Online DVR's / content re-streaming

@johnrmatthews In Online TV Re-Streaming, UK's TVCatchup Dealt A Legal Blow: A High Court judge has dismissed an application by UK... http://bit.ly/hLFY0x


Interesting to see how this is going to play out country by country - there is a court case in the USA as well - IVI vs MLB - http://blog.collins.net.pr/2010/10/ivi-not-gotta-licensewhatye-going-todo.html

Yet in Australia http://www.mytvr.com.au/ seems to be humming along with no legal issues at all.


Cheers,
Dean

5.8% Interest

I was listening to all the outrage this morning from Germans complaining they are "bailing out" the Irish and it's so unfair..... later in the news I found out Ireland is paying 5.8% interest on these loans.

Wow.

Thats going to be a huge windfall for the Germans, i'd love to earn 5.8% guaranteed by a state government. I'm not sure Germans understand each and every person in Ireland is now paying $2.25 to Germany every day, thats every man, woman and child across all of Ireland.

Thats only the "Interest" (or the "vig" as loan sharkers would call it)

85,000,000,000 loan amount

5.8% interest rate
$4,930,000,000 annual interest
365 days
$13,506,849 daily interest
6,000,000 irish population 2010

$2.25 daily interest per person per day each and every day

- personally i think the Germans are onto a good thing. Maybe like the Chinese they've worked out you dont need to attack a country to cripple them, just loan them a barrel of money.
 
 
Cheers,
Dean

Facebook analytics

Loving the new facebook interaction analytics, shows exactly how many people are viewing our http://www.livebasketballchat.com/ NBA posts etc


For every post we are seeing interaction details about 60 mins after the post. Fantastic.
 
 
Cheers,
Dean

The death of RSS

I'm lamenting the death of RSS today. It's seems frustrating to me how twitter has killed rss feeds/readers and probably brought down the level of "self publishing" by several years.

It seems to me most people are just "re-editing" content from elsewhere and posting useless 140 character blurbs instead of putting thought and insight into their personal writings.

Got something to say? Hopefully it's longer more important and in content than 140 characters.

Any thoughts?


Cheers,
Dean

Ch-Ch-Changing

Watching I'm Not There , interesting I had no idea about how many fans hated the change to electric, made me wonder how come Madonna is able to change every 3 years and no one minds her evolutions?

Cheers,
Dean
(by the way Cate Blanchett is great- the rest i think is a little psuedo intellectual BS) #LiveTVchat

Groupon Patent

Groupon patent;


Any thoughts? http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/19/groupon-vs-mobgob

I think this comment sums it up nicely - http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/19/groupon-vs-mobgob/#comment-99578565  
 
 
Cheers,
Dean

Charles Rangel belongs in jail

If i get caught cheating taxes i'm going to ask for a Censure instead of going to jail. http://bit.ly/axe9gR  #CharlieRangelBelongsInJail


BTW oh the irony - this guy is the reason why i'm giving up my green card soon.

When these foreign bankers, software engineers, chemists, and others leave the country—if only to retire or transfer to a new posting abroad—the Heart Taxation Act, which was sponsored by Representative Charles Rangel, the New York Democrat, will tax them on the unrealized capital gains of their total global assets.
Read more: http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/07/08/US-Tax-Law-Hits-Foreign-Workers#ixzz15kNLWHh2

Facebooka and Twitter are clunky

People you do realise that you will look back at the clunky tools Facebook provides us today and chortle that they were the myspace of their time right?

I mean everyone looks at MySpace and thinks how primitive, thats how i feel when using Facebook today to build our Live Chat Apps.
 
Seriously not being able to rename tab urls so that this http://www.facebook.com/LiveBaseballChat?v=app_132093016846407 is the only way i can provide a url to our LBBC Top 10 users list?
 
And Twitter not providing any analytics about who is looking at my content and how often it's being looked at - how "Geocities" like. 
 
I like the comment here about how Facebook is perceived as a juggernaught when even now with a critical eye it's obviously not.

Cheers,
Dean

Faithless - Insomnia

Probably an apt song to come on as i'm burning the midnight hours here tonight.



Need a release to get some sleep, bring it on bring the light bring the codes to get some sleeps.

Cheers,
Dean

Up with freedom down with tyranny

New Jersey kicking TSA's butt - http://bit.ly/ccndXe - up with freedom down with tyranny.


Cheers,
Dean

Sellaband launch another major artist investment fund

Yet another major well established artist starts up a sellaband fund.

https://rock.sellaband.com/en/projects/jonathan-davis

Raising $75,000 for a dvd production and distribution, various download, copies and 5% profits. I'm wondering how record companies are viewing these activities by established artists?

