We yawn to keep our brain cool!

Apparently so. The Discovery Channel writes

If air in the atmosphere is cooler than brain and body temperatures, taking it in quickly cools facial blood that, in turn, cools the brain and may even alter blood flow. Prior studies reveal yawning leads to a heightened state of arousal, so a morning yawn may function somewhat like a cup of coffee in providing a jolt of energy.

The new findings also explain why tired individuals often yawn, since both exhaustion and sleep deprivation have been shown to increase deep brain temperatures, again prompting a yawn-driven cool down. Yawning additionally appears to facilitate transitional states of the brain, such as going from sleep to waking periods.

So I feel a lot less guilty for yawing through holiday pictures now!

Twit or Fit?

Remember hotornot.com? Apparently it was sold for $20 million not too long ago. Now hot on its heels is twitorfit.com!

The site uses your existing profile picture on twitter (you know, the tiny one people can’t see too well) and asks people to rate you from 1 (twit) to 10 (fit). It’s interesting to see this format still, potentially, has legs and as twitter becomes more mainstream and grows in popularity I guess it could join the ranks of other twitter add-on sites.

For the purposes of research, I’ve signed up so if you come across me – go easy on the 1s eh! twitorfit.com/boringwill!

2009 Social Media Predictions

Peter Kim today has produced a report with commentary from many people in the social media space about where they think social media will go in 2009. Here are some of the interesting points from it:

• “Although it is now cheaper to launch an initiative leveraging Web 2.0 technology – it requires qualified and passionate people to make them successful.” – David Armano
• “You may not always start the year as a leader, but you can certainly finish it that way.” – Rohit Bhargava
• “Doors are going to close all over the social web. Why? Because the money didn’t come the way people thought it would.” – Chris Brogan
• “The tipping point has not only *not* been reached, but could still tilt *away* from Social Media.” – Todd Defren
• “There’s a lot of fixing that needs to be done.” – Jason Falls
• “We’re going to develop a set of better metrics to help guide, direct and validate ‘commitment’.” – Joseph Jaffe
• “These will be cumulative events and interactions that will build brand loyalty for the companies that pay attention to them.” – Scott Monty
• “The recession will force revenue results out of social technologies.” – Jeremiah Owyang
• “Companies that focus on earning love will thrive during hard times, and kick ass when good times return.” – Andy Sernovitz
• “Suddenly, being Facebook friends with your mom will seem less ridiculous than following 4,000 strangers on Twitter.” – Greg Verdino

Personally I think it will be an interesting time. The rush we saw in 2008 for companies to be on a social networking site as a ‘me too’ factor will diminish, along with their willingness to spend lots of money without thinking about what they really want to achieve first. I also think it will get more personal with brands realising that it’s not about blogging as a corporation/business but using executives and staff to act as ‘faces’, blending personality with PR.

You can  download a pdf of the report here, or read the article in full at Peter Kim’s blog here.

Remember when?

After seeing that a Renault ad made the top ten Christmas advertising turkeys, it got me thinking about their latest advert. Now have a think about these questions and clock up how many ‘yes’ answers you give:

• Remember when you said girls had fleas?
• Remember when you said you’d never get a mobile?
• ..or a computer?
• Remember when you said you’d never cut your hair?
• ..or have kids?
• Remember when you said you’d never buy a Renault?

Err… sorry but I’m really not down with you Renault. I scored a pathetic 1 out of 6. You’ll have to guess which one that is. The thing is that advertising should be all about appealing to your market by identifying the niches you need to serve but a straw poll tells me that only my Grandad would answer yes to all these questions.. if only he could remember that far back!

Ok, so another Renault ad slated but I did really like the music. However, after discovering that it was France’s Eurovision entry for 2008 I’m over it.

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=rTthvxpzNDM]

Capturing user feedback

Being able to discover what users think about your website is essential. The fact that you can solicit feedback across an entire website is something I find very exciting. No, really. What you do with the data is a whole other kettle of fish but it’s that ability to ask a visitor for feedback at any point of your user journey means that, in theory, you’ve lots of useful stuff to help you work on future site iterations.

For the launch of Boring Studnet and MyLongLunch, the plan is to have a horizontal feedback button either on the left or right edge of the site. It will simply read ‘Feedback’ and be visible and clickable from any page on the sites. Clicking it will pop up a little free text box, so that users can provide their thoughts/bugs/ideas throughout the entire site. Sound familiar? Totally, I see it every day on my favourite URL shortening site, bit.ly!

