brelson
I'm a digital strategist living and working in london, and this is my blog.
Homepage: http://brelson.com
Posts by brelson
An open assault on the walled garden
December 21, 2009 - 10:30 am
Tags: apple, google, mobile
Posted in strategy | No comments
Mobile telcos charge us for the texts, minutes and megabytes we use. They buy our loyalty by heavily subsidising our increasingly expensive phones. And they’re terrified of becoming like the people who supply our electricity or gas. They’re terrified that one day they’ll be nothing but interchangeable providers of a commodity, irrelevant logos printed on [...]
Are mobile apps here to stay?
Modern mobile apps are based on a publication model which limits user choice and frustrates developers, so this model will probably have to die. But in the medium term they will continue to play an important role.
How to post your Last.fm loved tracks to Twitter
December 8, 2009 - 11:02 am
Tags: music, twitter, walkthroughs
Posted in web | 1 comment
Instructions on using Twitterfeed to post your Last.fm “loved” tracks to Twitter, complete with shortened links to the track’s page
Using Google Spreadsheets to extract Twitter data
November 20, 2009 - 2:00 pm
Tags: google, twitter, walkthroughs
Posted in social media, twitter | 5 comments
Instructions for setting up Google Spreadsheets as a Twitter search engine, allowing you to search for tweets containing links or text using the BackTweets and Twitter Search APIs.
Readability of online text
November 10, 2009 - 11:06 am
Tags: content, readability, research
Posted in user centred design | No comments
A 2005 study looking at the readability of online text found that no single layout was ideal. Faster readers prefer two-column, full-justified text: slower readers benefited from single-column, left-justified.
links for 2009-11-06
November 6, 2009 - 3:01 pm
Posted in links | No comments
Bettween | The Ultimate Twitter Conversation Tracker Website that digs up and displays conversations between any two Twitter users. Handy for stalking & memory-jogging. I like the fact that it bugs you for money while loading up tweets. (tags: twitter tools) T-Mobile shares some Android statistics, will soon support carrier billing T-Mobile (US) have released [...]
links for 2009-10-30
October 30, 2009 - 4:30 pm
Posted in links | No comments
Internet Memes Visual timeline of internet meme history, to before the creation of the first emoticon. If you ask me, though, the fun doesn't really begin until 1990 when the term Godwin's Law was first coined. Of course everything went haywire in 1993 once Eternal September began. (tags: internet history timeline infographics)
links for 2009-10-27
October 27, 2009 - 4:30 pm
Posted in links | No comments
A List Apart: Articles: The Myth of Usability Testing Since 1998 Rolf Molich's work has indicated that usability experts rarely form consensus views. His Comparative Usability Evaluations show that different teams will identify different issues, and their findings rarely overlap. Does this reflect flaw in methodology, or something more basic? (tags: ux research usability)
links for 2009-10-26
October 26, 2009 - 4:30 pm
Posted in links | No comments
The Scoop on Content Strategy: An Interview with Kristina Halvorson :: UXmatters
My complaint to the PCC over Jan Moir
October 19, 2009 - 2:06 pm
Tags: politics, tabloids
Posted in media, politics | No comments
The PCC site is up and running again, so I decided to lodge my own complaint (click here to lodge yours). There are over 20,000 now which is apparently a record. Here’s what I entered in the “Explanation” field, feel free to re-use if you’re rushed for time. Section 1: Accuracy The journalist’s assertions ran [...]
links for 2009-08-17
August 17, 2009 - 4:30 pm
Posted in links | No comments
How Twitter works in theory "It is said that an economist is someone who sees something that works in practice and wonders whether it works in theory. Twitter clearly works in practice…" – but how does it work in theory? In this articulate and erudite post, Kevin Marks explains the theoretical framework he uses to [...]
links for 2009-08-13
August 13, 2009 - 4:30 pm
Posted in links | No comments
How Many Marriages Started With Online-Dating Sites? – The Numbers Guy … The WSJ's Numbers Guy looks critically at dating sites and their claims of success. Online metrics provide powerful insights but are very easy to manipulate, exaggerate and spin. The online dating industry is particularly prone to this sort of thing as these numbers [...]
links for 2009-08-12
August 12, 2009 - 4:30 pm
Posted in links | No comments
Sales Process… meet Buying Process; and why context trumps segmentation | Information Answers (tags: VRM)
Kicking Google Knol when it’s down
August 12, 2009 - 9:30 am
Posted in Uncategorized | No comments
You might not have heard of Google Knol, the service Google launched in an attempt to eclipse Wikipedia as a world-accessible font of knowledge. In a post last year I included it in a list of reasons why Google might be thought to have jumped the shark, and asked in vain if anyone reading this [...]
Letter to my MP about Gary McKinnon
July 31, 2009 - 10:40 am
Tags: comment, free gary
Posted in politics | No comments
As a constituent of yours, I’d like to register my disappointment with the decision regarding Gary McKinnon. I and many other voters had hoped that, under Gordon Brown and Barack Obama, the relationship between the US and the UK had progressed from the arguably dark days of the mid-2000s and that sufficient trust now existed [...]
Charging companies for Twitter – what could it involve?
February 17, 2009 - 12:08 pm
Tags: twitter
Posted in social media, strategy | No comments
You’re probably aware that Biz Stone, one of Twitter’s co-founders, told Marketing magazine on February 10th that: “We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts” How to decode this quote? It’s fairly vague, but I can [...]
Missing the point of social media
February 5, 2009 - 2:36 pm
Tags: comment, pr
Posted in social media | No comments
I’ve just been reading an article on Netimperative (What’s the future of search?) which features the following quote: …if you find that very negative results at search engines show up following queries for your brand, products, services, you should evaluate if you’re doing enough PR in the social media space to counter it. This statement [...]
Another Twitter visualisation
February 3, 2009 - 10:32 am
Tags: links, twitter, visualisation
Posted in social media, visualisation | No comments
I promise I’ll stop posting links to these one day. Anyway, this is from a series of Superbowl-related interactive visualisations produced by the New York Times: Unlike the visualisation of #inauguration posts I linked to recently, this isn’t based on hash tags but instead uses moving tag clouds to illustrate the volume of Twitter posts [...]
Googlewatch – updated
February 2, 2009 - 2:55 pm
Tags: comment, google
Posted in strategy | No comments
Before Christmas I suggested that Google may have reached its apex during 2008, especially as it had, for the first time, allowed a dubious new feature – SearchWiki – to infiltrate the product that sits at its core – search. And over the weekend, Google spent an hour saying that every site in its index [...]
Murdoch’s paid-content move
August 7, 2009 - 11:43 am
Tags: comment, murdoch
Posted in media, strategy | No comments
I’m hoping that News International will end up looking back on their move to paid content as a serious blunder. Not because I’m irked at the idea of paying for the Sun or the Times (I don’t read either) or even because I’m a particularly ardent defender of free content. I just dislike News International [...]