Archive for Other news

Huh? Doesn’t Google Maps know where Redfern railway station is?

// February 7th, 2011 // 0 Comments // Other news

Time to pay for my own endorphins

// February 7th, 2011 // 0 Comments // Other news

This year I’ve decided to put in an extra effort on my personal physical challenges.

In 2010 I competed in a 50km trail relay walk called WildEndurance, the 18km Kayak4Kids kayak race, the 90km Sydney To Gong Ride and my personal favourite, the 100km Oxfam Trailwalker Sydney.

This year I’m going to add the 90km overnight Hawkesbury Classic kayak race!

Those paying attention will notice these events all have more than long distances in common – they are also charity fundraising events, where competitors are expected to raise a minimum fund-raising amount to qualify to compete. Last year in addition to the minimum charitable contribution I raised about $8,000 for these charities, thanks to the support of many friends, family members, colleagues and social media friends.

This year I’ve decided to take a break from raising more than the minimum amount, and I’m going to donate the minimum amount myself instead of asking others.

Why? Charitable fund-raising disguised as endurance competitions are clever marketing ploys, but they’re psychological marketing strategy too, exploiting common weaknesses in the male psyche as effectively as the sugar-laden energy bar manufacturer telling you their product is healthy and good for you. It works on two levels.

See, human males have evolved to be risk-takers. I can only assume that in cave man days it was the males of the tribal group who did most of the hunting, risked their lives driving off predators, and of course, competed with each other for dominance and access to breeding age females.

From an early age, young boys start taking physical risks, from climbing to the top of their first flight of stairs to swinging off a rope or throwing themselves off the roof of the carport hoping they’ll fly. Risk-taking is a big element in determining what a man thinks of himself and what other men think of them. As they age, the surges of testosterone moderate and the demands of relationships, families and careers tend to moderate the risk-taking urge, but it still lurks within, seeking expression.

In their fourties, men are commonly stricken with mid-life crises. With the ego and emotional maturity of a young man stuck in the suddenly aging body of a middle-aged man, we rebel against this sudden awareness of our own mortality. We take off with a younger woman or buy a convertible, make a surprise career move, take up electric guitar, start playing soccer or, in extreme cases, all of the above. It’s all risk-taking.

It’s this same instinctive rebellion against ageing that I think is the reason most of us have many friends, mostly male, competing in an endurance event with a charitable fundraising compenent. The typical endurance event speaks directly to the risk-taking centre of our brain; it says, “here’s a chance to pit yourself against nature, to prove you can still climb that mountain, conquer the wilderness, succeed at something that looks impossible”.

The fundraising element gives us a higher cause to hide behind, a reason other than fear of aging to take the time needed to train and compete, to spend the money needed for equipment, meals and transport. It’s handy justification for the wife, kids and workmates who’ll be seeing less of us during training.

Problem is, for many of us, endurance events are addictive. The endorphin high is as addictive as any drug and much more socially acceptable. We like how we can run up a flight of stairs without losing our breath, how we can eat what we like and still lose that little pot-belly the odd gym session could never quite shift.

But get addicted to endurance events and there’s a hidden toll – if you’re a friend of mine, last year I would have asked you for a charity donation at least four times. One time is fine, four times maybe, but if I do five events this year are you happy to support me with a cash donation nine times in a two year period? If our positions were reversed, I wouldn’t be, and I say that as one of your closest friends!

If it was really all about the charitable cause rather than the masculine cause, maybe, but not while at least a part of it is sustaining my endorphin addiction. So this year I’ll take the year off. I’ll pay my own endorphin tax. You’re welcome to donate if you wish (I’ll post the links here) but you won’t hear me asking. If you do, please do it for the sake of the charity, not for me.

Posted via email from Trailwalker Tips Still time to Donate now!

http://www.irlgaming.com/beta/

// February 5th, 2011 // 0 Comments // Other news

Coming soon to a zombie-ridden suburb near you!

Now with added online market research services!

// February 3rd, 2011 // 0 Comments // Other news

I’ve been doing some market research work for clients the last few months that has drawn me further into research design than I ever thought I’d go (I’m numerically dyslexic, which is generally a significant handicap in any quant-focused exercise!)

Nevertheless, due to the needs of my clients I’ve enmaddened my skillz in SurveyMonkey, the tool of choice for startup online marketers (because you can design small, basic research surveys free). I’ve just upgraded from SurveyMonkey’s PRO subscription to their GOLD plan. I’m now allowed to build surveys including “unlimited questions and responses”! (Hah! Everybody knows the number of respondents is inversely proportional to the number of questions in the survey).

