Ben Barren - Confessions of a Mad Man

Tag Archives: ferrari

The Real_Time_Web vs The_Longitudinal_One.

Posted by Ben Barren on July 6, 2009 – 5:30 pm

Filed under Consumer_Internet, Everyday_Supercars, Sneaker_Freakers, Social Shopping

Nice res on the new iPhone 3GS which snapped well my shiny TK Society kix which pre-purchase I happily did a realtime search for the best price (which i found deeply embedded) via Supratalk.com forums : When it comes to etail purchases listed price is only the start - u need to determine whether coupons can be used to drive price down. So some forum digging which directed me to retailmenot.com coupon for karmaloop.com 20% off the $136USD retail - which compared very nice thankuverymuch to the $280AUD retail over at Laced (who I commend for getting kick in unlike most other slack Aussie retailers) Even with expensive UPS shipping when u buy from O/S (not that I complain about security of guaranteed delivery in under 10 days to Mornington Peninsula from Boston) I saved $100USD+/$130Aussie_Dollars thx2 some realtime search, find + transact.

Some Background on the Purchase + how Traditional PageRank Relevance Web Searching is being overtaken by Using the Real Time Web, and even though using Internet Word of Mouth, Twitter Search and Forums, it’s not like any One Player - whether it be Facebook or Twitter be close to Stitching up the Real Time Web: It was a late shift to the TK Society’s in Patent Grey by Supra : I’d been staking out the Italian Ferrari nephew and currently discounted by 35% due to end of season Common Projects Safaris + Tournament Mid Velcros, but then I was pinged that the TKs had hit the market : It wasn’t google or twitter that alert me but a word of mouth alert on these kix - thxU - via a Street Styling Sighting over on Imelda.com.au in Sydney….. and I immediately thought REPREZENT MELBOURNE IN THE HOuSE> W3LL MORNINGTON PENINSULA STYLINGZ - I HAD 2COP theZ3 KiX!) sorry I just genY shouted. It must be that twitter thing, turns u into a 140 character spambot. Or maybe as Krunch Mogul says it creates non-anonymous circling death squadz AKA “Shangri-La for mob justice enthusiasts”.

So.. as The TK’s (Terry Kennedy the skater himself above, not bad having such a fine kick named after u and bringing in the benjamins) were suddenly released after a year or so of teaser pics, tweets and blog posts by the Supra team (who r experts at social media marketing - they r killing nike with prob 1/100th of the sneaker marketing budget) over at Factory 413. I’m glad I had Timing + Patience thx2 having the inside info via Real Time Social Media Word of Mouth… as it would have been easier but ultimately not what I wanted if I’d picked up one of the first two releases of the TK Society was Purple Suede + Perforated Black with Red Sole.

So when the wear with everything Patent grey were the 3rd Colourway made public - after confirming they werent available downunder via a landline ringaround (again Google nor the Yellow Page were any use to me here) - I was quickly (G_blogsearch + .com) Googling to find the best in the know forum - which ended up being SupraTalk.com Forums - that then put me onto the best price conversion being via Karmaloop.com combined with retailmenot.com 20% off coupon.

Air Yeezy by Kanye which were meant to retail at $300USD-ish but quickly were resold at 2-3 times average that were an extreme example of not just Real Time Web technologies, but how that spills onto the street - Consumers camping out for a week for sneakers / angling people they know who work at stores to do them favours / high quality fakes being sold for hundreds of dollar on eBay - Forget about #Spooks and the Secret Service fighting Cold War 2.0 (unless u r new head of MI6 _ yer wife spills the beanz on facebook) : Just to keep aware of what is really going on in the street u need to be tracking thousands of topics, datapoints, product codes and feeds to stay close to the always on Younger Faster Cooler Generations that can wear and look good in skinnies. You might or might not be amazed at how many sneaker forums by brand (”Supra’ or “Common Projects”) and subforums for models (Supra/TK Society or Common Projects/Safari) there are : Combined with “real-time” twitter feeds by category of kicks - eg hightops / nike-kanye yeezys / high end chukkas / retro asics etc PLUS new research angels such as 2-4 minute Unboxing and profiling of kicks via YouTube vidz- Here’s the one I used to check the TK’s look good in real life as photos can be photoshop_exposure_light settings flickrd with bigtime - video seems to lie less - it is more likely to make a sneaker look average to bad if it is while pix can be opposite -The Sneaker Market : that footwear u once supposedly only wore for exercise. This is one fast + sophisticated market. And dont think other markets like FMCG won’t end up like this….

Next Real Time Web Case Study : Let’s take the above pictured seemingly innocent Adidas Superstars Kick - which is probably best remembered as the default 3 stripes for Run DMC. What they are is one of five-ish shoes per phase spread across 3 stages of released collaborations Adidas did with leading clicks + sometimes mortar retailers who have diversified into designing, without having to invest in pesty manufacturing plants + questionable third world labour issues. The pictured Superstar was a joint effort of the parties involved in the “Group 4″ - I’ll take the Off-White Cream with black laces and tongue.

