The Power of Individual Targeting

“The power of individual targeting—the technology will be so good it will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored for them.”

- Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, is a believer in targeted advertising because, simply, he’s a believer in targeted everything.

Via The Wall Street Journal

Initial thoughts on 'Discipline app'

I recently came across MacFreedom via @Malbonnington. A brilliant concept that allows you to escape the online distractions for certain period of time. When needing to concentrate with a busy workload, temporarily zoning out of Twitter, email, casual browsing and instant messaging is something that appeals to me, but when working in digital I often need access to the internet.

I starting playing about with other options. I started by using a basic timer; 'Apimac Timer' and manually allocated my time to tasks. Setting one to one-and-a-half hour work periods I would then allow 5-10 minutes for checking emails and Twitter (favouriting/instapapering any Tweets I wanted to read later.)

This worked relatively well, but I found myself forgetting to restart the timer, it became very matter-a-fact that it was running in the background. I decided to try another approach, this time using iCal.

Using iCals reoccurring event functionality I set up alerts for specific points in the day when I would allow myself breaks in concentration to browse, respond to emails etc. This works pretty well. You have to be fairly disciplined but I'm sure it must increase productivity - I might, in the future try to record it in someway much like how Robin Barooah recorded the effects of coffee on productivity.

Although iCal does work, it's a bit of a pain to update, and it doesn't allow you to run a single timer. I decided to start designing an alternative.

I want the app to do a number of things:

  • Run a constant timer of the task in hand
  • Alert me when the time period has finished and what is starting next.
  • Allow me to schedule multiple timers throughout the day, and a way of repeating these timers throughout the week, if the user wanted.

An item on the wishlist would be the ability to control certain apps connection to the internet, like MacFreedom but with far more control. 

   
Click here to download:
Initial_thoughts_on_Discipline.zip (505 KB)

From my initial sketches I'm moving down a 'timeline' style route. Much like iMovie, the user could drop task items onto the timeline, the user could then move, extent and contract them.

I should be posting the rough designs of the 'Discipline app' here soon.

Happy again

Last night I read a bunch of blog/forum posts about the iPhone 4 and its problems with the screens cracking. It seemed like I only had a few options: Go to the Apple Store and pay $199 for the repairs; buy a digitiser online and go through the painful process of replacing the screen myself; or go to the Apple Store and beg.

I decided to try my luck at begging... apparently I'm pretty good at it.

Thanks to Jon (a Manager @ Apple's Regents Street Store) for sorting a loyal Apple customer out with an iPhone replacement.

1 smashed iPhone

Apparently it doesn't take much to shatter helicopter glass, just a short drop off a sofa arm should do it.

A few of my weeks favourite reads

.Net plug-ins Site of the Month

I'm pleased to announce that Climb Mount Asgard has been selected for .Net's first 'plug-ins Site of the Month' award. Grab a copy if you're out and about.

Thanks to Paul Wyatt for selecting the site and for the quote.

Mark Campion & Adam Collins

A couple of good mates needed a site putting together double time... and here it is campioncollins.co.uk

A Spotify Journey

Today I thought I'd take a Spotify Journey.

It's a lot like a YouTube journey, where you watch a video, click on a link to a video it recommends for you, watch that video, click on the next video and so on until you've realised you've spent way too long on the 'Tube and wonder how the heck you got there.

I started with some Dave Matthews Band and selected one of the related artists, played one of their tracks, selected one of their related artists and so on. Pretty easy way of choosing if you can't think of what to play.

One problem, apparently the Kings of Leon are related to every other artist in the world, and a couple of times I almost backed my self into some sticky situations, Madonna, Lady Gaga, you know what I mean.

View my SpotifyJourney here

Crab Creative featured in Computer Arts

If your near a newsagents anytime this week, pop in and grab a copy of the July edition of Computer Arts. Crab are featured in the Brief Encounters section.

   
Click here to download:
Crab_Creative_featured_in_Comp.zip (269 KB)

Oil Spill Firefox Plugin

Creative agency Jess3 has developed a Firefox plugin that aims to black out all mentions of BP (British Petroleum) across the web. As one popular tweet reads, “Want BP to [blank] up your browser like they’ve [blank] up the Gulf? Install the Oil Spill Firefox plugin from @jess3.”

The Black Oil Firefox plugin replaces all mentions (case insensitive) of BP and accompanying terms like BP oil, BP gas, BP worldwide, and so on, with blacked out letters and dripping oil drops.

Images that contain meta data matching the terms are also blacked out.

You can see what the plugin looks like when doing a Google search for “BP”