Digitology - The Digital Marketing Blog

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Google's "iTunes for Books"

In an article in the Guardian it has been announced that Google is facing accusations of anti-competitive behaviour. The US Justice Department is reported to be currently investigating Google's dealings with the book industry. The investigation surrounds a $125m settlement that Google made with authors. Google have been trying for some time to create an "iTunes for books". Last September Google made significant progress with a deal that would allow the company to digitise millions of books in the US.

The deal followed two years of negotiations and was called a "great leap" by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. However the deal caused a lot of concern in a number of camps due to the exclusive rights that Google would gain to digitise "orphan works" (books that are still under copyright, but without any clear owner).

"There are legitimate antitrust issues related to Google's ability to solely commercialise this content," said Peter Brantley of the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based organisation that documents millions of web pages and digitises out-of-copyright books.

In a move that pleased campaigners, a New York judge granted a four-month extension allowing those affected by the deal to examine the details and decide whether to opt out of it or not.

"We now have time to really sink our teeth into what this agreement will mean," said Gail Knight Steinbeck, chair of the Creative Property Rights Alliance and daughter-in-law of late author John Steinbeck.

The outcome remains to be seen, but I for one think that this is a pivitol case, and the result will have serious implications for all online and offline publications going forward.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Chrome Goes Viral

In his AdAge article, Michael Learmonth describes Google as having "ambled into the Safari-Explorer-Firefox derby" with the introduction of their browser Chrome last year, and to be fair it would be very hard to argue differently. Internet Explorer, the often controversial and always-included option, has been around forever and still holds as favourite for many web explorers. Safari, the streamlined mac browser, is without doubt the Apple users favourite. Firefox, the new kid on the block, has come out of no where to totally dominate many demographics of net users. So why try and take on these goliaths, and not do it with gusto and determination?

Well, they may not have done anything spectacular to date, but that has just changed. The global-hyper-mega-corp that is the world's search leader has releasing 11 short films to promote their offering in the browser wars. That's a lot of weight in this and it's sure to drive a serious amount of traffic and interest. But is it really likely to drive any downloads?

When I recently reviewed my site visitor stats, I was some what surprised to see just how big a percentage of them were Firefox users. Understandably this may be slanted by my content but still, it's a huge proportion.

Take a look and see what you think...

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Tweenbots

This is just about one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time.

Kacie Kinzer (a student at Tisch ITP in New York) set out to explore the nature of movement and people's preoccupation with getting from one place to another. Kacie raises the question, "Could a human-like object traverse sidewalks and streets along with us, and in so doing, create a narrative about our relationship to space and our willingness to interact with what we find in it?" An extremely bold question in my opinion, and one that I wouldn't think was easily answered. To make things even more complicated, Kacie takes it a step further, asking, "How could our actions be seen within a larger context of human connection that emerges from the complexity of the city itself?"

Where to start? What to do?

Simple (in Kacie's mind at least) - build a robot.

To answer these questions, Kacie conceived the Tweenbots. Human-dependent robots that navigate through the help of the pedestrians they encounter. The robot itslef will move at a constant speed and in a straight line. The only indication of their mission is a flag baring their destination. After that it's up to those around to help them.

Would you trust strangers minding their own business to stop and help a robot? Considering the dangers that the robot would face it's seems impossible that it would get more then 15m (imho). Never-the-less Kacie placed the Tweenbot down on the path, walked away and set it on it's journey.

Surprisingly as it turned out, over the course of several months and numerous journeys, the Tweenbots successfully got from their starting point to their designated destinations. Although there were instances of a bots getting caught under park benchs, stuck against a curb, or trapped in a pothole, there was always a random passerby who would rescue it and send it toward its destination.

Not a single Tweenbot was lost or damaged. Brilliant stuff - perhaps even a sign that human nature isn't that bad?

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

What's In The Box? (ARG)

Following my post yesterday I was excited to see an article by Hashem Bajwa on Augmented Reality over on AdAge today. Hashem discusses some recent AR campaigns, including General Electric's Smart Grid technology (also here) and the Topps' 3-D baseball cards system. He also goes into detail on the Mobilizy app that I've previously posted about. All this even further reinforced my belief that ARG or AR apps/games are the way forward.

Low and behold I then received an email asking for my help with a Flash file and an image. Two guys I know were trying to crack an ARG that they had been sent a link to.

Have you seen this:

Do a Google Search for 'what's in the box?' and you'll see a lot of online chatter. Admittedly this video first appeared online about 4 weeks ago but the microsite didn't arrive until a week or so later, and it's only in the last 2 weeks that most of the really interesting stuff has come to light. Most probably this is an ARG for the next Half Life episode (based on the sound effects and audio used). There are also a lot of clues pointing to J.J. Abrams, which immediately brings to mind his 'Magic Box' outlook on storytelling (see his TED presentation).

I really want to go into the details about what I was able to work out so far but what's the fun in that. Go check it out and see if you can get anywhere. But be warned, I quickly discovered that whoever is behind this definitely sees their target audience as being very familiar with Flash, Java, Photoshop, HTML and CSS. Perhaps the modern gamer is far more educated then we were back in my day?