Archive for December, 2006
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Elf yourself
Simon Trist just emailed me a great viral campaign called “Elfyourself“, which features David, our Design Director as the leading star. The idea is to paste your picture on the body of the elf and the elf will then dance around in a funny way (in a really funny way).
It’s a brilliant viral, because it actually gives the recipient something of value (a good laugh) and as we know - if the recipient enjoys the content of the email they will (probably) pass it on to their friends or colleagues (89 percent of US adult users share content with friends by email).
The psychology behind virals is, according to Andy Chen, a combination of belonging and sharing. The sharing process strengthens bonds and relationships, and virals becomes an excuse to engage with friends, family and colleagues to strengthen those bonds.
I enjoyed “Elfyourself” a lot, and I created my own version and passed it on to a couple of friends. Perhaps I unconsciously did it to strengthen my relationships, hope it worked!
Not all viral campaigns work. Elfyourself works, because it’s funny (humour is the most shared content via email), the branding is subtle - instead of smothering the recipient with an obvious commercial message it allows the recipient to engage with the brand which consequently gives the recipient an opportunity to become a media creator instead of a media consumer.
A viral doesn’t need to be like “elfyourself” to be successful -its more complicated than that. Advertising Age has a list of “The 10 viral videos you should have seen“. “Elfyourself” is not included but there are other campaigns from 2006 that could be worth looking at.
Happy holidays everyone!
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Passwords
I guess I’ve been on the Internet for about 10 years and been a web developer almost as long, in that time I’ve seen the landscape of the Internet change quite considerably. Static HTML “brochure” sites have been replaced by CMS driven e-commerce sites, dodgy chat rooms have been replaced by knowledge forums, profiles and the dreaded blog.
But one thing that has changed very little (not just in that decade, but many before it), is passwords. Passwords are very important, they are by far the most common security model, so why are we so bad at them? Often people just type the first thing that comes into their heads.
Ok, so there’s an awful lot of systems that request a password these days and we can’t remember a different one for each can we? Well that was the opinion of a friend of mine, who ran into trouble when his girlfriend dumped him and then made extensive use of his “Book of Internet Passwords” - ouch.
The alternative (and very common practice) is to stick to two or three main passwords. Here’s a fun thing to try at home kids, set up a really fun site that requires a password, then randomly change it after a week. When your users next login they will try all of their common passwords one after another. Just record that information and together with their e-mail address you can now hack their entire life, starting with their e-mail account where password reminders for other sites will be sent. Just remember to buy something nice for them as a thank you from eBay ok? (on their account of course).
And what passwords do people choose? Well there’s the classics: “god”, “jesus”, “password”, “letmein”, “opensessame”, “trustno1″, “qwerty” - to name just a few. Next, how about some football teams? “Arsenal”, “Chelsea”, “Westham”, “Liverpool”. While we’re at it, let’s have a few pet names like “Buster”, “Tigger” and “Smokey”, then maybe a few of the most popular children’s names like “James”, “Louise”, “Thomas” and “Tracy”. And for our grand finale, a few things that you might find on your desk, “calendar”, “speakers”, “coffeecup” and “mousemat”. Well that should get you into about 90% of computer systems. For the remaining 10%, try running a dictionary against it, remembering to make a second pass where you change all the letters into numbers (harder to type but no more secure). Oh and in particular, make sure your dictionary contains as many geeky references as possible, it should include every planet the NCC1701D has ever visited.
Hopefully you’re reading this and feeling pretty smug, happy in the knowledge that you are in the tiniest of percentages of people with a strong password that is not covered above. But what about everybody else? Chances are if they do have a strong password they can’t remember it and have probably written it down next to their computer in a book of passwords.
“The weakest link in any security system is always the user.”
Maybe biometrics are the solution, but I think it will be a while yet before fingerprint scanners are fitted as standard to every keyboard. What can we do in the meantime? Well my advice would be to use two or more words per password, words that would otherwise not be seen dead with each other and maybe your year of birth for good measure, “cloudyfootball1971″ for example. You should have at least three different passwords based on the level of security. For example, do not use the same password for online banking as some random joke site. Have one for financial stuff, one for email, and one for anything that you really don’t care about.
