www.GutCheckIt.com ?

Anyone used http://gutcheckit.com/ for application feedback?
http://www.fastcompany.com/1713068/gutcheck-diy-market-research
Sounds interesting. Not sure how they find the panels though…

 
Cheers,
Dean

Shortened Facebook Feeds?

Has anyone else noticed that their Facebook newsfeed is being shortened over time, basically you aren't being sent all of the activities for all of your friends - particularly if you follow a lot of fan sites like me :(

This is becoming a real issue, i'm sure facebook are doing it to cut down on the amount of traffic but i feel i'm missing out on events and dont know how to fix this as no amount of top news/most recent news seems to increase the amount i can see.

Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Dean


P.S. Trying to draw some attention to this issue, if you are a Digg or Reddit user appreciate the clicks.
http://digg.com/news/technology/dean_collins_shortened_facebook_feeds
or
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/euzbo/shortened_facebook_feeds_have_you_noticed/c1b5pfk

Sean Walker

I have no idea who Sean Walker is but watch this video.

http://www.centernetworks.com/startup-and-entrepreneurial-updates?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Centernetworks-+%28CenterNetworks+-%29&utm_content=Twitter

GroupOn capital raising

hmmmm i'm all for tech IPO's but this is crazy, i'm heading for the bomb shelter - this is now officially a bubble.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/groupon_may_be_raising_almost_1b_in_financing_5x_a.php

Is GroupOn the Pets.com of their time?

Can we get official printed GroupOn stock certificates? (i hear the pets.com certificates are worth a fair amount on ebay).



Cheers,
Dean

P.S. Someone just asked me what the "pets.com" reference was about - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pets.com


P.P.S this just announced - http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/30/groupon-insiders-345-million/
The founders / early investors took $345m of this capital raising in cash - WOW - I thought Dennis Crowley got street cred for doing something similar for Foursquare but that was only a couple of million between him and Naveen (which they deserved) but this is just robbery on a whole new level.

Snowcalypse press

I've been watching all the local press running around with glee about we finally have something to report "on this day what a tragedy it's the snowcalypse blah blah blah".

Get over it, it's snow not that big a deal.

Go do some investigative journalism there are real stories to be found every day instead of reading out press releases and being lead by the nose.

People wonder why press/news readership is down - its because you guys are freaking amateurs.

 
Cheers,
Dean

Ziggy Stardust lyrics

Ziggy really sang, screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo
Like some cat from Japan, he could lick 'em by smiling
He could leave 'em to hang
Came on so loaded man, well hung and snow white tan

lol dont know why but just 'listened' to some of the lyrics coming out of my headphones. Lol David Bowie must have had access to some amazing drugs in the 70's.



Feeling like a memory trip? check out the Nina Hagen rendition, absolutely jaw dropping brilliant.

Cheers,
Dean

Winter snow Dec 2010

The snow is late this year, this is the first of the real winter snow 2010.

Cheers,
Dean

P.S. LOL- for once the news was right about 'a blizzard', here is the snow the next day.

because of our deck furniture we ended up with a snow drift of about 3 feet worth of snow on our back deck.....4 stories up.

Check out the 18" of snow on top of the cars. Their not going anywhere today.

YouTube re-re-re-re-Rip

Crazy to see how much it degraded in 10 generations:

Gen 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEIzS_27Vt0
Gen 10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZVkUm9TGCo


Check out the 100th rip as well (though turn your speakers down first).

Cheers,
Dean

Google slam

Neat marketing campaign.

Whigfield

Listening to Whigfield "Aint it Blue" at 7am on a Sunday morning and boppping my head away like a spastic 12 year old.....lol there has to be something wrong with me.

www.BridgeURL.com

Just saw a neat app I thought a few people might find useful - BridgeURL.
Check out test example here http://bridgeurl.com/deancollins-1

Basically creates a “landing page” that then allows you to navigate through a series of urls.

Doesn’t look like there is anyway to add or remove URLs though (though probably being held back for freemium accounts).


Cheers,
Dean

A merry startup christmas?

Just received the First Round Capital christmas holiday card video - http://bit.ly/gb2fcc


Ha Ha crackup, well worth the watch.

On the other hand scary just how many startups were here that i had never heard of.

What does this mean?



Cheers,
Dean

Why QR codes are better than image recognition for 'most' purposes

I was trying to explain to someone today why QR codes are a much better way to hyperlink objects over image recognition.

Image recognition is NOT a good solution as there are no indications if an item IS scannable or IS NOT in the database.

The way i explain it is no one needs instruction when you walk up to a door, you instinctively know, reach over-turn the handle-pull or push the door-walk through.

When was the last time someone had to explain to you how to open a door?


