GoEyeball is an online shopping service that saves shoppers time and money by searching for any item as specified by the user based on a price threshold and other particulars. Shoppers make their own eyeballs on the site to find the products they want to keep an eye on, name the price they want to find it at (or a close approximation) and then the eyeball does the rest. Currently the technology is used most on major shopping sites that are compatible with the software but it is being further developed so that the scope and range of the eyeball will increase to include the entire internet; finding you the best price on earth for the product you want.  And you don’t have to do a thing, GoEyeball will e-mail you and alert you instantly when your eye has found the product you want for the price you want. Just in time for the festive season and right in the middle of swine flu season your customized eyeball can do your Christmas shopping for you, everything from kids toys to real estate listings.

I’m pretty stoked that I don’t have to risk  swine flu or debit card fraud on Robson Street now.

A few weeks earlier here in Senses Land we mentioned how Rupert Murdoch had basically lost his mind and was considering banning Google from accessing his many newspaper’s websites- like the blood sucking freeloading leeches they are. I mean really, don’t these guys at Google have any mid 20th century business-sense? Offering a free service that directs millions of people to Rupert Murdoch’s various newspapers and websites without asking anything in return. I mean come on! Where do they get off? It should be a crime to offer such a convenient service that millions of people use. To think that people would do that rather than walk outside in the god damned pouring rain to the nearest newspaper stand and buy a physical copy of The Wall Street Journal or sit at home waiting for something interesting and newsworthy to be “reported” on by Fox News is just shocking. And Rupert Murdoch has been shocked long enough! Here’s the plan:

Murdoch blocks Google so that millions of people can no longer see his newspaper articles through that engine meanwhile he convinces everyone to start using Microsoft’s search engine Bing, clearly it will be the superior search engine now based on the fact that it is the only one where you can get the twisted right-winged drivel produced by Fox News and other Murdoch owned companies. So if you want what the rest of the world considers news you can still use Google and if you want what Rupert Murdoch considers to be news you can use Bing- oh and you can start god damned paying for it too (Or Microsoft can). The details of how that all works will be worked out between Microsoft and News Corp, who I predict will soon become known as News Corpse, as this kind of backwards logic will surely kill this company. Microsoft paying huge sums of money for exclusive access to what many believe is the most slanted and biased news available is also, in my opinion, not good for their brand or their pocket book.

I’m not the only one who thinks News Corpse is doomed. The founder of Twitter, Biz Stone, recently spoke about Murdoch’s plans at the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) in London England. To use the main soundbytes, Stone said it was a “vain attempt to put the genie back in the bottle” and that it would “fail fast“. When considering how rapidly the technology and software that powers the internet changes, one can clearly see that putting a “paywall” around your content and burying it inside a search engine with a 10% market share is akin to going cyber-Amish.

That hasn’t stopped the giddy laughter from Redmond Washington though, as Microsoft has been looking for any way possible to chip away at Google’s market share of the online search industry. I’m not sure if making your search engine the only one where users can pay to get right-winged conservative news from an old man who hates the internet is the best way to go about it though.

And so begins Murdoch’s exodus into the online wilderness, welcomed and aided by another global opportunist; it will likely end poorly for the both. They have officially begun to work against the forces of internet-nature and because of this will surely be covered over by the jungle or swept away by the tide. In the end I believe it’s ego and greed that fuels Murdoch’s outrageous departure from reality or common sense while for Microsoft it’s desperation and greed. Any business strategy or alliance built on desperation, ego and greed is doomed to toxic implosion.

What a swan song this will be for Rupert Murdoch.

However, Youtube Direct isn’t just for news agencies, it can also be utilized for businesses, non-profits, politicians, or just about anyone who wishes to connect with a target audience.  Businesses could feature content that reviews or favours their products, or post up promotional campaigns; non-profits could use it to spread awareness about their work and goals; and politicians could utilize it to connect with voters.

