Guess who turned 30 today? You will be so surprised!

​I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my favorite file format – the GIF turned 30 today! Yes, you read that right! GIF has been around us for 30 years and is a millennial – woohoo!

If you were born in the '80s, you are probably trying to recollect the first GIF you ever saw! For me, it was the dancing baby!

The GIF was traditionally released as an 8-bit color image format in 1987 as a result of a problem Developer Steve Wilhite and his team looked to solve - how to make a computer display an image while also saving memory. The solution? A Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).

GIF inventor Steve Wilhite

In 2012, GIF was named word of the year and in 2013 Steve Wilhite received the lifetime achievement award at The Webby Award. While most people associate GIFs with annoying memes, GIF has contributed a lot more! Few examples include:

• Enhancing product illustrations
• Depicting visual Instructions
• Demonstrating UX for apps
• Displaying pictures as cinemagraphs
• Adding pop to social media pages 

They say, GIFs didn't just shape the internet — it grew up with it. Today, GIF has a personality of its own and has made communication simple. Like all digital media creations, GIF serves its consumers needs well and has thus thrived with the growth of the internet. 

If you want a deep dive into GIFs, check out Historyofthefgif.com 

P.S - Facebook celebrated the birthday of this mighty format by announcing the global rollout of a feature which enables GIFs in Facebook comments. Yaas!

https://www.wired.com/2017/05/gif-turns-30-ancient-format-changed-internet/

Internet for All

When we talk about the world going digital and every one having internet access, we often either forget or may ignore the fact that still only about 40% of world’s population has access to Internet. It is estimated that as of now about 3 billion people in the world have internet access.

The internet access has been a major concern especially in developing and under developed countries across the globe. While this may sound like a challenge especially for governments of different countries to ensure everyone in their countries have access to the internet, this is also a huge untapped opportunity to grow for all those companies who rely on Internet. All the internet, mobile and digital marketing companies are making efforts in different ways to ensure larger part of world population has internet access. Internet giant Google seems to be one step ahead with their Project Loon.
Project Loon is an internet project from Google that utilizes high-altitude balloons to offer affordable internet access around the globe to around 5 billion people without any access. These balloons have the capability to travel approximately 12 miles above the earth’s surface, in the stratosphere.  Loon uses software algorithms to determine where the balloon needs to go depending on the direction of the wind. It started as a pilot project about two years back when 30 balloons were launched from New Zealand's South Island that beamed internet to a small group of users.
To learn more about Project Loon and how it works, visit the following YouTube Link

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m96tYpEk1Ao

 In November 2014, Google announced that it has made tremendous improvements with this project especially with the auto fill equipment that would allow the balloons to last up to 10 times longer in the stratosphere than they did in 2013. The overall capability to launch has also increased up to 20 balloons per day.
According to a recent Times of India report, Google is in talks with the Indian Government to introduce its Project Loon to rural and remote areas of the country. Still more than half of the Indian population lives in rural areas and most of them living in villages do not have access to Internet. India has third largest number of internet users in the world only behind China and the USA. The internet user growth in India has been tremendous in the last year and it is set to surpass the United States before June 2015. Indian government elected in May 2014 has increased the budget for digitization across the country. With the rapid Internet growth in India, this Project Loon seems to be all set to be successful at least in India. According to the VP of business innovation at Google X, the plan is to launch a commercial version by 2016 covering all the parts of the world. Google X is already in touch with the governments and telecom operators of various countries including India.

I am eagerly waiting for the commercial launch of Project Loon sometime next year as it seems to be having a huge potential. It would also get sufficient support from all governments considering it is relatively inexpensive and environment friendly too.

 Sources / References:

http://www.google.com/loon/

http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Google-to-bring-its-internet-energy-projects-to-India/articleshow/46226175.cms
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-talks-launch-project-loon-031603196.html

Japan to introduce "fasting camps" to ease "internet addiction" rates in children

I came across an interesting article in the Daily Telegraph about the rise of “internet addiction”.  We often hear from older generations about how being a kid today is so different than it was in a time past.  Kids have mobile digital devices wherever they go and some seem to think that screen time has supplanted the critical physical and social development skills that playing outside with the neighborhood kids used to provide.  Others argue that digital devices have opened a world of possibilities in education, access and reach.  The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. 

In the meantime, to combat the rise in increased screen time, Japan’s Ministry of Education is introducing “fasting camps” to help “children overcome their addiction to the online world”.  The Ministry estimates that 500,000 of Japanese children (Ages 12-18) are addicted to the internet and to reduce this figure, children will attend the camps to re-learn the basics of outdoor activities and team sports.  The camp will also provide psychotherapists to help ease the emotional burden of disconnecting. 

While the “fasting camps” may marginally reduce “addiction” rates, is it really possible to turn back the clock on the digital revolution?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/10267303/Japan-to-introduce-internet-fasting-camps-for-addicted-kids.html

Marketing and the Psychology of Media

In a “Psychology of Media” class I am also taking we have discussed the influence of advertising on children, specifically relating to advertisements made for children.