Cheers,
Dean

Are you ready to pay Samsung a weekly fee to watch their TVs?

Great article from Shelly Palmer below about what your tv manafacturer has in plan for you. Did anyone ask you your thoughts?


Fighting For the Digital Living Room – Wrong!!!
Shelly Palmer
We’re not fighting for the living room, we’re fighting for the account.”
Fasten your seatbelts; this is going to get rough.
According to Mr. Anderson, Samsung, makers of exceptional consumer electronics, will sell over 8.5 million Internet connectible flat screen television sets this year. And, approximately 5.5 million of them will be broadband connected and registered online within a week or so of being purchased.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/notes/shelly-palmer/fighting-for-the-digital-living-room-wrong/174135142608455 



Hi Shelly,

I watched online in real time the Guardian TV conference a few weeks ago (unfortunately only looks like highlights are available http://www.guardian.co.uk/future-tv/video/red-bee-future-of-tv-video rather than the full 16 hours).
I was very surprised by the CE vendors about how much of an influence in the future they thought they were going be (Samsung in particular).
I didn't hear any discussion from these vendors about billing arrangements so i wonder how many people are prepared to pay a weekly/monthly/per event fee on top of the TV costs to Samsung to watch "the samsung channel".
I always assumed it would be a YahooTV or other "community" owner who built this content out - does Samsung really have the experience necessary to turn silicon chips into virtual credit chips?

Cheers,
Dean Collins
www.LiveChatConcepts.com

WikiLeaks broken the law - nope, go suck it Gillard

Excellent to see many Australian news editors telling the Oz Gov that #Wikileaks not acted illegally http://j.mp/hwnHMB

Health and Wealth of countries for the last 200 years - amazing graphics.

Statistics come to life when Swedish academic superstar Hans Rosling graphically illustrates global development over the last 200 years.



Some of the best UI graphic information i've seen in a while. Great video. Makes me think what else can i do to better represent information.

Cheers,
Dean

Logitech G11 macro ALT+TAB problem

I thought i would write this for SEO reasons and hopefully other people wont waste 30 mins trying to solve the problem - and if someone does solve it please let me know (the logitech forums have no answers to this problem either).

Although I LOVE LOVE LOVE my Logitech G11 keyboard there is a small problem with macros. It seems you cant program in an ALT + Tab event into a macro to enable screen switching from one application to another.

You can pretty much do anything else you can think of though which is why i would never give this keyboard up, but basically when the macro recorder does the ALT+Tab macro event the profiler app loses focus and collapses back onto the screen the last keyboard event occured in :(

Spent 30 mins trying to solve this so if you work out how to do it please let me know (you can script with the Logitech G11 so i might try again over the weekend but as far as i can tell this is a big negative for macros here).


Cheers,
Dean

10,000th chat milestone

Was just looking at our analytics dashboard and realized we just passed our 10,000th live chat session.


#10063 Colts at Titans starts at Thu Dec 09 20:20:00 EST 2010 hashtags: #Titans #Colts
http://www.livefootballchat.com/CHurl/12-09-2010/10063/4224

:( kind of feel bad I didn’t notice (now up to 10,063).

Facebook is small....when compared to TV

Wow, really interesting article - i'm totally not sure how to take this article that we watch a truckload of TV? or that Facebook is small and we really do get carried away with the latest and greatest.

Either way this is a great article with some sobering numbers.


CBS Audience Five Times Bigger Than Facebook
There is no question that Facebook is the hottest destination on the Web today.

However, as I learned from David Poltrack, chief research officer of CBS, during his presentation at the UBS Media & Communication Conference, CBS attracted almost 240 million viewers in October, who spent 210 billion minutes watching CBS programming. Yes, CBS is five times bigger than Facebook. As I learned last week from Jack Wakshlag, chief research officer at Turner Networks

If Facebook was measured as a TV network, it would be comparable in size to PBS.
PBS? Yes.


Is PBS worth $50b? If not why not?


Cheers,
Dean

YouPorn lawsuit

Any thoughts?


http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2010/11/30/history-sniffing-how-youporn-checks-what-other-porn-sites-youve-visited-and-ad-networks-test-the-quality-of-their-data/?

I’ve often wondered if something like this could be done with cookies etc. and wondering why it wasn’t done more often.

Anyone onreading this doing something similar (possibly in a different format). As long as it is in the T&C’s of the site signup it shouldn’t be illegal etc – or do the other companies maintain they “own” their cookies and therefore cant be touched etc.
Very interesting court case about privacy legal rights, T&C’s legal rights, cutting edge technology and data matching etc. Will be interesting to see how this one turns out.



