Although there are various communities on the web, there is no centralized source of information for the customers. If you could develop an online community to encourage collaboration and information sharing, what features would you want included? How would you go about including features that are widely available in other places (weblogging, message boards, wiki) and generating buy-in from customers.
Yikes. It sounds to me like you want to create something without any specific goal other than "creating a community" and "generating buy-in" which seem to be a bit vague for a business plan, at least.
I'd say including features widely available in other places (such as Slashdot or Digg) isn't going to let you take over existing sites. In fact, often new features end up not really being used at all. (For example, Slashdot journals have a very low participation rate).
But what would help is content. Content, after all is what's made this site popular, and what makes all good sites great. It's not interfaces, not design, but content, whether that's from a community, or editors, or both. But it still needs to be about something. Mentioning that a site is about "today's technology" is so mind-bogglingly vague that you won't be able to attract an audience.
I'll give you an idea though, free of charge. As far as I know it hasn't been widely implemented anywhere - or to put it more clearly, I haven't heard of it (which doesn't mean much). Why not create a review-aggregating hardware site? Something that combines content from other sites (AnandTech, TomsHarware, SharkyExtreme, CNet, etc) to give a best-of-the-best overview for any number of components. I just checked these three sites and unbder each category, I was looking for a recommendation. I click on video cards, I expect to see something like "This is the top video card right now: XYZ 5000S Xtreme5" but no, that didn't show up.
Why not create a hardware site that's like Rotten Tomatoes or Game Rankings. Gives you an overview of the overall options one has and recommends the best.
Then you can top it off with wikis and comments and blogs and RSS and what have you. But you need an idea to propel you.
"The launch portfolio was full of good games. There wasn't anything quirky that might hurt the platform or anything that really rose to the top. It was a level playing field for everybody."
And hereby Microsoft redefines the word great, as:
great. n. not great.
It's actually spot-on. There was no great launch title for the Xbox 360. At most it was Geometry Wars but who in their right mind would pay $400 for a new system just to play a $5 game? I have a friend who is actually so engrossed in it he's planning to do that, but I recognize he's abnormal. Still, the Playstation to date hasn't had a great game at launch and it hasn't hurt them one bit.
"I don't think that's fair. Everyone is looking for a Halo and a GTA, but we have to realize there are only two of those titles in history, and they weren't those big legends before they launched."
This guy seems to be oblivious to Nintendo and Mario, who kind of went hand-in-hand as far as launch games go for over a decade. Not only that, but GTA has never been a launch title and it didn't appear until well into the PS2's launch cycle.
"It depends. If it's the game that everyone is expecting then, yes."
That to me reads: "If due to competitive pressures we're forced to deliver Halo 3 because we have nothing else to hang our hats on, then we will rush it." That, or he's being deliberately obfuscating.
What is interesting is that A) Bill Gates has been championing Halo 3 for months now and B) there is still no official word regarding this game. Halo 2 was announced about a year before its intended release and about two years before its actual release. And yet there's no Halo 3 information.
This is the third non-story about the PS3 we've had in the past month (that I've seen). About every week, it seems there's a need to include an empty article about the 360 versus the PS3 just to start the same discussion over again. Sure, last week we called this service "HUB" and two weeks prior to that it was that"things could look bad for Microsoft's new system" eventhough no one had any ideas or facts abotu anything.
It's all a combination of Sony wanting to maintain the hype by sending out non-facts via their PR reps every week and bloggers and games newssites wanting to break a big story by being the first to "report" on something. The problem is there's nothing to report. Sure, opinion pieces and conjecture are nice, but only when they're well researched (for example, the cost of components for the PS3).
So not only is this latest article pointless, it offers even less (and contradictory) information than any of the reports or rumors from the past few weeks.
I actually have high hopes for it. It's being co-written between the game writer and the writer of 28 Days Later and The Beach (which has a video-game dream sequence at the end). And the director is Guillermo del Toro who's did Hellboy and some other good films in Spain.
Ugh, I know it must seem like a pedantic point to some, but his role as "Executive Producer" is much less interesting than some of us would like to believe. So far, Jackson has usually been the director, producer, and/or screenwriter for all of his movies. With "Executive Producer" the role implies a certain kind of vagueness. Usually, it means they deal with the business side of the film (financing) although they sometimes can leave their own imprint on things (for example, Bruckheimer and CSI). It doesn't mean Halo is his next movie, it doesn't even mean he's very artistically involved with it. At best, we'll see some Jackson-esque touches, at worst he was just paid a lot of money to have his name attached to the film and just occasionally acts as a go-between the different parties.
