More Digital blog

So, there’s a rumour floating around that iOS, the operating system for the iPod Touch, the iPad and the iPhone, might be heading towards Apple’s line of laptop and desktop computers. I cannot express how much I dislike the idea of sacrificing a working, incredibly well-designed OS (currently OSX Snow Leopard, soon to be OSX Lion) for what looks like a box of colourful chocolates.

1. I bought a computer, not a phone. I don’t want my computer to run on the same icon-based, simplistic system someone would use to ring people and quickly check their Twitter feed. A computer’s operating system has the room, nay, the screen real-estate to handle large program windows and the Dock. Why change it?

2. iOS is designed for touch-screen hardware. I don’t have one. Why? Because it’s a laptop and I have a keyboard and trackpad. Why force me to upgrade my hardware just to match an undesirable OS?

3. I don’t want an iPhone. Why? Android is more widely accessible, has a more open market, and you can get an Android phone without forking out hundreds of pounds. Mine also has a bigger screen, but I wouldn’t be running Mac OSX on it, and I wouldn’t want Android running on my Macbook Pro, either.

4. It could force people away from new Apple products. An iOS Macbook is not going to appeal to a significant portion of the market, however eagerly we eat up every single announcement Jobs makes. Mac OSX has the space to allow people to change their backgrounds, organise folders on the desktop, use the dock, install widgets, and keep a lot of space clear. Change that to a rigid-looking grid system and it doesn’t flow any more.

In short, iOS might be all hunky-dory for calling people and messing around on your daily commute, but imagine trying to write a report, or design a website, with an OS that doesn’t even yet support more than one app running at a time. Yeah, you go think about that.

Today is the first day of E3, for for those outside the spectrum of games industry knowledge, the Electronic Entertainment Expo. This three-day conference (five, for the press) centres on new games and technology produced by the big three – Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. It also saturates games news sites with lots of smaller (or sometimes equally important) announcements and news bits from individual games or gaming tech developers.

One of the biggest topics will be Microsoft’s Kinect Sensor, something I’ve written about here recently, as their conference starts at 5:30pm today. Also today, BusinessWeek published Lee Yi’s three-item list by which someone could confirm whether or not an app or piece of technology would benefit a business well enough to justify keeping it in play. Given that, outside of the hacking community, Kinect is struggling somewhat, it’s an interesting time to think about these criteria.

The first is thus: Is the app or tool a fad, or does its provider have long-term potential?

This is a major issue for me when considering purchasing new technology, one that was recently relevant to my shopping list as I braved the negativity surrounding Sony’s Playstation Network data security issues and bought a PS3. For items designed by small businesses, it’s especially relevant – there are countless companies producing new apps, and some will end up like Rovio (creators of Angry Birds, and now one of the richest apps-only developers around, as of 2011 at least), while some will fade. However, how can we judge whether it’ll stick around? The second qualifier for a long-lasting product helps with this.

The cost of education and transition.

This is crucial – for example, I’m considering switching from Microsoft Word to Scrivener for the purpose of writing and researching. I am considering this because Scrivener allows me to put my notes, research, images, plans and outlines all into the one program, as a single project file, whereas Word requires me to open multiple document windows and a browser – possibly more programs, if I need them. However, if it takes too long for me to learn Scrivener’s intricacies, I will abandon my attempt because my time is worth money, and I can’t waste too much time trying to shift between programs. It’s pick-up-and-play, or cut-and-run.

The third sign of how your product will perform in the long-term? Current employee behaviour.

Now, for a business, the individuals using the app or technology matter, because if your office is full of people who have a hard time adjusting to new ways of doing their jobs, this could make using a new concept extremely difficult and potentially far more costly than you could justify to investors or shareholders. “The key to productivity is user adoption,” states Yi, “so finding out what your employees like to use or are currently using should be a factor in your strategy.”

I couldn’t agree more. Now here’s the final test, tonight – will people finally see the merits of adopting Kinect, or Scrivener, when simpler alternatives, like conventional controllers or the old favourite, Word, are right there and ready to go? I’ll follow up on the Scrivener experience from a writer’s perspective, but for now I’d love to hear your thoughts. What software packages or bits of tech made your business better, and how worth your time and investment was the transition from the old to the new?