Sneaker Freaker summarise the project thus : “The third and final drop of the 3Way Consortium project from adidas Originals sees the series heading East for a work-around between some of the most respected sneaker retailers and influencers of the region. With the choice of working on the five models together in whatever manner they chose, Acu, Crooked Tongues (London based but with strong ties to Thailand), D-Mop and VA decided to pair up on two shoes each and all collaborate together on the fifth. From the Espo-inspired Samba Shuttlecock to the hefty hunk of Forum Mid, it’s the vintage-dipped Nizza, Oriental porcelain-designed Stan Smith and nubuck Superstar that stand out of this illusive collection.”

God is in the Details as Product Managers paraphrase. What is extra kewl about this collab- Rather than having to buy 5 different pairs of kicks to get all the colour combos - the online ordered “package” dropping on July 18th - comes with 5 re/detachable laces tongues (the lead on the project was “Crooked Tongues” after all) Feel like all black or white - maybe even burgundy or green ?

Now economists have been talking about Mass Consumer Customisation for a long time. But just as Choose Your Own Adventure/Ending was never going to be the overriding format for Hollywood or the Television, one size fits all is far too common in too many markets for too many products; In the land of oligopolic Australia for example, switching your bank, internet connection or mobile phone plans is heavily weighted against via upfront cash overly onerous penalties, financial incentives to sign long contracts, cross-platform contract bundling on 24 month contracts, and generally making it really fn hard that why would u risk losing the internet for a month while the telco gets around to your “Fast Transfer”.

So, while changing the Tongue of your kicks isn’t much…. it may match your burgundy hoodie while popping down the street to buy your $20 mafia like government priced smokes, which is then redistributed under a Micro-Lotto like via $900 Economic Stimulus to the government voting white collar working classes… It’s still a little win in the game of they giveth and taketh away. From Crooked Tongues on designing the adidas 3Way ‘Asian Group’ Superstar 80s : “The Superstar 80s is, for us, the definitive cut of a legendary shoe. We’ve been keen to play with this model for years - for 3Way, the opportunity arose. The problem with getting a Superstar to rework is that we found ourselves confused as to what to do with something so close to all our hearts without damaging that legacy, both personal and further reaching, and after all the attention it’s had since it’s 35th anniversary in 2005, what new looks can we bring to the table. First things first - this is a shoe that needs to be kept clean - there’s no room for funny business.. Each team store was allocated its own embossed tongue - VA opted for a grey and yellow, D-Mop went for a snake-effect pattern that incorporates browns, ACU chose green and we opted for Burgundy as a trademark colour. A more impartial option comes in the shape of a black one that carries all the names. A collection of laces, including an off-white pair, greys, burgundies, greens and blacks means a perfect match, and for starters, 5 individual looks in 1 package without any compromises on quality. This model is limited to the team retailers involved, as well as O-Stores, and it’s set for release in the Crooked Store on Saturday 18th of July.”

So while Collaboration Created Sneakers may be a Posterchild for a Trending Towards Mass Customisation Economy, the Real Time Web - which happens to be the latest hot segment to invest in/startup around - is helping the Crooked Tongues, Sneaker Freaker, Huf, Undefeated, The Hundreds reach and breakthru 8 figure turnovers by selling lifestyle clothing and shoes to the same market that buy video games : Ageing GenX, some boomers and hip Gen_Y’s with big pocket money and part time jobs. But so far, like blog search - the horizontal nature of the term - with time as a filter or differentiating factor may be anything from cute to misleading. I’m sure Sand Hill Road is already getting the pitches that simply add “Real Time” onto an existing segment - or even triple derivative - “Real Time” may be added onto a Web 2.0 segment.

“Retail” thx to Amaxon + Ebay successfully became “Etail” or “Shopping” became “E-Shopping”
Web 2.0 added “2.0″ onto any category so “Retail” became “Retail/Etail/Shopping/eShopping 2.0″ but then “Social” replaced 2.0 - So it became “Social Shopping” ! Maybe even “Social Shopping 3.0″ if your VC or non tech sector Angel knew no better.
Now it becomes “Real Time Social Shopping” where we aim to change the world with our real time inventory checking, purchase intention of crowd sourced structured user data ratings blah blah

So while REALTIME becomes the new buzzword du jour in the targeted venture segment… alot of the current (consumer) offers still dont solve real (enterprise) problems..

The major segment of action so far is “Real Time Search” - With blog search pretty much RIP - the action went to Summize.com which became Twitter Search - which by definition didnt search outside Twitter. Further Twitter search happily didnt have the Search Engine Optimised Spam early on which protected the largly recency based search using basic keyword/phrase boolean AND/OR/NOT logic.

Which was fine till the spambots arrived on Twitter… remember the days when new followers were kewl human beings…

It made logical sense that the next round of Real Time startups would try to improve on what Summize achieved with their handy 8 figure exit : New startups like Scoopler (adds in Flickr as one added content type but is still twitter centric), Trendrr, Yauba, Topsy (focuses on building authority via twitter actions eg retweets) and many others I cant remember - focused on indexing user generated text skewed microbloggy content types other than Twitter.