Having development resource means we have the ability to build our own feedback mechanism into our sites but what if you really don’t want to embark on another building mission? Personally I would say that if you can, try and build your own form as that way you capture the info you want but don’t worry if you can’t as there are a few companies out there who will handle site feedback for you at a relatively low cost. Here are a few solutions for website feedback I’ve come across.

Suggestion Box: Suggestion Box isn’t strictly about website feedback but I thought I would mention it as it’s a great way for consumers to suggest improvements to a business or the products and/or services they provide. Though at time of looking at Suggestion Box there were a number of impressive organisations listed, such as Nike, Linkedin and even Obama, it’s not limited to big organisations and anyone can create a Suggestion Box account simply and for free (using their 30-day free trial). There’s a weath of administrative tools and they provide a unique url for you to point users at so they can provide honest and anonymous feedback. Suggestion Box subscription after the free trial starts at a not-too-credit-crunch-friendly $50/month.

Crowd Source: Crowd Source is a site developed by a company called intrideas. Their feedback application appears to work by integrating a widget into your site. This method adopted by Crowd Source has its advantages, as you draw lots of attention to the feedback element and can make it immediately clear to the site visitor what sort of feedback you’re after, along with being able to put the widget on other sites, not just your own. Its disadvantages include possibly not being able to incorporate it onto every single page as there simply isn’t the space on your site, along with having to put up with the Crowd Source widget design and potentially annoy the consumer as it lacks any subtly. Crowd Source offers a free version with some neat features such as spam and profanity filtering or a plus version for about $10/month letting you customise the widget and have SSL security for admins.

User Voice: User Voice is my favourite of the three as it has all the features I like. Firstly the feedback mechanism is simply a small feedback button which sits to the left hand-side of the page, on every page of your site. Secondly User Voice has a nice way of presenting user feedback in tables and allowing you as the site owner to comment on this feedback and make all this public, so people can see you’re listening and making changes (or not making changes but at least listening to their feedback). Thirdly, fourthly and fifthly it just has the edge when it comes to design and usability when compared to the other two, so User Voice gets a big thumbs up from me. Though there is a free version for up to 10,000 contributions, after that the prices do leap to almost $300/month for the never level up, enabling 20,000 active users.

Remember that user feedback is so so very valuable and if you can’t do anything with it visitors will notice this, cease to contribute and eventually cease to visit your site! If you can do something about it, make sure you create a song and dance about this – they need to know about it!

Worst TV ads of 2008

Campaign magazine yesterday released their top 10 advertising ‘turkeys’ and what gobblers some of them are!

1. Gilette
Roger Federer, Tiger Woods and Thierry Henry apply a thick layer of cheese trying to imply that their performance is all about the razor they use. Nothing to do with hours and hours of practice and dedication then? I guess we should be luck the three are still strong enough in their chosen sports to not try a stint as an actor (a la Vinnie Jones!)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4L3bm6m3KQ]

2. Specsavers
I’ve only recently seen the Edith Piaf biographical film, La Vie En Rose, prior to that I had this ad. Little did I know that she was should a troubled woman with a life full of slaps in the face. So I can see what Specsavers were getting to:  years of torment are yours if you don’t go to Specsavers! On the up side, I wonder if this ad had a positive effect on sales of her music in the UK?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C-4A7VS6C4]

3. Renault
Argh! We’re a victim of euro recycling! This advertising equivilant of Badly Dubbed Porn has a woman getting really shocked about receiving a cash back cheque. Didn’t she see the adverts before buying one?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4ogWSb9LOc]

4. Warburtons
A bloke on a trip overseas finds that everyone is named Warburton. Woo. Spooky!

5. Country Life
Anarchist, boyfrend of Viviene Westwood and now front man for butter?! I felt slightly uncomfortable watching it.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mSE-Iy_tFY]

6. Kellogg
Poor Dame Kelly Holmes. She won loads of gold medals in some Olympic (I think it was 2004) and now she’s trying to tell us that we need to start the day off with a good breakfast but has the persuasion and style of a physics teacher!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYpt2wNuvSo]

7. Orangina
I wouldn’t call this a turkey, as such, just plain bloody freaky! Animals perform sexy dances and a dear simukates sex wth a bear. I’ve not had a sip of the fizzy orange juice since seeing this one!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZB9-u5H-04]

8. Premier Inn
I grew up watching Lennie Henry. He used to be quite funny, I think. I’ve no idea what happened here. “Hey I found something small time, the bill!” No no no nooooo.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETz_OR1cq2k]

9. Samsung
Sportsmen do not a good advertisment make! They’ve bunged a few Chelsea players into a TV and asked a woman to swish around. This is why my HD TV is Panasonic!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MxdfUfiWx0]

10. DFS
They’ve already had quite a bit of wrap over this advert, in fact it’s banned, due to the fact 21 people complained to the ASA as the ad used a production technique to make the sofas look larger than they actually were. The idea is that if you get a DFS sofa, you can live like a rockstar. Eh?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKCMGGN1HFo]

Source: Campaign

Last.fm layoff 20% of workforce

Having got most of Acknowledgement and Boring staff onto Last.fm over the past few months, I was sad to learn earlier today that last.fm, the social network based around the music you and your friends listen to, is laying off 20% of their 90-ish strong workforce.