As far as the article? Jackson says "I definitely see improved graphics and sound as continuously positive attributes for consideration among the Hollywood community. Actors will look more 'life-like' in HD and the sound continues to get closer to the theatrical movie experience." If he had used the terms "rich medium" or "consumer-centric" I could've gotten Bingo on this Buzzwords Bingo tablet I have. It's also a dead giveaway that the interview was done via email, not by phone or in-person.
Here's the obligatory Ikea-joke from The Simpsons, courtesy of SNPP.com
The Simpsons make a shopping excursion to Shøp, the place to go for modern Swedish furniture and accessories. A costumed character that looks like an Allen wrench with arms and legs walks up.
The Simpsons make a shopping excursion to Shøp, the place to go for modern Swedish furniture and accessories. A costumed character that looks like an Allen wrench with arms and legs walks up.
Allen: You put it together yourself. All you need is me -- Allen
Wrench. Homer: [giggles] He's named after what he is. Bart: [knocking on the wrench] Cool costume. Allen: [turns away from the rest of the family to face Bart, and
begins talking in a robotic tone]
It's not a costume. They found me inside a meteor. Marge: Excuse me, where are your hamper lids? Allen: [friendly] Hamper lids? Uh, third floor.
[turns to Bart again]
[robotic] Help, I need tungsten to live. [raises arms]
Tungsten!
[Bart flees]
Now, in all seriousness, I think this table is a dream come true. I only hope in a decade they are affordable enough for the common man. LCD prices are becoming cheaper, and it looks like multi-input touch screens are functional in demo form. Imagine playing table-top RPGs with the assistance of custom terrain underneath? This would also work pretty well in business at places like architecture or engineering firms where everyone can crowd around a gigantic display.
What an interesting topic. I'd never think this would make Slashdot, but here we are.
I personally don't have a wristwatch because I haven't found that I needed one. A cellphone, systray, car clock works just as well. What watches are for 90% of people are fashion statements, and for most it's just a display of money or liking a specific brand. I understand the fixation, but I do not share it.
But yers, in case you missed the two links, that's the site I recommend. I haven't bought anything there, so as far as commercial transactions go you're on your own.
What irks me is that MS should have free viewers for all their applications. That means you, Publisher. Imagine if you needed to buy Adobe Reader to be able to see a PDF. Acrobat would be dead in the water now.
The burgeoning field of arithmetic
on
Uwe Boll Smash!
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Well, we can't fault his math. In the article, he says:
Tons of journalists, including you, have nothing else to do than to follow the Internet voices of one or two thousand people. Only half of those people have seen my movies, and only two per cent of those people have seen my movies before House of the Dead.
So in his estimates, that means about 500 to 1000 people have seen his movies and less than fifty knew him before House of the Dead.
Based on the paltry box office results from his recent movies, I'd say that sounds about right.
"The concept of having HUB be a "media HUB" for Sony music, films, etc. is interesting, but I really wouldn't call that new."
Well, there's a couple of problems. First off, Sony already has a music store. The fact that no one seems to mention it tells me that it's not very well known or well-used. Their Japanese online music service might be faring a bit better, I don't know. Both sites reek of "me too"-ism... if Sony is going to let the Media part of their company control the other divisions (as it currently does now, eventhough it's not the most profitable), then HUB might be another bust.
For those who remain concerned, here's how the feature works. Firefox has a preference browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers which by default is set to -1. No more than 8 pages per tab are ever cached in this fashion, by default. If you set this preference to another value, e.g. 25, 25 pages will be cached for every tab. You can set it to 0 to disable the feature, but your page load performance will suffer.
For those that don't know or remember, the preference is accessed by typing about:config in Firefox's address bar. Let's see if there's still a leak after you change the option. I know when I close tabs the memory usage doesn't go down.
Take Commerce Bank. They have CommerceOnline.com for their main domain and CommerceOnlineBanking.com for their online banking. But why not CommerceBankHome.com as GoDaddy suggest? Or CommerceBanking.com? Or CommerceBankingOnline.com?
Unfortunately their domain names are a soup of common names and it's impossible to remember. With common names, a small alteration of the site and that's all you need to confuse some folks.
The best phishing URL I've ever seen was one that was www.amazon.com.exec-obidos.com. If anyone remembers, previously Amazon URLs always had an exec-obidos in their path when the link lead to a product. Even I had to blink a few times before I realized it was a phishing scam. (All the links went to a working Amazon section).
