I noticed this week that Google have just announced that they have moved into the face wear business with the creation of augmented reality glasses. As well as being geekily intrigued I was also amused (doesn’t take much) as I’d written a post about having a pair of these a couple of years back (on April 1^st) ..

My original spoof (nay, visionary) post is here:

http://markkellynet.com/2010/04/01/my-new-ar-glasses/

More detail on the actual, real Google venture is here on the Brass blog (where I work) :

(is the second story down but do read the others : all killer no filler).

 http://www.brassagency.com/blog/top-digital-stories-this-week-incl-memes-mobile-the-unlikeminded/

[ Google Glasses image courtesy of http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/44529/android-powered-google-ar-glasses]

Related articles

• Report: Google Developing AR Glasses? (gadget.com)
• Android powered Google AR glasses to land this year (pocket-lint.com)
• Forget Embarrassment, I’d Wear Google’s AR Glasses (slashgear.com)

What was it about?
The premise for the panel event was to bring the conversation about social influence up to date (some of the panelists took part last year) and to look at the area of trust. Trust as a term was used in a few contexts during the debate (I’m paraphrasing here):

Should we trust the motivations of ‘Influencers’ and / or brand advocates and if so, does that differ by instance?
Can you trust the tools that identify those Influencers?
Can you trust the Influence scores being attributed to anyone online with a ‘social profile or presence’.
More philosophically - should you use or care about the scoring tools (e.g Peer Index, Klout).

The #smwldn Influence panel - my camera phone. Better pictures exist on the Like Minds site

The rise of Influence scores and Influencer identification and wider taxonomy of Influencer, Advocate, Fan etc is an interesting (nay, vital to understand) area and I’ve written a bit about it here before (search results on my blog for ‘Influence’) : http://markkellynet.com/?s=Influence

The whole area of pinpointing and then measuring online influence is still shaping up (different measurement platforms, different measures used). In fact the definition of Influence itself  is mercurial still I think.  Which makes for a dynamic ‘we’re still figuring all this out’ debate.
Like I said, some of the panelists were the same guys from a similar event at last year’s social media week (@joannejacobs @azeem @benjaminellis  @likeminds). Actually, a quick read through a post I did at the time shows that the same issues prevail to some extent – what do we mean by Influence? How do you stop any platform being gamed? Are we at a stage where Influence Scores can be relied on to make important life affecting decisions – for or by us? Or indeed should they be (as they are with credit scores)..
http://markkellynet.com/2011/02/14/sound-bites-from-social-media-week-london-smwldn/

Panel debate transcript
So lots of questions raised during the morning and lots of views put forward. It was a great debate, really lively and covered more than published subject area – a transcript is here courtesy of Like Minds: http://wearelikeminds.com/live/trust-and-social-influence#comments

Some of my tweets, not doing justice to the hour or so of discussions but more to capture some initial reaction are here:

On the subject of Influence Scores :
mine are, I think “ doing okay but must try harder” or similar.
After an initial flurry of ‘attending’ to my Peer Index and Klout scores, I’ve just allowed them to do ‘their own thing’ and rise and fall as I tweet or blog in fits and starts. I one point I was (say it loud) The Most Influential Digital Marketing Practitioner in Leeds – now, I’m not (as evidenced by a Peer index list from @monicatailor). I’ll get over it. Don’t judge me.
Related articles

• Klout vs Kred in the social influence game (econsultancy.com)
• Does Klout Score Really Matter? (community.constantcontact.com)
• The Truth About Marketing Leadership (twistimage.com)

Babies are eight times more likely to be killed than any other child. A pretty stark fact.  And the NSPCC are committed to ensuring that the public, all professionals and governments protect babies.

I’m not giving away any trade secrets in saying that the NSPCC is using social media and online marketing in general to really get their message across, to raise awareness of a range of issues and to engender a sense of community amongst supporters. And to gain tangible support (via pledge signups and /or donations) along the way.
They are using a range of ways to engage followers / fans and galvanise people into action (including the multiplier effect of friends of fans in Facebook). They / we are also running a blogger outreach programme to help spread the word.

And as a charity, all of this needs to be done within a finite budget, so all of the above has to be effective and measurable.

Anyway – enough of the marketing talk – this was more a personal post to do my bit to raise awareness of the campaign:
The resources that the NSPCC make available for new parents is great, frankly I wish I’d been aware or had access to them (way) back when I became as Dad.