Okay so the Playstation Network is now back up in full, after the hacking outage. I bought a load of stuff last night – on a debit card. While that sinks in and you start rushing around to find tins of baked beans and see if the shelter needs airing out, I’ll list five reasons why there’s no point in being terrified of the service stealing your soul.

1. It is now probably the most secure network in gaming. Seriously, think about it. They’re never going to take this chance again, and you know that the security systems they’ve put in place are probably of incredibly high quality, so relax a little. Oh no – what about my Xbox details? Argh! I’m kidding, guys, calm down.

2. Most networks are hackable; everything can be hacked. There is no such thing as an infallible network security system. Think of it as a technological arms race, and realise that even now, there are networks that you consider safe that will eventually be hacked. Don’t believe me? How did you feel about the PSN six months ago? Right, exactly.

3. You can wipe your details. I don’t know if they keep backups (possibly, if so that’s a little silly), but I can delete my details off the PSN in under thirty seconds. Xbox Live? That’s a good hour of fumbling around, as their site is so badly designed it’s almost impossible to remove card details. So pay, wipe, and chill out.

4. Paranoia is healthy. That’s a paraphrased quote from our IT department, specifically our own security whiz. Without paranoia governing the way in which you use your information on the web, you’re putting yourself at risk. Security was developed out of the worry of being stolen from, so don’t assume fear isn’t healthy and compromises your fond sentiments towards the PSN.

5. You will save money on tinfoil. If you’re going to go on a paranoid crusade and assume every one of your details is going missing somewhere, you’re not going to be able to enjoy the amazing technologically-focused world around you. We have WiFi (not secure), the PSN (not secure), and houses! Again, not secure! But the chances of things like this happening are miniscule. It’s why we were all so shocked in the first place.

That’s it, guys. Enjoy your weekend, and for the love of all that is Sony, please stop trading in your consoles. You’re making Microsoft richer. And that’s coming from an Xbox owner.

For some time, it’s been argued that the social network every business should be tapping into is Facebook, but is this really the case?

Social Media Examiner states that “with 500 million people on Facebook, chances are more of your customers are active on Facebook than any other network.” Aliza Sherman of GigaOM claims that in terms of advertising, “there’s no question that Facebook wins.”

It all appears so clean-cut, and it’s interesting reading when you get into the reasoning behind their championing of Zuckerberg’s platform. The ease of viral promotion, the size of the existing community, and the way in which Facebook constantly pulls users in towards it because it’s so central to modern social communication.

However, a recent study by Three_D, the social media arm of PR company Threepipe Communications, has revealed that 65 companies on the FTSE 100 use Twitter instead of Facebook. While they may only represent sixty-five companies out of countless millions across the globe, a majority vote for the small blue bird from a hundred of the most successful companies in the UK is a significant statistic.

Twitter is no longer the novel concept it was in 2006. It now has over 300 million accounts – a growth of 60 million a year. This stands in comparison to Facebook’s 500 million accounts, accumulated since 2004, a growth of 71 million. The difference isn’t all that great, relatively speaking, and the immediate accessibility of the Twitter platform means it takes minutes to set up a company account, rather than the longer period required to adequately establish a Facebook fan page.

Sherman concedes similar points within her article, and her differentiation between the two platforms is key to understanding what some businesses prioritising their Facebook presence are missing: the reasons consumers connect to your company. “The way you accumulate page fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter is different,” states Sherman. “You might gain a fan on Facebook just because someone sees someone they know becoming your fan. You gain followers on Twitter — genuine and engaged followers — because they actually want to hear what you have to say.”

Twitter is a feed of information that the user selects themselves, rather than another group affiliation or sign of consumer appreciation to be hung on the Wall of a Facebook user. Businesses are no longer seeking those who are willing to give them no more than a nod of approval; they want people to connect with the company out of personal interest.