Perhaps more important for existing 360 owners who don't wish to change any hardware or software of their console is the ability to stream or read video off the console's hard drive or an attached external USB drive. Right now, that can be done with pictures and audio, but not video. Sure, you can do it if you have a Windows Media Center PC (or Vista) but in the meantime there's nothing else.
I would imagine that just like last time for large changes in hardware or software, people who want to run Xbox Live and have homebrew apps are going to be SOL. And buying a second 360 right now is not only pricey, but also difficult because of the continuing availability problems.
Are you one of those suicidal internet users in Japan? Because not only does that headline repeat itself, but the articles repeat themselves so much that you'd probably die of alcohol poisoning before the end of the day.
As far as "AJAX 2.0 Blognets! being the Next Sliced Bread" I have two methods of working when I am away from home. I can access anything I need if I can go through FTP (or fill in your favorite existing technology which has allowed you to do this for the past ten years). My mail is forwarded to Gmail so I can read and respond when I am away.
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 15, 2006 - It may not be the last laugh, but on Friday afternoon, after the close of the stock market, Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive of Apple Computer, shared an e-mail chuckle with his employees. The message was prompted by the 12 percent surge in Apple's stock price last week, which pushed the company's market capitalization to $72.13 billion, passing Dell's value of $71.97 billion.
In 1997, shortly after Mr. Jobs returned to Apple, Dell's founder and chairman, Michael S. Dell, was asked at a technology conference what might be done to fix Apple.
"What would I do?" Mr. Dell said to an audience of several thousand information technology managers. "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."
On Friday, apparently savoring the moment, Mr. Jobs sent a brief e-mail message to Apple employees, which read: "Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve."
The retired former owner of a car wash chain might not be the right person to advise you on your web startup.
I'd strongly disagree. There's a lot of very "common sense" Old-School business still at play out there. As much as those on the forefront like to talk about Web 2.0 and AdWords and streaming-this, RSS-that, many times people understand the technology without understanding the concept of customer service, communication, etc. etc. The list of companies that delivered an interesting concept without being able to execute on it correctly could fill a phonebook.
I'd personally rather hear advice from the car wash chain owner than some new "e-vision" guru that happened to get lucky during the.com boom. Ideally, there should be a good core of people who you can run things by and act as advisors. I wouldn't fill that informal board with eight different car wash chain owners, but having one wouldn't hurt. They may not have experience with how the internet works, but they know business. Ultimately that's much more useful.
Give my dad a reason to even LOOK at a ps3. He's a HD connoisseur like anybody else, but the thought of getting a PS3 wouldnt' even go through his mind.
That's because the components Sony will put into the PS3 may be the same as they are with the PS2: bottom-of-the-line. The PS2 DVD player is one of the worst as far as playback. Sure, it plays movies. But that's about it. Any home theater enthusiast will be playing their movies on something else.
The BluRay drive in the PS3, besides helping with game storage, will just let Sony say that there are n million of BluRay players in consumer's hands as of today. Whether or not those consumers care is another matter. For those of you who think Sony isn't about hyping everything and giving things new irrelevant terms, I have two words for you: Emotion Engine.
(Not to say Microsoft and 348,230 other companies worldwide don't do the same, but Sony is no different).
Slashdot Mirror
Moss: "Oh, don't mind that, that's why always make two cups of tea."
Yikes. It sounds to me like you want to create something without any specific goal other than "creating a community" and "generating buy-in" which seem to be a bit vague for a business plan, at least.
I'd say including features widely available in other places (such as Slashdot or Digg) isn't going to let you take over existing sites. In fact, often new features end up not really being used at all. (For example, Slashdot journals have a very low participation rate).
But what would help is content. Content, after all is what's made this site popular, and what makes all good sites great. It's not interfaces, not design, but content, whether that's from a community, or editors, or both. But it still needs to be about something. Mentioning that a site is about "today's technology" is so mind-bogglingly vague that you won't be able to attract an audience.
I'll give you an idea though, free of charge. As far as I know it hasn't been widely implemented anywhere - or to put it more clearly, I haven't heard of it (which doesn't mean much). Why not create a review-aggregating hardware site? Something that combines content from other sites (AnandTech, TomsHarware, SharkyExtreme, CNet, etc) to give a best-of-the-best overview for any number of components. I just checked these three sites and unbder each category, I was looking for a recommendation. I click on video cards, I expect to see something like "This is the top video card right now: XYZ 5000S Xtreme5" but no, that didn't show up.
