By Ian, on August 21st, 2008 
I introduced my colleague Alan to the term ‘Abandonware’ today. As a net-savvy individual, I was surprised he’d not come across it before. But, then again, it’s only really current among gamers. Abandonware is software that has been given-up by its original developers and publishers. Normally, it applies to old games which fans still love, but which their publishers don’t care about any more. The spiritual home of abandonware is Home of the Underdogs (beware Dragons and possibly viruses), which, appropriately enough, hasn’t been updated for two years. The site hosts binary files for hundreds of old games, manuals and screenshots. While some of the content is definitely illegal, according to the letter of the law, it’s also a shrine to those old games that you played as a teenager. On balance, it’s definitely a good thing that it exists. Not just so you can get free w4r3z, but because it keeps the games and the emotions and memories of those games alive. These games, despite the moniker, are not abandoned, but carefully curated and preserved (if the site owner would get off his arse). Back to Web 2.0, Alan’s observation, just on the basis of the term was that, “a freemium model endgame is suggested” (I think it’s disrespectful to represent someone’s opinion from a single Twitter message. I do so here only to advance the argument. Sorry, Alan.) Web 2.0 abandonware already exists, surely. I have no idea how Google Docs, for example, could ever make any money. Annoying Microsoft doesn’t seem like much of a model to me. Open Source is ‘cards on the table’ abandonware in some cases. There are interesting examples — when Movable Type went Open Source was that a form of abandonment?, but if there is a Home of the Underdogs 2.0, it won’t really matter very much. I can still find a working binary download for Computer Quarterback published in 1979 (don’t bother — it’s shit) nearly 30 years after its publication date on Underdogs. I wonder if someone couldn’t make a fortune by starting a Web 2.0 Underdogs for those projects that were loved, but not by the right people. By Ian, on August 21st, 2008 
I never quote Seth Godin. I find his stuff far too happy-clappy for my comfort zone (ach– another americanism!) Yet here I am: Seth on America choosing Neil Armstrong as their ‘moon landing guy’: NASA did what many organizations do when picking someone to act as company spokesperson. They avoided risk, played it safe and chose someone who wouldn’t make a ruckus. What a shame. Armstrong could have taught the world about science. He could have done work that would have won him a Nobel Peace Prize. He could have had a huge impact on his country and the world. Instead, he mostly disappeared. Many organizations worry that if they put their clout behind an individual, he or she will gain notoriety and power and eventually double-cross the organization. So, instead, they go for bland.
Bland is a tad harsh, though I wish they’d chosen Buzz for the first man on the moon. He’s got a much cooler name. There’s another reason as well — because I continually get to tease my wife for confusing him with Buzz Lightyear on one occasion. (Buzz Lightyear apparently trained on Lanzarote’s volcanos for his moon trip). Speaking in my capacity as a has-been journalist, bland won’t get you a headline in a magazine or newspaper. But hang on… Neither will the out-spoken fool. No journalist is going to publish a story that says ‘Dave Colossus, mega-spokesperson for XCorp, today said they’d be curing cancer within a year using the power of social networking’. Dave Colossus (not his real name) is out of a job within a week, and the fools that did print the story, well, probably they keep their jobs in my experience. Stick to bland, and true. And bollocks to you, Godin: I’m not sure I’ve come across a better quote in the last forty years than ‘One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind’. If that’s bland (and even if he got it wrong), it’s still pretty magical. But I still wish it was Buzz. By Ian, on August 20th, 2008 I left a comment on a blog that wouldn’t leave me alone all day. So here’s a fuller response, and I hope it breaks my blogger’s block. Antony Mayfield is delighted with Dell’s approach to social media, as represented in this video interview, in particular. Even without that, it’s clear that the company has embraced many of the concepts wholeheartedly through initiatives like IdeaStorm. As Antony the interviewee, Andy Lark, Dell’s head of Global Marketing, points out, the company’s commitment to social tools is pretty thorough: The social media stuff is probably the most important we do today, from a marketing stand point. The other elements of marketing mix has sort of become more and more transactional and more and more tactical in nature. Social media stuff is much more strategic… Use social media to power the fundamental of the business. That’s what we’re focused on. [Mayfield’s transcription — thank you]
Great stuff. And here’s that interview in full: To be clear, Antony is one of the good guys — I just disagree with his opinion on this one. The part where I started to become anxious comes late in the piece, at about 4:00. Lark contrasts the approach taken by new media journalists with the old school. BBC journalists apparently now come along with a digital recorder and immediately ask if they can podcast the interview. The old school — regional journalists, he says — turn up with a notepad and pen. That’s a failure on the part of the latter group, according to Lark: “The content that I’m giving them is the asset, not their translation”. That’s *not* true. The media is there to question, to analyse and to be sceptical about the ‘asset’ that’s been given to them by Lark. It is certainly not its function to broadcast that ‘asset’ verbatim and without question. That’s what we people