It’s also not surprising to learn that potential customers are leaving Facebook along with the companies now devoting themselves to the 140-character marketing effort. The New York Times suggests that there are several factors at work driving people away from the social networking site, amongst them the overlapping of personal and business relationships, and the “inevitable” Orwellian undertones of Facebook’s aspirations to usurp Google as the central hub of today’s online society.

Twitter certainly seems like the better option, at least from my own perspective. There’s a sole purpose to a Twitter account – to tweet i.e. to communicate. There’s little else to do, nothing in fact, if you discard personalising your display picture, your small bio or your website link. It’s a streamlined experience that separates itself from the Facebook morass of Mafia Wars, Wall comments, privacy paranoia, and the endless struggle for the consumer’s “like” click. Perhaps the pro-Twitter trend will extend beyond the FTSE 100 in future. If the New York Times’ exodus analysis is anything to go by, it’s almost certain.

Today, I was reading through the usual batch of SEO, social media and small business news when I happened across a rather intriguing response on SEOmoz to the allegation that hiring a social media expert was a waste of time. Both the unintentional instigator of the debate and the individual who responded had a number of valid points. The instigator, one Peter Shankman, claimed that claiming someone was a ‘social media expert’ was akin to claiming they were able to remove bread from the fridge, but minus the ability to actually make the sandwich.

The individual refuting the statements made by Shankman was Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz CEO and co-founder. Interestingly, he went to the length of creating a chart detailing the expertise of social media specialists (a far more legitimate term, in my opinion), which I’ll post here for you (all credit goes to him, of course):

As you may be able to tell, it’s fairly comprehensive. However, I’ve got a few issues with his categorisation of certain slices of ‘web-knowledge,’ especially given that some of the skills he categorises as advanced are actually what he states social media expertise is not – ‘common sense.’ I believe in offering somebody the best service they can get, and I think it’s important to analyse his competent summary, given that the few flaws within it do point to an overall problem with the image of the ‘social media guru.’

First of all, the basic and intermediate skills are literally common sense, and are actions that people perform in their daily lives – people who don’t touch social media professionally. Shortening tweets, Google Analytics, Wikipedia, competitions with few requirements to enter – this isn’t anything new, and contesting that this is somehow specific to social media is awkward, especially given that some of it has nothing to do with social media. SEO, I can understand, but to purport something as vague as someone’s display picture as relevant solely to that sphere of expertise is a flawed argument, at best.

It’s all about what you’re willing to classify yourself as. No web expert wants to be a Jack-of-all-trades, and this is because you’re not actually seen as skilled at anything, only competent. But herding in a bunch of skills from disciplines separate to your own highlights that ‘competent’ characterisation of social media experts.

By no means am I contesting the relevance of social media experts – if I myself ran a company that worked with SEO, or even any business entity with an online presence, there’d be a full-time social media specialist on staff, because to ignore the importance of social media to marketing is ludicrous. However, the first commenter on Fishkin’s article made the most valid point of all: that most ‘experts’ on the web are usually self-proclaimed as such. ‘Ninjas’ is a personal pet peeve. You are not a ninja. Ninjas assassinate people and live by a code of honour. You actively seek to make friends, and employ no code of honour whatsoever, given that the most common phrase you’ll utter within any given online situation is ‘follow me and I’ll follow you back!’

Fishkin sells his expertise well – the advanced skills are really something to consider, but I feel he sells himself short by including basic knowledge in that chart. When defending any discipline, it is paramount that you state only what separates you from all the would-be experts, because giving the ‘common sense’ qualifications for the title in addition will inextricably mesh your field of expertise with theirs and make that distinction infinitely more difficult.

He then reveals his master-stroke; that Shankman himself is listed as a social media consultant in a featured listing on InvestinSocial. Priceless, and proof that if there’s one group of people you shouldn’t criticise unfairly on the web, it’s the people who’ve made it their stomping ground. Nothing is hidden, everything’s fair game. Now, where is my ‘social media ninja-pirate-alien-robot’ badge?

