The Best-Written Top 10 Albums Of 2009 List On The Internet
http://www.bestweekever.tv/2009-12-30/the-best-written-top-10-albums-of-2009-list-on-the-internet/

The Most Adorable (and Talented!) Musical Kids (Videos)
http://www.urlesque.com/2009/12/30/musical-kids-videos/

Embarrassing celebrity moments of the decade
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/theampersand/archive/2009/12/30/most-embarrassing-celebrity-moments-of-the-decade.aspx

Decade in Review: The most influential video games since Y2K
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/theampersand/archive/2009/12/30/the-most-influential-video-games-of-the-decade.aspx#ixzz0bHCv9IRU

The 5-Minute Decade Review: Hits, Flops and Your Future
http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/12/29/the-5-minute-decade-review-hits-flops-and-your-future/

2009 As Seen Through Twitter Hashtags
http://mashable.com/2009/12/26/twitter-year-review/

8 Spectacular Christmas Light Shows on YouTube
http://mashable.com/2009/12/24/christmas-lights/

Best viral videos of the decade
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/theampersand/archive/2009/12/24/best-viral-videos-of-the-decade.aspx

Digg’s Top 10 Most Popular Stories of 2009
http://mashable.com/2009/12/23/digg-stories-2009/

Looking Back at Google in 2009
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2009-12-23-n43.html

The 50 Hottest Dead People of The Decade
http://www.bestweekever.tv/2009-12-22/the-50-hottest-dead-people-of-the-decade/

The 13 Most Stupidly Convincing Infomercials Of 2009
http://www.bestweekever.tv/2009-12-22/the-13-most-stupidly-convincing-infomercials-of-2009/

The Last Decade Represented by Graphics
http://laughingsquid.com/the-last-decade-represented-by-graphics/

Never a Year Like ’09
http://sendables.jibjab.com/originals/never_a_year_like_09

The 100 Most Iconic Internet Videos
http://www.urlesque.com/2009/04/07/the-100-most-iconic-internet-videos/

(and a little retrospective of the prior decade)
http://www.urlesque.com/2008/10/15/top-5-grandfathers-of-viral/

Best Albums of the 2000s
http://www.spinner.ca/2009/12/08/best-albums-of-the-2000s/

Top 10 Worst Commercials of the Decade
http://www.aoltv.ca/2009/12/25/top-10-worst-commercials-of-the-decade-video/

Top 10 Best Debut Novels of the Decade
http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2009/11/top-10-best-debut-novels-of-the-decade-2000-2009.html

In Depth: The 12 most incredible games of the decade
http://www.tech-news-daily.info/in-depth-the-12-most-incredible-games-of-the-decade.html

Northernstars Picks the Top 10 Canadian Films of the Decade
http://www.northernstars.ca/News/01209311128_top10.html

The best films of the decade
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/12/the_best_films_of_the_decade.html

The Top 5 Everything of the Decade (For Better and Worse)
http://www.cracked.com/article/18353_the-top-5-everything-decade-for-better-worse/

Give the People What They Want!: Top Ten Most Popular Youtube Music Videos of 2009
http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/video-clip/most-popular-youtube-music-vid/

TenYears: PC Games of the Decade
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/12/31/tenyears-pc-games-of-the-decade/

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Some reading from my files:

Murdoch Ready to Hit Delete on Google
Jon Miller, News Corp.’s chief digital officer, says chief Rupert Murdoch is ready to block Google’s access to his Web sites “within months” and that the company will lead the media industry in this direction. “There is real tension surrounding the free versus pay debate.”

London Times to Add Pay Walls by Spring
Rupert Murdoch’s Times of London plans to start charging for access to its Web site as soon as next spring using a similar model to company sibling the Wall Street Journal. Charging for online news will be part of a major revamp of the Times Online in April 2010.

Murdoch’s Web Sites ‘Stealing’ Content
Rupert Murdoch talks about wanting to cut off Google, claiming that aggregator Web sites are “stealing” from him. But some of his company’s own sites — WSJ.com, AllThingsD, FoxNews.com — appear to aggregate content and rely on the same fair use argument.

