Current Apple iPad marketing approach not recommended by ex Apple evangelist
Februar 3rd, 2010 Ralf ScharnetzkiGuy Kawasaki (who worked in the past for Apple as evangelist) explains in Seth Godin´s free ebook “What matters now” that you:
Never describe your cause by using bull shiitake terms like “revolutionary” and “paradigm shifting.” Instead, explain how it helps a person.
Apple just launched this new product everybody was so excited about before it was announced:
Source: Apple
So Steve Jobs clearly does not follow in Apple´s initial iPad marketing campaign the advice of his former employee. Time will tell if he is right or wrong.
Posted in Interesting Links, Thematic Web Archives | No Comments »Explanations for Twitter trending topics getting a trend
November 25th, 2009 Ralf ScharnetzkiThis is part 3 of our Twitter related mini-tutorial (part1, part2).
Twitter.com is providing a short list of currently popular keywords from within the most current stream of tweets.
This list is called “Trending Topics”.
It provides a convenient way to connect to what is currently happening on that global message bus called Twitter:
Recently some explanations started to show up after one clicked on a specific trending topic:
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%22Happy%20Thanksgiving%22%20OR%20Thanksgiving
Brizzly, a new Twitter client, is also providing explanations for trending topics. For some this is even a differentiating feature of Brizzly:
WhatTheTrend is a Wikipedia like community website to provide explanations for always new trending topics on Twitter:
WhatTheTrend seems to be used by Twitter as a source of some of the explanations it is displaying.
Closing comment:
Happy Thanksgiving!
Posted in Interesting Links, Recommended Products, Thematic Web Archives | 1 Comment »Microsoft wants less Windows
November 23rd, 2009 Ralf ScharnetzkiMicrosoft is continuing to invest into user interfaces that will help users to open less windows.
Quadrant and Pivot are the code names of two new Microsoft applications that make use of a zooming interface to let users change from overview to detailed views in a seamless way.
1) Microsoft “Quadrant”
“Microsoft code name -Quadrant- is a graphical tool for easily viewing, editing, and exploring data found in any SQL Server database.”
Screenshot taken from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/ee789913.aspx
Overview of Quadrant features:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd857506%28VS.85%29.aspx
Movie showing the user interface:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/ee789913.aspx
2) Microsoft LiveLabs Pivot:
“Pivot makes it easier to interact with massive amounts of data in ways that are powerful, informative, and fun.”
Screenshot taken from: http://getpivot.com/
Overview of Pivot features:
Closing comment:
It is good to see some user interface innovation happening in Microsoft.
Posted in Good Ideas, Interesting Links | No Comments »How to show all tweets related to a web page with a single click
Oktober 11th, 2009 Ralf ScharnetzkiTweets link often to web pages. The reverse direction works too: with one click you can see tweets that are related to the current page your browser is showing. This is the second part of our mini Twitter tutorial (part 1 here).
You could use a URL Twitter enabled search engine like http://backtweets.com/search?q= to find tweets related to a specific URL.
We like best the sidebar from bit.ly (in October 2009; new and often better Twitter related tools and services are becoming available every day).
When you would like to see what people say on Twitter about the current page in your browser you just install this bookmarklet.
From then on you just have to click once on its button and the bit.ly sidebar will show you all tweets related to the page that you are currently reading.
Great!
Find here a tutorial and all instructions: http://bit.ly/pages/tools/sidebar/
Screenshot of early comments on Twitter about US President Barack Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize 2009. Congratulations Mr. Obama!
Posted in Recommended Products, Thematic Web Archives | 1 Comment »What is twittering and how does it work ? Part 1 messages = tweets
Oktober 11th, 2009 Ralf ScharnetzkiWhat is a global stack of short text messages good for that is free to use and open for multi purpose ?
There are two ways how you can get value from using Twitter:
1) Leverage all messages others putting right now on the global stack of messages
2) Publish your own messages for whatever you see as a value
This is part 1 of a mini tutorial about twitter: What can you put into a message (called tweet)?
a) Type something like “Hello World”
Type a text message (the tweet) and press the update button. That is all. You put your first tweet out on Twitter.
More inside this post, just click here. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Recommended Products | 3 Comments »The whole is greater than the sum of its parts quote great visualization on youtube
September 24th, 2009 Ralf Scharnetzki“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” . The information age was given recently a new visual metaphor for this quote from Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC).