It also comes with:
  • Custom Survey Design, URLs & Redirects Upon Survey Completion
  • SPSS export
  • A/B Testing
  • Question & Answer Piping
  • Text Analysis
…and more!

It’s going to cost me a fair chunk of change to be a gold subscriber and there’s nothing stopping me running multiple research projects for multiple clients, so if you’ve ever yearned for more than an eight question survey or longed for some piping (when the survey recalls your answer to a previous question and includes it in a subsequent question) let me know.

Photo by Mishism

Social media for TEDxSydney

// December 17th, 2010 // 0 Comments // Issues, My work, TEDxSydney

TEDxSydney | 28 May 2011 at CarriageWorks

TEDxSydney 2010 was Sydney’s first direct experience of TED, the innovation festival phenomenon. Now TEDxSydney is back for its second year, scheduled for May 28, 2011 at Redern’s Carriageworks complex.

TED’s reputation has grown partly thanks to an open and engaging approach to sharing ideas with the internet community. TEDx is an endeavour designed to spread TED even further and give people not just the chance to attend a mini-TED event, but to plan and host their own TED-like conference, reflecting the spirit and purpose of TED while addressing their own local cultural values and issues.

I was fortunate enough to attend TEDxSydney 2010, and it blew my socks off — the calibre and the scale of the event went far beyond my expectations, encompassing science, politics, gender and sexuality, design, art, music, indigenous culture and more. Although auditorium space was limited, TEDxSydney included a second stage outside the auditorium with live crosses, vox pops and post-presentation interviews with speakers, as well as an active Twitter stream. For a first effort from the organisers it was hugely impressive. You can still watch the presentations, available on YouTube.

Now I’m utterly stoked to post that I’ll be a member of TEDxSydney 2011′s all-volunteer organising committee, helping as Social Media Director.

I’ll be working on helping people who can’t attend TEDxSydney get the most out of the live and archived content we’ll be publishing, helping people interact with each other and the speakers, and using social media to learn about what people like/don’t like about TEDxSydney 2011.

If you’ve got thoughts about that, please let me know, follow @TEDxSydney on Twitter and join the Facebook Page.

Here’s one of my favourite sessions from last year, featuring Michael Kirby on the separation of Church and State.

Simple billboard analytics

// November 29th, 2010 // 0 Comments // Other news

Lately I’ve had my mind on ways to track the response rate of “offline” marketing (i.e. not delivered over the internets) so that advertisers can track reports in a Google Analytics-style dashboard.

Here’s a simple, clever solution I saw on a train station billboard this morning. It invites you to take a photo of the billboard and bring it into the store to get a discount off the sale.


You’re speaking to the target market (geeks) who are likely to have a cameraphone but not over-complicating things by requiring them to get a data connection and upload it to a competition mini-site.

You may even be able to get some location data by getting store staff to match photos against a book of photos you’ve prepared earlier.

It rewards the target consumer by making them feel smart enough to be able to do this without alienating them by making the offer too hard to redeem.

Like it.

Location:Whatmore St,Waverton,Australia

iPad power tip: working with formatted text in Mail

// October 10th, 2010 // 0 Comments // Other news

The iPad’s email client bugs me: it supports rich text formatting, but it doesn’t give you any control over formatting while writing an email. Copy a paragraph of text from, say, a web page, paste it into an email, and all the formatting comes over too, whether it looks bizarre or not. And there’s no way to change or remove it.

How to clear up the formatting? Cut or copy the text into (and then back out of) another text app that doesn’t support rich text. Apple thoughtfully ships just such an app with every iPad: the Notes app.

Cut or copy your sentences from Mail into notes, then copy and paste it back into the email, and SHAZAM! No more pesky text formatting.

But wait, you ask, how do you add formatting to text in a Mail email? Again the answer lies in copying and pasting, but this time you’ll need an app that supports rich text and let’s you mess with it.

Apple doesn’t include anything that’ll do this for free, but if you’ve already bought the Pages app from iWork for iPad, that’ll work nicely. I wasn’t able to find any other iPad apps for document editing that included rich text formatting, but let me know if you know of one.


(I made this image using the SketchMe iPad app, which makes images look hand-drawn in pencil or crayon. I started with a screen dump of the Notes app on my iPad. Like the iPhone, you can take a screen dump on your iPad by pressing the Home and Power buttons simultaneously. Your screen dump will be saved to your Saved Photos album in Photos. Note that screen dumps taken while in landscape mode will be sideways and will need to be rotated).

Social media can bring you uncomfortably close to your customers

// August 6th, 2010 // 0 Comments // Other news

Social media brings you the truth about your brand

Don't ask customers for their opinion without paying attention to their answers.

