who understands this concept, as it has its nuances. In fact, I’m not sure I can fully explain, but here goes: Chocolate chips in cookies, casseroles, chicken cordon bleu, or stuffed shells do NOT constitute Stuff in Stuff. However, nuts in brownies (or any dessert), celery in potato salad (or egg salad or macaroni salad or ANYTHING for that matter), and anything in Jello, DOES. See the difference?? Most don’t. Stuff that ‘belongs’ in other stuff, that blends and melds with other stuff, is NOT Stuff in Stuff. As a whole, it creates the Stuff. Stuff that doesn’t match or can be ‘picked out’ (ok, so salads are an exception, but that’s a dish where EVERYTHING is separate) is Stuff in Stuff.

If you ever see me with a little pile of something at the side of my plate , you’ll know - THAT was Stuff in Stuff. And I don’t like it. Nor do I like anything in life that doesn’t belong with the other stuff that surrounds it. I like things to be consistent, contextual and meaningful. If it doesn’t belong - if it doesn’t create one concept -  then don’t put it in there! It’s Stuff in Stuff.

Of course, I can translate this easily to website content. For instance, if you have a page on your company’s mission, then don’t include information on your history and your board of directors. Too many times I’ve seen that page. It’s almost as if people throw stuff in other stuff simply because they have it and don’t have any place else to put it.

So next time you have that half-a-bag of leftover walnuts, PLEASE resist the urge to put them in your brownies. Save the world from Stuff in Stuff. Unless, of course, you LIKE nuts in brownies. But then you’re just weird.

Here lately, LOST is losing it — at least for me. In previous seasons, things were different. Work came to a grinding halt every Thursday morning as hours of LOST water cooler conversations ensued. We’d TiVo back and forth through LOST commercials like mad fools, logging onto secret websites to dig for clues.  LOST theories ran through the office like wildfire — blackberries going off in meetings with one liners that could go back and forth into the night. The purgatory theory…the ‘it’s all just a big dream’ theory…the writers are on crack theory…It was like the year between the Matrix 2 and Matrix 3. Endless possibilities. Unlimited potential. But something’s different with LOST this season. This season, we’re back to work.

So with all this extra time on my hands, I’ve been thinking. What’s changed? The characters are the same. The set’s the same. The story is heading the same direction. But there’s one fundamental difference. And it’s kind of hard to ignore. This season, we got to meet The Others. And as it happens, The Others really aren’t that scary.

In previous seasons, we were forced to ponder questions like “What do The Others look like? How many are out there? How far are they willing to go?” In our minds, The Others were a dangerous group of primitive people…or ferocious monsters…or people possessed by some evil deity…or whatever else scared the H out of us. Now that we’ve met The Others and have gotten to know them, things are very different. Now, they’re just a group of slightly off key adults singing Kumbaya in some outdoor recreation center.

Is our rapid loss of LOST engagement surprising? Perhaps not. After all, the funniest comedies don’t give you all the lines. The best mysteries don’t give you all the clues. The scariest movies never show you the monster. No matter what the genre, it seems that audiences are most engaged when they aren’t given all the details — when they are forced to make inferences instead. And when you think about it, this is really a timeless concept. Take Helen of Troy.  She’s possibly the most beautiful literary character of all time — all because Homer never described her face. All we know is that she was so beautiful that the grandfathers of the soldiers who died in battle over her could look upon her face and understand what all the fighting was for. Now that’s hot! So many people have imagined her differently. In the 60s and 70s, she was a twiggy, thin lipped woman dressed in psychedelic cloths. In the 80s, she was a curvy full lipped woman wearing a black unitard and pink aerobics sox. If you’re into brunettes, she’s a brunette. If you’re into read heads, she’s a read head. Helen of Troy will always be beautiful because it doesn’t matter what you’re into – she’s that.

So how does the concept of inference apply to our industry? Should we design our brands to flex with audience expectations – to let our audience dictate what they want to see? Could ‘inferential marketing’ (if you will) be the key to reaching the highest levels of audience engagement – the key to universal brand appeal? Given the effects of inference in so many other media forms, perhaps it could.

Give the brain a taste of what you want it to know and the mind runs wild. Give the brain too much and the mind stops –making room for other curious things.

I was thinking the other day about the differences between my generation (think Breakfast Club, Parachute Pants and Members Only Jackets) and today’s kids and how vastly different our communication tendencies are. For instance, if I wanted to send out a message to most or all of my contacts, I’d either send an email or use LinkedIn. If a 15-year-old wants to do that, they’d probably send that message through a site like MySpace or Facebook. If I want to tell someone something quick and short, like “Oh my God Becky, look at her butt”, I might call them or send them a quick instant message. The 15-year-old would most likely text that message with their phone in blazing, I can’t be bothered writing whole words speed - “OMG bky c hr a**?”.

My point is, in ten years when these kids are in the work force, will they be using email the same way that we do today? I hear more and more about college classes communicating via wiki’s and we all know how popular Facebook is with the college crowd, so the idea that they will stop using social websites to communicate once they are out of college may not be a viable one.

The Internet is starting to absorb email as a form of communication. Prior to the past few years, peer-to-peer communication was not easily done through websites. Now its practically built in to every new website that’s created.

So I guess this is the question to the masses, what is the future of email?