I’ve tested most of these - however my test is to compare against a combination of Friendfeed Search, Twitter Search, Google Blog Search + the most important of all of them : Google.com Advanced Search that allows search by time - in the last hour/day/week/month/year : are parameters I use very regularly. If you can add these searches to Google Reader via atom/RSS I’d use all the time, but for whatever reason google is scared of offering advanced search results by feed. Maybe I should try BlastCasta which combines Google + Twitter Search.

I definitely think the Real Time for awhile now Friendfeed is going in the right direction…

But to go back to my Sneaker Researching/Obsessing behaviour, and also to think about what happens in the typical consumer internet research phase 1-3 months pre-purchase : There are lots of “Real Time” Sources beyond twitter, with probably the most important being Forums - that are based around an Industry, Manufacturer/Brand and it’s various Products (eg Sneaker Freaker for Sneakers / CaymanClub.net for Porsche Caymans / etc) You also then have a “real time” intersection into the product review space.. there must be a heck of alot of reviews already linked to or mentioned in Twitter and Friendfeed - The reality of meta-product review search on the Page Rank Web is it is too corrupted by SEO spam and links that are circular, Combining high authority / well moderated / segment and brand forums with twitter/friendfeed : would be really useful - It could tell u when there is are new links, reviews, tweets, videos, pictures for the car/watch/sneakers u r “following” / looking for / to buy etc.

If you flip around the consumer searching for a company’s product to buy : One solution I have been using extensively/offering to clients is the Premium Version - highly affordable but not free Filtrbox.com : They are focused on The Real Time Web that matters to enterprises and also Power Users. They are dedeuplicating double results. They allow the filtering between blogs, social networks and twitter. You can generate reports in html, .xls or html in under a minute and email thru to clients. You receive daily emails with new matches. And all the alerts I setup in Google Reader can be sync’d (son) with Filtrbox (and vice versa : alerts I generate in Filtrbox I can add to my Enterprise Google Reader Social Media Intelligence Dashboard (thats a mouthful i know;) so all the client mentions goes into one dashboard) In short it rox. If interested ping me.

The enterprise gaps I see in all the Search related products I’ve used beyond indexing more than twitter like Web Forums (not to mention key brand related spaces such as viral videos and advertising tracking within social media) is moving beyond boolean search. Clients need to be able to breakout :

Parent Company vs Product Brand Level Mentions
Identify who the Influential Social Media Commentators are talking about their Brand and contact them
In near real time identify emerging trends and quantify them and group which of their business unit it affects, which consumer segments and marketing tactics. But in short : Trend Identification.
Move beyond recency to popularity or real time Virality that is relevant to the company tracking it

With tools and related API’s such as Twinfluence, Filtrbox, Feedly and Postrank.com - there is the ability to score the popularity/viral’ness of entries (out of 10), triangulate the data, and aggregate up the scores of entries attributed to a source. Which starts to give an idea of who the influential social media commentators a client has talking about them.

The developers and startups in the Real Time Search space - while possibly not interested in the Brand Mentions space and breaking out differences between parent Company Mentions vs Brand level ones, will probably find the same recurring issues in so far as aiming to move beyond pure boolean recency to a more relevance based search result. Which ironically is where Google is already. Except google hasnt yet been able to fine tune the real time results well enough that the important links + tweets can be pulled out and displayed alongside a google search result in the same way it does now display a YouTube video when appropriate.

OK, before this post eats itself I’m going to jump in the Ferrari California first ferrari with a folding hardtop or maybe the extra fast loud yellow on black rims The Novitec Rosso Ferrari Scuderia Spider 16M. At least those cars have a Real Time to 100 metres of 3.7 seconds - give or take half a second depending on model. Then again, I havent sold my Real Time Search Company, so I may have to wait till July 18th for the Adidas Superstars by Crooked Tongues collaborators to come out for 100 quid or so. And they have the kewl changeable tongues after all. Hows them Mass Customisation Apples ?

New Perspectives as good as a Ferrari California

Posted by Ben Barren on February 25, 2009 – 3:33 pm

Filed under Entrepreneurship

Damn Ferrari California Looks Fresh SideOn via Amaury AML on Flickr

Controlling yer Own Destiny

One core resultion I’ve made this year in business is to be less reliant on technology. Now this can be interpreted in a whole stack of ways, and I’m sure even I will evolve my thoughts on what it really means, but specifically I want to work on projects where I am in control of my own destiny. In one sense, this means is I need to be able to offer my services/brains and in the background use webbased tools that dont go down/cost huge amounts to maintain - that are cheap to freemium with pay4whatU_use costing models. But I still want to work on problems that matter and opportunities that are big, or else I may as well just get a job/consulting gigs. There has to be a bigger picture, and for me that means being in the middle of the blogosocialtwittersphere.

This is easier said than done and there are lots of hard lessons in doing this, but I’m going to keep trying to climb this mountain coz I keep hearing the same client needs, problems and opportunites, excuse the businesspeak for a second but it’s true; In the monitoring the blogosphere for clients for example (or getting their offer in front of the right influentials), there are alot of freemium tools that can be used to track people, company, product and brand mentions. However these tools won’t suddenly automatically classify blog posts or tweets according to location or popularity or category : or all of the above combined with identifying influential bloggers, twitterers, youtubettes, facebookers - within such parameters.

