DaxThink: Digital life: July 2009

21 Jul 2009

4 of the best sites to take a break with

Sometimes we all need a little break from work, here are 4 amazing sites that colleagues just chared with me:

AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com
See above!

ThisIsWhyYoureFat.com
Inspired!

FMyLife.coom
"Today, after my girlfriend of 2 years left me for another guy, I got stuck in an elevator for 3 hours. With both of them. FML

"Today, I went on a date with a girl. She drove while texting someone then stopped at a house and told me to wait in the car. She left her phone so I looked at the last text and it says "I'm here for the quicky". Our "date" was a decoy to throw her mom off so she could have sex with another guy. FML"

And my favourite site of the day...

TextsFromLastNight.com
"DUDE. I'm missing my big toenail. My bed has blood all over it. WHAT DID WE DO LAST NIGHT?"

"I don't know, but I chipped my tooth and I'm wearing different underwear."

"Dude someone changed all the contacts in my phone to I Like Eggs"

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12 Jul 2009

Michael Jackson Thriller (mini) flash mob

I was out and about being a tourist this weekend in San Francisco when I caught this (mini) flash mob at the cable car turnaround doing a tribute to Michael Jackson - wicked!

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8 Jul 2009

39% of the way to the moon

I use a service called Dopplr to track my journies and share them with friends and colleagues, the idea being that my travels might overlap with those folks and we can make contact.

In 18 months this has never happened!

However, what is very cool is the bi-annual personal travel report that they send you showing where you have been and how long for.

My headlines for the first half of 2009 are:

100 days at home / 81 days on the road
16 trips, most common being South Africa
Travelled 39% of the distance to the moon!

I apparently didn't switch on the carbon feature and so it wasn't calculated, but I am guessing it's the size of a Yeti! Sorry environment.

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6 Jul 2009

A very bad day at Phorm HQ as BT cancel trials

For a technology company days don't get much worse than those Monday's where your main route to market decides not to work with you any more! BT (British Telecom) has decided not to continue its work with Phorm, thus starving Phorm of its major route to the UK market.

I have been very vocal about Phorm, an ad network still to get up and running, but one that showed so much promise. The basic idea behind their technology is to monitor anonymous Internet packet traffic at the ISP level giving them sight of all your behaviour, thus being able to serve you the most relevant ads.

Targeting exists within advertising whether consumers know it or not, and Phorm actually stores less data than a regular ad-server.

However, amongst what I personally think is a catalogue of errors, Phorm did not address the balance between consumer reward (for opting in) against its own revenue potential. Consumers are smart and know a bad deal when they see it - downloading some free anti-virus/firewall type stuff is not a good deal in exchange for the millions Phorm will make from their own behaviours.

In the NY Times article that reported the news, BT claim they are not doing this because of privacy, but instead it has become a lower priority.

Whichever one of these you believe it comes down to that fact that BT don't think the potential return from this model is worth all the hassle, which may or may not include dealing with angry consumer groups.

The person who sent me the article originally used the subject line of "wah wah, buh bye phorm" and I wonder if this is such a major blow that they will indeed disappear. A 40% stock reduction signifies that they will have to evolve their story and fast in order to survive the media targeting world.

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1 Jul 2009