Last.fm was a favourite of mine as the software would just sit in the background tracking the music you listen to through media players, such as iTunes, or via the streaming service on the last.fm website. This tracking of music even had a verb: ’scrobbling’.

After getting everyone to register and use the site religiously, we had a few weeks of fun creating an office chart and seeing how our music choices differed. The thing was, that’s where it ended. The level of engagement last.fm provides, though fun, doesn’t reward frequent users enough. Sure, it reccommends music you may never listened to before but if you’re anything like me, it’s pretty easy to exhaust these offerings and get bored of their suggestions.

It’s never nice to learn of people in the same industry as you losing their jobs, so as a mark of respect I’m going to use last.fm all day tomorrow. Even though I know it’s going to suggest Kylie, one too many times.

Goodbye Ergh Designs, Hello Users

Boring Student’s design and build process has been a bit all over the shop. We started specing, then designed, then speced a bit more, then did some build, then some more design then called the whole thing off. Well, not quite but we have gone back to the drawing board.

One of our developers back from a week long tech camp the other week came back to the office full of new ideas she wanted to put into practice and it’s really paid off. Her approach was to stop what we’re doing and get back to the user. It’s often the case that when you get so far into a web project, you actually forget who you’re doing it for – the end user. So personal opinion creeps in and, invariably, the product suffers.

You can usually sense the signs. People argue and squabble over minor points (not that we ever argue at Boring, no no no!!), there is little sign of progress, there’s a lack of drive and people seem to lack the excitement they once had.

This interjection couldn’t have happened at a better time!

We spent a few days reminding ourselves who will be using the site. It wasn’t us, though we will use it religiously. And it’s important to make decisions on behalf of the user, rather than as the user. We’ve disgruntled 20 year old lad who really couldn’t be bothered with University, a high-achieving 14 year-old boy who was planing his University before he’d even started GCSEs, a single mum of two kids who’re at secondary school and a few other interesting characters. They’re all now close to my heart as it’s these characters who are reminding me what the site is all about. It’s difficult for a site to serve all users but as long are you are thinking about the users and not yourself, you’re on the right track.

Armed with this breath of fresh air, we’re about to embark on a serious change to the User Interface of the site. This kicked off today with new wire frames and, hoping that Christmas excess doesn’t kick in too early for our designers, we should have some designs by the early part of next week. I’m very excited!

You know when a software project fails when…

Recently I answered a question on Linkedin which asked Finish this sentence. “I knew the software project was doomed when…”

I’d worked on a project back at AOL where the project named changed about three times in as many months so shared my quip. When I was contacted by the questioner to be told I was the top answer and made the first entry in her article on CIO.com, I was pretty pleased.

You can view mine and the 25 other answers, bound to resonate with anyone who’s worked on a software/large scale web project, here.

Europe: stop recycling, the planet doesn’t need your help!

Ever sat in a café in Paris and coped a listen to the radio in the background? Aside from the very catchy jingles the French seem to love in their advertising (Eurostar travellers will be familiar with SNCF’s “ba da baaa da” at Gare du Nord), you’ll hear a lot of French language music. Actually, you’ll hear at least 40% of French language music on French radio due to the Pelchat amendment to the 1994 Broadcasting Reform Act requiring this. So there you are, sipping a erm.. cafe and you hear a really familiar tune on the radio but you don’t recognise the voice.. wait a minute.. it’s not even in English!

Living in the UK, we (thankfully) don’t get to experience much of this euro-recycling but today I came across a classic example of 3, count em, 3 songs from 3 different countries, performed by 3 different acts but all the same 1 song (this sentence was sponsored by 3 mobile broadband).

So from France we have L5, Deconnecter
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnYc21JiNBg]

From Spain we have Natalie, De Repente
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wuql6ty7Tk4]

Finally, from Germany we have the er, talentless Sandy and Unexpected
[youtube=http:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=utIGzfyqI6A]

Ok, that’s enough for one day. Sorry.