This video was generated by combining thousands of photos (the parts) to generate this animated 3D view (the sum) of San Marco Square in Venice (the whole).
Source: http://grail.cs.washington.edu/rome/
“In this project, we consider the problem of reconstructing entire cities from images harvested from the web. Our aim is to build a parallel distributed system that downloads all the images associated with a city, say Rome, from Flickr.com. After downloading, it matches these images to find common points and uses this information to compute the three dimensional structure of the city and the pose of the cameras that captured these images.”
Find more details here: Building Rome in a Day
The group of researchers behind:
• Sameer Agarwal, University of Washington
• Yasutaka Furukawa, University of Washington
• Noah Snavely, Cornell University
• Ian Simon, University of Washington
• Steve Seitz, University of Washington
• Richard Szeliski, Microsoft Research
Thank you!
Posted in Interesting Links | No Comments »How does Apple Genius work?
September 21st, 2009 Ralf ScharnetzkiThe Apple iTunes Genius feature can create personalized play-lists for your iTunes library and provide you with recommendations regarding media and other products that you maybe would like to buy.
How does Apples itunes Genius functionality work?
Apple is making no secret out of what Genius does, you can find it all here:
http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/appstore/us/terms.html
We would also strongly suggest that your read Apples Customer Privacy Policy here:
http://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/
When you enable Genius iTunes will start to send from time to time from your computer via Internet the following data to Apple:
- information that can be used to identify all media in your iTunes library
(media purchased through iTunes and media obtained from other sources.) - including for example play history and play lists
Apple is saying clearly that this information will be stored anonymously.
Apple will not only combine your information with the information collected from other Genius users. Apple will additionally also make use of:
- your iTunes Store purchase history data,
- aggregated purchase history data from other iTunes Store users,
- and other information obtained from third parties (whatever these may be)
to do the following:
- Create personalized play-lists for you that fit to your current iTunes library (that Apple at that stage knows all about)
- Provide you with recommendations regarding media and other products and services that you maybe would like to buy. Comment: there is a fine line here that is separating advertisement from good advice.
- And obviously the information you provided to Apple in the context of the itunes Genius feature will be from now on leveraged to provide recommendations regarding products and services to other Genius users.
If you do not want Apple to get all this information about your Music Library there is a simple solution: just do not enable Genius in iTunes.
In Apple´s own words:
“If you would prefer we not collect and use information from your device in this manner, you should not enable the Genius feature. You can revoke your opt-in choice at any time by choosing to turn off the Genius feature from the Store menu on your computer. Upon opting-out, iTunes will no longer send information about your iTunes library to Apple.”
It looks like Apple is not stating somewhere that it will ever remove any of your data that it received when you enabled the Genius functionality in iTunes. Therefore you should probably assume that the information you sent to Apple will stay with Apple (anonymously) even when you should ever revoke your opt-in choice for Genius at one point in the future.
Posted in Issues explained, Recommended Products | No Comments »Auf deutsch – Apple nano Bedienungsanleitung inklusive Reset iPod nano
September 20th, 2009 Ralf ScharnetzkiHier gibt es die originalen deutschen Bedienungsanleitung (en) zum Apple iPod nano:
http://support.apple.com/de_DE/manuals/#ipodnano
Insbesondere wichtig kann die Anleitung zum Reset des iPod nano (und der anderen Modelle) sein:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1320?viewlocale=de_DE
Posted in Artikel auf Deutsch | No Comments »Search engine trend: remove typing as the barrier to entry
September 15th, 2009 Ralf ScharnetzkiGoogle:
- Search with voice recognition: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-mobile-app/
- Google Fast Flip: GoogleBlog and here http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/
Microsoft:
- Bing Visual Search: BingBlog: Visual Search – Why type when you can see it? Example: VisualSearch (needs Silverlight installed)
About ownership of data on Facebook
September 15th, 2009 Ralf Scharnetzki“The more dependent we allow ourselves to become to something like Facebook — and Facebook does everything in its power to make you more dependent — the more Facebook can and does abuse us,” Harmsen explained by indignant e-mail. “It is not ‘your’ Facebook profile. It is Facebook’s profile about you.”
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/magazine/30FOB-medium-t.html
Posted in Interesting Links | No Comments »
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