I Want You To Want Me / by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar
3 comments April 18th, 2008
Archive for April, 2008
SAPO.cv
Hoje é um dia importante aqui pelo SAPO!
É que o SAPO ficou um bocadinho mais global! Que neste caso é mais ou menos o mesmo que dizer que o SAPO já não é só .PT mas também .CV:
O SAPO.cv é um projecto marcante aqui pelo SAPO não por ser o primeiro SAPO fora de Portugal mas por todo o impacto que teve na forma como se desenvolvem os serviços SAPO. Foi necessário pensar em tanta coisa! Desde de as limitações técnicas próprias de uma sociedade insular ao simples facto de que diferentes culturas correspondem diferentes necessidades e formas de ver o mundo, pelo que uma simples cópia do SAPO não iria provavelmente ser suficiente 
Custou mas está aí! E até vem bem preparado, ora confirmem só:
- Notícias.cv -> http://noticias.sapo.cv/
- Blogs.cv -> http://blogs.sapo.cv/
- Fotos.cv -> http://fotos.sapo.cv/
- Mail.cv -> http://mail.sapo.cv/
- Videos.cv -> http://videos.sapo.cv/
- …
UPDATE: O Celso escreveu um post com (quase) todos os detalhes técnicos envolvidos neste projecto! Vale a pena ler…
4 comments April 15th, 2008
Kamen solution to World’s water problems?
Dean Kamen, to me one of the most brilliant contemporany inventors of our time (know segway? AutoSyringe’s?, Insulin Pumps? and so much more…) seems to have come up with something extraordinary that might as well solve a lot of today’s health problems, have a look at his demo on the Colbert Report for the Water Purifying machine:
you can read a bit more about it at the US patent office.
Add comment April 15th, 2008
We used to call them users
Yesterday I’ve assisted to the Conversas Unicer (an informal meeting organized and sponsored by Unicer a major beverage player in Portugal) where Bruno Giussani was the main speaker and some very well knowned portuguese bloggers (Maria João Nogueira, António Granado, Luís Paixão Martins, Eduardo Correia, Paulo Ferreira and Paulo Querido) joined in in yesterday’s conversation.
The starting point “We used to call them users” set the motto for a great presentation. The title was a clear reference to the ‘OLD’ web, where people’s role weren’t anything more than mere spectators of the whole business. The web we live in today if far different, since much of it is actually based in Action, web2.0 brought in personalization and customization, users stood up and embraced the role of actors! Which for companies actually meant more work or at least they couldn’t just count on users eating all the PR jargon they meant them to take. Users got a voice!
According to Bruno, users can be more or less involved along time with a company or product, but they tend to follow a specific path of engagement:
- witnessing
- sharing
- conversation
- collaboration
- action
At first, we’re all mere spectators, witnessing whatever happens around us. Nothing new here, or by that matters with the any of the following states. The only difference is that with the advent of web, the power and time by which this all process happens is amazingly fast, meaning I can progress from the point where I’ve witnessed something to the point where I decide to engage some action about it in a fraction of the time it used to happen.
For companies this brought in the need for them to engage users in all this different mind settings. And basically you have two options about it: retreat or engage the conversation. Bruno and the portuguese bloggers that joint the conversation seem to have an agreement that if you’re 100% into it, it’s probably better not to jump into blogging at all, since the side effects of poor communication (blogging in this case) can be as worst as traditional communication.
On the other side, for the companies that actually engage the blogging as a communication process, there are clear advantages. Users will always talk about a company products, so if a company does provide their customers with a place for open discussion about their products, they somehow control or at least have an active part in that discussion. Anyone barely involved in PR knows how much better that is
Plus, and this was something I haven’t heard during the general conversation, people bond with brands, it’s a natural happening, the difference this days to me is that people don’t expect to be mass-branded any more, so the closer they feel to a brand, the more personal the experience gets… and experience is everything in there days.
I personally thing that this theme is amazingly important in the Portuguese context, and I’m not complaining as usual to the fact that Portuguese companies tend to be 2/3 years far behind the rest of Europe/World! But by seeing so many companies PR’s in that room and see them taking part of the discussion and acknowledging the importance of the blogs in their communication as a way to increase their users satisfaction and have closer control how their brands are interpreted by their customers it’s already clear the importance blogs will have in the future or traditional public relations.
One last note, for the Unicer team who organized this all event, congratulations to them all, I’m truly inspired and admired with the concept.
UPDATE: the full video (PT) is now available:
1 comment April 11th, 2008
RFH: Playful Interactions
I’ve been working on a presentation about a special aspect of interface design: the need for PLAY! Boring interfaces don’t go far! And we as Humans have this inner desire for play so the more engaging a service/site is the better especially on the web where our attention span is so scarce!
Although the hard core of the presentation content is done (I’ve made a demo of it at Tecnonov last Saturday), and I’ll be posting it online in a couple of days, but the thing is that I would love to enrich it with a lot of good and bad examples of interface design! My Request for Help here is precisely for that, I would love to hear from your most loved or hated interface designs that you have to work everyday! Please drop me an email with a screenshot and why you actually that particular ’strong’ feeling about it! I promise to give full acknowledge of each submission if it actually makes it to final presentation!
Email: pedro (.) custodio (at) gmail (.) com
2 comments April 8th, 2008