It’s a great idea to show consumers considering your brand what other consumers think about it. But it’s really important to listen closely and pay attention to that stream and participate in the discussion.

This angry and ignored Malvern Star customer hasn’t just been ignored in store and on the phone, he’s also being ignored when he takes his complaint to the brand’s website.

This page could look so much better with a conciliatory comment from Malvern Star customer service, with an offer to resolve the problem on the phone or via email. It might even become a net positive result for the brand if handled well.

Sell the armed forces and do something constructive with the money

// June 11th, 2010 // 0 Comments // Other news, World Peace

“I say cut defence. I dont mean nibble at it or slice it. I mean cut it, all £45bn of it. George Osborne yesterday asked the nation “for once in a generation” to think the unthinkable, to offer not just percentage cuts but “whether government needs to provide certain public services at all”.What do we really get from the army, the navy and the air force beyond soldiers dying in distant wars and a tingle when the band marches by? Is the tingle worth £45bn, more than the total spent on schools? Why does Osborne “ringfence” defence when everyone knows its budget is a bankruptcy waiting to happen, when Labour ministers bought the wrong kit for wars that they insisted it fight?”
- Simon Jenkins, of The Guardian, brought to my attention by the easy-care and dry-cleanable Lloyd Shepherd of I’ve Said Too Much.
I know this is a brilliant idea because I had it too.
As far as I know, the only nation to give something like this a try was New Zealand, which back in 2000 decided to bail on upgrading the ageing combat aircraft in its airforce.
It’s been ten years now, and New Zealand hasn’t been invaded by anyone, unless we’re counting international tourists.
New Zealand still retains a small navy and an army that Wikipedia says has 4,500 full-time soldiers. Really, subtract the logistics and management overhead from that 4,500 and you’d be lucky if you could beat back a well-drilled rugby scrum much less an invading islamic fundamentalist horde prepared to sacrifice themselves to secure permanent access to high-quality merino wool, organic cold-climate produce and pristine glacial wilderness.
Instead of showing Johnny Hun a lesson and digging in against Kruschev’s tank regiments, Australia’s armed forces now deliver three apparently crucial needs, so crucial that we must spend more on them than we do on schools or hospitals.
Our Navy provides incredibly expensive and over-equipped border security against the terrifying threat of a few thousand Afghani and Sri Lankan refugees each year, starving in rags on leaky wooden Indonesian fishing boats. They don’t stop them, mind, so much as direct them to the closest refugee processing facility. Like Israel’s anti-peace flotilla, minus the regrettable fatalities.
Like most UN nations, our Airforce stands ready to deliver precisely enough Hercules-loads of urgent food and medical aid to service runway-located  television crews. From there, they are delivered to their ultimate destination: overseas correspondents, who desperately need good background to accompany their grim voice-over work as they drone on about how little aid has so far arrived to address the growing humanitarian crisis now enveloping the isolated, mountainous Werthefuk Province of Collapsedistan.
Meanwhile, on the ground, our Army provides an essential support role to US armed forces wherever religions other than Christianity and Judaism seek to overthrow the carefully greenhoused economies of the third world. We provide training and other human resource functions to newly-undisbanded Henchmeni militias, thereby improving the non-combatant collateral damage and informal-taxation-levying capacity necessary to return their nations to approximately the same state they were in before the international peace-keeping mission invaded was invited to assist.
If Australia disbanded its armed forces, could the West Australian Very Large Hole industry use a few poorly-socialised, strong young lads not fussy about the quality of their sleeping quarters and the industrial safety standards of the workplace? Yes. Would we all be competing for our knowledge industry, service and tourism jobs in the rest of the economy with Afghani and Sri Lankan arrivals with ten times the formal qualifications, none of the English-language communication skills and no idea how to knot a tie properly? Almost certainly.
Bring it on.
Australia and those other island nations, UN member nations and nations with significant natural resources or international economic significance should just retire the whole lot. Collapsedistan will offer us a great price. We can then invest the money in something that might provide a return other than full coffins and empty hearts.

Hard to design products for people who aren’t paying attention

// June 11th, 2010 // 0 Comments // Other news, Search

“I think most consumers use a search engine the same way they brush their teeth — with 90% of their attention on something else, with impatience, boredom and frustration with the whole category of search. They begin with unreasonable expectations about the quality of the result and with minimal patience for any request to contribute to the input.

As search product designers we find it very hard to really live inside that mindset since our work requires that we have 90% of our attention on the product we’re designing. It’s really a kind of method acting to get inside the head of a search user.”

That’s me, talking to Kat Mackintosh in a two-part interview on Nestoria’s company blog. Read on for more bold assertions about how personalisation, recommendation and geolocation might change the world. Again.

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