TechnoCloud
Archive for October 2006
Speed dating for the seriously short of time
Those who remember the ruthless jungle that was placing your photo on hotornot should check out yesnomayB. This interesting twist on speed dating for the seriously short of time, asks you to rate a person’s photo alongside sketchy personality statements about likes and character. You answer “Yes, No or Maybe”. The more people you rate, … Continue reading
Golden Retrievr
Visual recognition is one of the significant challenges facing search as the scale of multimedia content on the web grows. It is relatively straightforward to extract text and even audio, but the variables involved in visual recognition mean that a human eye remains the best judge of a successful search. The likes of Blinkx, Riya … Continue reading
Ad remixes you won’t forget
One of the pieces of feedback from my audience session with Sky+ users was that they skip nearly all TV advertising. I’m betting if the ads were as engaging/distubring as the remix below then they would watch them (and they are looking at the YouTube stats). I for one can’t get E-e-e-sure out of my head (and … Continue reading
Tomorrow’s TV audiences today
I had an interesting session with selected members of the UK public to discuss the ways their TV consumption has evolved thanks to ownership of a Personal/Digital Video Recorder (PVR/DVR), such as Sky+ or TiVo. Disruptive to the traditional linear model of broadcasting via the schedule, the PVR is part of a growing trend of ‘Me, Me, Media’ – … Continue reading
Mashing up the ’1% rule’
A recent Nielsen Useit column seems to confirm that the ’1% rule’ is alive and well. He states that: In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action. Although the percentages differ the numbers are echoed in … Continue reading
Spam will find a way
Domain registrants usually enjoy a spam-free honeymoon period, until they need to start paying increasing attention to email and comment filters. Having been bitten in the past on other projects, I have been careful not to post TechnoCloud’s email address in machine-readable format. However, as sure as death and taxes spam found a way, most likely … Continue reading
From MySpace to MomSpace
Stats from comScore Media Metrix claim that in the US at least, MySpace has a much broader demographic than the teen segment it is commonly associated with. In fact only 30% are under 25, with just over half over 35. They estimate that MySpace has 56m users in the US, against Facebook’s 15m, Xanga’s 8m and Friendster’s … Continue reading
Social bookmarking with WordPress
One of the functions of this blog is as a space to experiment with technology and to share the results, whether a Google widget or indeed social bookmarking on WordPress as you’ll see below. Thanks to the wonders of the WordPress plugin community (and in this case Apostolos Dountsis), each blog post now has a … Continue reading
Google releases widgets into the wild
No self-respecting site or service can be without a widget these days it seems. A ‘widget’ is a suitably loose catchall that is now so pervasive that it has achieved the true Web 2.0 cachet of being ‘mashed’ into new service names, such as Nokia’s WidSets for mobile phones. Little surprise then that Google has continued the … Continue reading
Who wants to be a millionaire?
Netflix are offering a $1m prize to the first person who can achieve a 10%+ improvement in their recommendation engine. They are making available sections of their ratings database and stress that all data is anonymous – after all they wouldn’t want an AOL data leak on their hands… The standard Netflix model, as with competitors Blockbuster and … Continue reading