News Corp Would Lose Traffic Without Google
If Rupert Murdoch blocks Google from indexing News Corp.’s online properties, such a move would be felt, according to Experian Hitwise. Google is the top traffic provider for News Corp.’s WSJ.com, accounting for more than 25% of the site’s traffic.

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Marc Andreessen on Charlie Rose:
Marc: Oh, you gotta kill the print edition. You gotta kill it
Charlie: You’d stop the presses tomorrow?
MA: You have to kill it
CR: Stop the presses tomorrow?
MA: You have to kill it
CR: Stop the presses tomorrow?
MA: (laughing) Stop the presses tomorrow, if that’s how you want it. The stocks should go up. Look at what’s happened to the stocks. The investors are through this – the investors are through the transition. You talk to any smart investor who controls any amount of money, he will tell you that the game is up. Like, it’s completely over. And so, investors have completely written off the print operations. There is no value in these stock prices at all attributable to print anymore at all. It’s gone.
CR: So, you’d recommend to the owndes of the New York Times, stop… printing … paper.
MA: Oh Yeah! Absolutely. You have to. You have to jump
CR: And take your losses like a courageous person.
MA: You have to. Well, so… Chronic pain / acute pain. How many years of … music industry; the same… how many years of chronic pain to you want to take to avoid a year of acute pain?

Watch the full interview, or scrub over to 29:00 to see his comments on news and newspapers.

Marc Andreessen is known as an entrepreneur, investor, startup coach, blogger, and a multi-millionaire software engineer best known as co-author of Mosaic, and founder of Netscape Communications Corporation. He was the chair of Opsware, a software company he founded originally as Loudcloud, when it was acquired by Hewlett-Packard. He is also a co-founder of Ning.

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According to a senior VP of sales and marketing, “You’ll be able to choose the news you want about anything, whether you’re a Detroit Red Wings fan or if you’re green-oriented,” and then have them sent to a special printer being developed for MediaNews that each customer would have at home. The home printer, connected to a phone line, could send the stories to a computer or mobile phone.

Now, it also seems like the plan is to also aggregate content from other sources and offer those up too. 

Really?  Wow.  Personally, I’m speechless. 

I’ve heard of some crazy-stupid ideas, but this one ranks pretty high.  The only part of the concept I applaud is the aggregation and distribution of other’s content, however I can’t see them doing this very effectively with all the copyright issues.  If they manage to re-publish competing newspaper content, legally, I’m certain it will be an administrative headache.

• Why is MediaNews getting into the hardware sales and support business?  I mean, I sure hope they’ve partnered with a vendor that’s going to be managing this for them.  Ask any ISP or Cable Company how big their phone rooms are just to handle the inbound calls of people saying “my email is broken”. 
• Why would I want to buy (or receive, if it’s free) another device for my home that ties up my phone line?  Wow, that’s just so 1992! (yes, I even had a paid subscription to Pointcast.com in 1992. It was very cool — in 1992. And even pointcast.com only required a downloaded application, not special hardware!). There is something called the internet, and a lot of people have high-speed connections.  Installing a printer/modem hybrid in my home office is just, well, retarded.
• Why do I need this at all?  Good grief!

This is either the flat-out worst idea ever, or I have totally missed the point, and these guys are have Nobel-sized genius brains.

I get angry with crap like this, because I still actually like newspapers and newspaper companies.  But when I see really bad train-wrecks like this, it’s easy to see why so many of them are in such dire financial situations.  I just hope they haven’t sunk much money down this outhouse of an idea.  In fact, any money at all is too much.  I can just see all the “green-oriented” people queueing up to print out a daily personal edition of their local newspaper.  

Good times.

For the benefit of MediaNews execs, I offer up the following video:

 

However, I’m not sure they’ll see it, since they can’t print it out.  The interweb has news these days, boys.  You should check it out.

It’s like the future is now. I feel so honoured to see such progress :

Thank god MediaNews has figured out how to send the pictures, ads and comics.  They’ve come a long way in 25 years.

Discuss.

