In the 20th century, it was said that, “Content is king.”  Consumers and marketing professionals alike have observed this after years and years of experience with traditional media outlets such as television and print.  Marketing professionals know their message will reach wider, larger audiences when bundled with content that is in high demand by a large and varied group of consumers such as an episode of ABC’s Lost or an issue of the New York Times.  Since there’s good marketing money to be made by producing content that reaches a wide audience, an impetus to increase the quality and value of content was placed on content producers.  The result is (arguably) better television programming, better magazines, and better news papers.  The consumer wins in this situation at the cost of seeing some marketing materials along the way.  Thankfully, humanity didn’t forget who the King was when the 21st century dawned on mankind and ushered with it the internet as a ubiquitous part of our lives!  Competition is so fierce for a consumer’s attention that quality content has become a baseline starting point, and not just something to separate the NBC’s from the CBS’s.  The internet can be like a full cable package:  5,000,000,000,000 channels and nothing’s on.  

Join Jeremy Kolonay and Michael Wunsch as they discuss the technical implications of user-generated content campaigns.

 LeapCast LFI University Feb 8 2008: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The last month has been rife with both speculation and confirmation of the “side projects” the geeks at Google have been focusing on for the balance of 2007. Two big announcements involved new, open source platforms for web development in two of the hottest and fastest-growing arenas in interactive advertising: social media and mobile.

We’ve included a video with WSJ reporter Amol Sharma above. Sharma does a great job of presenting, in layman’s terms, the implications of Google’s newly-announced mobile platform, Android. Android is the real-world version of the heavily rumored “gPhone.” Rather than a hardware device, Google has announced an open-source (and presumably ad-supported) mobile application platform.

Mobile advertising has been a major buzz item in interactive advertising circles for most of 2007, however, it has also mostly failed to live up to the hype surrounding it. U.S. numbers for mobile web access continue to lag far behind Asia and Europe.

While the prospect of a near-universal, open source development platform means that interactive developers have a new foothold in getting their applications onto the mobile web, it doesn’t guarantee that there will be an audience to monetize once they arrive. It also seems unlikely that an influx of new “cool mobile apps” from independent publishers and developers will significantly increase the number of Americans accessing the web via their mobile devices.

However, as is often the case, the saving grace for mobile may be more traditional media channels, most notably the television, film and music industries. If the new Android platform lowers the cost and time-frame for mobile applications enough that these industries begin releasing more highly-sought mobile-only content (such as mobisodes for extremely popular shows Heroes and Lost).

Clients and developers alike are far too familiar with software delivery that works, is on time, and within budget but doesn’t actually solve the problem that the client was trying to solve (http://www.projectcartoon.com/cartoon/2). This situation typically arises from misunderstandings that occur early on in a project through no fault of any one person or any participating organization. These misunderstandings would have been easy to correct for had they been identified early. Project teams spend countless hours communicating with each other in an attempt to have as complete a picture of a project as possible. They begin software architecture and design work now heavy with all this great information, but despite their best intentions, the damage may already be done.

Rather than jumping into all the technical details and intricacies of the project first, planning and design should begin with some good old fashioned journalism. The answers to who, what, where, when, and why will ultimately provide the answer to how.

Who (will be using the software)?
What audience is your software for? Is the software for internal users on your intranet or will it be a customer facing? More often than not, an application for internal use or business partners will be larger to write than one for external users/customers.

What (should be built)?
This question is the one where the misunderstandings typically come from. A client may ask for a fully-integrated B2C communications portlet when what they really needed was a contact form. This question is still very important because the answer to this question was derived from the answer to “Why?” It helps both sides at least start off in the same ballpark as one another.

Where (will the application/web site/software be deployed)?
This is the question that establishes the deployment environment which will dictate how the problem is solved. Answering “where” will determine the following variables:

• Where will the application be hosted?
• What languages are supported?
• What development frameworks can be used?
• What operating system?
• What application server/servers, if any?
• What database server?
• What email server?
• What web server?