Being a new parent is fantastic but it can also be a pretty lonely and very stressful place at 1.00 a.m, 3.00 a.m, 3.30 a.m .. etc, when baby is crying incessantly. Having a range of materials available to better understand the cues your baby is giving you, or to explain how to deal with acute tiredness is brilliant.

Have a look at the campaign site for more information. And please take a minute to sign the pledge form! Thanks

Related articles

• Up To 200,000 Brit Babies ‘At Risk Of Abuse’ (news.sky.com)
• Charity warns of babies at risk (bbc.co.uk)

This will be the world’s first gallery to explore the impact of the internet across all areas of culture, politics, our individual lives and from its inception onwards.
It’s a mix of In Real Life exhibits and experiences within newly redesigned museum areas and also online / interactive presences.

Brass are one of the sponsors of the gallery along with Start JudgeGill and Virgin Media and we’ve been supporting the Life Online social media and digital marketing campaigns with a range of work. A couple of us are also on the advisory panel.  The gallery content itself has had input from a variety of web experts e.g Ben Hammersley , (Prime Minister’s Ambassador to TechCity and editor at large of Wired); Google and Microsoft guys (don’t have details sorry) and Rob Wilmot and Ajaz Ahmed who founded Freeserve.

For updates follow @mediamuseum  and get involved as it develops!

Info on the gallery and exhibitions can be found here :

http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/PlanAVisit/Exhibitions/LifeOnlineExhibition/PermanentGallery.aspx

If you are in the UK and haven’t been to the museum before – get there : the other exhibitions (photography, film, et al)  are superb and this will be no different.

image courtesy of the the Life Online website

In this context I’m talking about digital stuff.. images (still, moving, captured or made) and words. Far too much to ever be able to consume.

Which is fine, I’m not looking for a Matrix download or for Joe90 glasses (although…) but I do like to get a broad update on stuff that interests me. For me that’s digital marketing / tech, ‘Art’ and also Walking and Hiking. I can (and do) use RSS feeds pulled onto my igoogle page (and tabbed by interest area) but its a bit of a ‘flat’ experience and not that social.

Which is why I’ve set up three paper.li ‘newspapers’ (more like magazines in look maybe). They look really nice and  it makes scanning and / or in-depth reading more enjoyable.
They are also social. By that I mean that when the next edition is ready, one or more ‘contributors’ (at that stage unaware they’ve added to my paper.li for that week) will be included in a tweet that’s automatically generated. I’ve found and ‘met’ some great bloggers (for example) by being included myself along with others on someone else’s digital marketing paper.li.

You can also see what paper.li publications others subscribe to and find new stuff that way.

I”m not really that sophisticated with the service – I point one of my twitter lists at a new paper, change some of the settings ( design, frequency of aggregation/publishing..) and that’s it. You can get more picky by screening your twitter list by (say) PeerIndex or Klout scores (e.g. just publish ‘big hitters’). But I have people on my lists because I like them / what I’ve read.. ‘Influence’ score isn’t that paramount in this setting.

You can also bring in specific content you find elsewhere on web as a ‘guest’ article and also change the order of articles. So moving from being an Aggregator to an Editor. Which is a great feature and some nice examples of how people have used paper.li for groups / communities etc can be found on their community site (http://community.paper.li/).

And just because someone is on a twitter list doesn’t mean they just write / tweet about that subject area, so paper.li catergorises the content into areas such as technology, education., leisure .. very useful.

I read my paper/s on my phone and also on the big screen (Mac or laptop). I haven’t as yet got a tablet but I think they would  great read that way, probably better and more newspaper like.

My 3 paper.li newspapers are:
- Digital marketing groups and organisations (so I can see articles and news from people like eConsultancy, The IDM, Mashable etc)
(here : http://paper.li/markkelly333/dgtal-groups-events-assoc-21 )

- Digital marketing bloggers (people I’ve met or come across who write imho a reta marketing blog)
(here : http://paper.li/markkelly333/1325684684 )

- And ‘the feeding station : Art & that‘ : Artists, photographers, makers , galleries etc.. I nice way for me to see whats new exhibition or artistic practice wise
(here: http://paper.li/markkelly333/1323964517# )

I haven’t set one up for my hiking / outdoorsy twitter list as that’s pretty small and manageable to scan and read as is.

screengrab of my Art / Culture (in important Caps..) paper.li

Have you used this service or do you prefer RSS .. or another aggregation service ?

