Social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook are giving people the power to 'spread' content that they like and that they think their friends and followers will like.
Because of the 140 character constraint, links to content invariably are fed into url shortening solutions. There are over 100 such solutions online right now.

URL shorteners are very simple, they take a url such as:

http://inside.nike.com/blogs/nikefootball-en_GB/2009/05/20/razor-sharp
and shorten it to become something like this:
http://nike.com/u/2/a (this doesn't work by the way)

The benefits are huge:

It enables you to take your brand into these areas (e.g. http://nike.com/ and not http://tinyurl.com/) – This is free advertising.
It increases trust and click-through rates. e.g. You know that clicking on it will take you to something to do with nike.
It enables you to track where and how people are finding your content by ensuring you're adding the necessary meta data and tracking info to the links you are shortening.

One way to try this out in a cost effective way is by using http://awe.sm. For $99 a year you get 10,000 unique urls a month, all tracked by Google Analytics and customisable by you.

Posted via email from rickwilliams’s posterous

Schulze&Webb created this brilliant visual as a solution to improving the way in which we use maps.

Then they did this:

Credit where it’s due – How they built this is incredible!

Posted via web

Tourality is a new type of game for your mobile phone that combines sporty outdoor activity with virtual gaming experience.

In contrast to normal sport simulations, you will face the real challenge of reaching geographically defined spots in reality as fast as possible and before your opponents.

Posted via web from rickwilliams’s posterous

For the winter season 2008-9, Tinker.it! decided to put its office window to good use and build an interactive display. Based on an original concept by John Nussey, Jon Hewitt & Andras Szalai, we decided to build an RFID-enabled snowflake generator.

Placed in our London office, alongside a busy corridor, passer-bys are invited to use their Oystercard to discover what kind of snowflake they are. As they move past the windows, the snowfall in the background is gently swayed by their movement, and the last person’s snowflake is in the foreground.

]]> http://www.pixelpod.co.uk/blog/2009/05/13/what-kind-of-snowflake-are-you/feed/ 0 http://www.pixelpod.co.uk/blog/2009/05/11/spinning-vinyl-iphone-app/ http://www.pixelpod.co.uk/blog/2009/05/11/spinning-vinyl-iphone-app/#comments Mon, 11 May 2009 17:31:07 +0000 Rick http://www.pixelpod.co.uk/blog/2009/05/11/spinning-vinyl-iphone-app/

Posted via web from rickwilliams’s posterous

Posted via web from rickwilliams’s posterous

Dr. Fogg is the Head of Captology at Harvard University and ran the 1st Facebook course at Stanford in 2007. He’s written a couple of books. The one I’ve read is Mobile Captology.

Captology is the study of ‘persuasive technology’ – motivational avatars can be as impactful as video games at enticing you to keep playing.

One facet of social media is the gaming aspect. People are playing online social games, they’re incredibly popular (particularly on Facebook & the iPhone). One of the reasons for this is because they can’t offer the graphics of console games so have to work harder with what they have.

‘Play’ is an integral part of online digital engagement and for finding content online.

Tristan Ferne is a blogger I’ve followed for many years. He’s an exceptional Technologist and his latest work involves the work of Louis Von Ahn and Games With A Purpose (GWAP) I can’t wait to see what Tristan and his team have been playing around with.

Simply awesome work, really emphasising ease of use. Genius.

We’re on the cusp of a sea change in the way we interact with the Internet. More and more often the problems I’m asked to solve aren’t concerned with an experience in which you’re in front of your computer screen. It involves a store front or a mobile or an outdoor space or a physical object…

Timo Arnall is a designer working with interactive products and media. He runs a design research project that looks at emerging technologies at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Recently he gave the following presentation:

The web in the world:

Timo Arnall has a couple of blogs with some equally interesting insights:

ElasticSpace – http://www.elasticspace.com
Nearfield – http://www.nearfield.org/

Thanks Timo for making this available.