When (does it need to be done)?
This answer will determine if a realistic timeline can be established or whether scope must be cut to meet primary goals. What other constraints must be worked in/around/on/under?

Why (are we doing this)?
Finally, we have reached the “y” of the journalism questions world. Without a doubt, this is the most important question! This question transcends “what are we trying to build” because it forces us to identify (in no uncertain terms!) the problem that must be solved. This is absolutely the guiding principle that must be kept in mind by all participants at all times. If things are happening that don’t directly help solve the problem, their value to the project probably needs to be assessed. It was a problem that lead the client to seek help (”People can’t currently see account information when they log in” or “Our web site doesn’t have a pricing tool that would make us competitive”) and it should be the developers’ responsibility to solve that problem. If you can’t say “the problem is solved” at the end of the project, the team likely lost direction, possibly from the very start!

Projects that are completed under budget and early can be failures if they don’t emphatically answer, “YES!” to the “is the problem solved?” question.

How?

Fortunately, we’ve been good stewards of software journalism and have all of the information now to answer this question so that it accomplishes our primary goal of solving the client’s problem. All the answers to Who?, What?, Where?, When?, and Why? provide us with the information necessary to forge ahead towards the successful completion of the project (read: problem solved!)

I recently received an invitation to beta test the new social bookmarking app RSS feedreader, Streamy, thanks to Mashable.com (thanks, Pete!) I’ve been taking it for a test drive this morning, and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. Do you like the sweet Ajax user interface of Ma.gnolia, but not the slightly girly design? Then you’ll like Streamy.

The interface is beautifully slick and clean, and it has truly excellent usability. The “Start” page is the typical social bookmarking “most popular” list, which appears to be personalized (possibly based on your expressed interests, or possibly based on the subscriptions you’ve chosen). The next navigation link takes you to your subscriptions–and this is by far the slickest and most fun to use feed-reader I’ve seen so far.

You can browse for subscriptions by most popular, by topic, or you can enter your favorite feeds manually. Of course, when I say “manually” you might be cringing, imagining yourself dealing with some clunky form page. Au contraire, mon frere. The Ajax pop-up is clean and simple, a joy to use, pretty much (unless you subscribe to a few dozen feeds–I didn’t notice a place to import your feeds from another feedreader.) After your subscriptions are all in, your subscription page lists post excerpts in date order. You’ve also got a sidebar that lists your subscriptions individually–so if you want to only look at one particular feed at a time, it’s simple to do so.

Clicking on the title of a post excerpt opens the full post in another nifty Ajax pop-up. There’s also a “launch” button if you want to launch that particular site in a new window or tab. You can comment on posts internally within Streamy, which other Streamy users who are logged in and looking at that story can read–but it doesn’t appear to post those comments outside of Streamy on the originating site.

Of course, because it’s a very web 2.0 site, you can join networks, groups, and add friends. Wouldn’t be much of a social bookmarking site without that. You also have the obligatory profile page, chat, and IM functionality. Drag ‘n Drop sharing of stories and other media is a nice interesting touch. You can even drag another user into an IM window to create an instant chat room (although the metaphorical implications of literally dragging a friend into a chat room are more than I want to contemplate at the moment. It reminds me vaguely of being dragged into a nightclub to socialize when I really wanted to get some sleep. Ah, well.)
On the whole, I think Streamy is an incredibly well-made and well-thought-out application. Kudos to the gang at Streamy for building a great tool. If you can finagle an invite to join the beta, I highly recommend it.

Our schools are using abacuses to teach math and fountain pens to teach writing. My opening sentence is a gross exaggeration but the fact is most schools are using the tools of yesterday in order to teach the workforce of tomorrow. Specifically the way we teach higher mathematics is poor because the most useful tool ever invented for doing math is being almost completely ignored, Programming.