Cheers,
Dean

Christmas eCard

Jodie got a write up in ABA law Journal for the Chrismas eCard concept that she developed for her company this year.
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/after_lengthy_confab_manatt_offers_warm_wishes_with_disclaimer_on_holiday_e/
or click through to the card here
http://www.manatt.com/holidaycards/2010/

The card got another write up today - this time in the WSJ - http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/12/09/the-law-blog-best-law-firm-holiday-card-of-2010/

This is setting the bar high... i told her time to start thinking about 2011's Christmas card now.

Calorie Counts

One of the coolest things i think Bloomberg initiated was the requirement that all NY based food outlets with more than 20 stores MUST post calorie content for each meal item.

Just heard on cnbc they are doing calorie counts across all of the usa from 2011.

Very cool.

Cheers,

Dean

The Future of TV - video of Guardians conference

You can see why i get all hot and heavy around 9.30 :)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/future-tv/video/red-bee-future-of-tv-video


Cheers,
Dean

Biggest change at YouTube since live broadcast

YouTube introduced the biggest change since live broadcast events in march 2010 (eg the IPL live tournament coverage).

TrueView video ads allow you to "skip forward" past the add (eg think fast forwarding on your dvr).


In an attempt to benefit both consumers and advertisers, the new TrueView video ads will give viewers the option of skipping an ad after the first five seconds and will only charge advertisers if their ads play for their entirety or 30 seconds, whichever is shorter.
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/12/trueview-video-ads-give-viewers-choice.html

Now what is really really interesting and not covered here is whats happening with the backend buying model. Like what happens with google ads - ads that get clicked on a lot will rise to the top and appear more often "and the theory is" that the CPM charges for them will go down (lol yeh right, since when have you known Google to leave money on the table).

The idea is that if you have a crappy ad that people dont pay to view and the skip past after 5 seconds you wont be seen as much. lol imagine spending 20k to shoot a high quality video add for YouTube only to find the end users telling you that your ad sucks and that you cant get it shown without shelling 5 times more.

The idea of project Canoe is to deliver targeted cable tv ads....wonder if they want to tempt fate by doing similar. What a Damocles Sword that concept would be.


Cheers,
Dean

Amazon Sales tax

I wonder if all the "receipts" are being held in a trust account and Amazon will get them back should they win - And if they do then do they have to return them back to end customers, lol I'll be due a fortune.

Amazon v. New York Tax Challenge to Continue

A New York appeals court ruled that a trial court incorrectly dismissed a lawsuit brought by Amazon and Overstock challenging on constitutional grounds a state law that requires online retailers to pay sales tax on purchases by New York state residents.
The trial court had dismissed the suit, which was brought by the online retailers in 2008 after New York amended its tax law.
The new tax law required companies like Overstock and Amazon to collect sales tax on items shipped to New York addresses even when the retailer has no offices or employees in the state. Read more

 
Cheers,
Dean

Julia Gillard is an idiot (part 2)

Julia Gillard is an idiot - there is that other small issue that "he's not living in Australia so your laws dont apply"


- http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/wikileaks-acting-illegally-says-gillard-20101202-18hb9.html
Prime Minister Julia Gillard says the leaking of classified documents via the WikiLeaks website is "illegal". The Australian Federal Police are investigating whether WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange's publication of secret US cables breaches any local laws.


That would be like saying every Australian citizen who went to Germany and drove on the autobahn should get a speeding ticket when they arrived home to Australia.

What an idiot.


Cheers,
Dean

When are QR code readers going to get past "Beta" functionality?

I was just asked this question on Facebook Questions
 http://www.facebook.com/q/Do-you-think-google-goggles-will-become-the-universal-QR-code-scanner/162569547118128?answer_id=162784307096652&qa_ref=qd



Here is my response

No. Too many choices and no need to standardise.

 

When are we going to see a QR codes reader that does more than the basic "reading" functionality is what i want to know.

 

When will we see a QR code reader that;

1. Stores the last 50 codes your read for later access.
2. Uploads codes you've read to a web page that allows you to access them from a desktop browser, possibly allowing you to "tag" them at a later date or at least view the content from another browser on you pc.
3. Allow you to sms or email a qr code to a friend once you've read them.

Basically as i see it QR code readers (and therefor their developers) are in the dark ages (lol feel free to hire me for further product application design).

Cheers,
www.Cognation.net/QR

 

Why are there no real export configuration tools

i know i screw with my computers more than most people so this isn't really an issue for most people etc but why dont apps come with "export configuration" tools.

I mean i had to install Outlook on a new pc today, the thing that took the longest wasn't the installation but configuring all my little option choices (toolbar/signatures/prefence for 7 days a week in the view etc).

Is it something i'm missing or do you find the same? why is there no "export all configurations" tool in MS Outlook and Internet explorer etc?


Cheers,
Dean