Think & Play
Thoughtplay is the creative team behind various popular websites and other projects. At this blog we give away bright ideas regularly, and comment on interesting trends both online and off. The thought channel is for more business-related trends, play looks at entertainment and leisure, and thoughtplay introduces our own creative ideas, as well as news about our projects.
Million dollar thoughts - for free | 280807
Quelle surprise - there's another variant of Alex Tew's infamous Million Dollar Homepage: the Million Dollar Wiki (MDW). Spend $100 to 'bag' a page which you can fill with content of your choice, rather like Squidoo, which is largely regarded as a failure since it's been over-run with spam (though is at least free). MDW guarantees your page is yours (unless you sell it on) for 15 years. Some people claim to be making small amounts of money from MDW, such as John Chow. Step back, though, and of course the only people advertising, or certainly only thos emaking any money back, are people advertising services to... people considering advertising at MDW...
This is the circular world of these get-rich-quick schemes. Generation 1: launch a get-rich-quick product. You'll make more money than... Generation 2: launch a service helping others to make the most out of the product. Anyone else - ie the majority for fall for these things, is simply spending money.
MDW is well put-together and has clearly made its young creator some bucks - good for him. But why would anyone visit such as ste over the long term, and therefore guarantee its content providers sustained traffic or income?
Categories: thought
In a mine, a few diamonds shine | 240707
It's not very well presented, and surely risks a visit from Google's trademark lawyers, but GoogleReport does offer something intriguing: a shorter, deeper set of search results. Basically it appears to mine the best results from Google, plus content at Wikipedia, when you enter a search term. Interesting idea that could benefit from improvement.
Categories: thought
Not getting things done | 090707
There's a huge wave of 'productivity' sites on the web, notably Lifehacker, Merlin Mann's 43 Folders and David Allen's Getting Things Done movement. But we rather prefer the approach of structured procrastination advocated by philosophy professor John Perry: in essence, procrastinators are often incredibly productive while putting off what they're actually supposed to be doing. In this vein, there's an early (1949) essay by Robert Benchley, and some interesting alternative productivity roundups at blog.pmarca.com, plus Richard Oliver's purposive drift project.
We only wrote this entry, of course, because there was something more important to get done.
Park here | 190307
Park at My House (UK-based) is one of those ideas that's so good and simple it barely needs explanation: a classic example of how the web brings needs and suppliers together without fuss.
Categories: thought
Big in Sweden? | 220207
Obsessive trackers of web user statistics will know this already, but Alexa has added some new traffic measures.
For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Alexa tracks the relative popularity of sites by monitoring the browsing activity of users of the Alexa toolbar. It is far from perfect, but it is still the best way of tracking the traffic to a website if you can't get hold of the actual weblogs.
The new features include showing what proportion of the Internet community visit a particular site, and what the national breakdown of visitors is. We have been surprised to learn that our Whatshouldireadnext site is (relatively) most popular in Sweden.
Categories: thought, thoughtplay
It's not so hard to hunt and peck | 210207
Is democracy better for having constraints upon it?
We're not brave enough to discuss this in political terms, but here's a smaller-scale instance of the tension between freedom and constraint. Marketing blog Below the Line recently asked Is HTML the new typing? (hat-tip to Seamus McCauley for the link), making an analogy between the transition between typing as a specialist province and typing as a general skill without which people would be disadvantaged. Popular web services such as Blogger and MySpace, although straightforward to use, expect at least a basic understanding of the markup concept.
Meanwhile, somewhat on the other side of the fence, is Jason Calacanis, who says Wikipedia keeps contributors out by what he calls 'technological obscurification', demanding familiarity with specialist MediaWiki markup. One of the comments at Calacanis.com also draws the typing analogy, reminding us of when keyboards were originally made to slow people down rather than speed them up.
We commented ourselves recently on the participation inequality of user-generated content in general, but concluded that at least people now have the option to participate, which is more than they did in the past. We'll say it again now. Markup is a simple concept to grasp, but also, we suspect, an effective gatekeeper to put off people with only an idle interest in contributing to the data seriously. It's not just geeks who know the markup concept now anyway, so what's the problem? If editing Wikipedia really was an entirely transparent process, it would be much more exposed to abuse than it is currently. Is it so bad to expect people to have a basic element of formal knowledge beforehand, much as a journalist has to know how to type?