When I was in elementary school our computer class consisted of playing Oregon Trail and typing. By the time I got to high school they did offer a computer programming class as an elective. We did the basics, printing things to the screen, using control logic and loops, a great way to introduce somebody to computer programming. I consider that class to be a success but the entire methodology used to teach me mathematics in high school a failure. An intro to computer programming class such as the one I had in high school should have really been given to elementary school students. In high school where students are learning mathematics like algebra, geometry and trigonometry there is no excuse not to have a computer as a major part of that study. Specifically by writing programs that use the skills students are learning.

When you program on any non trivial problem you exercise your abstract thinking ability, your problem solving skills and have the opportunity to put mathematics that may otherwise seem useless, to action. You learn to develop methodologies to come up to solutions to problems. Geometry and trigonometry, 2D and 3D graphics offer a play ground where abstract problems can be visualized and there can be direct interaction. Algebra and pre-calculus are used all the time in non trivial problems, the concept of functions, recursion, set theory, algorithm development, all used when programming. The most important single benefit of programming for the math student is the application of his work to a problem who’s solution can be a lot more exciting then a number on a piece of paper.

Many students are using programmable calculators in the high schools but I feel even that is insufficient. If students were writing programs on desktop computers with an actual programming language that is used for more then just molding math then they could get the sense that they are learning a skill that may have use in their every day lives. Even if they don’t intend to be programmers they may have a web site in which they can use their new found programming skills to enhance their content.

Computers answer the question that is heard throughout high school math classes, “When will we ever user this stuff in the real world?”. Students are all too often expected to take it on faith that they will need math for some magical purpose later on in life. Many of them will not, there are numerous jobs some of which pay quite well in which knowing anything but basic arithmetic is not required. Many doctors and lawyers can probably go their whole careers without using any kind of higher mathematics and we generally consider those two professions as among the more educated amongst the population. The problem is of course it is not knowable in high school what career a student may end up perusing. All too often students in higher education do not peruse a degree in the field they really desire because they are afraid of the mathematics involved. I was one of those students who asked “when will I ever use this math in real life”. I wish now that I had seen that in the future I would need mathematics to do what I love doing. I paid for that lack of fore site in college where I had to play catch-up on the math front. I am lucky that I had enough background to get me though, I wonder how many students never even tried to peruse their dreams because lack of confidence in mathematics.

* Abacuses or abaci, I choice the less used abacuses because the word is Arabic and abaci is a Latin pluralisation of an Arabic word, see here.

Marketing people are horrible. Well, not all marketing people… spammers are though. I fight on a weekly and sometimes daily basis to reduce the amount of spam that we receive through our contact forms. We block IPs, catch certain words, and do various things to reduce the spam coming through the form — it’s an ongoing battle that has no end.

You know what’s worse than spammers? The people that click on the links in spam. Those are the people that keep the spammers coming back — if no one ever responded to spam, the spammers would surely stop spamming. but people keep clicking, and buying, and falling for scams. Why on earth would someone send thousands of dollars to some guy in nigeria that they have never met? Those people apparently have too much disposable income.

So I have a new idea to combat spam. If everyone participates, we can rid spam from the world forever. Really. Here’s the idea: anytime you receive spam, and are feeling like you might click on the link and purchase something, come fill out our contact form and we’ll sell you a website, or some SEO. If you feel like you’re about to go to the bank and get a cashiers check and postmark it for Nigeria, just send it to me. I won’t mind. If we all follow this simple plan, the spammers will stop spamming, and I’ll we’ll all be happy.

And we thank you for your support.

If you’re familiar with the concept of kaizen at all, it’s probably in the context of manufacturing or other assembly-line practices, not in the context of creative work.  Kaizen is a Japanese term that, roughly translates to “continuous improvement.” However, there is a lot more implied by it than the standard Western idea of continuous improvement. There is an element of “respect for people” implied in the idea of kaizen, and three guiding principles must be in place for true kaizen: focus on results and process; big-picture, systemic thinking; and a non-judgmental, non-blaming attitude (blame-laying being considered a waste of time and energy).

