Machine and slave

Much of the good digital stuff is invisible. Strange thing to say when you think of the prevalence of digital throughout consumer and service sectors.

Domain name strategy

Today’s FT.com article, Blackstone turns hostile on website names,  is a pretty good short course on how to approach domain name strategy from a reputational point of view. (It’s more tactical than strategy, but let’s not sweat the terms.)

Blackstone, a private equity group that’s been in the news recently (see, e.g., Telegraph article, 030611), is now defending itself against detractors by registering the whole host of domain names that it doesn’t want to be known by:

Postmodernism, branding and the individual

While individuals are being told to keep it real by Facebook and Google+ and the likes, brands are creating avatars of themselves online and have been for years and years…

Packets of rational irrationality

Why is work email so overwhelming?

A recent FT article about the attempts by companies to overcome the burden of email was followed up a few days later by the news that Volkswagen is restricting Blackberry messages to its employees, allowing them a break from the service from half an hour after a shift’s end to half an hour before the next shift.

From games to the quantified self to social media

We’ll only get to see what we want to see, even though we didn’t know it’s what we wanted to see, but we’ll know it when we see it. How chance is being designed out by design …

Good Content contributor, OB, wrote last June, “the problem of relevant content and why we still need editors, about the elimination of serendipity online through automated curation.

Raph Koster’s games presentation from a conference (GDC) earlier this year titled, “It’s all games now,” touches on the same topic. He offers lots of food for thought not just about games but how games and social media relate to each other: that games are social media. And how gaming’s boundaries are increasingly porous, exposed to risky real-world trends, such as automated relevance that rules out the unforeseen by design.

Get it right

As Michael Cimino said, “If you don’t get it right, what’s the point?” It’s not an original point, but apparently it’s one digital content suppliers can’t seem to learn, at the cost of their credibility. Confused.com is the latest victim of its own sloppy research:

“If they can’t even get a basic fact like road tax correct, what hope do they have comparing deals for my elderly Peugeot 206?” The myth of ‘road tax’ returns to haunt us again, Guardian, 22111

And for those of you who haven’t seen the #occupyamazon user reviews on the US retailer’s site then have a gander at that pepper spray item.

Exposure: social network dilemma

The FT.com has a feature article today about privacy issues and social media (Identity and the internet: From pixels to persona, 221111). The issue is Facebook, Google+ and other powerful social networking sites banning the use of pseudonyms in favour of real identity.

The article sets out the problems well, from human rights through privacy and safety to countering reality, and there’s no point reiterating them here. What I’m picking up on is a point made right at the end of the story:

“Facebook’s emergence as a de facto standard for online identity raises plenty of questions. Among the most important: whose job will it ultimately be to verify, maintain and control identity information?” Identity and the Internet, FT.com, 221111

A wide and shallow river

This weekend’s FT.com has an interview with John Waters, a filmmaker, in which the interviewer asks him:

“If he were starting out now, would he make YouTube videos? “No, because I don’t want to run an ad agency,” he replies.” John Waters on the Couch, FT.com, 19/20.11.11

That response neatly sums up the hegemony of marketing in digital products and services aimed at ordinary people.

Social TV

Social TV? Huh?

X-Factor + Twitter = Social TV.

And games? Yes.

And politics? Yes.

Reuters has a video all about it…

I want to read the text, honest

I have a thing about denim, I like it weighty and well made. So I was looking up what textile manufacturers makes the best denim and came across Cone Denim, who use old-style looms that produce heavyweight fabric with selvedge edges. The website’s fonts contrast with backgrounds throughout the site except on their history page, where the