Why not create a hardware site that's like Rotten Tomatoes or Game Rankings. Gives you an overview of the overall options one has and recommends the best.
Then you can top it off with wikis and comments and blogs and RSS and what have you. But you need an idea to propel you.
And hereby Microsoft redefines the word great, as:
It's actually spot-on. There was no great launch title for the Xbox 360. At most it was Geometry Wars but who in their right mind would pay $400 for a new system just to play a $5 game? I have a friend who is actually so engrossed in it he's planning to do that, but I recognize he's abnormal. Still, the Playstation to date hasn't had a great game at launch and it hasn't hurt them one bit.
This guy seems to be oblivious to Nintendo and Mario, who kind of went hand-in-hand as far as launch games go for over a decade. Not only that, but GTA has never been a launch title and it didn't appear until well into the PS2's launch cycle.
That to me reads: "If due to competitive pressures we're forced to deliver Halo 3 because we have nothing else to hang our hats on, then we will rush it." That, or he's being deliberately obfuscating.
What is interesting is that A) Bill Gates has been championing Halo 3 for months now and B) there is still no official word regarding this game. Halo 2 was announced about a year before its intended release and about two years before its actual release. And yet there's no Halo 3 information.
This is the third non-story about the PS3 we've had in the past month (that I've seen). About every week, it seems there's a need to include an empty article about the 360 versus the PS3 just to start the same discussion over again. Sure, last week we called this service "HUB" and two weeks prior to that it was that"things could look bad for Microsoft's new system" eventhough no one had any ideas or facts abotu anything.
It's all a combination of Sony wanting to maintain the hype by sending out non-facts via their PR reps every week and bloggers and games newssites wanting to break a big story by being the first to "report" on something. The problem is there's nothing to report. Sure, opinion pieces and conjecture are nice, but only when they're well researched (for example, the cost of components for the PS3).
So not only is this latest article pointless, it offers even less (and contradictory) information than any of the reports or rumors from the past few weeks.
But I guess this is the way it will be until E3.
I actually have high hopes for it. It's being co-written between the game writer and the writer of 28 Days Later and The Beach (which has a video-game dream sequence at the end). And the director is Guillermo del Toro who's did Hellboy and some other good films in Spain.
Ugh, I know it must seem like a pedantic point to some, but his role as "Executive Producer" is much less interesting than some of us would like to believe. So far, Jackson has usually been the director, producer, and/or screenwriter for all of his movies. With "Executive Producer" the role implies a certain kind of vagueness. Usually, it means they deal with the business side of the film (financing) although they sometimes can leave their own imprint on things (for example, Bruckheimer and CSI). It doesn't mean Halo is his next movie, it doesn't even mean he's very artistically involved with it. At best, we'll see some Jackson-esque touches, at worst he was just paid a lot of money to have his name attached to the film and just occasionally acts as a go-between the different parties.
As far as the article? Jackson says "I definitely see improved graphics and sound as continuously positive attributes for consideration among the Hollywood community. Actors will look more 'life-like' in HD and the sound continues to get closer to the theatrical movie experience." If he had used the terms "rich medium" or "consumer-centric" I could've gotten Bingo on this Buzzwords Bingo tablet I have. It's also a dead giveaway that the interview was done via email, not by phone or in-person.
Here's the obligatory Ikea-joke from The Simpsons, courtesy of SNPP.com
The Simpsons make a shopping excursion to Shøp, the place to go for modern Swedish furniture and accessories. A costumed character that looks like an Allen wrench with arms and legs walks up.
Now, in all seriousness, I think this table is a dream come true. I only hope in a decade they are affordable enough for the common man. LCD prices are becoming cheaper, and it looks like multi-input touch screens are functional in demo form. Imagine playing table-top RPGs with the assistance of custom terrain underneath? This would also work pretty well in business at places like architecture or engineering firms where everyone can crowd around a gigantic display.
What an interesting topic. I'd never think this would make Slashdot, but here we are.
I personally don't have a wristwatch because I haven't found that I needed one. A cellphone, systray, car clock works just as well. What watches are for 90% of people are fashion statements, and for most it's just a display of money or liking a specific brand. I understand the fixation, but I do not share it.
Now, if you're more into the style of the watches, especially watches from the 1970s, Graham's UK-centric 70's Watches site is the closest you can get to watch porn. One day when I find it worthwhile to plunk down a big wad of cash I'll get one of those LED driving watches.