As an interactive agency, we’re in a radically new industry that blends the creative with the technological. From a project management standpoint, a kaizen attitude is a great fit for process improvement, because it works well with both the very human creative elements and the very practical process and delivery elements. With each new project, we experiment, learn new and better processes, and we implement them and carry them forward into the next project. We also learn from things that didn’t work well, and eliminate those elements from the process as we go.  I’m not saying that we are formally instituting kaizen here at LeapFrog; just that the improvement process here feels, to me at least, very much like kaizen.
Often in business, instead of making small, incremental changes, you determine that you’re going to “do it right.” “Doing it right” means taking time, making preparations, setting the stage, and totally implementing a complete, fully-formed new way of doing things.

But there are a lot of problems with this approach. First, it fails to take into account the shifting, continuously moving nature of work. By insisting on completely defining both the problem and solution in detail first, a person or organization can effectively postpone making any changes …pretty much forever. Second, it fails to take into account the complex nature of change and how even a small change can have difficult-to-predict outcomes that then need to be dealt with. By trying to implement massive, all-at-once, “programs” of change, an organization is effectively tacking learning the new way, maintaining the new way (building new habits and breaking old ones), troubleshooting the new way (dealing with the inevitable “oops, didn’t think about that” items), and improving the new way simultaneously. In short, it’s a great way to set yourself up for failure.

As LeapFrog moves forward and continues to grow, we’ll need to keep improving to continue to exceed client expectations. That means improving one task at at time, one project at a time, continuously, with respect for the creative people who are part of our team and with an eye on the big picture.

Did you know that the Internet is a series of tubes? Senator Stevens thinks so. It’s how the data moves around. Though tubes. Seriously.

Yahoo is building pipes. The pipes gather and filter data. Through pipes. Seriously. Sound familiar?

Yahoo’s pipes are a bit different from tubes though. First, it’s real. Second, smart people made it (as opposed to Mr. Tubes: Senator Stevens). The idea is that there are loads of data feeds (RSS feeds) out there carrying lots of information. The “lots of information” thing is the problem — there is too much information that we need to sort through and put together in meaningful ways.

Pipes is interesting in another way as well: it has an amazing interface. Imagine a data-driven Visio. You drag a data block in, set some parameters, link it to a filter block, and before you know it you’ve tied the iTunes latest releases of your favorite band to the corresponding YouTube videos and delivered the list to your favorite news reader.

The interface is slick, but it’s definitely technical and not for the un-savvy computer user. No one has yet to find a way to make RSS feeds more accessible, so it would be hard to expect a web application that organizes that data to be simplistic.

I wonder how Yahoo’s pipes will work when Senator Stevens’ Tubes get clogged. Maybe Google will release a tubes cleaning website. I think Drainle would be a catchy name, don’t you?

Let’s talk about AJAX. Not the detergent, although it does smell good. AJAX (in the Internet world) is a technology that allows a web browser to send and receive information to the web server without making the page you’re looking at refresh. That’s really all it is. I hear you saying “But what in the world does that mean?”

The idea is that if the page you’re viewing doesn’t refresh, and completely redraw itself a couple things can be accomplished:

1. Less information is transferred from the server. Browsers do a good job of caching things like images so that they don’t have to be downloaded again, but for every image on the page, the browser still has to ask the server if it has a newer copy. That’s a lot of talking back and forth, and it takes time.
2. The interface can be more responsive. If you’re viewing a long list of items, and you’re looking at the first page, when you click the next button your browser only has to load the next set of data — not all of the formatting, and images and what-not. Clicking on something doesn’t require everything to be reloaded again.
3. Money can be saved. (This is the part you business owners will like) Because less information is transferred overall, there will be lower bandwidth costs.

The concept behind AJAX has been around for a very long time. Swapping the processing of data from the server to the client and back again has been happening in cycles since the inception of the mainframe. AJAX in the form it is today has also been around quite some time. Around 1998 I built an application that used very similar ideas to get around having the page refresh, but in the past couple of years there has been a heavy focus by the web programming community to build code that does it in a very clean and efficient way.

As time passes AJAX will mature even further, and may become the core method in the way that browsers work, rather than simply one way of creating web sites.