(By the way, there's an enjoyable web comic about the history of typing you can read - it's also propaganda for the sensible-but-overlooked Dvorak keyboard system.)
Categories: thought
Are things becoming more perplexing? | 110207
The hunt for the 'The Receda Cube' is over, with the prized object being dug out of the Nothamptonshire mud last week.
The cube - an 'artefact' 'stolen' from the alternate reality game (ARG) Perplex City - has been hunted for by more than 50,000 players around the world over the last two years. Clues to the location of the cube were revealed in the solutions to problems on 256 puzzle cards, hints within the the game and real-world events and media.
What makes Perplex City interesting is the financial model adopted by Mind Candy, the company behind the game. Rather than relying upon a subscription based model, the revenue required to run the game is generated through the sale of the essential cards and to a lesser extent generic merchandise. Could this be the next big thing for gaming? Index Ventures (an investor in Skype amongst others) are sufficiently convinced to have invested $3m in Mind Candy. At Thoughtplay, we have our doubts that this type of game will really gain a mainstream profile. Even though we are inveterate puzzle solvers and games inventors, we believe that the population of fellow travellers is orders of magnitude less than the market for Facebook or YouTube. We would however be happy to be proved wrong.
Yahoo's piping hot | 080207
When Tim O'Reilly describes something as a 'milestone in the history of the internet' it's definitely worth listening. The something in question is Yahoo Pipes, a clever, visually orientated way of plumbing together data and news feeds into new ways and applying filters to them. This essentially means people can create mashups without knowing how to use code (well, kinda) - take your favourite sources of news and so on, link them together and output only the stuff you're most interested in reading.
It's a cool idea and there are already some interesting uses in the first day or two - though given that, as we've said before, the world at large is still not really hugely aware of RSS and so on, it threatens to be another gimmick that the world of Web 2.0 adores but 95% of humanity doesn't understand. The real world is where most people accidentally type a URL ('whatever that is') into a field for search terms, or vice versa, and where people read the news that Yahoo's home page gives them in the first place.
Nevertheless, it is a great idea, and we'll be watching the way people use it closely.
Categories: thought
New models for search... Not yet | 160107
There have been many attempts to come up with new angles on the search engine format, of course. Two recent ones have caught our eye. One is ChaCha, which adds the option to have a real human being assist you as a guide. Interesting idea, though it hardly seems like a revenue winner (services such as the UK's SMS-based AQA work because of people's needs when mobile [or drunk]). Also, when we tried it, the guide went totally quiet for ages, and never came up with anything; user patience is eggshell thin.
This week now sees the launch of WikiSeek, which aims to offer a search purely of Wikipedia and the sites it links to, thus theoretically maintaining a high quality. Nice idea, and maybe it'll work out - but the vast majority of WP users are going to stick with the search facility there, aren't they? WikiSeek surely needs to be integrated directly.
That's if it works, of course. We tried a search for 'Captain Scott' (this week sees the 95th anniversary of the polar explorer's famous death). Absurdly, none of the results on the first page at WikiSeek were for the Wikipedia page on the captain himself; and only the fourth result had a passing reference to him. Contrast a search on Wikipedia: straight to the correct page.
The beauty of the commons | 110107
A few months ago there was much, largely downhearted discussion about 'participation inequality' (usability guru Jakob Nielsen) on the internet, focused around a general principle that websites relying on user-generated content show a similar pattern. The rule of thumb (Nielsen again) is "90% of users are lurkers... 9% contribute from time to time... 1% of users account for most contributions". Media commentator Seamus McCauley comments for example that "Wikipedia in 2006 isn't substantially more participative than Britannica in 1911" (the latter had around 1500 contributors; two-thirds of WP is created by a third of its users).
(The same general trend is observable at our own site, What Should I Read Next?. As little as 5% of traffic comes from registered users - though they account for around a fifth of activity at the site, and of course all of the data. Among those registered users, the pattern repeats: 27% of registered users generate 82% of the content. By the way, Ross Mayfield provides a nice analysis of the 'power law of participation' [thanks, jvvw].)