Ideally, you should change your passwords frequently (especially if you fall out with your partner), but more importantly you should check your computer for viruses which might be logging your every keystroke.
Another area of vulnerability is “Password Hints”. For example, “Name of pet” or “Mothers Maiden Name”. The answers to these questions are often available on the Internet should anyone conduct a quick search or maybe have a look at your profile. People who know you won’t even need to go to that trouble.
Password security systems can be safe, but only if you choose a good password, do you really want to find out what happens if your password isn’t good enough?
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You win, we win
Time’s annual Person of the Year award has gone to… you.
That’s the collective you, the ‘you’ that are writing your blog posts, sharing your pictures and videos, commenting, rating, syndicating. Across the country, across the age ranges and socially groupings you’ve been doing so in unprecedented numbers this year.
2006 is the year that we stopped being consumers of the internet and became participants in it.
As Time puts it:
‘It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen
before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the
million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis
MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping
one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world,
but also change the way the world changes.’The full Time piece is worth reading, but while I think Time pretty much ‘gets’ it, I think it still manages to even underestimate the scale and significance of what is going on.
Yes, most of this is happening in the online ’space’, but it is extending everywhere, driven by the change taking place online. It is changing not just the internet, but every other medium along the way.
Television programmes are relying ever more on your input, radio stations are extending their phone-in content featuring you, advertising and marketing campaigns are seeking to use ‘you’ to sell their products. Newspaper columnists, once able to sit in lofty judgement above us all are now subject to our comments, positive and negative. The top-down editor/director/producer knows best approach is dying fast.
We - you - now determine how we consume content, when we do, where we do so.
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We are recruiting!
We’re busy. We’re very busy. That’s a good thing and it means we need more really good people to join us. So, why not take a look at our recruitment pages and see if there might be something that’s right for you.
We are currently recruiting for:
- Strategy Consultants
- Web designers
- Web developers
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Digging for dollars
Somewhat sad, but completely unsurprising, it is emerging that marketing and pr firms are waking up to the potential of social networking sites like digg, and are quietly paying a number of contributors to promote products.
Jason Calcanis gets this right - this isn’t the beginning of the end for social software sites, but it might be an end to the innocent idea that relying entirely on member self-regulation alone will ever be enough.
As the spread and influence of the social web grows, the role of web editors is changing fast but it certainly isn’t going away.
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Why website statistics should come with a health warning
MySpace has, apparently, overtaken Yahoo’s combined websites for the first time in page views. MySpace is therefore ‘the biggest site on the internet‘ and more popular than Yahoo!, right?
Erm, well no actually.
As the linked article above does belatedly point out:
“Yahoo still dominates in total unique vistors, though, with over twice
as many people visiting Yahoo sites as MySpace. The end game isn’t page
views, its user attention and, ultimately, revenue.”The highlighted text above is mine - and I think this is an important point. Page views can mean many things. As Mike Davidson’s excellent MySpace analysis has pointed out previously, MySpace is an extraordinarily inefficient (perhaps intentionally), click-heavy site. A cleaner design and improved user experience could result in page views dropping very significantly.
Statistics, you see, can be misleading. Increasing page views isn’t always a good thing. It can mean that you are driving your visitors mad by giving them too many clicks on the way to where they want to go, it can mean they are lost.
Or it could mean they love your site so much, they can’t stop reading it.
How do you tell the difference? Analysing user journeys is part of the answer, but quantitative web statistics will always give you part of the picture, not the whole of it. Supplement your statistics with user surveys and regular ‘real user’ testing and you’ll gain a far richer picture of what your statistics really mean.
