Innovation — Page 16

Minnov8 Gang Podcast 55: The Connected & Social Library

October 17, 2009 By Steve Borsch

Libraries used to be places to go solely to find information and knowledge in containers called “books” that were comprised of “atoms” and organized by Melvil Dewey’s cool Decimal System, but increasingly library systems are morphing in to places to get connected online where patrons can find their information and knowledge in “bits” while interacting with the library in an increasingly virtual and — most intriguingly in today’s participation culture — in an online and interactively social way.

The Gang had a chance to invite Meg Canada on the podcast to talk about the 21st century library, what our biggest Minnesota library system is doing (and what she’s driving within it) to embrace new realities that are internet-centric and deliver a surprising array of services you may not know even exist. Meg has long impressed us with how much she “gets it” with respect to new media and social technologies, but have been quite delighted to see how much of her energy is invested in the social and internet community in Minnesota and the role she plays in nurturing it along with good humor and an eagerness to serve others.

Meg is a senior librarian for Web Services and Training at Hennepin County Library and currently coordinates public training and social media efforts for the library. She volunteers helping with the Unsummit, recently presented at MinneWebCon, and is a regular contributor to Social Media Breakfast. Had we known beforehand that she also sings regularly with the Twin Cities chapter of TechKaraoke, we would’ve had her croak out an Etta James tune or something. We’ll get her on another podcast soon and have her sing.

This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Opening & closing music is “38 Special” by Charlie Musselwhite (iTunes link) from Music Alley, purveyor of podsafe tunes.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:03:58 — 36.9MB)

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Discussed during the show:

+ Wired article, “YouTube’s Bandwidth Bill Is Zero. Welcome to the New Net”

+ Libraries & Broadband by Ann Treacy on the Blandin on Broadband blog

+ Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) on Twitter

+ Hennepin County Library (HCL) and their services; Bookspace, a social site for HCL book lovers; eBooks and downloadable audio books and videos; and a remarkably easy to use, searchable database of all events and classes in the HCL system; HCL on Twitter.

DoApp Making Big Strides with ‘Mobile Local News’ App

October 16, 2009 By Graeme Thickins

DoApp-MobileLocal If you’re a TV news station, newspaper, or online news site, you probably should get to know Minnesota startup DoApp Inc. For those of you in our local tech community who already know of this firm (it launched early in 2008), you may find this fact amazing: on a search for “DoApp” in the Apple® iTunes® App Store, you’ll see the company now has — count ’em — no less than 84 apps published, available for download. Now, you may have known DoApp only for utility and game apps, with which it had early success soon after the App Store launched in mid-2008. The firm ended 2008 with well over 3 million downloads of those apps — 11 of them are now in the store (and most have been updated multiple times). But what are those other 70-some apps (and counting)?

Well, throughout 2009, DoApp has been busy on another front: its “Mobile Local News” app, which is an ad-supported iPhone app it co-developed with partner Inergize Digital Media of Minneapolis. The latter is also helping DoApp market the app, primarily signing up TV stations initially, which brand the app for their own use in their local market. And each of those branded versions of the app is distributed via the App Store to consumers, who download them for free. DoApp also has the app available for the Android mobile platform, with Blackberry and Palm Pre versions coming soon. (By the way, DoApp’s first customer for the iPhone mobile news app was our own WCCO-TV, Channel 4.)

Now, however, I learned from the DoApp folks at the recent MIMA Summit (where they did a demo), that they and their partner Inergize are spreading their wings even further — now offering to build and publish branded versions for newspapers and other publications, as well as online news sites.

DoApp is now touting its Mobile Local News as making citizen journalism easy. It says 50% of internet users will be generating content by 2010, and that 100 million Americans now get their news from a mobile device.

In a newsletter it just distributed, DoApp says this: “Now it’s easy for readers (and writers) to create user-generated content with Mobile Local News. With our app, you can connect with a television station or newspaper and be part of the news-making process. No press credentials required! DoApp’s Mobile Local News is the first and only local news platform to provide user-generated content. You can easily upload video, photos, and text from your mobile device. Report the news as it’s happening!”

As you might expect, DoApp is touting its Mobile Local News as a tool for “citizen journalism.” Get this: it says 50% of internet users will be generating content by 2010, and that 100 million Americans now get their news from a mobile device. They don’t cite a source for those numbers, but they square with what I’m hearing elsewhere.

In a newsletter DoApp just distributed, it says this:

“Now it’s easy for readers (and writers) to create user-generated content with Mobile Local News. With our app, you can connect with a television station or newspaper and be part of the news-making process. No press credentials required! DoApp’s Mobile Local News is the first and only local news platform to provide user-generated content. You can easily upload video, photos, and text from your mobile device. Report the news as it’s happening!”