While the 1911 Britannica is a work of beauty, and the expertise of its contributors more clear than that of the eager Wikipedians, it was compiled under an authoritarian philosophy. The beauty of the participative commons is that we all have the choice. If only a small minority actually contribute, that's the way people clearly like it: more people want to consume than provide. We have only ourselves to blame if we don't like it - and isn't that better than railing at an authority - whether an encyclopaedia or newspaper editor, or indeed a dictatorial government - who we have little or no control over?
Categories: play, thought, thoughtplay
Can Apple do it again? | 090107
Steve Jobs has just announced the new iPhone from Apple - a video iPod with a wide touch screen, only one button, that's also a mobile phone and internet device. It looks very impressive, and possibly the revolution this market needs - in his keynote address at Macworld, Jobs made a big deal of how 'smart phone' keyboards are a sticking point. If they've genuinely beaten the fiddliness of phones, it's exciting stuff. (Though not available until June in the US and the autumn in Europe...)
Free to good homes - a list of gift economies | 030107
At Thoughtplay we're fascinated by gift economies as well as commercial ones. Here's a quick roundup of websites based around the idea of free exchange of goods, services or just friendly communication where no money changes hands:
- books - Book Crossing
- books,music,games,films - chanceXchange
- any goods - Freecycle (local groups worldwide)
- skills and services - the LETS scheme (UK) (see here for links to similar schemes in other countries)
- postcards - Postcrossing (send to and receive from strangers)
- digital text/images/audio/video - Wikimedia Commons and Creative Commons
In broader terms, blogging, geocaching and of course Wikipedia are all gift economies too.
Adapt, plan, info-gather | 191206
News via The Register is that Google has axed its Search API (though an AJAX API remains available, and existing accounts have not been removed).
( What's an API? )
Now, Google's Search API has been criticized, and in any case it imposed a daily limit of 1000 calls - making it pretty useless for anything that might attract a lot of traffic. But what this withdrawal really highlights is the danger of relying on a API unless you have other ways of gathering data. APIs and 'mashups' form a big part of the 'Web 2.0' explosion, but they're always vulnerable to the whim of the data providers. The moral is: trust no one, build your own data, and plan to be adaptable.
Categories: thought
Can the music industry learn from goats? | 161206
Jonathan Rosenberg's webcomic, Goats, recently celebrated its 2000th edition. Rosenberg is to congratulated, not only for the longevity, originality and humour of his comic, but for the fact that he has been able to effectively monetize his creation - since April 2006 he has been able to support himself solely from the proceeds of advertising, book and T-shirt sales generated by the site. Goats is not unique in this respect - John Allison has been making a living from Scarygoround (the best and most popular of the UK webcomics) for several years now.
What is significant about a couple of artists earning a few thousand dollars a year from their websites? ( more on how this relates to the music industry )
Coldplay, the biggest band in the world in 2005 (by sales) consistently trails Scarygoround in online popularity stakes. Of course if you could get all of their tracks for free from the site, this situation would change significantly, but it would be a brave (and legally tortuous) step to take.
At Thoughtplay we think that there might be another alternative, but we'll talk about that in a future blog post.
Categories: thought
Alex is smart, his advertisers less so | 101206
Last year's internet success story, MillionDollarHomePage spawned a thousand imitators, but none of the truly innovated the original concept. Until now. Pixelotto takes the same essential principle of MDHP - there are 1 million pixels for sale on the site which advertisers can buy in blocks of 10x10 - but adds a significant twist: this time the pixels cost $2 a piece, as opposed to $1. This might not seem like much of an innovation, but the rationale for increasing the charge is. Rather than all of the cash going into the pocket of the site owner, 50% of the revenue generated by the site will be won by one of its visitors, with an additional 5% going to a charity of the user’s choice. In theory therefore some lucky person will walk away with $1m of their own.
The prize is not only a means of driving traffic to the site, it is also generating click-throughs to the advertisers. To be eligible for the prize you have to register on the site (with some well-thought-out steps to prevent multiple applications from the same person) and thereafter you receive an entry into the prize draw every time you click on an ad on the site (with a limit of 10 times a day). Once you have clicked on an ad it is greened out, so you have to click on different advertisers each time.