However what is important is that the heavy lifting can be partially done by the Googles and Amazons. Separate to the automagic algorithms and plain old fashioned research and analysis any startup wants to own itself, you can lessen your workoad and access other’s customers who have APIs from Wordpress, Facebook, Twitter, Apple + Friendfeed : Although as we’ve seen they can ban your service if they dont like what u do but that is the exception to the open will win rule.

Secondly, the internet infrastructure cloud tools which are the hardest to build if u ask me in a startup and that big companies will be better at are increasingly offered by the majors; Amazon Web Services EC2, Yahoo Boss, Google’s Custom Search Engine and it’s App Engine : which has just announced some new services which is a step in the right direction via RWW :

“Google today finally announced its pricing plans for its App Engine service. Google’s App Engine allows developers to run their web applications on Google’s infrastructure and, until today, was only available in a free, but restricted, version. The free version currently gives developers up to 500MB of persistent storage and CPU power and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month. Starting today, however, developers will also be able to purchase additional resources, which will enable them to scale their apps beyond these free quotas.. Google’s prices seem to be slightly cheaper and less complicated than Amazon’s pricing schemes for using its EC2 and S3 service. It should be noted, however, that Amazon offers a far larger feature set than App Engine. App Engine only supports the Python programming language, while EC2 gives you access to a complete, remotely hosted, on-demand operating system.”

Top of the Line Most Sporty Not Bad Looking eh Aston Martin DBS via Amaury AML on Flickr

Moving to the Social Edge

While many clients esp on this continent will take the approach of denial and head in the sand, when it comes to the importance/centrality/cost of technology, my resolution to become less tech centric does not mean I want to involve myself in less technical businesses. This is the internet circa 2009 and any venture to be a sustainable asset past time based earnings needs to have some type of technical advantage (or leverage great technical offerings eg wordpress) - that is unless it is already a huge aggregator of customers or has an especially addictive monopolistic type offering. Some business opportunities can only be leveraged if a range of parties coordinate in new ways, while still each being driven by their own self-interest not necessarily by sharing equity or earnings in one centralised venture.

For example, there have been countless small (each less than $250k in funding) attempts to aggregate the Aussie blogosphere and increasingly also the twitter_microblogosphere. Similarly there have been a range of smallish publishing ventures aimed at social media locally, clients using their PR companies to get onto Facebook, and so on. Being at the frontline of trying to aggregate this and speaking to others doing similar things, the same issues come up which need a new, dare I say it collaborative, hybridised open source/commercial approach to solving.

I’m thinking of some type of commonly owned local platform that multiple parties contribute to and individually commercialise. As simple as users authenticating their lifestreams once, which developers via open source API can mash into their own offering, and publishers/corporates can commercialise within GPL reason. Like a multi-headed Automattic/Wordpress or a freely useable Friendfeed Hyperlocal API meets Gnip with the ethos of Identica.

Hope this isnt making too much sense to any1. Bottom line is investors in Australia won’t punt on something like this as one standalone venture and scrappy individual startups cannot bootstrap the engineering cost; Esp due to the various R+Dish problems that still need to be solved to make clients happy.

Now that's how to roll in a Merc in Paris SL-63_AMG via Amaury AML on Flickr

The Moving Beyond Keyword Boolean Problems

Let’s say there was a opensource like up todate growing hyperlocal index of multiple social media types from tweets, blog posts, video, images etc. Tick Indexing issues. Then u get to the Algorithmic Real Time Web Issues Today, you can keyword query and add boolean strings to the local blogosphere to get down to a level where u r providing matches to a client’s need to understand what is being said about them or the topics they are interested in to identify influentials, trends, or content they wish to syndicate.

But if the blogosphere is an aggregation of it’s people’s psyche - good and bad - Rather than journalistic written edgy content as many media (would like to) imagine; Nor is it like many corporates hope a larger free’r market research focus group - The blogosphere is just a total mess of unstructured content. It’s why twitter is so powerful in that 140 character limit with #hashtags and a kick ass set of filters by the Summize now search.twitter team - means twitter even with a much smaller audience than facebook and blogs is providing better insights in monitoring the blogosphere than traditional blog monitoring or research companies. But twitter is too small a slice of the socialmediasphere to be enough for clients, esp those that want high reach and want to reach the mass of social networking influentials or video masses.

Damn the Lambo Gallardo Nero is one phat looking black mobile via Amaury AML on Flickr

Summize Started Broad pre-Twitter Search

Unfortunately it’s not an either/or scenario when it comes to Twitter vs Blog search/track. And while twitter may be relatively easier to monitor, the same fundamental issues still apply : There needs to be major improvements from keyword/boolean filtering of the blogosphere to monitor it, to one which can better break posts + tweets into the different categories clients want, and identify new ways to identify trends, relationships, signals etc. Which brings me back to having more (location based) aggregation and more (API) access points to the local blogotwittersphere, so more developers can try more algorithms, more mashups, more outputs and combinations, which create more chance of meaning being harvested by end users, which business can ultimately package.