To get more perspective on these recent developments, I asked DoApp founder (and early Google employee) Joe Sriver if he’d answer some questions, and he was kind enough to agree. Here is that email interview: … [Read More…]

Adaptive Avenue’s Next Generation Ad Technology

October 13, 2009 By Tim Elliott

header_1 Adaptive Avenue is a twice-patented online advertising technology that takes the concept of a display advertisement to the next level through a uniquely engaging experience. Such ’smart’ ad technologies represent the forefront of online advertising — they strive to improve relevance, consumer engagement, click-through, and conversion rates. In the case of Adaptive Avenue, the format is achieving a 2-4X (multiplier, not percent) increase in click-through rates — with better qualified prospects for conversion – relative to increasingly ineffective static display ads.

Traditional display advertisements constantly seek the ultimate hook — designed to be catchy, relevant, and timely. Their sole objective is to capture the attention and imagination of a (publishing) website’s visitors long enough to prompt a click on the graphical ad that steers traffic to another, completely independent (advertising) website — which, ideally, is a targeted landing page. At this point, there are numerous desired outcomes depending on the objectives of the advertising campaign, not limited to:

conduct a transaction/purchase
provide personal data in the form of a “lead”
offer feedback or take a survey

However, the reality here is that, more often than not, display advertisements under-deliver. Why? Because they don’t authentically engage users or offer them any real value. If viewers aren’t simply ignoring ads, they’re blocking them or defrauding them — thus the believably low click-through/conversion rates (based on the standard measure of clicks per one thousand impressions). It’s no wonder that most web surfers report an increasing aversion to online ads or have conditioned their viewing habits to ignore them. True, there have been notable improvements to the display ad model over the years — specifically Cost-Per-Action (CPA) pricing, contextual ads, and niche networks — but there’s still a long way to go before display ads become as effective as they can (and should) be!

So — what’s the Adaptive Avenue advantage? … [Read More…]

Podcast: Download (37.9MB)

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MIMA-Thanks For the Take-Aways

October 7, 2009 By Phil Wilson

As we bask in the afterglow of another MIMA Summit here is a quick video of some new and old friends of Minnov8 (meeting twice weekly at a church basement near you) and their “take-aways” from this year’s event.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuFnl6iND48

MIMA Summit Goes Gadget Happy

October 1, 2009 By Phil Wilson

No doubt, the Minnov8 Gang is stoked about the upcoming MIMA Summit this Monday. We plan on our usual “no holds barred” live coverage complete with live blogging, video, and photos. A practice that’s…well…pretty geeky. However, we are not alone.

The MIMA folks and Jennifer Kane Consulting, the people that brought you “little Seth”, are giving the geek meter a workout by providing plenty of tech fun gadgets and mobile access. For those of you who thought that free wifi at a conference was the shizznit, prepared to be amazed…

Behold, courtesy of the M Group, the Wayfinding Station. Not to be confused with the Wayback Machine (Sorry Mr. Peabody), this little gem, built on Microsoft’s Surface technology, is, and I quote, “a multi-touch experience to deliver conference information and services to attendees”. Check this, “Users can navigate a map of the conference facility and related breakout sessions by grabbing digital information with their hands and interacting with content on-screen by touch and gesture – without using a mouse or keyboard.” Sweet!

Wait there’s more. MIMA created “conference personas,” each with a pre-configured schedule based on an area of interest. You can chose a “persona chip” and be Social Media Maggie, Suzy Search, Email Ian, Mobile Mack, Victor Video, or Brady Branding. (Sorry, no Pete Propeller-Head.) You’ll then get an itinerary of sessions related to that area of interest. “Because Surface sees and interacts with objects, guests will be able to place their conference persona chip onto the Surface screen to trigger different types of personalized digital responses, and then the transfer of digital content to their mobile devices,” explains the M Group’s Janessa Meyer.

No, wait! There’s even more. MIMA is even using individual tags that are embedded with the URL to each of the conference speakers’ social networking site of choice. These tags are printed on the conference signage corresponding with that speaker’s session. Using the Microsoft Tag Reader application you just use your mobile device to connect with the speaker’s sites and social media outlets just by snapping a photo of the tag with their device. Shnikies!

If they only had an iPhone app…wait…they have one of those too! Geek metered…pegged!!!!

(Crap! I don’t have an iPhone. My coal burning Treo 650 probably will only buzz and click pittifully. But still…it’s pretty cool.)

Buy the Change and Local Tweeps

September 30, 2009 By Tim Elliott

buylocal Buythechange.com & Localtweeps.com are two websites created and co-founded by local tech startup Monkey Island Inc. entrepreneur Zack Steven. While these initiatives are miles apart in their application and scope, they share the same DNA: hyperlocal, community-driven services focused on generating both financial and social capital.

