manage to experience

Flickr changes for the worse

Thomas Hawk: There's Some Mighty Pissed Off Flickr Members Right Now

Yes, and I'm one of them. Mainly because I didn't want to merge my Flickr and Yahoo! accounts. It might seem like a minor gripe, but apparently it's shared by many others. 

Apparently, we "old skool" members are a drag.


Technorati Tags: flickr, ue, yahoo!

Your brand's face

Walking to a client's office this morning I saw something that stopped me: A FedEx delivery person, slowly pacing up and down the block. Looking completely lost.

I see delivery drivers downtown all the time, of course. But they're always a blur of activity. This driver's lack of haste seemed downright unnatural, and counter to everything I associate with the brand. I laughed and thought about this brand message this sent:

FedEx: What's your hurry?

Technorati Tags: fedex, brand

Untethered

Seagate's DAVE platform is a natural step toward freeing us from desktops. 10-20 GB of storage is pretty light, but that will undoubtedly change in the near future.


Technorati Tags: seagate, storage

One way to kill the browsing experience

Want a convenient way to spoil the browing experience for your Web site or blog's audience? Add those annoying SNAP link previews.

Even those who should know better are doing it.




Technorati Tags: ue, snap

Search primer

A primer on SEO best practices. Is SEO a big part of your online marketing plans? If not, it should be. Because these days it's all about being findable.


Technorati Tags: seo, findability

Social media success

Facebook's Mike Murphy (via Chief Marketer) highlights three ways to succeed using social media:

1. Give users a reason to share
2. Become a part of the experience
3. Listen without fear

Read the whole article.

In my experience numbers one and two don't present a problem to most companies. Number three is the big hurdle. Too often, when I hear companies' ideas about using social media listening is nowhere to be found. The result: their plans come off looking like a slightly different spin on advertising.


Technorati Tags: facebook, socialmedia, listening

Inevitable

DRM-free music is inevitable. No matter how scary it is to the major labels, it's what customers want, it will improve the music buying experience, and it will likely boost the labels' flagging sales (or at least arrest the decline).

Speaking only for myself, I tend to avoid most DRM protected music. Take DRM out of the equation and I'd be more likely to buy music downloads.


Technorati Tags: drm, music

The next big platform?

Fortune understands Second Life's potential.

Why might it become the Next Big Thing? Because it's not just a virtual world. It's a platform.


Technorati Tags: secondlife, fortune

Email etiquette

(Almost) everybody uses email; most use it in ways that can drive recipients to distraction. Here is a simple, common sense guide to email etiquette. The 30 seconds you spend reading it may save others hours of time.


Technorati Tags: email, productivity, etiquette

Scrivener

After reading Merlin Mann's review of Scrivener, I'm tempted to give it a try. Writing is, for me, a messy process, and Scrivener's index card metaphor looks like something that might work for me.

The explosion of niche products within major software categories has me wondering about the future of the big enterprise products. If Scrivener works for me, do I really need Word? So far the thing that has maintained Office's dominance is the lack of worries about exchanging files with others. Putting up with bloat-ware is the price we pay.

But the file interchange problem (and I'm talking about people who want to save, send, and/or open files -- not those who are tech savvy) is only going to be around for so long. Then it's going to be about the features we need and not the features we have to put up with.

More software goodness from Literature and Latte (makers of Scrivener).

Technorati Tags: scrivener, writing, apps