Puffbox

• Yahoo Says It Is Backing Away From TV-Style Web Shows – New York Times
  User-generated content is the new TV blockbuster, says the head of Yahoo’s media effort. ‘Mr Braun said yesterday that the way to keep users on Yahoo’s site longer was to offer ways they can create their own content and look at content created by others.’
  (tags: ephemeral.work)

If anyone was expecting a big announcement regarding Microsoft’s already mythical ‘Origami Project‘ today, you’re going to be bitterly disappointed. Another spooky chillout Flash video, lots of vague statements about ‘I am everywhere you are.’ And: ‘come back next week’.

After the rather underwhelming Apple announcement earlier in the week, I really thought this was the Microsoft marketing machine finally getting it. Were we really going to see Redmond out-cool Cupertino? For a while there, it looked like it. Origami is getting lots of nice buzz around it; then suddenly Apple trips up. What an opportunity. And I think they’ve blown it.

The aim of the campaign has – of course – been to build buzz. Well, maybe I’m just reading the right blogs and news sources (even the BBC), but I think the buzz is cranked up to the max. If it were me, I’d have tried to redraw the plans overnight, in the light of Apple’s apparent slip. Get the product out there ASAP. Or at least, say something tangible. I have a nasty feeling that, by next week, we’ll all be sick of the waiting. You can only buzz for so long.

Once again, you’re left wondering how Microsoft can excel on the blogging side (Scoble, Channel 9, MSDN), and misjudge its conventional marketing every time. Dinosaurs, for example. Product naming, for another… I mean, come on, Windows Live Local? The ‘Microsoft redesigns the iPod box‘ video is funny, until you learn (according to Joe Wilcox) that it was produced by someone inside Microsoft. I agree with Joe that self-parody is a good thing, but only up to a point. If everyone recognises there’s a problem here, and nobody is fixing it, that’s not good.

UPDATE: actually, I think it’s actually worse. If you look at the source code of the page at www.origamiproject.com, you see an HTML comment: Origami Project: the Mobile PC running Windows XP. The tone of the report on, for example, the Register hints at disappointment – ‘oh, it’s only a new XP device.’ It’s hard to imagine Microsoft putting substantial effort into adding major new functionality to an operating system it’s about to retire. This could be one big disappointment: and then all this hype generation will seem less than clever.

Tom Foremski’s diatribe against Silicon Valley press releases comes on the day I helped critique some briefing material on a major government announcement. Many of his points struck a timely chord.

Press releases are nearly useless. They typically start with a tremendous amount of top-spin, they contain pat-on-the-back phrases and meaningless quotes… Press releases are created by committees, edited by lawyers, and then sent out at great expense through Businesswire or PRnewswire to reach the digital and physical trash bins of tens of thousands of journalists. This madness has to end. It is wasted time and effort by hundreds of thousands of professionals.

Press officers need to change their view of their role. It’s no longer about pushing out what the boardroom wants to say; quite the opposite. These days, it has to be about bringing the media perspective into the organisation. And that starts with taking press releases back to first principles – giving journalists what they need.

Newspapers will never reprint verbatim a lump of woolly, meaningless management-speak. What reporters need are hard facts rather than vague concepts, real statistics rather than unqualified assertions, (decent) quotes – anything that can support them in writing their story. Note, by the way: not your story. Their story… which, as Tom notes, they were always going to write anyway. (I’m not sure the world is ready for Tom’s full-disclosure ‘tagging’ concept, but he has the right ideas.)

Why? Because these days, it’s so much easier and quicker to get to the truth. A quick keyword search across an inch-thick document will yield, in seconds, the statement you were trying to bury on page 142. And the stressed journalist is hardly going to be nice about your woolly press release after they spend hours chasing the facts you chose not to include.

I spent most of Monday playing with different RSS readers. As mentioned here earlier, I was looking for a freeware tool suitable for absolute novices. In the end, the winner was a tool I used myself in years gone by.

Abilon has a lot going for it. It has the standard Outlook-style three-panel presentation, with the nice extra option of three vertical panels. Even better for me, it has a ‘newspaper’ view which presents all feed items on a single scrolling page – more familiar to web-literate novices. It has pop-up alerts in the bottom right corner of the screen. It has some nice advanced functionality, like a blogging tool and feed ‘filters’.

It’s only a few hundred K to download, and as PortableFreeware.com points out, it doesn’t actually need to be installed in the C:Program Files folder, nor does it store its settings in the user profile. So you can install it in its own folder, and then copy that folder from PC to PC. In other words, a customised installation. Perfect.