Buythechange.com, which launched around 3.5 years ago, is a localized social commerce network that helps people buy and sell products/services with their community friends and next door neighbors. It also aims to promote local businesses – as opposed to faceless corporate enterprise – say for example, one owned & operated by an out of area central office. Hyperlocal is the mom and pop shop down the street, the independent contractor neighbor, or the local food shelf. When products or services are posted “for sale” on the site, a specific geographical network (neighborhood/community) is alerted, which fosters more personalized connections than a craigslist model by simply removing the anonymity factor. This form of commerce enhances social bonds which lends itself to more meaningful long term relationships, commercial and otherwise.

There are three membership levels: a free Basic membership which allows people to post goods and events, a $24/year Personal membership which allows people to post services (as well as goods and events), and a $120/year Business membership which includes a business profile and posting of unlimited goods, services, jobs and events. The social cause comes into play when a portion of the membership fee (33-50%) is donated to a local non-profit of the members choice, and then(optionally) the cause is added into the member’s profile, further shaping the identities and intentions of each individual member. Simply put, Buythechange.com is “classifieds with a conscience”. … [Read More…]

Podcast: Download (31.8MB)

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U of M Showcases It’s New Media Research Resources

September 21, 2009 By Phil Wilson

inms_logomark_white Yet another well kept secret in Minnesota tech and media is the Institute for New Media Studies on the campus of the University of Minnesota. In an effort to reveal that secret the Institute annually hosts an event to showcase the many resources available and projects underway at the University.

Held on Friday, September 18th at the Coffman Union, though not standing room only, this year’s program was presented to an interested group and included information on projects addressing journalism, social media, gaming and art, to name a few. It also showcased the institutes facilities including focus group rooms and eye-tracking software used in site design and usability studies, as part of it’s quest to provide the ability to do more applied research.

613_nora_paul I had a chance to talk with Nora Paul, Director of New Media Studies about the goals of the gathering. “I think we’re kind of the ‘Yenta’ (referring to the matchmaking character in Fiddler on the Roof.) for the campus when it comes to new media. We try to make matches.” she goes on to say that the event “brings together seasoned researchers with students.”

She adds that the Institute doesn’t want students, or others for that matter, to get “caught in silos” when comes to new media thinking. In line with that desire comes the offer of the resources and facilities to not only the campus community, but to the community at large to some extent. The Institute appears more than willing to collaborate with the private and education industries.

To find out more about the institute, interested parties including University faculty, staff, and students as well as professionals in the twin cities community are encouraged to join the New Media Research Network as well as follow along on Twitter, Facebook, Delicio.us and Flickr.

MN Light Rail Gets a New Brain

September 11, 2009 By Steve Borsch

trainapp

Entrepreneurs go with their gut when they see a need and have the skills or moxie to fill it with some innovative technology or approach. When developer Andy Atkinson, a light rail rider, found himself uncertain as to whether his train was on time or when others might be available if he happened to want to catch one earlier than usual, he knew that the GPS-enabled iPhone in his hand was the perfect device to deliver an application that would fix this problem…and he had the skills to create it.

Enter Train Brain. This $1.99 iPhone application (available here in the iTunes store) is for Twin Cities Metro Transit light rail riders. Though you can walk around with a paper schedule in your pocket or pull up a PDF of that schedule on your iPhone, with a couple of taps Train Brain can tell you when the next train is scheduled from the station you’re standing in, how much the fare will cost and and a countdown for the trains arrival.

I had a chance to talk with Andy this week and find out more about this guy and why he created the application. He told me the backstory I alluded to in the opening paragraph along with being a bit self-deprecating about the limited nature of the app and that it wasn’t “complicated.” I’d beg to differ since “perfect is the enemy of good” and what he’s already delivered meets the need squarely and is a tool that will delight Light Rail riders.

Turns out Andy is a web application developer, Objective-C coder and has the technical chops to put out this first Train Brain version and to keep it going (he has lots of ideas and next steps in mind for it). You can read more of his thoughts on his technical blog here and I’m sure he’ll talk more about his new gig with Tightrope Media Systems (a recent Minnedemo presenter) and the great work they’re doing in digital signage and broadcast when he’s able to do so.

One of the things that came up in our conversation was the design of the website and application. I’ve yet to meet a solid developer who’d admit to possessing any modicum of strength in graphic design. Andy was quick to point out that the website and application design I was praising (as clean, functional and fresh) was done by Nate Kadlac Design and Nate deserved the praise.

The only thing that came to mind after talking to Andy was this: Metro Transit ought to buy this app and get behind it. With the future continued rollout of light rail in the Twin Cities, likely delays as the system expands, there is no question riders will need better tools to manage their ridership instead of just a PDF of a paper schedule or, God forbid, having to carry a schedule around in your pocket.

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