For more on the impact of how Youtube is impacting the world of citizen journalism, check out this interview with Olivia Ma, Youtube’s manager of News & Politics:

Olivia Ma on YouTube as a news channel from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

But, as one might expect, there’s an app for that. Actually, there’s a couple.

Mall Maps - You Are Here costs a mere $2.99 in the iPhone App Store, and provides shoppers with detailed floor-plans to over 1,000 American malls. It’s the perfect thing to plan the attack route and, perhaps more importantly, an effective exit strategy. Currently it’s the 9th most popular reference app in the store.

TGI Black Friday is a free app put out by the online coupon repository, Dealcatcher.com. As the source would indicate, it offers more than 8,000 discounts at major retailers.

ShopSavvy is another free app, available for both iPhone and Android users. And it scores well both for technical innovation, and retailer angering. Using your camera’s phone, you can go into a store and scan the UPC code of a product. The app will then tell you exactly how much that same item costs at all the competitor’s stores. Great for bargain-hunters, annoying for the folks selling the products.

So if you are the U.S. and you plan to brave the crowds on Black Friday, don’t leave home without spare water, pepper spray for crowd control, and your app-equipped iPhone.

Virtualization and Software as a Service have been slowly transforming the business landscape by offering effective ways to consolidate and manage massive amounts of data without having to buy your own football field to house servers. They’re also more cost-effective options because companies no longer have to buy physical product and install software,  it’s as simple as buying the service and logging in. Virtualization and SaaS don’t just save space they also save time. SaaS providers have begun to get more creative though as the industry moves from primarily IT data management into new realms. An earlier post examined LendingClub.com a company that launched via Facebook and quickly outgrew the platform. Though the company is viewed as a social media lending portal I feel compelled to include it in the new virtual business model- where the software coding is less of a product and more of a construct in which a service is experienced. They are the newest kind of business models in an exciting field of entrepreneurship. Another great example of innovative SaaS  comes from InTouch, a Vancouver business that creates comprehensive marketing and sales solutions for fitness companies world-wide. The software engages both staff, management, potential clients and existing clients through multiple digital mediums. For management and staff it organizes and clearly lays out all sales data including reminders of appointments and upcoming meetings, instantly informs the company of business leads from activity on their website, tracks sales and shows all leads and what kind of follow-ups have been done. For potential fitness clients it keeps the company in touch with them through reminders and info about the services that the company offers; “Touches” being a key concept in sales and marketing and something that many companies under perform in. According to a PR Wire release the InTouch SalesTracker Software (their virtualized sales tracker):

“helps clients sell more memberships and increases their revenue by an average of $25,000 to $35,000/month/location by ensuring that all leads are contacted automatically, frequently and consistently.”

InTouch clients take “luck” out of the sales process. The average health club only contacts a lead 3 times, while our clients realize that most people need to be contacted 7 to 11 times before they will become a member. Clubs that do not follow-up frequently and consistently, suffer from follow-up failure. SalesTracker stops follow-up failure by guaranteeing that clubs communicate with all of their leads frequently and consistently through multiple communication channels including the phone, email and SMS text” messages.

I met InTouch CEO Scott Johnston at an event recently and we discussed in depth just how profoundly SaaS and virtualization are affecting business. InTouch continues to  explore ways to enrich the service experience for users as the company grows, further developing this robust platform for business to client interaction. I believe they’re another excellent example of the kinds of new business models that we are going to see as engines of growth in the software industry.

Gimme that SaaS!

Photo Courtesy Of Shaun Scholtz

At TEDx Vancouver, this weekend, there was a recurring theme of “context versus content”. It began with the first speaker of the day, Terry McBride. It is unfortunately rare to find a veteran of the music industry who both understands where the industry is headed, and why there is good reason to be optimistic about it. Terry is definitely one of those people. While many record label heads are afraid of altering the underlying business models of the music business, Terry seems prepared and willing to catalyze the industry’s transition.