That would be like Dennis Crowley starting a new company and deciding to cut out VC’s/Angel funds and raise the entire investment via foursquares end users but keeping 95% of the company profits for himself.

Can this allow to be continued or do you think that a label will try to buy out Sellaband soon and then turn it into an investment vehicle for their development artists?


Cheers,
Dean

Voiceovers

Just found this neat website; http://voice123.com/christinelarkin
Very cool if you are looking to book voiceovers for web apps or video.


Cheers,
Dean

The next big thing......not!!

Remember when everyone though Facebook groups was going to be the next big thing...wasn't that like 8 weeks ago, when was the last time you got a facebook group invite? and how many do you belong to that are active?

I'm still amazed how things "catch fire" or just dont. I'm trying to distill what it is some times that make it happen and to be honest i'm not sure after all the research I'm not sure i'm any closer.

Any thoughts?

Why aren’t you using groups? What function is lacking? If a http://www.tokbox.com/ like live video conferencing application was implemented do you think this would help?



Cheers,
Dean

Suing the wrong people?

Interesting Jigsaw are trying to sue Apple instead of the developer.... i hope their lawyer got paid in advance and isn't working on contingency.

- http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/smartphone-apps/chopper-app-hits-highs-low-for-australian-student-20101114-17sq6.html
 
 
Cheers,
Dean

Kinect camera watching you watching it

TG Daily running an article about the MS Kinect watching you watching it.

http://www.tgdaily.com/games-and-entertainment-brief/52494-kinect-wants-to-track-your-movementsfor-advertisers
Did you know thanks to the Kinect motion camera, Microsoft can now see how you play your Xbox 360 games? And it wants to send this information to marketers.


But do you care is the question?


If someone gave me the direct benefit of having a camera in my living room and it made me $10 a month for watching me, watching tv, then i'd do it.

The problem is companies tend to hang on to the direct revenue or bury it in offset costs (cheaper harder etc).

That's the real story here.
 
 
Cheers,
Dean

Russian QR game

Very cool QR related game idea.

http://www.marketingprofs.com/short-articles/2082/how-a-qr-code-driven-game-paid-off-in-russia#6377

You could have the same starting point each week and just by resolving the first URL to a different answer have preset codes located in hidden places so all you needed to do week after week is just change the first clue leading to week 2’s /3’s/4’s follow up series of clues etc.

Should be somewhere central to Manhattan like Grand Central Station etc. and then each week could fan out to different parts of Manhattan/Boroughs

Some smart marketing firm will replicate this here for a big label brand sooner than later.


Cheers,
Dean
P.S> Clueless about QR codes? check out my 60 second overview here http://www.Cognation.net/QR

Manual Line Break

Wow who knew.

When doing a search and replace in MS Word you can actually replace something with a "Manual Line Break" which looks like this  ^l

So if you have a full list of "objects" seperated by commas and instead you want a list of objects, instead of manually typing enter after every comma you can just do a find replace , with ^l   (or if you still want the commas at the end of every line just do find replace , with ,^l    )

Neat.


Cheers,
Dean

BeQRious = yet another URL redirection based QR management platform

Every man and his dog is suddenly talking about QR codes (like they just appeared overnight).

The problem is a lot of people are "doing it wrong".

I was sent the BeQRious announcement about their new QR management platform this week and just like all the other current generation of QR management platforms they are doing it all wrong.

As you can see from the screenshot above if you use one of their codes that the platform generates it doesn't actually lead to your website but leads to their website which they then redirect to your site. - Yeh ok but if they turn off the servers everything stops working.

For as long as you want to code to work out there in the field you HAVE to keep paying their invoices otherwise the codes will stop working immediately, regardless of how much they jack up the prices etc.

It's these BS shortcuts that people are being suckered into where they dont understand the ramifications that are going to give QR code management platforms a bad name.

I cant stress how much i think any URL Redirection based solution = Fail.

Instead you should ALWAYS have a web url QR code go to YOUR servers and then get redirected by your DNS eg http://www.cognation.net/QR that then redirects to the mobilised content you want to serve up for that particular campaign.

NEVER rely on someone else to be "in the middle", if you do and they go out of business or decided to jack up the rates all of your deployed codes will stop working (for the same reason i hate MsTags).

I'm sure eventually soemone will build the next generation of QR management platforms but this isnt it.

If you need a 60 second overview of QR code basics check out http://www.Cognation.net/QR


Cheers,
Dean



Followup:

I was contacted by the CEO of BeQRious this morning who was upset with my comments about his company.


His concern was that "I didn't highlight BeQRious offer users the ability to encode a url to resolve directly to a users url (without analytics) but don’t have the technical capabilities built into their product for offering analytics when clients encode the urls to go direct".