So where’s the catch? For no obvious reason, the product’s owners seem to have disappeared. Abilon.org is now a ‘free parking’ page. The original domain, activerefresh.com has disappeared completely. If Abilon has been abandoned by its creator, it’s a real shame. It’s by far the neatest RSS package I could find. You can still download it from PCWorld.com, but naturally, there’s a caveat.

I managed to get access to the Google Pages website at the weekend, and wasted a few moments building a quick page or two. I’m not even going to quote the address to see my efforts; it’s just not worth it. Suffice to say, I’m bitterly disappointed: it doesn’t seem to be much more than PowerPoint-style authoring brought to the web.

Why is Google bothering with this, when it already owns a brilliant webpage creation tool in Blogger? Honestly, the more time goes on, the more I see blogging platforms as the solution to big organisations’ CMS headaches. There must be a hidden agenda, surely.

Coincidentally (or perhaps not), I’ve just found references today to a ‘web 2.0’ site called Thumbstacks which – surprise surprise – puts PowerPoint-style presentations on the web. I really wonder why we’re pursuing this, when the guru of graphic presentation, Edward Tufte thinks PowerPoint is evil. Rather than emulating PowerPoint on the web, we should be looking to reinvent it.

• John’s Adventures: John’s Background Switcher
  Let Flickr redesign your desktop on an hourly basis.
  (tags: ephemeral.work)

Delighted to see that Media Center and Tablet PC functionality will be part of the mainstream versions of Windows Vista, as opposed to separate editions (confirmed in a press release at the weekend). I used to have a Tablet PC whilst working at Microsoft, and I became quite enamoured of it. I have to say though, most people – even inside Microsoft – only used their Tablet as an ordinary laptop.

‘Tablet’ computing is definitely the way to go, especially if you’re in the creative business. I picked up a Trust wireless tablet (with mouse too) for just over £20 at Tesco’s a few weeks ago, and after a short period of adaptation, I love it to bits. The key was remembering that (ordinary) Windows XP includes an option to replace double clicks with a single click. Open up Windows Explorer, click on ‘Tools’ then ‘Folder options’ – and click on ‘Single-click to open an item’. It makes all the difference. (I also find it helpful to switch on underlining when I hover over a link.)

Once you’ve used a pen, you’ll wonder why we ever had the mouse in the first place.

• Run London – RouteFinder
  Mashups go mainstream: Nike uses Google Maps to create a runners’ route planner. OK, so it’s a shameless copy of gmap-pedometer.com – but you have to hand it to Nike’s RunLondon campaign. An exemplary PR campaign: and a great day out. I’ll be back in ’06.
  (tags: running ephemeral.work)

Does anyone have any experience with RSS reader software that:

• is freeware;
• is portable (ie. sits in its own directory only, for easy setup);
• is dead easy to use, for total novices;
• is OK with feeds published locally on an intranet; and
• doesn’t have the word ‘Blog’ in its name?

One of my current jobs is with a contact centre (telephone calls, email, letters). They’re having problems keeping track of developments in other parts of the same organisation, on other sites. When a new press release is issued by the press office, for example, they all need to know it’s there – and word doesn’t always get through. I’m seeing RSS feeds as a possible solution: quick and easy to implement, popup alerts on the desktop, etc etc.

But we’re talking about a user community who have zero experience with RSS as a technology. Giving them a full-strength three-panel tool (like Blog Navigator or RSS Bandit) will be too much for them. Web-based tools are out too, as we’ll be publishing a lot of the necessary feeds on their intranet only.

I’ll be trying a few candidates over the next few days. I like the look of Nutshell, which is a name I hadn’t come across before yesterday. Greatnews gets a very good write-up as a ‘portable app’. cRSSReader looks good, but the .NET thing could be a problem. Does anyone have any experience with these… or any better suggestions?

UPDATE: I plumped for Abilon in the end. Here’s why…

If anyone tells you that RSS is a cure for information overload, they’re lying. I spent all day yesterday at a client site, and didn’t get to clear out my daily Bloglines reading. Only 60-odd feeds… and yet when I log in this morning, I’m looking at 800 unread items. Hugh MacLeod, I’m looking at you here. Although Google didn’t help by doing this.

Incidentally, if you’re looking for UK driving directions on the web, there’s a clear winner. For the same journey from Newbury to Runcorn, MSN and Google gave me almost identical routes. MSN reckoned the 182 mile journey would take 2h 38, which basically requires you to go at 70mph the whole way. Google gave a more reasonable 3h 56.

The clear winner is – the AA. Its time estimate was the closest at 3h 37, and its results page was by far the most usable. Simple things like highlighting the road numbers in colour, and telling you where the service stations are, put it head-and-shoulders above the rest.