Related articles

• Tech & Your Biz: How Paper.li Can Fit Into the Content Mix (smallbiztechnology.com)
• Beta Test the New Paper.li “Nomad” (paper.li)

New year , new blog (platform). Seemed a good time to make the move.

And an excuse to noodle away hours on trying out new themes, new widgets.

Hmm, maybe should have left it well enough alone.

Anyway, I’m in the process of pulling across all my content from a squarespace account into wordpress (markkelly.net was on squarespace for years but I’ve made the move to WP ) ..
hence the current clunky design, the lack of images etc (they all need re-adding which is a bit painful, going back 3 years or more!)

So stick with me as I rebuild my blog, thanks.

Oh, please RSS, fave, +1 , like, tweet, gasp .. as much as you like .
Or just say hello in the comments of this inaugural (kind of) post ..thanks

btw – the featured image is (should be) one of the older photos on my ‘old’ squarespace blog. It features a Pleo, which I left behind when I left McCanns. I miss the Pleo. I like dinosaur-shaped robots.

Handy for things like business cards or email signatures.. People can then choose which of your streams to check out : your tweets, your photos (on flickr) your CV / résumé or biz updates on LinkedIn  etc. Flavors.me has now expanded  that initial service further by allowing you to see what other flavors.me users are updating within their respective ‘native’ services.

I wrote about both the new service itself and where that could go in the future : have a look here over on the Brass Agency blog  (3 stories in , scroll down the page).

I’ve also written about it before here : aggregated online personas on markkelly.net

And as an update to how these type of services are doing..  Google trends seams to suggest that both services have similar numbers of searches now and also site visits (whereas as about.me was ahead on both for the last year or more : http://trends.google.com/websites?q=about.me,+flavors.me&date=all&geo=all&ctab=0&sort=1&sa=N

Personally I prefer flavors.me because of the other users aggregating  tool thing and I’m used to the design options and functionality now. But the about.me url is much better…

Do you use either? if not, why not ? if so – which do you prefer?

Related articles

• 3 Sites to Showcase Your Personal Brand (junta42.com)
• Flavors.me Heads Into Tumblr Territory With “Follow” Buttons & Plans To Support Content Creation (techcrunch.com)
• Flavors.me evolves from personal landing page and shows off its social aspirations (digitaltrends.com)
• The all new Flavors.me: A social network to unite all social networks? (thenextweb.com)

I haven’t got time (sadly, as I’d like to) to replicate the session content or conclusions (as such) and I don’t think it was filmed, so this is just a signpost for the Leeds Digital festival website (above) where you can get more info.
And also to say that its clear we’re still collectively figuring out what works (and maybe what doesn’t) to get meaningful (as in, making money or offering brand value) engagement.

And also that the panel was really good (worth following these guys .. I’ve added correct twitter adds I think):

The Geolocation panel at leeds digital festival @LDSDigital

 
Lawrence Alexander (Bezier) – @larrysbrain

Imran Ali (LSx Festival of Technology) - @imran

Ashley Dawes (Zap!) (@zapmenow)

Adrian Inman (Order of Magnitude) (@adrianinman)

Sean Murricane (Welcome to Yorkshire) (https://twitter.com/#!/seaneeboy)

Matt Seward (Kilo75) (https://twitter.com/#!/mattseward)

Tim Waters (GeolQ) (https://twitter.com/#!/tim_waters)

my tweets sort of summarised (badly) what I thought at the time or agreed with:

 
Also here’s a link to a USA panel I looked at a few months back and a post I wrote :

http://markkelly.net/2010/09/23/are-we-nearly-there-yet/

And another post I’ve written on geolocation / location based marketing:

http://markkelly.net/2010/10/18/location-based-services-versus-bluetooth-proximity-marketing/

Related articles

• 70% of Americans Have No Idea What Geolocation Apps Are (readwriteweb.com)
• Adoption of geolocation applications has remained stagnant (venturebeat.com)

Although just launched, there’s been a lot of behind the scenes label negotiations (of course) and it can boast a huge song base already (at c.13 million songs). Which compares against around 15 Million (according to Wikipedia) for Spotify and 18 Million or more at the end of 2010 for iTunes (so 20+million now maybe).