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Personally, I agree, I think this is going to raise the ire of a boat load of news publishers and have them rally. It should be interesting to watch their collective blood pressure rise. I think shitstorm is an understatement.

However, I’m no legal expert, but Google might be on solid ground here. Well, perhaps they’re toeing the line.

I think Google will be showing ads on the News SERP’s and not the main News Page, which might be an argument that they’re “monetizing search, not news”. Flimsy, perhaps, but it just might catch wind. I’m not sure if many newspapers have the kind of deep pockets they once had to fight this, considering most major publishers and broadcasters are in some serious financial trouble these days. However, don’t underestimate the tenacity of the angry child who’s had everything taken away from him. Start to take away more candy, and they will go ballistic on an epic scale. It might just be Google striking at the best possible time, or the worst possible time. Google also has a history of releasing ideas, and then quickly reversing when they start getting angry calls from the industry (ask me about Google Base). I wonder whose phone is ringing.

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website: www.irishstudies.ca

Business Overview:

The Canadian Association of Irish Studies is a group lead by my sister. It seeks to foster and encourage the study of Irish culture in Canada. It also works to encourage young scholars and develop the next generation of Irish studies enthusiasts as well as support discussion of current issues in Irish studies and culture through conferences, publications, and online resources.

I built a website for them a long while back (in 2003 I think), and it was starting to show it’s age. Plus it was quirky and the back-end system didn’t work well with my sister’s Mac (bad me, I should’a know better). So, as my sister is getting ready to hand over the reigns to a new lead, I wanted to give the site a face lift and re-work the back-end so it is easier to manage, update and maintain.

This is a case study in pure speed.

Project Overview:

The goal here was simple. Upgrade and move to WordPress. The old site had content, that had been added to over the years, and the old site didn’t give the group a very easy way to do that (again, bad me), so they ended up doing what most would do in their position; cram everything onto a home page. Sort of like the Career Centre’s Bulletin Board; new stuff just got pinned to the top somehow without much thought. This is totally the fault of the application and the implementation, not the users.

It shows that the mechanics matter.

If it’s not easy to add/update, people will fall into what they can do quickly, and pass over the extra work needed to produce something that looks good. This is especially true for the infrequent author. Under the direction of a professional blogger or author, quirks and oddities can sometimes be forgiven, because they simply remember what needs to be done every day. The infrequent author simply forgets.

Technologies / Components:

Key aspects of the site include:

• WordPress installation
• Mimbo theme, modifed with a child theme

Time Taken = 4 hours. (this blog post? 10 minutes… I’m on a roll!)

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Business Overview:
What started as a conversation at a dinner party, resulted in an experiment in Film, Web & Social Media, that pulled in as many victims we could find — including the Canadian Olympic Luge Team. The business goal is to simply produce a compelling story and create a rich and interactive online experience. This is privately funded, and is aiming for sponsorship money to float the series for a year, leading up to the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver/Whistler.

Project Overview:
“Obsessed with a foreign luge athlete, Nikki is convinced she’ll marry at Vancouver-Whistler 2010. She will stop at nothing when it comes to love and luge – from learning about the twists and turns of an elite luger’s life, to sabotaging the Olympic Luge Teams. Check out her video blogs and games. Leave a comment – Nikki will be happy to chat with you about luge!”

A major goal of the experiment was to merge the worlds of film and web together to create something unique. This would not be retrofitted TV crammed into web pages. It is written, directed, filmed, produced and distributed on the web. We did things differently, and questioned everything, during every step.

The site is more than just the site. It’s been built inside various social media networks, including; Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, iTunes. Because we’re not totally relying on display ads, rather sponsorship or product placement, it frees us in our distribution options. Youtube doesn’t compete. Uploading videos to Facebook actually help the cause, rather than hurt the pocketbook. A different business model allows for every aspect of the site to be different. If you rely on site traffic, you think twice about publishing your full posts in your RSS feed. If your revenue is not totally tied to on-site display ads, then a better (full post in rss) user experience can be allowed to happen.

