Shake Gently - advertising technology blog

Could Twitter be a platform for mobile payments?

A great article today from Silicon Alley Insider called How Twitter Could Be Worth A Billion In A Year [via Mediapost]

I’m a huge fan of Twitter, and I agree that Twitter has potential for being a platform for mobile payments.

Not sure what Twitter is?

You can check out my Twitter presentation or create a Twitter account and follow me on Twitter to learn more. I also have my interactions in the twitterverse posted to my blog and Facebook page.

Below is the summary from Mediapost:

Twitter is undoubtedly the hottest Web property with no revenue model. Silicon Alley Insider’s Nate Westheimer suggests that the microblogging service move into the peer-to-peer mobile payments space, where “no one has much of a head start.”

So what are P2P mobile payments? Think PayPal for your phone. What does this have to do with Twitter? At first glance, not much, really, except for the fact that Twitter is widely used on mobile phones. As Westheimer says, “Twitter is far from being a ubiquitous mobile platform, but they have more penetration and usage than any other mobile service and their current user base is the same important group of technology early adopters that PayPal enjoyed when it convinced the world that you could send money to an email address.”

Forget for a moment that the Twitter infrastructure often fails, and consider the implications of a carrier-independent mobile messaging system. This is effectively what Twitter could achieve when the re-architecting “is all said and done,” making it a powerful alternative to social and mobile SMS text messages. As more and more people become familiar with the Twitter language, the microblogging service could easily become the de facto platform for mobile payments. Imagine simply sending a message like “p innonate $5″ to pay for a beer at a bar?

Technorati Tags: Twitter, mobile, payment, sms

Posted in freshish thinking, mobile, technology, twitter | 2 Comments »

Lowe’s Paint Estimator: Lacking Validation and QA

We are in the process of selling our existing house and buying a new house.

As part of that, we have been getting our current house ready to sell and looking at paint colors for the new house. As part of the moving process, I have been making almost daily trips to Lowe’s and Home Depot.

This evening, I thought I would check out some of the tools that Lowe’s offers: specifically the paint estimator.

Since I don’t have any paint yet, I thought I would use their paint estimator tool to see about how much paint that I would need.

To my surprise, I got the following results:

This job requires Infinity gallons of primer (estimated labor: 0.9 hours) and Infinity gallons of finish (estimated labor: 1.4 hours).

For the moldings, even worse than infinity is NaN:

This job requires NaN gallons of primer and NaN gallons of finish; estimated labor: 1.52 hours.

For the 99.9% of the people that aren’t web developers, NaN stands for Not a Number.

So, in reality, the system should have never allowed me to submit the input to be calculated, since required fields were missing. What should have happened is that I should have been presented with an error message stating that required data was missing and must be added before continuing.

Even if invalid data would have made its way into the calculator, it should have been smart enough to return an error to the site and not display a bogus response

I can’t be too harsh on Lowe’s, since the paint calculator is provided by a 3rd party (Construction Calculators provided by AccurateEstimates.com), but they still should have made sure that it worked right.

Technorati Tags: paint, Lowe’s, tools, construction, remodeling, error,

Posted in technology | No Comments »

Mobile Banner Ads Have Same Brand Recall As TV Spots

MediaPost had a great article today about mobile banner ads.

“On average, small banner ads on mobile devices produce the same level of brand recall as the typical 30-second TV spot.”

“The banner ads work really well, and that’s where you have the greatest reach,” Marshall said, adding that she “was blown away” by IAG data showing they were on par with TV spots in terms of brand recall. (IAG used the same method for measuring brand recall that it does with TV ads.) Mobile banner ads also produce click-through rates that are “exponentially higher than online” banner ads, where CTR has fallen to about 0.3%; mobile banners produce an overall click-through rate of 2%, even “slightly higher for entertainment brands.” [via]

Technorati Tags: mobile, banner, ads, TV, recall, advertising, research

Posted in advertising, mobile, search | 1 Comment »

Zappos gets Twitter

Zappos was one of the companies that I mentioned in my Twitter presentation yesterday.

Today, Kelly Mooney posted a great article about Zappos and Twitter: What is Zappos doing.

Technorati Tags: Zappos, Twitter

Posted in advertising, technology, twitter | No Comments »

Twitter 101: an overview of Twitter, tools and brand strategy

I gave a presentation on Twitter today at Barkley and I had several requests to share the information so I thought the easiest way would be to post it on my blog.

As you might have noticed, my blogging has trailed off recently as I’ve been spending more time with Twitter and other emerging and social media (specifically mobile which I presented on several times in April).

Twitter is one of the shiny toys in the web 2.0 toolbox that is picking up momentum, and one that I believe is worth discussing (and educating those in the dark). I attempted to compile some of the recent blog posts, videos and articles on Twitter.