The band (artist) hub feature looks really good, maybe a bit more dynamic than Facebook pages (in design maybe, not reach initially). And an alternative to Facebook is good for fans and prices surely? With Android now having 52% of the global smartphone OS market (Gartner Nov 2011) artists will be making the most of the band hub feature that Google Music will offer, potentially putting some squeeze on Facebook band pages and impacting on ad revenue in that space?

And as android user it should be easier for me to buy and sync tracks for my phone. Not that its such a hassle now but it’s a two stage process and I use an app called Double Twist which links my iTunes purchases and playlists with my Android  smartphone.

Secondly, it may make Google+ more social. I’m still not Google+ ing much but music can be a real conversation starter so it may oil the wheels of adoption in that space.  But I won’t know if that’s the case for a while as Goggle Music is only available in the states at launch.

And there’s an obvious eCommerce tie in with YouTube , letting you purchase a tune straight from a video that fires you up. But will Google music move past the G+ / android space and be a bigger crowd pleaser? I’m not so sure it will.

Related articles

• Google Music launches massive sale (techradar.com)

I went the Leeds Girl Geek dinner (http://lsx.co/girlgeek/what.html) event last night. The second for me but 9^th for the organisers. And from last night I’d say there’ll be a lot more as it was really well attended. Mostly by girls but that’s the point.  Men are allowed but only if invited by a girl.. I’m saying ‘men’ not ‘boys’ as I’m way too old to be a boygeek. Greygeek, chapgeek, baldgeek.. much better descriptors.

As the website said (and I knew from the one male amongst women organisers, @Imran) “so far, we’re expecting 47 girl geeks and 02 guy geeks…” As a fairly shy guy that ratio was a bit intimidating as I headed over to the Mint hotel. And to be really honest as its billed Girl Geeks I didn’t want to intrude in a space where maybe some women felt more comfortable without men around. But the ethos is one of geekdom and digital discussion above all else – and I knew from the last event I’d be welcome. And I was again, it was a great atmosphere, really good food (that’s a biggie on my list) , two great speakers and lots of questions for them from the audience.

As I say, the two speakers were great, both really interesting. First up was Kathryn Grace (@KGBD ) who is a Design Manager at Everything Everywhere. Kathryn talked about Service Design and gave a really good overview of it (I’m not sure if there’ll be a slideshare so here’s some background for you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_design). Some of the things Kathryn talked about around having T shaped Designers .. e.g able to think / work across a range of disciplines .. resonated with the recent debate at a Leeds Digital Lunch on design for digital (see my last post).

Second up was a talk from Elizabeth Sanderson (@lizziesanderson ) who is Leeds City Council‘s Web Services Manager. She talked with lots of humour about wrestling an all male team into Agile methodology submission through the use of postcards and wipeboards and the liberal use of Donuts. And probably body slams (ok, (I’m making that bit up) as she’s a Roller Derby player. I don’t know much about Roller Derby but Rollerball is one of my top 20 films ever and based on that, I’d get my part of a coding project delivered on time if Lizzie ran a team I was in. And not forgetting the brave (as was a new approach for the council) but forward thinking approach of using Agile and not getting Prince2′d into IT deadlock.  I don’t live in Leeds so I wasn’t focusing on whether the new website that is being built using the Agile / Scrum approach will get my bins empted (I’m sure it will), it was just a really interesting insight. I’ve worked with anther UK council and I know they were looking at similar challenges of Marketing / design / UX / ‘IT’ build process harmony.

So, the ethos of the evenings is really sound I think and as the Girl Geeks site says : ” It is a learning experience for both the men and the women as men in tech aren’t used to interacting with women in tech on a technical level. Technical women are also not used to being technical with other women either… it’s a learning curve on all sides.”

I know some geeky girls (yes, yes I do) (some of them are cited here for no particular reason other than they’re all nice and geeky: @sarahkplatt, @ally_manock @scarletgeek, @eeegeeH, @robbolina, @monicatailor, @LauraMcbeth), but it was a good and refreshing thing to meet even more last night.

The evening was also under the working umbrella of Leeds Digital Festival , which is shaping up to be a really full and varied schedule and all credit to the guys who organised it.
If you’re in the Leeds region have  a look at the site and see what’s on during November.

Related articles

• Girl Geeks: 30 women under 30 in digital (socialalchemyuk.wordpress.com)