But yers, in case you missed the two links, that's the site I recommend. I haven't bought anything there, so as far as commercial transactions go you're on your own.
How else could you explain IE 5.0?
What irks me is that MS should have free viewers for all their applications. That means you, Publisher. Imagine if you needed to buy Adobe Reader to be able to see a PDF. Acrobat would be dead in the water now.
So in his estimates, that means about 500 to 1000 people have seen his movies and less than fifty knew him before House of the Dead.
Based on the paltry box office results from his recent movies, I'd say that sounds about right.
Well, there's a couple of problems. First off, Sony already has a music store. The fact that no one seems to mention it tells me that it's not very well known or well-used. Their Japanese online music service might be faring a bit better, I don't know. Both sites reek of "me too"-ism... if Sony is going to let the Media part of their company control the other divisions (as it currently does now, eventhough it's not the most profitable), then HUB might be another bust.
For those that don't know or remember, the preference is accessed by typing about:config in Firefox's address bar. Let's see if there's still a leak after you change the option. I know when I close tabs the memory usage doesn't go down.
Take Commerce Bank. They have CommerceOnline.com for their main domain and CommerceOnlineBanking.com for their online banking. But why not CommerceBankHome.com as GoDaddy suggest? Or CommerceBanking.com? Or CommerceBankingOnline.com?
Unfortunately their domain names are a soup of common names and it's impossible to remember. With common names, a small alteration of the site and that's all you need to confuse some folks.
The best phishing URL I've ever seen was one that was www.amazon.com.exec-obidos.com. If anyone remembers, previously Amazon URLs always had an exec-obidos in their path when the link lead to a product. Even I had to blink a few times before I realized it was a phishing scam. (All the links went to a working Amazon section).
Perhaps more important for existing 360 owners who don't wish to change any hardware or software of their console is the ability to stream or read video off the console's hard drive or an attached external USB drive. Right now, that can be done with pictures and audio, but not video. Sure, you can do it if you have a Windows Media Center PC (or Vista) but in the meantime there's nothing else.
For Mac users, a company has software that will allegedly let you stream audio and see pictures from a Mac OS X box. It is not free but I have heard reports on forums that it does work.
I would imagine that just like last time for large changes in hardware or software, people who want to run Xbox Live and have homebrew apps are going to be SOL. And buying a second 360 right now is not only pricey, but also difficult because of the continuing availability problems.
Are you one of those suicidal internet users in Japan? Because not only does that headline repeat itself, but the articles repeat themselves so much that you'd probably die of alcohol poisoning before the end of the day.
As far as "AJAX 2.0 Blognets! being the Next Sliced Bread" I have two methods of working when I am away from home. I can access anything I need if I can go through FTP (or fill in your favorite existing technology which has allowed you to do this for the past ten years). My mail is forwarded to Gmail so I can read and respond when I am away.
Anything more complex and I'd just use a laptop.
I'm trilingual and it's even worse for me. I call for a recount. It's just so surprising to me that--
Oooh, a bird!
To pay off magazines reviewing Driv3r, I take it.
GeoCities has had free hosting for a decade. Yet hosting companies are still around!
No... those are just their current regular charges for cable and internet. I should know, I'm a Comcast victim (customer).
That employee should have their web browser open to Bloomberg.com...
I'd strongly disagree. There's a lot of very "common sense" Old-School business still at play out there. As much as those on the forefront like to talk about Web 2.0 and AdWords and streaming-this, RSS-that, many times people understand the technology without understanding the concept of customer service, communication, etc. etc. The list of companies that delivered an interesting concept without being able to execute on it correctly could fill a phonebook.
I'd personally rather hear advice from the car wash chain owner than some new "e-vision" guru that happened to get lucky during the
That's because the components Sony will put into the PS3 may be the same as they are with the PS2: bottom-of-the-line. The PS2 DVD player is one of the worst as far as playback. Sure, it plays movies. But that's about it. Any home theater enthusiast will be playing their movies on something else.
The BluRay drive in the PS3, besides helping with game storage, will just let Sony say that there are n million of BluRay players in consumer's hands as of today. Whether or not those consumers care is another matter. For those of you who think Sony isn't about hyping everything and giving things new irrelevant terms, I have two words for you: Emotion Engine.
(Not to say Microsoft and 348,230 other companies worldwide don't do the same, but Sony is no different).
Wait a second...