It is pretty obvious that advertising attempts to influence our reality in order to get us to purchase a product. If it works well with us, how much more successful is advertising with children, especially as they interact with other form of media beyond television such as the Internet?

In the article by Ali, Blades & Oates (2009), “Young children’s ability to recognize advertisements in web page designs” the authors discuss a research which has been done with children in the U.K. and Indonesia ages 6-12. As the Internet has become a growing medium for advertisers to market to a younger audience, the authors examine how well children can accurately recognize an advertisement on the Internet, and discuss how the results from their study have implications for theories on how children develop an understanding of advertising on the Internet and how they could be made more aware of marketing messages on the Internet given the increasing time and importance it plays in children’s lives.

Also for us as marketers, it is important to know and understand to what extent children actually recognize ads and how they respond to them. The fact that children can identify an advertisement does not mean that they understand the nature of advertising. Investigating the effects of unrecognized advertisements on web pages is an important issue for future research, because children’s increasing use of new media means that they are more likely to be exposed to advertisements that they do not recognize as marketing messages.

When the Internet Knows Too Much

I was just thinking about how targeted internet marketing is becoming and wondered if targeting could be dangerous. From what I gather, the more I use the internet, the more the internet knows about who I am. Apparently, something called cookies keeps track of where I’ve been, what I’ve looked for, what I might want in the future, and who knows what else. It’s just like I’m building an online identity over time! Creating an identity is probably a fairly harmless activity considering it’s what you and I have done over time since we were born. But can it be a problem if the internet knows who you are too well?

Often times, when I do a search, I can type in a few letters and the search bar will guess the rest of what I’m looking for. The website thinks it knows me. And maybe it does. In real life, my identity consists of what I choose to show others. But the cookies in some mysterious folder on my laptop might know some things about me that I would not even tell my best friends, parents, siblings, or even my dog. The situation reminds me of what I envision would be the relationship I might have with a shrink.

(In theory,) We are supposed to be able to disclose private information to professionals like psychologists, doctors, or lawyers with a certain amount of assurance that those disclosures will be kept confidential. Confidentiality serves an important purpose in such relationships because the information can be crucial to effective servicing. Given the importance of such services to society and the importance of confidentiality to the effectiveness of such services, there are regulations in place to ensure that the privileges of information are not abused.

You may disagree with the analogy, and confidentiality alone is not a complete solution, but I think similar concerns about abuse apply to information collected through our use of the internet. I’m not trying to make any apocalyptic suggestions about the effects of the under-regulated collection of personal information, but I think we ought to consider the responsible use of information collected on the internet more. As the ability to target an audience on the internet gives rise to opportunities for marketing, it would be in the interest of opportunity seekers to prevent abuse lest the internet-users become wary of sharing their information at all.

this just in: obama revives talk of net neutrality

Picking up on Justin's Net Neutrality posting - Back in October during the presidential elections, Obama gave Net Neutrality advocates a surge of hope when he was asked during an MTV event if he supported Net Neutrality: An enthusiastic "Yes!"

I am a strong supporter of net neutrality," said Obama. "What you've been seeing is some lobbying that says [Internet providers] should be able to be gatekeepers and able to charge different rates to different websites...so you could get much better quality from the Fox News site and you'd be getting rotten service from the mom and pop sites. And that I think destroys one of the best things about the Internet -- which is that there is this incredible equality there...as president I'm going to make sure that is the principle that my FCC commissioners are applying as we move forward."

Nearly six months into office, the president clearly has a lot of enormous national problems on his plate - and his promises of Net neutrality seems to have been all but forgotten. Until last Friday... amidst a lot of discussion and news about increasing national cybersecurity, Obama let this fly:

"Let me also be clear about what we will not do. Our pursuit of cyber-security will not -- I repeat, will not include -- monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic. We will preserve and protect the personal privacy and civil liberties that we cherish as Americans. Indeed, I remain firmly committed to net neutrality so we can keep the Internet as it should be -- open and free."

Reassuring news for those of us who believe in Net neutrality - while some of its staunchest legislator advocates like Rep. Ed Markey (D-Massachussetts) have turned their attention to other hot button issues like the carbon cap-and-trade legislation, it's clear the president doesn't think the issue of keeping "series of tubes" (as one sad Alaskan senator once described the internet) equally accessible to all who log on is an isolated lobbying point - it's part and parcel of the way a country conducts its national security and its citizens communicate with each other.

The economic recession and what this means to online advertising

With the recent economic downturn, many advertisers have begun paying greater attention to optimizing advertising budgets and more closely analyzing campaign ROIs. Not only have we seen this impacting traditional offline media outlets, such as magazines and newspapers, but it has had an even greater impact on internet companies whose revenues rely solely on the sale of banner advertisements.

As some internet companies are coming to grips with lower advertising demand, they are beginning to accept less favorable contracts from online advertisers. For many, this means the transition from CPM-based advertising to cost-per-action (CPA) rates. Because CPA campaigns only pay advertisers when an action is completed, much more risk is assumed by the internet company and also makes them reliant on the quality of the advertisement and advertised product. For those that haven’t switched to CPA campaigns, many have begun accepting much lower CPM rates.

