Page 6.

*“Frank comments to himself as ‘a mastermind of online entertainment,’ and that’s not so far from the truth.”

The Observer

 

http://www.zefrank.com/v_draw_beta/index3.html O Ze Frank, one of the few Web personalities I really admire, released on your blog another brilliant example of what has been while “online performance artist”: an application in Flash (it is mandatory to test!) that lets us draw with the voice. Just talk, sing, scream or sound any sound with the voice to see the app drawing based on sound.

A medium volume sound draws a straight line, a louder sound, turns right while a low sound turns left.

I don’t admire it beyond “Stand Up Commedy”, I find it brilliant and admire the kind of “nerdcore standup comedy” reinvented by Zé Frank. I admire the intelligence, sense of humor (geek, ok!) and ability to renew comedy with this new reality that the Internet and the Web bring.

Ze Frank managed to transpose into comedy and perform all the basic principles of Web 2.0: a lot of video, has a Blog with thousands of visitors and, the brightest, takes advantage of their social network making it often their community to generate content and write their shows.

To illustrate brilliance, I leave as an additional example a 2004 video in a TED Talk (remember the emails you never read, sent by the son of an African Minister who sympathetically wants to transfer you to the bank account a few thousand dollars?:)

Look, and visit Zé's website!

Apple's inevitable future in the post Netbook world:

This week the Google made GMail accessible in Offline mode, allowing it to work whether or not there is an Internet connection. 

For me, which I centralize in GMail my mail, Twitter, Friendfeed, Google Docs, Calendar and that use as “homepage” of the browser, this is very good news.

Of course Outlook, Thunderbird, iMail or any other email client lets you do it but there are two major differences:

• GMail is in my opinion (and many others), an almost perfect email client! With offline operation, I no longer need other customers;

• With GMail I don't have to install software. All I need is a browser and I can access my email from anywhere: from my PC, from any PC, iPhone, netbook, etc.

After having already made Offline modes available on Google Reader, Google Docs and GMail, Google Calendar is missing to complete a serious package of applications that attack the current Desktop template. In fact, they don't attack. They just anticipate the future.

To understand better, nothing like their own explanation:

P.S.: And I... also liked Chrome for Mac!

       

I think you've seen half the Internet, but for simplicity and brilliance it's never enough to advertise the viral marketing campaign Queensland Tourism launched this month! The Campaign ” The Best Job in the World ” offers $150,000 for a 6-month “work” with the aim of dealing with the coral reef of Hamilton Island.

What's the job? Look at the trouble.

• Scuba diving;

• Swimming;

• explore the neighbouring islands;

• Exploring wildlife;

• Maintain a blog to share experiences and videos with the world.

And all this was published as a genuine recruitment announcement.

Interested? What is the application process? Just send a video explaining why you are the right person for the so-called “work”.

Result: in 10 days, more than 2000 videos/applications were submitted. And it was so successful that the site couldn't handle the third day of applications!

Image not recoveredtwitter bird And speaking of Twitter...

When I got on Twitter, I put it here on the Blog a skeptical post about my curiosity to explore it.

At the time he said that Twitter “did not tell me anything but at the same time told me much” and compared it to a new version of IRC on the Web.

Although I am not totally addicted to Twitter (I am a moderate user), it took me very little time to “see”, “breath” and get “fascinate” with Twitter.

The “fascination” is 100% the result of the simplicity of Twitter, the project that most marked the Internet in the last year, showing that “It’s not the technology, stupid!”. A simple interface, 140 characters that do not require thinking too much and a reversal in the normal subscription process that clicked: we do not select who can follow us (although we can block, which is something radical), we only select who we want to follow. Very democratic.

And for those who wonder about a “So what?” or, “I’ve tried it but I don’t understand the joke”, see Twitter as more than an application or service. A service worth the people there.

Why do I use Twitter?

For the people. Many “early adopters”, it is true. But at a time when everything happens in

After refusing to be bought by Facebook for 500 million dollars (although part of this payment is in shares), Twitter returns to the world of Risk Capital and prepares to raise another 20 million to the previous 20 million already raised, being valued at 250 million dollars.