He didn't give any indication if this was something they were working on or had thought of implementing it before he read my post.

However according to another CEO in the QR analytics space, clients don’t care about the issue I'm raising and clients fully understand that their QR will stop working the moment they stop paying our invoices.......
http://www.facebook.com/#!/antonymcgregordey/posts/145837922130030




##
I'm seriously not trying to troll here, I'm just trying to make sure people that pay me to advise them with their QR campaigns understand the ramifications of their choices and best implement QR codes which is a fantastic technology, but needs to be implemented correctly.

Fight, Fight, Fight !!

http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/10/google-gets-feisty-kicks-data-portability-fight-with-facebook-up-a-notch/

lol, gloves are really off now.

Personalised URLs

Just implemented some great new functionality on the http://www.livechatconcepts.com/ websites.

Type out any of our 13 website urls followed by your /username and it now leads to a users personal profile popup.
eg. - http://www.LiveBasketballChat.com/dean.collins
or -- http://www.LiveFootballChat.com/bweschke

Getting there slowly but surely.

Cheers,
Dean

Liz Freaking Phair !!!!!!

I cant believe it i just found out Liz Phairis touring to NY !!!!!!

Just bought two tickets to Monday night the 13th of December at the Bowery Ballroom  If you've never heard of Liz Phair i just updated the Mood Music of the Day box (top right -->>).

There are very few artists who know how to let you into their private moments in a way that you just cant help respect, Liz Phair shares in a way that is vulnerable while still being a sex goddess you want to head under the bleachers with.


Cheers,
Dean

Snow in November?? are you serious?

Hmmm it's not really snow more ice crystals but seriously.....it's the first week of November.

This cant be a good omen for the coming winter.



Julia Gillard - what a waste of space

http://media.smh.com.au/national/selections/clinton-touches-down-in-melbourne-2030340.html

Julia Gillard you idiot. I cant believe you just said that about Melbourne.

- That comment alone about Melbourne shopping probably just put back female roles in politics 10 years.

You are a waste of space.


Cheers,
Dean

George Lois cracks me up

His 2003 book George Lois - Sellebrity arrived from Amazon this week and i settled in with a coffee or three to have a read.

This guys sums up his poignant attitude in the first sentence;

"Enlisting a celebrity to sell cat food, an airline or a lube job would seem to be a delusional strategy, fraught with irrationality (and seeming suspiciously to be motivated by a starfucker mentality) But lets face it, it's a starstruck world. We're all suckers for a famous face".

George Lois calls it like he sees it but delivers campaigns that make you want to open your wallet and buy anyway. This guy is a genius (oh and he's got you by the balls).


Cheers,
Dean

Ringback advertising

Ringback advertising, would you allow this if your carrier gave you a call discount?
- http://www.thepudding.com/en/audio-interactive-reverse


Cheers,
Dean

Is "Checking In" wearing out it's welcome?

Is the act of Checking In over for good?
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=138970

Dennis Crowley spoke yesterday at Adtech about how Foursquare expected to move to a GPS solution that buzzed you to ask if you wanted to check in if you visited a place you had checked i previously eg turning a 4 step process into a 2 step process (though requiring a back end application to be running continuously....how you going to do that on a iPhone?)


I do agree though, checking in for the sake of checking in seems to be wearing out it's welcome.

There needs to be something else in the backend to "quid pro quo" the desire to interact.
At http://www.livechatconcepts.com/ we "check in" users when they interact with one of our sites eg http://www.livefootballchat.com/ or http://www.livebasketballchat.com/ etc but at the end of the day checking in and posting a note out to your twitter and facebook accounts saying you just logged in secondary;The primary purpose is being on the site to chat live while watching the game.

Yes badge information is interesting but you need to provide more to keep your users coming back.

Cheers,
Dean

CSIRO wifi over tv?

Love how CSIRO kicks butt when it comes to wifi patents (they developed a lot of what you already use).

- http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/10/11/03/164217/Aussie-Research-Company-Brings-Wi-Fi-To-TV-Antenna

 
Cheers,
Dean

Pssword hack iso cd

Just used my windows password change iso cd to boot up into and hack my own webserver that i forgot the admin password on - I wish i knew who wrote this code, if they lived near me they would never pay for another drink in their life again.


Cheers,
Dean

apathetic?

I'm watching the news and everyone is predicting a republican landslide because they suggest that the republican supporters are more fired up.

If you are a democrat voter why wouldn't this encourage you to make the effort to go and vote today?

I dont get it.

What was it about the vote 2 years ago that swept Obama to power only to have you so apathetic just 2 years later?