Technologies / Components:
Key aspects of the site include:

• WordPress Blog and custom Theme (yes, the whole site is a blog. Doesn’t look like a typical blog, does it?)
• Youtube channel and custom design
• Facebook Profile & Page
• Twitter account and custom design
• iTunes Podcast
• Custom Video integration into WordPress (building upon the wordTube plugin)
• Display advertising (Google adsense / Google admanager)
• Analytics (Google analytics)
• E-Commerce — an innovative way to donate to the Team.
• Custom Analytics integration to track goals and sales
• Video delivered via Amazon S3 Cloud CDN
• Flash games and interactivity
• Boat loads of fun and laughs

Verdict?  
TBD.  Stay tuned.

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We all kinda know that Social Network sites like facebook, twitter, flickr, myspace, ning, etc, are good marketing and branding tools. I mean, it makes sense; a display banner ad might be effective, but having a friend or family member personally endorse or recommend or tell you about something offers up a huge familial endorsement that can’t compare. Or can it? Well, yes, it can.

I recently did three email campaigns to promote ilovealuger.com, and there were only slight differences it the email newsletters;

• Mailed the Press Release to the Toronto Press (not very targeted)
• Mailed the Press Release to an Industry List (slightly more targeted)
• Mailed a modified Note directly from a colleague’s gmail address

The first two were very standard & corporate. Not an example of “social media”, rather a very bland and staid press communique. The message also came from an anonymous and generic email address. So, people received this message from a faceless corporation.

Compare that, with the personal note (which was very similar to the press release, except the copy changed only a wee bit). Firstly, it came directly from a personal gmail address. So, the people receiving this message got something from someone they knew. Now, might not seem like an example of Social Media, because its not using facebook, twitter or some other silly site people always think of when you bark out the words “social media”, but in fact, I’d propose that it’s a more profound example of Social Media than any site, because it was received by people as a personal one-on-one note from someone they know.

The result? Off the fricking chart!!!

The Personal Note drove 70 visits from 300 emails, compared to 48 visits from 3000 Industry emails.

To put conclusions against this:

• “Slightly” targeted press note sent to jaded and cranky press people = 1% click-through rate
• More targeted Industry list = 1.6% click-through rate
• Personal Endorsement = 23.3% click-through rate

So, I can’t say it should be terribly surprising that the personal note performed better. Advertisers and marketers have know the power of personal endorsment for a very long time. That’s not the surprising part. The compelling and interesting part, is the order of magnitute of the effectiveness gain. I mean 20x better is compelling.

Food for thought. Comment below or tweet me (@lairdf) with your thoughts.

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This is big news for stat-junkies like me! I can hardly contain myself. This is Google’s first attempt at competitive research, and comparisons are being drawn to Alexa and Quantacast, but also to comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings. Now, comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings obviously offer up a lot more insight and reports to their subscribers. I should know, I access comScore frequently, and it’s a very useful tool with way more data than the Google Website Trends.

However, there are some nifty features within Website Trends that include being able to compare daily unique visitor traffic from site to site.  Now, they don’t disclose the raw numbers, but you can visually draw some quick comparisons.  And, I’ll bet we’re only days or weeks away from being able to download the data to a CSV file, where the raw numbers will be disclosed.

For example:

• Compare thestar.com with theglobeandmail.com

• Compare cbc.ca with ctv.ca

• Compare workopolis.com with monster.ca

Just for shits-’n-giggles, let’s compare the three reports above, with the same reports using comScore data.  Now, that definition for each site will vary, and it’s not really fair to compare two dramatically different collection methodologies, but it’s still fun:

• Compare thestar.com with theglobeandmail.com

• Compare cbc.ca with ctv.ca

• Compare workopolis.com with monster.ca

All Google reports include Geographic differences. You can see who’s accessing the sites from the different country or region.  This is an extra paid product from comScore. Something I don’t currently see.  So, Google is giving me insight that I don’t get from comScore — the ability to see non Canadian traffic.