In short 140 character exec summ : Currently the whole ecosystem of the local blogosphere doesnt exist/is broken.. and it’s important that something outside facebook/twitter/iphone API’s and google adsense exist. I think…

Maybe you prefer a larger Murcielago 640 model to park on the streets of Paris when popping out for some shopping, via Amaury AML on Flickr.

At Least this Blog Post has Charcoal Supercars in Paris

When you spend 4 years on limited resources trying to solve the same problem from many different angles, like a PHd that is simultaneously highly annoyed with their thesis/yet ultimately hopefully of solving the area of investigation, you accumulate alot of knowledge that makes very little sense to people outside of designated area of study. So apologies blog readers : Enjoy the supercars at least; I started and ended with the Ferrari California as it’s a very practical car to get around in:)

But even when u get down to the barest of resources, enough good things come in (customer leads in the area u r trying 2 solve, developers that tell u they experienced the exact same problem/hurdle/barrier) that u get enough energy to look at the same problem from a different perspective; There may not be an algorithmic button that automatically identifies popular blog/tweet/video/image/news entries/individuals/sources in Australia/NSW/Suburb/Geo_location within designated categories/vertical/topic/issue/company. But new approaches - Open sourcing indexes, easily allowing consumers to portablise their lifestream and mostly providing developers total access to all the content possible, maybe they’ll come up with things that can be done with it that single entities with none to a few developers can’t. Until then I’ll use the old fashioned way of monitoring teh blogosphere; Via google reader, a blackberry and moleskine:)

OK I’m off to Gym and listen to Hamish and Andy get ready for their Tall Ship to Tasmania journey.

So the Ferrari California Convertible hardtop 0-100 in 4seconds or so damn is this the car or what ! Via Amaury AML

share_subscribe_clip_tag_twitlet this desert boot sunday.

Posted by Ben Barren on February 15, 2009 – 5:06 pm

Filed under Social Shopping

How Good was Coles donating one day of profit to the #bushfires ? Unlike banks with no imagination - each commodifying each other by adding $1M - Coles changed consumer behaviour (ppls didnt shop till friday/used coles instead) and got every1 talking about it on radio/at mothers-fathers group, and turned up on friday happy to spend money at coles : Possibly some will not go back to Safeway etc. And they made $5.1M - probably the total given by the banks put together, even though their individual and aggregate profit dwarfs Coles. So Coles rocked it.

**Disclaimers first* -**

I am in no way associated to Coles altho my 2nd job (following the paper round) was for a supermarket - The Anstees brand I think or that’s how it sounded. Nor am I associated in anyway NonSociety way to Polyvore although I do use their free website. What a bargain! I really can’t say enough positive about Polyvore, my account’ere. Finally while these bookmarklets may be considered Web 2.0 - that term doth not speaketh it’s name* ! While MySpace will use their PR strength to push time on site connsumer engagement, I’m just plain addicted sporadically (in terms of creating a set) to Polyvore, but I’m always adding products and images to my Polyvore dashboard via their “clip to polyvore” bookmarklet. Polyvore is very smart at remembering and redisplaying the url, thumbnail and summary info of what u clip and then automagically republish like a search result as u see with list of curated by BB desert boots. Obviously with great CPCs in fashion Polyvore have a gr8 vertical to win first but as a modern scrapbooking tool it’s way smart. I see them operating in all verticals amazon is in ! Bonus. OK spiel over!

Just a Little Bit of Web 2.0 4 Ya : My Bookmarklets

BB's Bookmarklets Top 5 : Friendfeed, Polyvore, Delicious, Twitlet + Google Reader.

If u r not using any bookmarklets as alot of people still aren’t because, well they r on windows, and dont want to download any “toolbar” full of viruses and are just plain lazy, u r really missing out on productivity. Especially if u r a blogging social networker and if u have any need to store your web history in a means beyond browser bookmarking, something I cant even remember doing now. So here u will see the 5 bookmarklets I use : Which has evolved as each of them have a very similar use case prima facie, but in reality what has evolved is clearly segmented items, but there is alot more I wish I could do.

BB’s 5 Bookmarklets :

1. “Share on Friendfeed” :

You can see my friendfeed’ere. When I find an article usually via Google Reader (as I have near 4k feeds now I have set up a “SupaSpesh” folder which is my Top 200 feeds, thiis is what I read first as reading the inbox of 4000 feeds gets u nowhere. Anyway, so I’m usually in google reader or I also see items come via Twitter (using Twhirl and the 800+ peeps I follow there) or Friendfeed via their realtime open window browser (following a couple hundred people and 5-10 rooms) So when I find a piece which usually has a good picture and is temporal as I’m not likely to need it for strategic/research etc purposes I’ll share via friendfeed bookmarklet both selecting best paragraph and the pic. Until it busted the bonus of this was the same pic and headline was then showing on my blog sidebar via Friendfeed Activity Widget for Wordpress 2.7, but the plugin busted and the substitute one i’ve got doesn’t show the image only headline which is a real bummer as blog sidebars need images in my pov. The key decision I make here is whether to use friendfeed or delicious. Delicious doesnt allow me to clip/tag images in an article so in effect fun/disposal pieces i use friendfeed sharing and serious/evergreen i use delicious, not both. Friendfeed search is good enough that when im looking for item i can go back and search for it. But I also dont know why they dont allow u to tag items in storage that u have shared. So actions :