O Scobleizer made an interesting parallelism: if they are part of the 6 million Twitter users (number that grows daily), assuming that the only Twitter asset are users, each user is worth 42 dollars (ok, this is not purchase cost).

When I look at customers BySide, the purchase cost of its customers varies between €30 and €150€ (communication and sales commissions). For Twitter... not bad!

With a giant and participatory community all Twitter lacks is a small detail: a business model.

As a user who thinks Twitter offers something very close to a public service, I worry that a new “round” of investment will slow and lazy the need for Twitter to create a sustained business model...

I'm a late user. I'm part of the recent wave of Mac converts (I started using an M0001 in college to play “Risco” and edit some texts).

Only with the iPod did I slowly convert. Now I'm dependent on my Mac and iPhone. 

Today, Mac is 25 years old and nothing better than a Steve Jobs video, in front of a full audience, in which was his first big performance of Mac:

2008 is coming. A lot has been written about it and... it is already past (which makes this post slightly... late!).  

Despite this, reading a note from Edson Athayde on Facebook (“ Hope and chicken soup “) on the neutrality of 2008 I decided to make a brief retrospective this year (late, I know). Edson's note said:

*“Quick, still, moved, still. I think 2008 will be remembered as the year when nothing has been resolved, little has been improved, where the planet has been where it has always been, but, as Galileo would say, it has moved. *

*Will we miss 2008?”

Without questioning Edson's point of view, I think that despite everything 2008 was what I call a silently important year (at least part of my world, online).

After entering 2007 with the “YOU” as a figure of the previous year in Time cover s, feel 2008 as “O” year of the Internet; the year of consolidation in which I felt the Internet mature and in the phase where you can say: “Now it’s all starting!”; a year of “Tipping Point”. And this, for me that I accompany the Internet in Portugal from the beginning (from the time of PUUG – Portuguese Unix Users Group, first Portuguese ISP), is relevant.   

What I found relevant in 2008: 

• ** Massification:** It is no longer necessary to explain what the Internet is. Although many who often use it do not know exactly what it is, use it! I always said that when people used the Internet like electricity, we'd get to the point of maturity. We're almost... * Proof of this*: My 8-year-old started using Google Chrome and my wife started using Last.FM, discovered Google Reader/News and started using Gmail

Image not recoverednetcall

Last week Netcall’s bankruptcy, first IP Voice Operator (VoIP), or voice over Internet, was made public.

For having been co-founder of the Netcall business, because, despite having presented alternatives (rejected), I had anticipated and repeatedly warned, without being taken seriously, for this moment, for having felt obliged to leave the project in early 2006, for having proved with the current projects that the view I defended was far from lunatic and was sustained, despite being part of a shareholder conflict that still lasts and at the natural risk of being misinterpreted, I feel legitimacy and willingness to write a few lines about a project that had become mine.

The Netcall statement stated that bankruptcy was due “to the moment the international economy lives, and in particular to the national economy”. Externally, I know that it is easy to justify “fall” with economic factors; internally with internal conflicts and to say that because of these conflicts the “window of opportunity” has been lost. As in everything in life, we can hide behind excuses and justifications or we can learn from mistakes and move on.

Netcall actually had a “moment” and that “moment” was, at that time, its main asset. In 2005, a brand was created and designed and Netcall appeared on the market with an image of innovation and disruption. A kind of “enfant terrible” with the desire to change the world of telecommunications. It was even seen by the incumbent as the new competition wave (I saw Netcall proudly in Portugal Telecom's Powerpoints). It had the empathy of the media and the market, which saw cost reduction, innovation and the alternative to one (or several) incumbent.

What's wrong?

It failed the same thing that failed in all the VoIP businesses that sank and are sinking around the world. The truth is that VoIP was not, contrary to what it promised, very different from the traditional telecommunications business, following the same market logic in the telecommunications world and its regulators: high operating costs and very low margins. As someone said at GigaOM in 2006, unfortunately “It’s a sucker’s game!”

Massification business

(picture of Robert Scoble ) 

And speaking of Free Love posters, in creativity and interactivity offline and in virtual windows, another example that we cannot “can” forget the power of offline and how simple ideas can draw attention (much!).

By the way: “Free Love Cards”... what will “Free Love Monsters” look like?