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No Beziers - still in Beta
My boy is always hassling me to look up websites on my computer for us to play on together. He often brings a tatty piece of paper out of his book bag and asks me to ‘Google’ the word scrawled on it. I am beginning to learn that his teacher has a good handle on websites that provide good wholesome entertainment ,and this weekend’s discovery is no exception. For a seasonal game, which is fantastically simple yet ridiculously compelling check out Line Rider - click on the graphic contained on this page to play http://jayisgames.com/archives/2006/09/line_rider.php. It will take you seconds to get the hang of it, but a while longer to master it.
We have all at some time been on a fast moving ‘vehicle’ heading downhill with no brakes and even little control - so send a little guy on a sledge to his doom and feel for him! When you get to like him I would suggest you try creating a jump for him, getting him to do a somersault, and performing a loop de loop (you’ll see what I mean)
The game is still in beta, but the possibilities are endless. When the developers get hold of it and add an eraser and Bezier curves a whole fairground of fun will be available for the little chap and you - Enjoy.
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New Year Goal
Consider turning your New Year goals into Outlook Tasks. Writingthem down on paper is risky — they’re too easily forgotten orlost. In contrast, Outlook will remind you of each new step toaccomplish until your goal becomes a reality.
Follow these steps to attaining your goals:
1. Open a new Task.
2. In the Subject line, type the title of your goal.
3. Select the Due Date, such as Dec 31 next year.
4. Record all the steps you need to accomplish to attain your goal.
Include what should be done, when, by whom, and the resources needed.
5. Setup the Reminder date for the first step to be accomplished.
When the Reminder date arrives, open your task and adjust the date for the next phase to be accomplished.
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A great conversation over Instant messenger
A typical IM conversation between me and Andrew (you’d think we’d talk to eachother as we sit right across from one another, but no, we IM)
Farhan says:
Have you seen Yahoo’s new Top Searches for the year?
http://buzz.yahoo.com/topsearches2006/lists/
beware lots of purpleAndrew Travers says:
blimey. Yes very purple.Farhan says:
Like the pictures from Kris Kros
http://flickr.com/photos/krosAndrew Travers says:
should i know who he is?Farhan says:
I don’t
but he was on that page in a year in pictures
http://kriskros.wordpress.com/Andrew Travers says:
good to see chelsea didn’t make the top ten sports teams. these little things matter…Farhan says:
LOLAndrew Travers says:
quite like the interactive version of the page, but you are right about the purple. way too muchFarhan says:
especially with the hover, you go over something in white and its like Barney exploded
http://ca.promos.yahoo.com/yearinreview/
Canadian version is a bit easier on the eyesAndrew Travers says:
definitelyFarhan says:
interesting how every country has a totally different lookAndrew Travers says:
maybe a classic example of where yahoo is wasting energy?Farhan says:
peanut butterAndrew Travers says:
Farhan says:
I’m going to post this conversation on the blog (Sorry Mark T)
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Nut-free accessiblity
Rosie Sherry has written an interesting piece for Usability News, Showing Web Accessibility Statements the Door. In it, she makes some good points about the tendency of these statements to be verbose, unhelpful and effectively filler.
For me, accessibility statements have become the online equivalent of the ’some products may contain nuts’ notices in restaurants and cafes. They exist to say, ‘please don’t sue us, we’re trying’. They are statements that seek to keep the consumer/audience at arm’s length. It’s not enough.
Website accessibility is a complex and subjective issue. What looks and reads as accessible to one judge, might not to another. Automated tools can tell you where the problem might be, but they can’t tell you whether a website is accessible or not. So why do so many accessibility statements make such grandiose claims?
Content about accessibility should be there to help and to enlist the participation of their site’s audience to make the website’s accessibility all it can be. It should be about a two-way conversation, not a one-way ’statement’.
The bragging statements Sherry rightly criticises do nothing but encourage the sort of aggressive accusatory email that any beleaguered webmaster will be familiar with. Accessibility statements that offer a little humility, forget the pointless ‘badges’ and focus on seeking the real world experiences of the site’s audience, give web teams a far better chance of receiving constructive feedback they can act upon and improve accessibility for the widest possible audience.