Every so often, it becomes clear that small businesses are taking increasing steps to widen their knowledge of search engine optimisation. The SEO discipline is, when put to good use, a veritable goldmine of consumer attention, increased website traffic, and a boost in the industry’s awareness of your business.

BusinessWeek‘s Karen E. Klein states that SEO is especially important for “small businesses with limited brand recognition.” Promoting the brand should be any small business’s number one goal – without brand awareness, there is no foundation upon which to build a successful company. Encouraging not only awareness, but loyalty can ensure that your business meets its long-term goals in addition to boosting sales of its current product and service range.

Unfortunately, as Klein states, the SEO tutorial network is rife with “bad information.” There are countless so-called “SEO experts” who are nothing more than self-proclaimed industry figureheads whose Twitter follower numbers are unfortunately often only an indication of a large void in which to cast their ideas. SEO agencies, however, are a far more reliable source of guidance and assistance, and will allow you to take advantage of the countless benefits of good SEO whilst negating the risks of bad advice.

SEO is, by and large, a method of turning a search-engine’s algorithms to your advantage. If you find that you rarely appear in the first page or two of results for keywords that describe your what your business offers to the letter, than perhaps an enquiry to an agency may be a wise choice.

Klein recommends SEOMoz and other sites containing beginner’s guides, but it is imperative that you consider the sources of such information. Like the wave of traditional marketing “experts” before them, many SEO magicians can offer little more than parlour tricks, preferring to rely on vague allusions to “community branding” and “generating a positive consumer experience,” minus the useful examples required to put these positive-sounding first steps into practice.

As with any new discipline within marketing, however, SEO has often been branded hogwash by those who prefer a more traditional approach, but it is easy to highlight the ignorance of such remarks. Figures from Search Engine Land indicate that as many as eighty-eight billion searches per month were made via Google alone in 2010. Statistics like this are hard to ignore – with the potential to reach as little as 0.1% of these individuals, the traffic drawn to your site would be enough to fund every single aspect of your business model, provided you are capable of generating revenue through advertising.

If your intention is to school yourself in SEO, and there are sound resources that make this possible, consider that it is not a monetary investment, but one of time and effort outside the day-to-day running of your business. Consider if you can justify this against the cost of hiring an SEO agency – after all, if you are capable of spending ten hours a week working on your SEO skills, it is equally justifiable that those hours could have funded a day-long SEO briefing at any number of competent agency offices. The financial benefit of the latter, you will find, more than pays for the cost of a DIY approach.

Soon, the digital age will reach its pinnacle and traditional businesses will have to re-shape their approach to marketing their brand. But until then, those small businesses who choose to take swift advantage of the benefits of search-engine optimisation will find themselves rewarded, and ahead of the game when their competitors finally join the online sphere.

At the end of this month, I was planning to get a PS3. I am, despite the news, still getting a PS3. However, what I’m not doing (for now, at least), is putting any of my bank details onto the thing, for fear it’ll be leaked again. But I’m not sure what worries me worse about the whole issue – the collapse of games journalism into an endless cycle of articles about the PSN relaunch date (to save time when writing them, just put “when?!” and hit “publish”), the lack of response from senior Sony executives, or – and this is my personal favourite – the blaming of Anonymous.

If you’re a company with seventy million accounts, and you’re not securing their details, you’re quite simply insane. Crimininally so. Here’s the kicker, if you have seven accounts and you’re letting security slide – you are still insane. There will never be a solid reason for not protecting your customers’ bank details. Unless you’ve been hacked by the one group being blamed for every major hacking job in the last six months, right?

Meet Anonymous. WikiLeaks? They were there. Palin? They were there. Sony? They weren’t there, but apparently the hacker left a similar calling card on Sony’s servers (though there’s no real proof, just their word) and the blame game began. The problem with this is that Anonymous have never stolen anyone’s details – they down sites via a DDoS attack, and have never expressed any desire to commit an act of theft, especially not on a scale that could equate to an extremely long time behind bars.