- Friendfeed : add tags to bookmarklet shared item links. Also the bookmarklet when it appears on page, if u try and add an image too quickly (beforepage name in title is presented) the whole page is lost and u cant click back, having to find the url of page again and start whole processs again. Check out Polyvore’s bookmarklet as they dont have this issue and their images load quicker with less errors. It’s really quite amazing, Polyvore can suck in 10 images in less thn 45 seconds then when u reuse them u can use quite a high res. Friendfeed take notice.

- Delicious : add images to tagging functionality, its ridiculous u dont, or I’d say buy Polyvore (their founder created Yahoo Pipe) but I’d say dont buy em as u’d wreck it and there would be no innovation

- Wordpress and developers : get a better bookmarklet for friendfeed so I can display headlines, intro text and images and control what is presented.. eg items i’ve shared that have most likes/comments etc ie advanced search item selection and publishing control over media. Overall - more friendfeed/wordpress integration please

Alpha Project is trying to Discover The Dollhouse

2. “Subscribe” to this Feed via Google Reader :

My Google Reader shared items’ere. The ‘Subscribe’ bookmarklet is simple as adding feeds of your choice to google reader. However, being a nearing 4k subscribed to google reader I face some issues;

a) Slowness with More Subscriptions: The more feeds you are subscribed to in google reader the more time it takes to subscribe to new feeds. Sometimes even on top of line imac and fast connection, it takes over one minute to press subscribe and select a folder.

b) Authenticate Feed : Also feed authentication is a big issue. I’d say nearly 1/4 of feeds using “Subscribe” bookmarklet dont add the feed and dont give an explanation why (sometimes i’m already subscribed for example) rather just takes u back to inbox. Then when u open up “Add subscription” within google reader and add feed url (i prefer atom) this works 95% of time. Please fix this.

c) Less Clicks Please : Why cant I add a folder at same time as I press subscribe - instead I need 2 page refreshes and back to it takes over a minute 70% of time.

Now if I could embrace The Secret + Change My Life, I'd just be able to walk well floor it out of the Lambo dealership with the stunning 560 model via Autostyle on Flickr. No Spider version of this yet so Ferrari win.

3. “Clip to Polyvore” :

Very happy with Polyvore bookmarklet (account’ere), which I use to clip largely fashion items - From sneakers, desert boots obviously, jackets, shirts, watches, cars etc - There are some sites that block eg flickr and some etailers but generally 80% of sites I try there is success. Sometimes and i didnt realise this till one month in of using and so I guess this turns off alot of users, about 1/3rd of images u clip, u need reverse the image “Show background” in polyvore speak. This needs to be communicated better. What is very kewl with polyvore is u create sets of items from those u clipped (or others from system) and all the original url/site/product name/details are kept and represented (plus u can optionally add your tags and keywords - unlike friendfeed), it’s really brilliant. Then u can publish on facebook, your blog. At moment, I still havent got it autopublishing to my blog (i do to facebook but i hate facebook) so I’d like more assistance from Polyvore within the site on autopublishing to wordpress on my own domain. They could help more. But 9/10, top notch. If anything the dashboard within polyvore is where improvements are needed, navigation isn’t totally intuitive going from draft to publish to sharing on your blog and facebook then back to edit etc. Simple things like Creating a New Set or finding your old ones are actually quite hard on Polyvore depending on what page u r on. They need some big universal buttons, even for power users So basically I use it for fashion eg desert boots today, but I’d like to use it in an almost skitch like manner where it does all my photo presentation and remixing on my blog, as well as categories beyond men’s fashion - whether that be entertainment, design, automotive and travel etc. Also I’d like to be able to better display my polyvore items in my design on my blog sidebar. Havent found a polyvore/wordpress plugin yet, coming soon any1?

Adidas Originals are Kewl just as Polyvore is.

4. “Tag” This to Delicious :

This is the first bookmarklet I used and I’m up to 4777 items all via bookmarklet tool. Delicious is still brilliant but examples where both friendfeed and polyvore allow u to clip images, there is no reason other than laziness, size, being inside Yahoo that u cant clip images… and other media types from a page. Get onto it please delicious, as if friendfeed brought out decent folksonomy/self classification I could walk away from delicious/benbarren. That said with my other bookmarklets it works. And I then publish on my blog sidebar.

5. “Twitlet” : Don’t think Twitlet has an aggregate url ? My twitter is ere and twitpics too. This is a recent addition to my bookmarklets done last week; It doesn’t require me to download anything ore register even (like twiitpic it uses my twitter account for better or worse) With this instead of finding a link I want to tweet, which would necessitate a cutnpaste / write tweet / enter url into bit.ly-tinyurl type service / then press update on twitter - Now all I do is when on the page, say Im watching a flight of the conchords new ep I simply press ‘twitlet’ bookmarklet then type “#link watching latest gr8 ep of #flightofconchords” - I’ve found this tool much more productive than i even envisioned being boarderline about whether I really needed it and whether it would provide benefits. It’s great for sharing songs, movies, tv shows u r watching but couldnt be bothered opening new page about etc esp when watching/doing.