For a much smaller group of internet properties, the recession has not affected the ability to demand extremely high CPM rates. Recently, it was reported that Cannon is paying as much as $275 CPM to video advertise its products in Thrillist, an email newsletter that is distributed to 1 million subscribers. Certainly the highly targeted demographics of Thrillist subscribers allows the company to charge a premium for its advertisements, but many still question whether the premium paid will generate enough sales to make it worthwhile.

In the coming months, as the economy begins to rebound, it will be interesting to observe whether companies will return to higher CPM rates or if online advertising rates will remain less favorable.

Amazon invest in Shelfari

Amazon has invested $1 m in Shelfari, a website where users input all of the books they own, and have an online visual representation of their library to share with others. Users can share their library through the Shelfari website or via a widget, and make money by linking to the books for sale at Amazon. It's a new idea of user generated content.

Let's see how it evolves.

Challenges for the movie download industry

I have been arguing for some time now that, among others, those two are really important challenges for the new Movie Download Industry in order to succedd:

1. Quality: with HD TV becoming more a more popular, what is the reason to buy a movie on Internet with qualities close to DVD: "4 times less than a HD TV movie"


2. Piracy: with the option of downloading content for free, what is the incentive to pay per content.

It seems that Duggmirror shares my concerns at some level. In that webpage, they made an interesting analysis linking both concepts. It seems that not only is free, but pirated movies have higher quality with similar file sizes than iTunes Movies. It is going to be a tough market to compete in.

Dell 2.0

Since Michael Dell came back to manage the company he built years ago, changes are accelerating.

One of the main ideas is to bring the concept of Web2.0 to the corporate world. So far Dell has a team of people actively reading blogs, webpages, reviews ... to have a real idea of what users thing about Dell products.

Now, they have launched a new project: IdeaStorm. The goal is to convert Dell in a 2.0 company. That means let users suggest what new products they must launch, what things to change, services to implement, ...

Dell has also launched a StudioDell video site where there's a button that allows users to upload their own video testimonials. There's an introductory video from Michael Dell, explaining IdeaStorm and StudioDell.

It is a really challenging idea for an industry that has been struggling to offer reliable products with value added.

Has Wikipedia any future?

A lot can be said about Wikipedia (both good and bad). There are some examples of misuse of the free initiative to create opinion, to change history, to influence politics, ...

On the other hand, it is a good example of what Web 2.0 is supposed to be: user collaboration, user generated content, open standards, fast evolving, ...

I was really surprised reading this comment from Florence Devouard (Chairwoman of the Wikimedia Foundation):

“At this point, Wikipedia has the financial ressources to run its servers for about 3 to 4 months. If we do not find additional funding, it is not impossible that Wikipedia might disappear”.

Those are her words at LIFT 07 and they bring old issues to the stage:

• What is the business model behind Wikipedia?
• What is the future of all those initiatives based on the user willingness to work for nothing (i.e. Linux software, Wikipedia,...)?
• What the industry should support a free initiative with funds when there are legitimate companies providing solutions + support + rigor?

I'm sure that Wikipedia has help Britannica to understand that the rules of the game have changed, but I still feel more safe quoting an article from Britannica than one from Wikipedia.

Should Wikipedia die? Is all this some kind of PR campaign to collect funds?

Yahoo!!! Launches Pipes

Pipes is a RSS Mixer that gives the user a lot of freedom about what he/she can do. Let me give some examples:

• You want to look for specific news related with a concrete topic in a list of webpages (e.g., looking for Ferrari News in Road and Track, and Car Magazine)
• You want to find in NY Times all the references to crimes in a 2 mile radio respect to your apartment

It seems to be a very powerful tool but I think is too complicated for the average user, but you can copy pipes from other users to your own space.

Steve Jobs' letter against DRM

For all of you that have not clue of what DRM means, let me say that DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. In other words, it's the piece of software that controls the way you share your music, videos, pictures, etc.

For example, if you are a user of iTunes and buy music from the internet store, DRM will set that the maximum number of times that you can copy the music to a CD is 6 and that you can share the music with other 4 computers.

There is a lot of movements in Internet against DRM with the argument that controls your freedom as user to do what you want to do. Seriously, DRM is not Steve's idea or Gates' idea. DRM is an initiative that music companies have put in place.

Recently there has been a lot of talk about it because a) iTunes has been declared ilegal (due to DRM) in Norway, and probably the rest of Europe can follow the idea (same to Vista DRM, ...); b) the implementation of DRM from Vista is really strict.

Steve Jobs has react with this letter showing some interesting points:

1) DRM is not his idea
2) He would support any movement to freeDRM music but the industry doesn't let him
...

I found it really interesting. In other words, SJ is trying to push the users to fight the battle against the music companies, cleaning iPod+iTunes name at the same time :-) Really smart.

Here you have a link with more details.