another piece of innovative communication from Melbourne (see car park signage below)
Craft Circle Fights The Power, Martha Stewart Style | PSFK – Trends, Ideas & Inspiration
I wonder what they’re putting in the water?

More Melbourne style! originally appeared on TheCustomer on August 8, 2008.

Business Technology : Why Most Online Communities Fail

Why communities fail /2 originally appeared on TheCustomer on July 25, 2008.

Ze Frank on Breaking the Metaphor of the Web
There’s momentum building here, towards a watershed. In recent weeks we’ve seen VRMWorkshop, big forward steps from Dataportability, Facebook‘s adoption of those principles… I’m sure there’s more – there’s certainly thinking about the problems created by social media

So is 2009 going to be the year in which we get a technical breakthrough, that changes Web 2.0 from being a technical achievement into being social & commercial?

breakthrough 2009: cultural shift in social marketing originally appeared on TheCustomer on July 25, 2008.

Oh for goodness sake!
Banks ask their customers to jump through hoops… and then, it seems, can’t put their own house in oder. My guess (experience) is that legacy systems and organisation culture combine to stymie development at the pace needed to stay ahead of developments in security risks.

Most Bank Sites Are Insecure originally appeared on TheCustomer on July 25, 2008.

BBC NEWS | Politics | Voters’ data ‘should not be sold’
Of course it shouldn’t.

If a business compelled customers – and non-customers – to register their details, and then sold on that information, they’d be strung up! But that’s what ‘government’ does with voters’ data. Yes, there’s an opt-out – which is widely used – but the practice of selling-on information undermines trust in government & the democratic process. Which is not a good thing – so it’s not a good trade.

It’s a practice left over from analogue marketing days, when profiling was in its infancy, and targeted marketing almost always created direct mail – where profiling, print, production and postage costs created commercial limits on the volume of direct mail. The first of those – profiling – has moved on dramatically, which allows data companies to do much much more, with less starting data, for a lot less money.

And customers’ relationships with companies has moved on too. Digital marketing centers more on rapid 2-way engagement – there’s less commercial need for electoral data, and the business case is weaker.

Data compulsion originally appeared on TheCustomer on July 11, 2008.

The web thrives on standards – but try putting toghther a virtual team video conference with freelancers, outside the confines of an organisation’s preferred software, and the mix of technical religions will almost certainly scupper things before they get started.

Maybe ooVoo is the answer – I’ll try it out on a Mac/Win, UK broadband & South african narrowband conference & see how we go….

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Is this the mixed platform/messenger client/ bandwith video conference solution? originally appeared on TheCustomer on February 7, 2008.

Around the milennium I used a 10.4 inch Sony Vaio laptop… and only stopped using it around 2005, when its inability to run anything more modern than Win 98se stopped it connecting to networks.  The Mac Air launch had me digging for reviews of my old Vaio – this one ending “After 6 months, there still isn’t anything to upgrade to. That’s
unheard of in the PC market.”

Come to think of it, after more than 6 years, and reading the mixed reviews of Mac Air at launch, there’s still precious little to compare. It’s (almost) tempting to find a late PII Vaio pcg505, & pimp it with Linux.

Almost.

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Laptop memory lane: Sony pcg505 originally appeared on TheCustomer on February 7, 2008.

great review of 15th Anniversary celebration meeting at the ICA

SMS is 15 originally appeared on TheCustomer on December 13, 2007.

“That said, a study issued last month found that Facebook members themselves were somewhat careless about safeguarding their privacy. IT security firm Sophos found that 41 percent of Facebook users surveyed were willing to give personal information – such as e-mail address, date of birth and phone number – to a complete stranger, greatly increasing their susceptibility to ID theft.” Charlie Taylor, on TheRegister

If you take that info (by phone, or scraped from social networking sites), and add it to the delivery address given on amazon’s wishlist, could it be all that an Identity thief would need to clone your ID…

Only ourselves to blame for privacy breaches originally appeared on TheCustomer on September 6, 2007.

‘scuse me while I crowbar a personal plea into the regular schedule of marketing comment:

Alex Zanardi is innocent 

The way that his site is built may move the link in time… but you’re looking at stills from the TV coverage that show he didn’t cause the accident…

Tech rant Number 2: Zanardi is innocent originally appeared on TheCustomer on September 5, 2007.