Radical change in the music industry has been a hot topic in the Thirdi office over the last few weeks as well. We have been deeply discussing the possibilities for new models to reshape the world of music distribution with one of our clients. In this short essay I’d like to discuss what Terry thinks about the future of the music business, as well as what I took away from our internal discussions.

The days of thinking of music as a rights-managed, packaged, good are over. The current business model that the industry is clinging to was shaped by the fact that:

A) Music cost a significant of money to distribute
B) Shelf space, and album length, were finite

In that world, looking at music in terms of copyright made sense. You needed to control the number of people who could distribute music because otherwise nobody would take on the risk of bearing these costs. Neither of these two points are true in today’s world, however. Terry says that represents an opportunity, and so do I. The old model was defined by businessmen and lawyers, the new model will be defined by artists and fans.

You see, music is about situation and relationships far more than it is about distribution. Songs have meaning because of the way that they become a part of your life. As a teenager, Terry used mixtapes to win the affection of girls he liked. The medium of Cassette, LP, CD, or iTunes Download is not the important part of the story. What matters are the relationships that these gifts fostered. The context of the mixtape is far more important than the content.

The fact that he was breaking a copyright law by doing this never even registered in young Terry’s mind. He pointed out that most of the lawyers who are now helping record companies sue teenagers likely engaged in that same form of copyright infringement in their youth. You cannot litigate teenage behaviour, and you cannot legislate it either. People’s connection to music is too strong to be broken by scare tactics and arcane rules. I would add that you cannot DRM teenager’s behaviour either. DRM is designed to take away one of the core functions of music, to share it with your friends. Taking away that ability severely lowers its value to listeners.

There is more new music being created today than ever before. It has never been cheaper to record an album and distribute it, which completely upends the relationship between artist and record label. The old model assumed that even wealthy artists could not afford to record their own music, promote it, and get it distributed to all of their fans. In the analogue world, that was too hard. The label’s grips on the distribution network forced independent artists to the fringes, and put a ceiling on their success.

It is now possible to release music at a fraction of its former cost, which is likely why Terry is recommending so many of his artists start their own labels. It is a general economic rule that as the friction of coordinating a business shrinks, so does the size of the firm. In the case of The Barenaked Ladies, and a growing horde of other acts, the size of the firm has become a single artist (and a number of organizations they hire to help them manage and accelerate their success). Artists can interact more directly with their fans today, and don’t need to communicate through middle-men like labels. In this model, the artists are not constrained by copyright law because they hold the copyrights themselves. That affords lots of new opportunities.

Anyone who grew up around file sharing has become accustomed to free or very cheap music. That has changed the context that music exists in. Listeners can experiment more, and delve deeper into new genres, because there is no penalty for picking the wrong album or song. Terry talked about Spotify as the future of the music industry. It is true, there is a lot to love about the service. I wrote about it a few months ago on this blog, and still love the freedom it affords. Managing a music collection is usually a burden. I have spent hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours managing my 20,000 songs. Only a tiny, High Fidelity inspired, minority like myself actually enjoys that time. When most people want to listen to an artist, or a genre, of music they are not concerned with whether they ‘own’ it; they are concerned about how easy it is to access. In that sense, Spotify is a near-perfect service. You can listen to anything you want within seconds, and not have to think about where it came from.

I would argue that Spotify is far from a perfect product however. Music is inherently social, and Spotify’s social features seem tacked on at the end. Sure, you can share links to Spotify songs, but there is no way to play them if the receiver does not have the downloadable client and an account. Music is meant to be a shared experience, and while Spotify’s shared playlists are nice, they are neither central to the service nor universally accessible. Last.fm is closer, but still has little to offer the teenager looking to impress a girl. Spotify is still trying to replicate some aspects of the ‘individual-centric’ music model of the past.

