The thick line between copy and content
Over at A List Apart, freelance writer and web designer Amber Simmons makes a great case against the widespread (ab)use of the bullet-pointed web writing we see so often nowadays. In her deliciously lengthy article Reviving Anorexic Web Writing, she observes that “(...) we’ve gone astray as an industry, and we’ve starved all the life out of web writing. The kind of writing we encourage is lifeless, insipid, and calorie-free. If we want to get back on track—to allow writers to write wonderful user experiences—we have to change our expectations and our rules.”
There are plenty of times when short text is the best option, especially if the writer belongs to the big group of people applying “the inflated speech of the politician using many words to say nothing, the sales pitch of the greasy used-car cretin whose crafty euphemisms try to disguise the fact that his product sucks.” This is what Simmons files under ‘copy’: “the marketing fluff that serves no purpose but to take up space”.
On the other hand there is ‘content’ though:
“Content is thoughtful, personable, and faithfully written. It hooks the reader and draws him in, encouraging him to click this link or that, to venture further into a website. It delivers what it promises and delights the attentive reader.”
But don’t let me keep you any longer from the interesting article itself. Grab a coffee, sit back and let Simmons’ words nourish you.
The revolution will not be sychronized
I've lost count of the number of blog posts I've read that state that the iPhone will revolutionize the mobile phone industry. Yet I've seen very few that then go on to explain how that revolution will come to pass. Nonetheless, it is starting. How? Not because of the user interface, nor the design, nor because it's an iPod and phone in one. Rather, it's connected to Apple's ability to push out radical user experience and application updates to an entire existing customer base instantaneously. An iPhone is a blank slate upon which Apple can install whatever they like, whenever they like. This will lead to a dramatic change in the nature of a users relationship with their phone, their phone manufacturer and their network operator. Read the rest of this post for how.
Want to remove your friend from a photo? Automatically?
So there is some buzz going on with the BBC about what appears to be a ‘smart’ photo stitching technology around the corner. The article states: “Digital photographers could soon be able to erase unwanted elements in photos by using tools that scan for similar images in online libraries.”
Apparently the algorithm can search vast databases of photos that are collected from a variety of sites such as Flickr. According to the article it works like this: "We search for other scenes that share as closely as possible the same semantic scene data," said Mr Hays, who has been showing off the project at the computer graphics conference Siggraph, in San Diego. In this sense "semantic" means composition. So a snap of a lake in the foreground, hills in a band in the middle and sunset above has, as far as the algorithm is concerned, very different "semantics" to one of a city with a river running through it."
Currently they are stating that there is a 30% chance that the people viewing the images can spot where the change occurred. I find it interesting considering that soon you will be able to remove that one embarrassing friend (partner) from a photo of a beautiful sunset without getting your hands too dirty. My cats tried their own version of the software that they developed recently called ‘kittystitch 1.0’ but the results as you can see were definitely not as good as the ones stated by the BBC!
Music discovery + dynamic pricing + buyer's conscience
More and more online music stores are finding ways to combine social networks and dynamic pricing while playing on the buyer's conscience at the same time.
Take for instance, Amiestreet. It's an online music store that rewards early buyers and makes music discovery even more fun. It has "just closed a Series A financing round led by Amazon.com" according to food-for-entrepreneurial-brains springwise.com
- All tracks and albums start off FREE and, depending on how many people download it, increases to maximum $ 0.98. Great incentive for early buyers.
- Recommending music to friends is rewarded with credits which you can use to buy more music.
- Artists maintain FULL ownership of their work and receive 70% of every sale ($ 5 is deducted to cover storage, bandwidth and transaction costs).
- All MP3s sold are DRM-free and so can be used on any music player without restrictions.
Magnatune, on the other hand (love their tag: We are not evil ;-p ), works on this principle: just listening to music = free; downloading music = paying for it. BUT you may choose to pay a LOW price. Sounds incredulous, so what's the catch?
None.
Magnatune founder and owner, John Buckman, believes that given the option, customers will want to pay for music - and even more than necessary - if artists get a fair deal out of it. You can choose to pay as little as $5 for an album in Magnatune, for instance but you can opt to pay $18 too. Whatever amount you pay, artists will get half.
Customer's conscience / sense of fair play / generosity apparently plays a big part in the purchase process: Magnatune gets an average of $8.93 per album.
We're seeing the long tail of iTunes. Fascinating ain't it? 