You can check out my Twitter profile at http://twitter.com/dustinj

Thanks everyone in the Twitterverse for the great content. I referenced the sources in the presentation.

Check it out below and please post comments / feedback.

| View | Upload your own | download PDF

Technorati Tags: Twitter, socialmedia, community, web2.0, Barkley

Posted in Barkley, advertising, freshish thinking, research, social, technology, twitter | 1 Comment »

Drummers Are Natural Intellectuals

via Guy Kawasaki on Twitter

New research suggests that as well as possessing extraordinary musical talent, drummers may also be natural intellectuals. By asking volunteers to keep time with a drumstick prior to taking an intelligence test, scientists found those with the best rhythm scored the highest in mental assessments, as there is a strong link between intelligence, good timing and problem-solving. So despite the wealth of musicians’ drummer jokes out there, it seems drummers are definitely playing all the right notes when it comes to brain power. [source]

Did I mention I was a drummer and got a perfect score at a competition in high school with an original drum set solo piece I wrote? I sold all of my equipment a few years ago, but once we have more space, I’m sure I’ll get back into it.

Technorati Tags: drummer, drum, intelligent, intellect, music, zildjian, tama, yamaha

Posted in life, music, research | 7 Comments »

Got Tatts? A few nerd tattoos

I think we have all seen a wide variety of tattoos. Working at an ad agency, I see all kinds of cool tattoos. As I was catching up on my RSS feeds from Neatorama, I stumbled upon an interesting programmer tattoo. For those not familiar with HTML, feel free to read up on it at Wikipedia or ask one of your programmer friends to explain it.

[via]

Another interesting one is where a guy had his initials in binary tattooed on his arm:

[via]

Technorati Tags: tattoo, html, nerd, binary

Posted in creative | 2 Comments »

Don’t be a fool: some classics

You don’t have to search very far to find all kinds of office pranks on the internet, from people filling whole rooms to the ceiling with styrofoam peanuts to all kinds of craziness, but I thought I would share a few of the standards.

One of the best was a joke a few years back that was played on a co-worker, whereby he thought he won tickets to the final four, complete with a contest website with a domain registered to what appeared to be a legit organization, email and a notification phone call from the prize fulfillment organization. Nicely done indeed.

Office Prank: Tin Foil

How To Play the Aluminum Foil Prank on a Coworker

Office Prank: Balloons

How To Play the Buried Cubicle Prank on a Coworker

And, from our office last year (post April Fools’ day):
3800 post-it notes, 15 people and 2 hours later..

Technorati Tags: office prank, April Fools’ Day, joke

Posted in freshish thinking, life | 3 Comments »

The Very Short List: Cycling Safety

One of the lists that I subscribed to recently is called the Very Short List.

Very Short List (VSL) is a free, daily e-mail that points to excellent new (and sometimes vintage) entertainment and media that haven’t been hyped to within an inch of their lives. Each weekday, we tell our subscribers about a single recommended gem from among the vast pile of feature films and documentaries (in theatres and on DVD), television shows, novels, nonfiction books, magazine articles, Websites and services, CDs, radio programs, and more. The focus is on products that really deserve attention but haven’t already been subject to giant media pile-ons.

The topic today was Cycling Awareness, called Seeing is Believing. For those that cycle and have had run-ins with motor vehicles, you have a probably appreciate this PSA. Andy and IV, this one’s for you.

It’s easy to miss what’s right in front of you if you’re paying attention to something else. This is usually funny when it comes to slapstick comedy (we’re looking at you, banana peel) but can be seriously tragic when the person who’s distracted is driving. “Test Your Awareness,” a new PSA from Transport for London’s campaign for cycling safety, turns the fact that we can all miss seeing the obvious into a clever perception test that could double as an absurdist comedy–art happening.

The spot asks you to count the number of passes a group of basketball players makes to one another, but pay close attention: It’s harder than it sounds. We can’t tell you any more, but if you’re like us, you’ll probably have to watch it twice.

Technorati Tags: Very Short List, VSL, cycling, awareness, safety, PSA

Posted in cycling, freshish thinking | 2 Comments »

To Lead, You Have to Follow: 8 Traits of Effective IT Leaders

I like lists.

I stumbled upon a great list of called To Lead, You Have to Follow: 8 Traits of Effective IT Leaders

1. Leadership means focusing on the needs of others, not yourself
2. Leadership comes from your actions, not your title
3. Leadership makes you accountable, even if it’s not your fault
4. Leadership is not a 9-to-5 activity
5. Leadership takes trust from your followers
6. Leaders get their best ideas from their team
7. Leadership thrives on diversity
8. Leadership comes from continuous communication

You can click through for the full details, including examples.

Although the article uses IT examples, it can be applied to pretty much any leadership position.

Technorati Tags: leadership, IT, management

Posted in business, technology | No Comments »