Terry also talked about a push versus pull view of looking at recorded music. Vinyl records had to be played in sequence without risk of scratching them. That led to the “concept album” which took advantage of this reality and the length available in the LP format. When the Compact Disc was released, it allowed listeners to switch and repeat track easily. Artists adapted their work to this medium, as they have for every medium that preceded it, and created works that emphasized individual tracks. The concept album is a push-centered idea. The artist compiles a full-length work that is to be listened to in their specified order. The CD (and digital download) allow the listener to control the order of play. The effects of this transition are still taking shape. My question is: what will inherently social music look and sound like?

The talk was rich in personal stories, and new ideas to move the industry forward. Here are a few thoughts that I took away from his talk:

• Listeners don’t want to be threatened or controlled by corporations. They want to control their own experience.
• Artists are freer than ever to set their own course
• Context and relationships are a core part of listening to music
• Format, and business structure, affects art
• The fan will take a far more central role in the creation and distribution of the music that they listen to
• It is a good time to be a music fan, and an even better time to be an artist

For more information on some of these ideas, check out these articles which inspired me.

It was the ideas that came out of that meeting that got me invited to TEDx Vancouver. We talked about game design, and how powerful it could be in transforming people’s behaviour. For example, the videogame Re:Mission is designed to help children cope with the symptoms and treatment of their cancer. We talked about the power of personal stories, and how they can inspire change in others. We talked about how essential it is to have a social context at the heart of the experience, not tacked on at the end. Tommy, the entrepreneur leading the web project, recommended me to Cyrus (one of the organizers of TEDx Van) as a potential speaker based on these discussions.

As a huge fan of the TED Conference, it was an opportunity I could not ignore. I immediately started a discussion with Cyrus about the ways in which game design has crept into our day-to-day lives, and why we should be actively working to make sure it was used for the betterment of society. Games are a powerful tool of manipulation, as they can influence behaviour without having to explain themselves too much. We don’t have to ask why someone plays a game, we can just accept that it is “fun” and not think any deeper. I talked about some examples of pervasive games, from the Prius battery monitor to Air Miles Reward cards.

When Cyrus confirmed that I was speaking at the event, I knew I had to step things up a notch. In addition to well-articulated ideas, I needed a unique visual style. I was up between Academy Award Nominees and Titans of Industry. So, I decided on an ambitious project of using Apple’s 3D motion graphics software, Motion, to create a talk that zoomed and moved as if it were shot from a fast-moving helicopter. The videos would then be sliced up and strung together as a Keynote presentation to allow me to control their pace. Click here to see a short sample of what I am talking about.

Unfortunately, this visual style would be my talk’s undoing. Through a series of missteps and miscommunications, and some last-minute changes to the presentation equipment, the organizers could not get my talk to play. I had re-encoded the video in three different formats to no avail. My talk was moved from the morning to the afternoon session, and then ultimately pulled from the schedule. While I was obviously disappointed by the experience, I believe that a greater opportunity lies ahead.

The show must go on, and so I am now working with the organizers to create a community event where this talk can be seen and discussed. I think it brings up important questions about ethics, morality, technology, and human behaviour on the web. I hope that many of the TEDx attendees will be able to make it to the event, as well as some of the TED fans who were not accepted into the event or were intimidated by the daunting application form. I am happy that my talk will be seen in a more open forum and that it will still be exposed on the TEDx website.

If you are interested in reading more about TEDx Vancouver there will be many more posts here on Senses, and be sure to check out Sean Cranbury’s excellent summary as well.

Once upon a time, Britain had a working draft of a new bill that was primarily meant to help improve the country’s broadband infrastructure. It was being spearheaded by the British Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, and many in the media though it sounded pretty good.

But then something odd happened. Entertainment industry kingpin David Geffen invited Mandelson down to the Greek island of Corfu for a little all-expenses-paid mixer. They presumably ate some moussaka, drank a little retsina and talked. And soon after that meeting, the Digital Economy Bill underwent a few minor tweaks. News of those tweaks recently leaked to the media, and have provoked a growing storm of reaction. Mostly because the bill now has nothing to do with broadband infrastructure improvement, and everything to do with giving the entertainment industry free rein to investigate and punish illegal file sharers by cutting off their internet access, fining them enormous sums of money and possibly even throwing them in jail.