This was news that rivalled, at the time, the upcoming Royal Wedding and the events in Syria, and it was not handled well. That the story is still going on, even after Bin Laden’s death, gives an idea of the scale of the PR disaster. It should act as a warning to smaller businesses who wish to grow. No matter how much you expand, how impervious you may perceive yourself to be on the basis of profit and loss sheets, share prices and sales figures, you’re not. If you lose people’s credit card details, they will have to cancel their card, and no one wants that. You then become The Unreliable Company, and it’ll take Sony years to drop that reputation.

It’s an interesting example of business strategy at its worst, though the fact they’ve taken the network down until May 31st (at which point it will be restored in full) is cause for rage amongst fans, which baffles me slightly. Shouldn’t you be pleased they’ve spent a month upgrading security and sorting everything out, rather than shoving it back online immediately? It’ll never cease to astonish me how, when people’s private details are now being toyed with by people across the globe (for all we know), they will still bemoan the loss of an online gaming service.

If you’re curious as to how it’s going, follow it via Twitter, though don’t bother with Sony staff, they’re all very quiet, funnily enough – like I said to a friend earlier, probably on holiday. Not much to do bar wait for the security to emerge all shiny and upgraded. I’ve already had my card details stolen once, and that wasn’t a small hack – that was part of a huge iTunes operation. But had iTunes blamed Anonymous, Steve Jobs would’ve looked a right mug, and frankly, that’s what Kaz Hirai looks like at the moment. Until the end of the month, Sony. Then we can be friends.

Recently, I’ve had a lot of fun with the weirdest shopping technique you’ve ever heard of. Basically, I get to see films, games, books and other media way before you do, and I get collector’s edition goodies that’ll mostly never see public release. How? Because they’re bonuses for people helping fund these films, games, books and other media.

My site of choice, currently, is Kickstarter, although Jon reliably informs me that there’s also a similar (and apparently the world’s largest) site of this type, that goes by the name of Indie Go Go. Both work around the same few ideas, though Kickstarter seems to have become the go-to platform for software, documentaries and fiction work, currently.

First, you’ll need your idea, and it’s best to detail this as concisely as possibly, preferably with images, and one or more videos that give people an idea of what your project is aimed at achieving, be it a small adventure game for a Windows Phone, or a new type of blender that tweets at the people on a Twitter list who are into smoothies (I should really patent that).

Then you’ll need to set out what the different levels of donation are, and what they will grant your donors. So, for example, one dollar would net the donor a special email letting you in on a discount code for when your smoothie-tweeting blender is finally available to buy. However, two hundred and fifty dollars means a signed recipe book from you, to the donor, along with all the other bonuses specified in the previous donor levels, and of course, the blender itself.

Then you get a time limit, and the project is then open to donors. However, the donations don’t just stop once you’re fully funded – one project in particular received over 9000% of what they needed, receiving almost a million dollars in funding when all they needed was around ten thousand. Their bonuses included the product itself and a lot of other ideas, and people took to it with gusto, giving them so much money that they probably didn’t even know how to react.

I suppose the major downside is that yeah, you’ve got your project funded, but most of the donors might be high-level, and that means you have a lot to buy and produce to pay them back in kind. It’s not a way of funding your project if you’ve not got a lot of spare time, but ultimately, if your rewards are digital (say, a soundtrack to a game, for example), it means you can just copy and paste or give them a download username and password. Job done, and you’re quids in when it comes to funding. Physical products will take time, but of course it’s then also simple to just make that a higher-level donor gift.

There are also no limits, seemingly, to donor levels, as I’ve seen them as high as ten thousand dollars, which is, quite frankly, utterly crazy but obviously extremely well received. I guess it all depends on what you’re selling, who you’re selling it to, and what their incentives are as part of a special “club” of people who simply want to see their name in lights, given that a common donor gift is someone’s name in the credits.

So go put people’s names in the credits. See how it goes.

I love this thing. I own an Xbox 360, but I don’t want Kinect, for the simple reason that I bought a games console so I could sit down and be entertained with minimal physical involvement. Jumping around doesn’t quite fit into that. However, Microsoft have, quite surprisingly, encouraged people to mod and hack seven shades of [expletive] out of their sensor bar in order to find new uses for what is clearly the new standard in sensor technology. Here are five uses I think are particularly amazing, and go to show that the games industry is not about training teenagers to shoot up their educational establishments. Enjoy.