I wouldnt mind a Novanta Desktop + Apple 24" Monitor or even a computer that worked at moment.

Onto Petrol Sniffing + Desert Boot Dreaming

This Car Probably Just Went to Top of Most Desired under $600K Aussie (may be more or less) via Ricardipus : Ferrari F430 16M Scuderia Spider in Yellow. Thats a triple tick.

F430 16m Scuderia Spider yellow drool.

Ok maybe there wasn’t any sniffing of petrol, coz y would i waste it ? Anyway so I had no petrol and had to get to docs in Rye today I had to go over to Balnarring first - One of the weaknesses of great property prices is the ‘general store’ which for 30 years my family has been here it’s been the one retail outlet for this area. Selling slightly higher than normal petrol, alcohol, coffee and food. But recently a retirement home developer bought the general store (even without the right council zoning it was worth the punt for him) and so that means no petrol in Shoreham or other suburbs on way to Rye, such as Flinders which hasnt had petrol for almost a decade.

So I drive for 25 minutes and prob used $2.50 worth of petrol and then put in $7 at Balnarring, grabbed a latte, didnt have enough for near $2 Sunday paper, but positive sign there was a Herald Sun that had been left by the last customer (which never happens) so that was a bonus + sign and then I popped over to Rye, forsaked goin to Christos cafe after docs as I already had paper and half a coffee. So I invested the remaining $3.50 (price of large latte) on more petrol. Dont u hate doing 2 service station stops within the hour for less than 8 litres of petrol. But I needed to as the empty sign went on even after I put in the $7. And I was told I have to go back tomorrow morning, and I didnt want to have to do all of the above again, and repeat it on the blog. Infinite Jest indeed for DFW fans, the entertainment never stops repeating, until you die banality.

So there is no connection between petrol, it’s cost, Mornington Peninsula transportation logistics and rising property prices even in this recession. Suffice to say my Freudian outlet is microchunking on Polyvore, and today’s object is the traditional desert boot. The one your parents bought u that was a light brown suede that u hated wearing - maybe with cords and an Anglican church windcheater if u were as lucky as me. God bless St Agnes, the S LU… ok i better noT out the lovely lass. Let it all out Gabriel Byrne told me on his HBO therapy show.

Gr8 Pic by Ricardipus, havent seen this car mentioned on the autoblogs : The Lambo 560 + 640 are so well designed, it's great to see a Ferrari finally look like a Ferrari should. Sorry but yellow exterior/black rims, on a supercar this good. I'm sold. Where do I sign the preorder for 2020 ?

Now this post was meant to be about Desert Boots, what happened ?

The Winner First : Common Projects Safari Boot in Leather. From Oki-Ni : "The Safari boot is a new style for s/s 09 from Common Projects and is a playful edition to the collection. A grey nappa leather high top upper with a simply laced vamp and matching black rubber sole, this sneaker has a low tongue and long oval toe that differentiate it from a classic basketball style."

And damn has the desert boot had some modern interpretations done or what. Unfortunately very few of the shoes shown are available downunder. Bad thing about subscribing to 100-200 fashion blogs (would be my estimate.. prob 20 dedicated quality daily publishing sneaker/shoe blogs then 3x that of mens fashion blogs) Anyway the best ‘chukkas’ as the UK call them seem to not mess with the formula too much, but modern up with an interesting sole, or type of leather treatment from brands such as A-Life, Opening Ceremony, Be Positive, Visvim, Nike’s Lux line, even Lupe Fiasco the rapper has a collaboration, there are some great looking kix ere.

Obviously at moment I’m most obsessed by the new Common Projects Safari desert boot, in leather with a very slight grey tinge is my favourite or close second is the dark charcoal canvas model, but the leather ones look so soft I cant go past. Oh to dream and throw in some wickedly expensive watches from Hublot, Panerai and slightly cheaper Breitling and best priced Welder K24 model. So many choices ere but when the Aussie winter comes around again, Im definitely getting some Chukkas as they’re called in the UK or plain ol Desert Boots downunder ! Check my polyvore list ere.

My Favourites are the VLight Grey Common Projects middle centre slightly right and some of the Opening Ceremonies, Be Positive, want a pair of Japanese Visvim if just for the cult following and kewlflappy heel western thing, etc :P

friday heatwave of bad logos #lost influence + #damages.