Some of the highlights of the new bill include:

• Fines of 50,000 pounds if someone in your household is accused of illegal file sharing.
• A requirement by internet service providers to spy on their customers in order to look for evidence the entertainment industry can use to sue illegal file sharers.
• Fines of 250,000 pounds for ISPs who refuse to take part in this spying.
• “Deputizing” entertainment industry groups with the power to investigate and impose punishments.
• And, best of all, the ability for the British Business Secretary to just make up new punishments and enforcement systems whenever he wants. And yes, that ability is actually written into the bill. There’s no review or oversight built into the bill for these new punishments.

For those who believe in a free internet, it certainly raises some ugly questions around freedom and privacy issues. And the bill’s seeming disregard for due legal process and that whole innocent-until-proven-guilty thing raises some red flags. But at least David Geffen’s happy with it…

The problem is widespread and consumers have been angered at the lack of transparency concerning the locations where cards were compromised. Unfortunately for those who have been scammed this is  the protocol for dealing with these kinds of bank card frauds. It’s considered the responsibility of the bank, not the government, to protect consumer’s who use the hardware that’s been compromised- but the criminal investigation relies on confidentiality.

Though the security of bank cards and their pin numbers have been the responsibility of the banks themselves, the Canadian government has taken the lead on  identity theft.  While banks maintain responsibility for cards and pins the government is responsible for those who use them. The passing of Bill S-4, An Act to amend the Criminal Code means that it’s now a criminal offense to obtain and possess identity information with the intent to use the information deceptively, dishonestly or fraudulently in the commission of a crime. It is also a criminal offense to transfer or sell information to another person without considering the possible criminal uses of that information and to unlawfully possess or traffick in government-issued identity documents that contain another person’s information. These steps effectively neuter identity theft operations before they’re able to gain momentum and do some serious damage, or at least that’s the hope.

In finding a balance between the freedom of business and the paternalism of bureaucracy we can create the systems we need to allow for flexible and secure ecommerce. But judging by what we see going on in the physical realm we need to have a co-operative approach. Government and institutions can only do so much- we as consumers need to be vigilant and cautious. Scammers will continue to find new and creative ways to completely screw us over and the more we let them do it (by letting our guard down)  the easier it is for bureaucracies to come tilting at windmills, for better or worse, with legislation and regulation. Suffocating us, and the internet, with their love.

There’s a new app available for iPhones that may help finally settle one of the grave issues of our time. To function properly, society has to be divided into haves, and have nots. Currently, one of the ways that happens is the stratification between those who own iPhones, and those who don’t. Those who don’t are obviously a mass of unwashed rabble who can be safely ignored. And those who do own one of the sexy little devices are awesome. But there’s a problem with this division - pretty much everyone now owns one. So if everyone is a have, how do we as a society know who to look down on? And how does an individual iPhone owner know whether to be filled with self-confidence, or to hate themselves for being part of the unwashed masses?

Thankfully, a new app has been released that will make it much easier to draw this important distinction. Visit the App Store right now, and for 99 cents, you can download “Fit or Fugly”.

Here’s how it works. You upload a photo of yourself (or a loved or loathed one) and then attach “anchor pins” to all the important facial features: eyes, nose, mouth, ears, dimples, etc. The app then uses the data collected from the anchor pins and measures your features against Fibonacci’s Golden Ratio. If your face is symmetrical, you’re declared Fit. But if your facial symmetry resembles that of Ron Howard’s little brother, you’re branded Fugly. Oh, and it works on pets too!

Fibonacci’s Golden Ratio, by the way, isn’t just something the app designers made up. It’s a mathematical formula that some maintain is an accurate means to determine how aesthetically pleasing things are, based on their symmetry.

But can Fibonacci’s Golden Ratio, and a 99 cent app, really tell you if you’re Hot or Not Fit or Fugly? I wish I could tell you, but I don’t own an iPhone.