1) A post-earthquake assistance robot.

Seriously, I’m not joking – here it is. It uses the sensor to help it find its way through the rubble and assist the various brave individuals who save so many lives after an earthquake. They could really make good use of this in Japan right now, and personally I think it’s an incredibly touching display of putting gaming tech to use in a real-life environment.

2) Controlling someone else’s body.

This sounds rather sinister, but it’s actually pretty clever. By using the sensor to read his movements, artist Choy Ka Fai has enabled himself to send nerve impulses to the arms of a volunteer, triggering movement in someone else’s body. Soon, we shall call him The Puppetmaster.

3) Controlling a robot.

Okay, to some this may not be as jaw-dropping as acutally controlling another human being. But when you consider the fluidity of the robot’s movements, this could be great for a variety of uses. Bomb disposal being the first one that comes to mind – camera goggles and a Kinect robot? Zero-risk bomb defusal operations, at least for the person doing the defusing.

4) A robotic assistant in surgery.

In a surgical environment, being calm, unwavering and extremely precise is a requirement. Trust me, I watch Grey’s Anatomy. So when you’ve got a robot helping you out with a surgery in progress, it can really help the process along and even minimise risk due to a lack of human mistakes.

5) Helping the blind to see.

For me this is definitely one of the best. By attaching the sensor to the head of a blind person, these people have worked out a way to help them detect obstacles, which negates the need for a golden lab trotting around everywhere. Okay, sure, it means no lovely pet dog, but it affords the blind a sense of independence that I feel is really a step in the right direction.

These are just a few, but if you know of any, don’t hesitate to comment and tell me about them. Enjoy the next step towards virtual reality, everyone.

I own an Android phone, and one of the advantages is access to a marketplace that’s extremely easy to use, and has a lot of high-quality content there to try, buy, or download for free that may not meet Apple’s sometimes excessively picky standards. The downside to any good software market is that eventually, someone will come up with the idea that their company can offer the same stuff, but in a different way and in a manner that they can profit from.

Simply, Amazon are slightly dodgy people when it comes to supporting small organisations or businesses, and I think this is becoming increasingly obvious. From their sudden lack of support of WikiLeaks to this latest debacle, the clear message they are sending is that they’re out for number one only. The organisation who brought their failings to light this time around was none other than the International Game Developers Association, who have illustrated in a well-thought-out blog post that Amazon’s contract with developers clearly treats them rather badly in a number of ways.

First of these, and in my opinion one of the worst of all the bizarrely scam-esque clauses in their contract with a developer is the clause in which it is stated that if you, say, generate more sales with a 50% price-slash on Google’s Android Markerplace, you have to slash prices by 50% on Amazon’s market as well. Fine, that’s okay. But when you’re putting prices back to normal after the promotional period is over, you cannot do that on Amazon’s marketplace.

Small businesses get started in a variety of ways, and one of those ways is by being able to offer a lot of content for a small price, then raising the price again once a promotional figure has brought in a sufficient user base. Is it then justifiable to expect them to subsist, as a business that, like any person, requires money to retain a sense of stability, merely by selling their products and services for a lower price than is necessary? Sure, the customer wins, but what does the customer “win” when the business goes bust due to Amazon’s sneaky pricing clauses?

What’s worse is that the IGDA are worried that this may prompt other Android marketplaces to do the same thing, and that’s simply not on. Creating an environment where you can only sell your product at the price you want to and have it fluctuate both high and low, and then putting that next to a thousand similar marketplaces, some of even higher quality, where your product could be sold permanently for less simply drives everyone away from the only fair market for your business.

It’ll be interesting to see how Amazon respond to the IGDA’s comments, but I doubt they will to any informative or even honest degree, much like they did when it came to answering why, exactly, they felt the need to boot WikiLeaks off their servers the moment Cablegate hit the headlines. Interesting insights by an organisation who care about small developers, who are clearly trying to protect individuals who don’t.