Also available is cross-visitation. In other words, when viewing the report for cbc.ca, you can see that CBC’s visitors also visit ctv.ca, sync-blog.com, globesports.com, reportonbusiness.com, theglobeandmail.com, etc. Cross-visitation doesn’t mean competitor; far from it. Using the CBC example, the number two on the list for “also visited” is sync-blog.com. sync-blog.com doesn’t even come close to the traffic volume of cbc.ca, so it just means that sync-blog.com probably gets clicked on in google’s search by the same users that click on cbc.ca. Just because people “also visit” a site, doesn’t make that site a competitor (however, often it does).

One unique feature to Google Website Trends, is the “also searched for” list. Unique to Google, because they have all that search data that no other has. This, in addition to the “also visited” can give some real insights into competitive similarities.

Now, what about the methodology? This is what separates Google’s stats from the professionally driven like comScore or Nielsen//NetRatings. Both have a sound statistical methodology that makes them reliable and statistically relevant. With Google, they have a disclaimer that reads (at time of writing), “Google Trends provides insights into broad search patterns. Please keep in mind that several approximations are used when computing these results. All traffic statistics are estimates.”

Where do they get the stats?  Perhaps it’s from people clicking from Google to the individual sites? Perhaps it’s from Google’s Analytics?  Perhaps it’s a combination of pixie dust, and some whack-job algorithm?

The stats come a variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, aggregated opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and other third-party market research. The data is aggregated over millions of users, powered by computer algorithms. Additionally, Google Trends for Websites only shows results for sites that receive a significant amount of traffic, and enforces minimum thresholds for inclusion in the tool.

So, just because it’s free, and just because it’s Google, doesn’t mean it’s not being produced with some level of statistical ‘trueness’.

I think those that use Comscore or Nielsen//NetRatings will continue, and not jump to the Google tool right away. But this is going to make for some interesting conversations in the coming days. Let the games begin.

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Baked into IE8 is a very interesting user-feature called Web Slices. There’s a video explaining it. Basically, the premise is that individual users can subscribe to a page-part. So …

• take a slice from eBay of a listing and watch for changes.
• take a search result on a job site and watch for changes.
• watch for breaking news changes on news sites
• the sky is the limit… those are just a few examples

More importantly, …

• what is this going to do to personalization sites?
• what is this going to do to alerts?
• when a user can monitor a page section directly in by browser, how will this impact paid advertising?
• is this “page-part view” considered a page view or unique visitor (specifically with ComScore or the others)?

Basically, this is Tivo for the browser.

With these in mind, some search, classified,  or marketplace sites could embrace this and others will hate it.

The end result for a user could be that updates to his specified criteria get pulled into his browser, and he could click directly to the listing. That’s OK for some (if their business model is baked around connecting buyers and sellers or selling listings), but not OK for others (if their business model relies on display advertising). For those that rely on both listings and display, it’s going to be interesting to see who wins.

Personally, I think the vast majority of employment sites won’t care too much and will like this. They might see an erosion of users registering for alerts, but the (hopeful) increase in traffic to the listings will make them happy. With automotive sites, display advertising is at a premium pretty much everywhere, I think the typical automotive site will hate this because the browser is sucking part of the search result page and the site doesn’t get to show the traditional display ads. For real estate sites, the answer is all over the place.

Food for thought.

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Google‘s CEO, Eric Schmidt, told the Economic Club of Washington, the Internet will bring even more changes in the coming years, as users increasingly move from traditional to cloud computing, he predicted.

“newspapers has never been in more demand, but people are getting that information in ways that doesn’t create revenue for newspaper companies.”

I can’t say that “more changes ahead” is a very profound statement, but his realization that newspapers are having trouble is interesting

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• Associated Press released a study about 18-34 year olds:
• The group wanted more depth when they read the news online
• They often multitask
• They often skimmed the news headlines
• Many get their news by email
• It’s important for them to know what is going on – news is a form of social currency.

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The numbers may not be final, and the race is far from over, but early reports are that Barack Obama’s campaign is spending a small fortune on Google CPC ads (or PPE — that’s Pay Per Election — a term coined by a very smart colleague)

I can only image what it would be like to manage that kind of campaign. I mean, I’ve been around large CPC campaigns, but not $3-Mill in four months!

It’s too bad I’m in Canada, because I can’t see all the ads he’s running.

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