Posted by Ben Barren on January 30, 2009 – 5:24 pm

Filed under Social_Networking, Urbanwear

Melbourne has won award for ‘first time since records began in 1855 that the city has had three consecutive days above 43C/110F’ FTW. Combined with zero$, it’s been heat to take you to Damocles. Anyway, that awful humid northerly has been offset with a cooler southerly and I’ve spent most of the last 4 years (commercially that is) dealing with companies bout Web 2.0. So that means talkn/selling social networking, blogging, verticals of interest, and the associated issues that go with this (defamation, copyright, monetisation, staff training etc) And Louis Gray’s Admiring Companies that Dont Blink post has that counter intuitive sense that the best companies dont blog/twitter or do they hehe - it’s friday and coming out of 110F/43C heat to only 35cs for next few days :

Now thats a Ferrari ! Love the FXX... what a track beast via BrandonPerDeck on Flickr.

Louis Gray : “Apple is one of the best examples of a company whose vast wall of silence and secrecy spawns a vast network of rumor-seekers and speculation. Once limited to the dark recesses of the Web, guessing the Cupertino company’s next move has practically become an industry tradition. You won’t find an official Apple Twitter account. You won’t find an official Apple blog either (though the Hot News page is pretty close). And you most definitely won’t find an Apple representative in the comments of users’ blogs, saying what features they will or won’t add to the next release. You could say the same, on various levels for many companies. What’s going on at Google? Despite their many blogs and the ever-present Matt Cutts, it’s not all that transparent. Most Google employees don’t blog about their at-work exploits, and product development isn’t usually that give and take.”

Wordpress LogoGate. Be Legit acc to 'Matt' - Lorelle.Wordpress Click.

On the other hand a few years late Australian MSM (in this case News.com.au and their AWFUL new corporate logo, wow its bad even Wordpress founder wants a better logo but sorry wordpress logo good or bad is so much better than news.com.au -pls tell me interbrand didnt make more than $500 for it, really... anonymous non Facebook Connect comments appreciated) is getting into the tweet real influence vs number of follower (i really need to twitter more to keep my top 50 position given i am #50 hehe) debates (is australia having its own SXSW jumpn the shark/tuna moment?) : “Maybe this whole thing is an exercise to increase the number of followers (the reporter) has?” wrote one.‘

Baratunde's March 2007 Tweet2Arms!

I’m a bit more interested in 2009 than 2006 and Facebook Connect by 2010 will be huge (need2find something to invest in that thesis, well invest my time not $ i dont have!), just another example where Apple may not blog or twitter but u can easily send your iPhotos to facebook without needing a separate login (which has like a trillion photos on it, maybe the biggest photo site on net or close) You gotta luv one click, via Caroline McCarthy : “Basically, this means that if you’re a Mac user running the latest edition of its iLife package, which started shipping earlier this week, you can hook up your Facebook account for easy uploading right from iPhoto. If you use the iWeb site creation tool, you can set it up to post a message to your Facebook profile (and your friends’ news feeds) if you make some kind of edit.”

Also good to see SocialMedia raise $6m, who are getting $15m to $20m PER campaign if PaidContent is to be believed, well they did just raise $6m, schweet : Widget social ad network monetisation in the house; “Social media-based ad network SocialMedia has picked up $6m in a second round of funding. IDG Ventures and previous backer Charles River Ventures led the round, bringing SocialMedia’s total raise to $9.5m. The SF-based company launched in 2007, and has since run app-based campaigns for brands like P&G, Coca-Cola and Diesel on Facebook and MySpace. CEO Seth Goldstein told VentureBeat the company brought in revenue between $15 million and $20 million on such campaigns, which ask members brand-related questions (like whether they’ve seen an upcoming movie trailer or which mouthwash they’d prefer their partner used); the ads gain exposure through profile status updates.” VentureBeat article updated quotes from SocialMedia founder : “Like all major media companies and ad networks (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, Google/Adsense, Platform A, Yahoo!), we run a mix of direct response and brand advertisers. While the performance side of our business is large, we have been pleasantly surprised by the recent growth in our brand business.”

4 Eps into S2 of Damages it is Now Started4Real! Click4Episode S2E4 William Hurt is Rockn Glenn Close with Rose Byrne Plotting but Oblivious, we think!

If you want a Podcast : Definitely get Mr Reilly in. He has the details. Or for the latest Founder Crunch’ness 2.0 try Dunc : “The spitting incident for example: Michael immediately presumes that it was a startup person who didn’t get a review, but the far more likely reason is Michael’s anti-European startup comments at LeWeb.” or even more so This is Going to be Big ! : “Controversy, conflict, and a generally unprofessional attitude follows Arrington wherever he goes- as does an army of fanboys whose numbers are nothing more than a useless distraction to PR and startup folks alike. I’m glad to see the distraction gone, hope he doesn’t return, and that we can all get back to the business of trying to survive in these difficult times- trying to figure out how to build great things that paying customers, not fanboys, see value in. Controversy, conflict, and a generally unprofessional attitude follows Arrington wherever he goes–as does an army of fanboys whose numbers are nothing more than a useless distraction to PR and startup folks alike. I’m glad to see the distraction gone, hope he doesn’t return, and that we can all get back to the business of trying to survive in these difficult times–trying to figure out how to build great things that paying customers, not fanboys, see value in.”

: Time Travel is a Bitch : Click for lost S5E3 Latest Episode. Series 5 is so good, get back on if u got off like i did but u need to see S4 which is amazing promise!