WELCOME TO THE DIGITAL DIGEST
GREETINGS, geeks and welcome to a brand new section The Multifarious: the Digital Digest, a selection of regurgitated slurry from this week’s web-and-tech-related news.
Nothing clever like a theme here, but instead a 2p pick-and-mix of chewy, gelatine-and-E-number-packed goodness from the dingy newsagents that is the Internet.
MP predictably slams ‘violent’ computer game: millions of gamers groan inwardly
Yes, I’m talking about the <ahem> ‘row‘ surrounding the release of a little game called ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2′. Trumpeting the news that certain levels of the 18-rated FPS contained content that was – gasp! – quite violent, MP, Keith Vaz, threatened to raise hell in Parliament on behalf of the curtain-twitchers of Leicester. You’ll be very surprised to find out that the root of all this manufactured outrage started life in pages of the Daily Mail – fancy that! This hysteria accompanies the revelation that a French teenager, who was recently convicted of planning to murder his classmates and teachers, was a ‘video games enthusiast’ – something that the media took great pains to point out.
The UK games industry provides 1000s of jobs and remains one industry in which the UK can still claim to be a world leader: meddlesome politicians looking to score cheap shots before a general election should perhaps bear that in mind.
Live the future now (and look a teensy bit of a plonker)
TED (that’s Technology Entertainment and Design, in case you didn’t know) is a global forum where the world’s leading boffins mass together to give long talks about how clever they are in various mind-meltingly difficult subjects. Wait, come back! It’s actually very good and often turns up gems like this one, where MIT student, Pranav Mistry, brings us one step closer to a ‘Minority Report’-style future of holographic interfaces, controlled by simple gestures. The most amazing thing is that he’s turned the paradigm that each future application (as science fiction would have you believe) would require a different piece of hardware on its head, by employing an amazingly simple idea.
DEATH TO IDEAS!
Nice pictures of how the fragile butterfly that is a creative idea can be trampled beneath the hobnailed jackboot that is the process of getting out to the public.too many laboured similes, I know.
Google Library Scan FAIL
So, as Google’s plans to digitise every out-of-copyright book rumble on, questions are being asked as to whether or not they should be the sole publishers/custodians of such a vast repository of knowledge. This suggests that the big G is not quite ready to assume that mantle.
Adidas World Cup
Real-life German footballers act woodenly in a lavish intro to this high-concept World Cup digital promotion from Adidas Germany. But hold on! What’s this? Heavens! It’s actually a game! Plays a bit like Subbuteo, but slightly less fun. Thanks to James M for this first piece of World Cup digital marketing on the radar.
Usability and User Experience…zzzz
No, DON’T fall asleep: this might actually help your clients a little happier and your job a little easier to boot. Anyway, I happened across a couple of interesting sites that provide a very cost-effective alternative to expensive focus groups and UX labs:
http://www.fivesecondtest.com/ & http://www.feedbackarmy.com/
With Fivesecondtest.com, you can upload a page design and either set up a quick memory test, where a user is displayed the design for 5 seconds and has to list 5 things he or she remembers about the design, or a more involved click test, where a set of click-based goals are set for a user.
The memory test could be useful for simple A/B testing e.g. working out the best location for a promotional container on a page based on which design has the best recall; the click test works in a similar way, but specific questions can be asked (although this is a premium feature). You can send the test design to an anonymous horde of testers, or circulate a secure link among people you know. At the entry level (11 results and no custom questions), this application is totally free, but if you need a bigger sample, then it creeps up a little bit ($12 for 46 results). I think it makes use of Amazon’s ‘Mechanical Turk ‘ service for the pool of testers – useful in its own right if you’re desperately hard up!
Feedbackarmy.com carries on in the same vein, this time with the ability to ask open-ended questions as standard, the twist being that you can send a link to a functioning website instead. The price for 10 responses? A very wallet-friendly $10. Luvverly jubberly.
And finally – man plays Guns ‘n’ Roses ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ on an…
…how can I put this ‘unconventional instrument‘. I wish that John Lewis had decided to use Mr Handman’s version instead of this rather drippy cover. Anyway, I guess you could say it’s a real ‘parpy’ hit! Snort.
So, that’s it for now. Next instalment is due in a week’s time when I will be serving up some hot nuggets of web goodness.
Until then…KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES
