At least in Portugal. They better not be, since Craigslist has just opened their portuguese version and Google is starting to take local search and location based services more seriously in Portugal.
Anyway, PAI (Portuguese Internet Yellow Pages) released a new set of features that are so web 2.0 that they even have round corners and gradients. Here’s what we can do now:
Ratings and Comments
Now users can leave their ratings and comments, supposedly to improve the service quality. I wonder how long will it take until spammers and ruthless SEOs start flooding the system.
Maps
Nice one. Not Google maps, but at least they know the local market, so a tailored experience might be enough to convince portuguese users. The service is provided by Local Matters.
Search Widget
You can take the search service and embed it in your site as a widget. Unlike Google custom search, no revenue is distributed to publishers.
Things are eating up, and after web 1.5, it seems that some portuguese services are entering the 2.0 bandgwagon. Better late than never. Someday we might even ditch Microsoft government agreements and choose reliable OSS solutions (I wish …).
Meanwhile, all minor efforts are welcome. Nice work, PAI and Truvo.
Being swamped with work in the past week, blogging frequency was tuned down. A lot of inspirations passed by and feeds piled up to 1000+, but i couldn’t help to share these precious gems:
Some agencies really get the web ! Check out what Modernista did with Faacebook, Wikipedia and other essential websites for their new internet presence. http://www.modernista.com/
Social network addicts: Compete shows the numbers
Favorite quote: “MySpace addicts are somewhat vain”.
Bjork’s Wanderlust 3d video premieres today on Yahoo. Meanwhile, have a look at a 2D Preview:
By us, i mean the 275 co-authors of “The Age Of Conversation: Why Don’t People Get It?”, this year’s edition of The “Age Of Conversation”, a collaborative book on the future of marketing, which i was proudly invited to co-author (thanks Drew, Chris and Gavin).
Having blogged about it last year, i haven’t actually reviewed it, something that i should get used to – isn’t it cool when Joseph Jaffe sends you his book to review – as i’m now reading several great inspirations (you can find my current reading on the left). The least i can do to help these great community effort (profits are donated to charity), is to ask my great readers:
The Age of Conversation book brings together over 100 of the worlds leading marketers, writers, thinkers and creative innovators in a ground-breaking and unusual publication. All of the proceeds generated from book sales and referrals will be donated to Variety, The Childrens Charity. Using the link above, all referral fees will (again) be donated to charity.
This is a global effort, and one more great example of the collaborative power the web has brought to us. I’m truly excited to be a part of this year’s book authors:
Ufff. That’s a huge set. More blogs than a feed reader could manage, so a book it’s one of the best ways to get a grasp of their author’s insights. Wait, don’t close the window yet. If you’re not inclined to buy the book, there’s other ways you can help.
Digg Chris post or save it on your favorite social boookmarkeing service
Talk about it with your friends, by email, IM or by the water cooler.
And let’s indeed have a conversation. I now that with Twitter, FriendFeed et al, you’re probably hanging out at other cool places, but i miss your comments. Drop a line once in a while, so the leprechaun that writes for this site feels appreciated. Thanks.
If you want to learn a thing or two about word-of-mouth, you’d better talk with Ze Frank. Despite ending his popular show, he knows how to stir things up, judging by how the Color Wars meme spread among the twitterati (did i just wrote that?) in less than a day.
UPDATE(20/03/08): ZeFrank explains the whole thing on a blog post.
Keeping truthful to ZeFrank spirit, the thing doesn’t make any sense at all, and basically invites you to follow a Twitter user with an alias @colorteam, and change your avatar according to the selected color. At the moment, you can join the teams:
Update: Gary Vaynerchuck is all excited (as usual) about the whole thing, and shot a video explaining why he joined the @verygreenteam.
I’m not even bothering counting how many followers each team has.
Do i find this useless? Absolutely. But then again i do browse occasionally at icanhascheezburger.com.
On other Twitter trivia, you can use Tweet Scan to your advanced search needs, a feature the application is in desperate need, just like FriendFeed did.
Interactive design is no longer geek talk, with a MoMa exhibit there to prove it. Yugop (aka Yugo Nakamura), a long time interactive visionary, produced the Elastic Mind website, where you can find interactive inspiration for the next decade, by innovators from the past decade. That simple.
From maps to origamis, mashups or sensory design, it’s like the living encyclopedia of interactive design.
The website features even more works than the gallery exhibit, with photos, videos and description on each project. Ben Fry, Philips Research Labs, GRL and, of course, Jonathan Harries, are all there. There’s a search feature if you can’t find them.
If only NY wasn’t across the ocean …
Perhaps this has been around for longer, but it’s a first for me. Alexa, an Amazon company, now lists the top 100 Portuguese sites. A few patterns emerge:
Besides user base, i simply don’t get it why it got so popular around here, specially when it’s way behind Facebook or MySpace in terms of features. Well, at least they announced their support for OpenSocial, by the end of this month. Curious how Orkut is ahead of MySpace (Brazilian emigration might not be the only reason).
Google domains
Google.pt + google.com + YouTube + Blogger = all your base belongs to us.
I always made fun of Travian as being WoW for dummies. In several trips to my hometown in the countryside, it amazed me the dozens of teenagers gathering around in the local cofee shop to play this online strategy game. Now i fully respect it, though i still haven’t figured out the whole etnography. Another contender is Hattrick, a football manager that’s killing productivity in Portuguese offices. (Hey boss, if you’re reading this, keep in mind I play neither of them).
The ISP / media conglomerate pack
Sapo, IOL, AEIOU do their best to take advantage of being a default start page. With agressive content agreements and new service launches they try to hold on to a good slice of the market.
Sports
Football, mostly. With 3 daily sports newspaper (odd, isn’t it?), no wonder the online versions of Record, A Bola and O Jogo rank in the top 30.
Leechers
Oh boy, where should i start? Emule, private servers, Usenet … As if it wasn’t enough illegal downloads, Portuguese leechers are coming to the web to use services like MegaUpload, RapidShare, BtNext or Mininova. You think that’s funny? You should try to get a Cable connection to work decently on peak traffic hours.
Portuguese do it better
Keeping this blog Safe-For-Work, you probably can figure out what is the subject in matter. Although it seems we have to see a lot of “instructional materials” to keep in shape, as 8 in 100 sites seem to point out.
The birth of social media
Besides Hi5 and Blogger, several user publishing plataforms are getting big enough to believe we’ll see a sustainable growth in social media tools in the near future. WordPress.com, Flickr, Fotolog and Imeem (where’s last.fm ???) have some impressive figures, a promising sign for User Generated Content.
Web 1.5
My biggest disappointment was not founding a single decent “Web 2.0″ (there, i said it) portuguese service. From the great list at Bloguite, none is featured on Alexa’s top 100.
Alexa’s ranking system, while extremely biased by those who have their toolbar, is the best free choice we have until compete.com becomes less US centric.
But i guess it’s our own market’s fault, that keeps feeding a monopoly like the one that Marktest has with their closed metrics solution Netpanel. Ah, if only comScore was here ….
Last year, on the balance of the e-Mkt 2007 conference, there was hope in bringing forward our national digital marketing industry, perhaps by becoming part of of EIAA or creating local IAB offices. Maybe that was not a feasible solution, but the reality of having poor industry metrics is a huge problem that needs to be addressed.
Better yet, let’s all have a true conversation about it. Your turn.
Several online campaigns have been around in the last few months that used sensorial immersive experiences worth of notice.
In this blog, you’ve seen the ones by Porsche and Arcade Fire, and now 2 more, hand picked from partner blog Osocio.org, to sharpen your senses:
* UPDATE (17/03/08): apparently DoTheTest is a ripoff, with no credit given to original author.
A witty mind hack and web sensorial campaign by Transport for London, aiming to reduce the number of cyclists that are hurt on London’s roads.
According to the campaign press release, researchers at Harvard University played this trick on some unsuspecting people and over 50 per cent failed to spot the change. This selective blindness is possibly the reason why motorists collide with cyclists.
Check also another video piece from Transport for London, that also plays on mind hacks.
Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour is sponsoring Burima, a micro-credit program with finantial support from Benetton, which also developed the website AfricaWorks, at their Fabrica studio.
In the words of Staci Smith who sent the project to my friend and art director Andre:
Late in 2007, Benetton began documenting the progress of the loan recipients through the images of photographer James Mollison. Mollisons photos spotlight a diverse group of entrepreneurs including a fisherman, a decorator, a musician, a farmer, and a boxer. In keeping with Benettons commitment to social advocacy, the images are featured on billboards and print ads in the companys new Africa Works global communications campaign. Benettons hope is that these everyday people will become tangible symbols of an Africa that uses the dignity of work to fight poverty and take back responsibility for creating its own future
A simple, zoomable navigation, trying to have a real impact on African’s looking for a way to change their lives for the better. The event launched worldwide last February 13th, with a performance by Youssou n’Dour of the song Birima (campaign video clip below).
Birima is also the name of the portal (http://www.birima.org/) where you can find more about the micro-credit program.
Just two links i (1) would like to share with you.
The first is a website done by Trevor Harman, and it features a cool concept: What would you do with that extra day every four years.
it’s Project leap year so go out there and say what you’d do with an extra 24 hours.
For the second link i’d advise you to get some 3D glasses and if you are a flash developer with a special taste for Papervision you have the source included.
It’s done by Ben Stucki a Flex Consultant you can read more in his blog and get the source for the project there too .
This is a guest post by Hugo Matinho, our new Flash Developer at Draftfcb Portugal. You can check his blog or follow him on Twitter.
Having just read Seth Godin’s book Meatball Sundae, it was a lot of fun seeing him showcased in one of his purple cows, the blender video series from Blendtec. Here’s the video:
Altough at first i was expecting the victim would be the whole book, this was a nice take. And again, do buy the book (and please offer a few more to those old fashioned monolitic CMOs you always complain about).