who turn up with a notepad and pen and ‘don’t get it’ call an advertisement. I think we raise a couple of questions here about quite how wonderful 24-hour on-the-moment publishing and releasing to social media sources at the same time as traditional media sources is. If the statements issued by marketing directors are taken as ‘the record’, then we miss out on the opportunity to compare a company’s claims with their financial records, the research that’s been done into their brand value and customer service records, comparisons with competing propositions from rival manufacturers, and the benefits of a broader view. I have nothing against Dell — my current PC is a Dell, and it’s fine. But, goodness, if I were head of global marketing at any brand, I’m sure that a podcast of my words on a well-trafficked website would be far preferable to an in-depth review of my products or an analysis of my financial performance somewhere else. The function of journalism is not simply to report or transcribe what powerful figures and institutions want us to. We need to question, analyse and remain continually sceptical, while also remaining neutral. If we can’t do the latter, then declaring our interests immediately. Taking a little longer to file a story doesn’t mean that you don’t ‘get it’ (a dreadful expression) but might mean that ‘oh yes, we get it alright, and we’re not letting you get away with it!’ By Ian, on August 18th, 2008 We’re running a Portfolio Clinic as part of the i-design conference on September 17. The idea is for budding interactive designers to come along with a laptop and show their wares the the cream of London’s creative agencies. They’ll tell you where you’re going right and where you’re going wrong — or how you might make your work more saleable, at any rate. They’re giving their time for free, because they’re hoping to find new talent among the people who turn up. So far we’re expecting creative directors from: o AIG www.aiglondon.com o Conchango www.conchango.com o Digit www.digitlondon.com o Digital Outlook www.digital-outlook.com o Glue www.gluelondon.com o Imagination www.imagination.com o Kin www.kin-design.com o Lateral www.lateral.net o Moving Brands www.movingbrands.com o Poke www.pokelondon.com o Precendent www.precedent.co.uk o Smoothe www.smoothe.com o TribalDDB www.ddblondon.com/tribalddb o Up the Resolution www.uptheresolution.co.uk Should be an excellent session. It’s part of the conference package (book now), but you can get into this bit for free. More details here. By Ian, on August 9th, 2008  On Amazon, this book is tagged ‘liar’, ‘alcohol’, ‘sociopath’ and ‘jail’. But also with ‘entrepreneur’, ‘web 2.0′ and ‘dotcom’. It should probably also be tagged ‘genius raconteur’.
The book tells the tale of Paul Carr’s successful beginnings — a published author while still at university, a Guardian columnist a couple of years later and a blogs-to-books publisher shortly after that — to the grisly end of his stab at Web 2.0 e-trepreneurship, Fridaycities (a site which continues under the leadership of his former business partner as Kudocities). With the Credit Crunch beginning to close its jaws on new Internet investment, Bringing Nothing to the Party couldn’t come at a more opportune moment. We have to express an interest here — Carr spoke on a panel about social websites at our conference last year, NMK Forum, which gets name-checked within the volume. At that point, Fridaycities was still in business, and Carr was, as ever, an eloquent and intelligent contributor, despite (as he reveals) not having slept the night before. There’s lots to like in the book, particularly if you have been to any London Internet social events. Carr captures the flavour of these sorts of evenings very well — khaki trousers and check shirts seem to figure prominently. Lots of the regulars show up: Michael Acton Smith, Saul Klein, Nic Brisbourne, Robert Loch, Mike Butcher, etc. Carr’s prose style makes for easy reading, and — as you’d expect from the architect of projects such as The Friday Thing — the gags come thick and fast. It’s a little like John O’Farrell’s Things Can Only Get Better, but with more swearing and a lot less politics. Carr is an excellent story-teller, and you’ll end up really wanting to corner him at the bar on one of these nights. If there’s a problem with the book, then it’s that the alleged ‘story’ — the rise and fall of a dotcom entrepreneur — doesn’t actually amount to very much. It’s the ‘padding’ that contains the most colour — the wild parties, the people he bumps into at bars, the wilfully doomed relationships, the back stories behind some of the big sites on the Web. That’s not an enormous problem, but if you already know about the origin of the name ‘Google’, for example, you sometimes wish he’d get on with it. The other story, the real story, is about Carr, though. His journey from gonzo journalist, to accidental business owner, to accidental web business mogul, to very-near-jailbird, to working out what actually makes him happy in life. It’s somehow quite surprising how much we end up liking him by the end of the book, having documented his personal and business failings quite so comprehensively. It’s a well-worn formula in fiction that might make readers roll their eyes when the good-for-nothing protagonist finally achieves wisdom (cf. anything by Nick Hornby or Tony Banks), but when it’s real-life then that’s something different. Bringing Nothing to the Party is available from Amazon and Waterstones, among other booksellers. [cross posted from NMK] By Ian, on July 30th, 2008 | About this BlogSocial tools, devices and web evolution are creating epochal change in media, society and business. The plan is to hide under the floorboards till it’s all over document some of the interesting parts of that change. More….
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