All very clever, and who came up with the idea? Alex Tew, the creator of the original MDHP. To date he has sold around $260,000 worth of pixels and his Alexa rating has started exceptionally well.
So, a winner for Alex, his users and his advertisers? Well perhaps not the last of three. If you do advertise on Pixelotto there is no doubt that your site will receive tens of thousands of click-throughs. The problem is that these are going to be users visiting the site to quickly click through their ten allotted entries of the day - the odds of them being genuinely interested in the product/service being offered is slim. This is compounded by the fact that many of the advertisers are simply linking through to their regular home page. A visitor who glances at your site for a couple of seconds at best needs to see something other than a detailed homepage like Justsloggi - a bespoke landing page with a clear message would be much more appropriate. Lastminute.com attempts this with a dedicated Pixelotto prize draw, but this is hampered by the fact it is contained within the regular site's frameset.
So is it worth advertising on Pixelotto? Perhaps, but only if you can get your landing page right.
Categories: thought
A business pick-me-up | 281106
Celebrated marketing guru Seth Godin is offering his guide for start-up business, The Bootstrapper's Bible for free via ChangeThis for a limited period, until the end of '06.
Categories: thought
RSS: read all about it | 271106
We're keen on RSS feeds at Thoughtplay - and we have our own feed of course (if you're an existing reader, please note the link has changed to enable us to track usage with FeedBurner - the old one still works, but it would be great if you can spare a moment to update it!).
Mainstream awareness of RSS though is disappointingly low (though significant numbers of people get newsfeeds through services such as a Google Personalised without knowing RSS lurks behind it). Interesting services that can help mediate it to people used to older media include Zookoda's RSS to email service, the new FeedCycle which provides preset serialised information feeds (get travel stories, for example, or old Sherlock Holmes tales in regular episodes, regardless of when you subscribe) and the worthy but not-quite-right 'glossy RSS' of Idiomag. We've got some cool RSS ideas of our own - but for another time!
Modern manifestos | 211106
We'd like to recommend ChangeThis - a collection of modern manifestos largely in PDF form. In the collection you'll find Chris Anderson's original article about the long tail of product sales, and a sequel, Hugh MacLeod's encouraging essay on 'how to be creative', and much more. Manifestos are disseminated with Creative Commons licences to encourage the free spread of ideas. Inspiring for business and life alike.
Alternatives ways of analysing web traffic | 071106
One of the perennial problems with web-based businesses is assessing traffic in context. Everyone has their own server logs, but understandably no-one wants to share them. At the moment, most people turn to Alexa or perhaps Ranking.com. But they're limited, and Alexa relies on its Toolbar - downloaded by a self-selecting group, who are all PC users.
These aren't perfect either, but here are two interesting alternatives:
- Socialmeter - this polls popular social bookmarking sites, plus Google and Yahoo, to get a raw number of the number of times people have linked to your site
- Urlfan is a neat idea, too: it analyses thousands of RSS feeds looking for links inside them. Clearly a bit uneven, but a good and growing source.
Categories: thought
Automated job candidate analysis | 061106
Here's a clever if slightly alarming idea: automated CV/resume sorting using Bayesian filtering (try it out here for IT-based jobs).
Categories: thought
The tragicomedy of the commons | 041106
The UK's Institute for Public Policy Research has published a report on copyright policy (see Ars Technica for a good summary).
In brief, it says there are four legislative models for intellectual property available, and encouragingly advocates the third:
- all knowledge is private property (US)
- knowledge is primarily private property, but some has public ownership (UK at present)
- knowledge is public property first, and secondarily a private asset (eg academic research papers)
- knowledge should be entirely a public resource (eg open source software)
Whether the mapping community would agree with this analysis is moot: the US offers its mapping data to the public domain, whereas the Ordnance Survey in the UK is notoriously litigious, and the Royal Mail overprotective of its postcode data.
Projects such as OpenStreetMap and the New Popular Edition Maps are thankfully trying to liberate cartography here too.
Bringing the long tail to retail | 021106
Here at Thoughtplay we've been watching the development of 'electronic ink' products such as the Sony Reader with great interest. But there's something else we've longed for, and now it's here: a book printer small enough to fit in a store. This is great, long tail stuff. It could give small independent bookshops a new lease of life - though the chains will probably beat them to it.
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