Ever wonder what happens to your emails once you’ve clicked send?

Tags: Email, gmail, Google, Google Green, How email works, Internet communication, Internet messaging, Online communication

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Source: SocialBakers

Tags: Brands, Coca-Cola, Consumer Engagement, Converse, Facebook for Brands, Facebook marketing, Infographic, Oreo, Red Bull, Starbucks

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Tired of your neighbour stealing your Wi-Fi signal? You might want to consider re-decorating. A team of French researchers have developed a wallpaper prototype that can block specific Wi-Fi signals. Whereas TV, radio and cellphone signals will still be able to pass through walls, Wi-Fi signals will be confined to the wallpapered room. That said, a password and a bit of old-fashioned data encryption should protect your home’s wireless network just fine, but we can definitely see the appeal of this product for people who require higher levels of security.

Tags: Block Wi-Fi, Data Encryption, Encryption, Faraday Cage, Home technology, Online security, Tags: Privacy, Wallpaper, Wi-Fi

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The more new technology contributes to producing and/or making content available (articles, posts, music, films, social status, brand content…), the more we should worry that our brain capacity isn’t large enough to handle all this information. In the beginning, Amazon was just a concept that seemed more a slogan than a reality: “The world’s largest bookstore.” Today, the web has proven that there are more things that interest us than we can possibly take in.

Innovations that attempt to manage content.
From the onset, technology has made us hope that easy access to content would give us the time to actually consume it. On the hardware end of things, hard drive terabytes and the cloud allow us to store thousands of hours of film, music and photos that we will never look at or listen to. As for content flow, the RSS was a well-designed solution to never miss a post or a headline. With just one simple click on a logo, we freed ourselves from constantly monitoring sites to receiving notifications from several sources at the same time.

Effective at the beginning.
Subscriptions quickly became popular and as a result, the quantity of available content increased to distressing levels yet again. Netvibes provides a bit of intellectual relief: a real-time social media monitoring platform that organizes content into handy boxes on a single page. A bit later, when the feeling of content control seemed to be slipping away once again, Netvibes added tabs to better categorize its sources until the number of pages and their complexity was so great that it scared off many users.

Social networks don’t fix anything.
The social media explosion made things even more complicated with the addition of thousands of pertinent new information sources (and hundreds of millions that weren’t). At the beginning, it was magical – no need to worry; you just had to follow a few reliable, well-informed people. But with time, as we continued to discover more good sources, our subscriptions increased just like they did for RSS. Tools like Tweetdeck or Flipboard came in handy to follow the flow of tweets and the ever-increasing number of status updates as we added more friends on Facebook. At first, they did offer some peace of mind, but the large quantity of content eventually wore us down and the feelings of hopelessness and anxiety resurfaced.

The pattern could go on and on forever.

• Technical or conceptual innovations (RSS, Netvibes, Evernote, Dropbox, Instapaper/Read later, Tweetdeck, Flipboard and now Pinterest) offer relief in the form of simplification until the moment where we feel like we are drowning in content.
• It works at the beginning – a meticulous preliminary cull effectively delivers control and simplicity by wiping the slate clean and forcing us to rigorously reconsider our sources.
• Things slowly begin to deteriorate as we continue to add new subscriptions and new friends, until content quantity results in usage dissatisfaction, thus giving way to a new, reassuring innovation whose main quality is often its novelty.

Will TV be our next source of digital anxiety?
There really aren’t many reasons why the increasingly popular connected TV won’t be affected by this recurring pattern. Historically, TV channels have organized programs into slots before submitting them to the audience for a verdict. Although connected television will bring about a wave of television content freedom, it will also create a new source of frustration for viewers as they are faced with too much content and left not knowing what to choose. Similarly, subscriptions to an unlimited on-demand video service like Netflix will also create a permanent rift. Unless we ask ourselves what we want to watch, we won’t watch anything! Sooner or later, of course, a technological solution will pop up to ease our conscious and make choosing easier – at least for a while…

Jacques Attali stated in Skylines, “To think of your library is to dream that you will read all of its books before you die.” But to pin all that we find interesting on Pinterest, Evernote or Instapaper, or simply to bookmark them in our navigator, is to believe that the web can shelve it all like books in a library.

So it’s only flow…

Read more from Jean Pascal at A Nos Vies Numériques.

Tags: Content, Data overload, Digital anxiety, Flipboard, Jacques Attali, Netvibes, Social Feeds, Social Media, Social Networking, Status update

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A typical Google search can easily yield a few hundred million search results. Unfortunately, quantity doesn’t necessarily imply quality, so there’s no guarantee that the ‘good’ stuff will be on the first, second or even the ninth page of results.

With the help of a web tool or two, however, it is possible to uncover those golden nuggets of useful information amidst all the noise. One of our current favourites is MentorMob, which allows users to create playlists on a certain topic. The site functions on a simple premise – everyone has his or her own skills and interests, so why not crowdsource that knowledge to develop a great content database that everyone can benefit from. It’s community curation at its finest and it’s succeeding at uncovering the best content the Internet has to offer. After all, it’s great when you find a fantastic webpage or video… but it’s even better when it doesn’t take you an entire day to do so.

Tags: community curation, Content Strategy, crowdsourced knowledge, Data, education, filtering search results, information, learning playlist, Mentor Mob, online learning, playlist, TMI

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Confession:
From time to time I do find pleasure in “vegging” out and watching TV. As a usability professional, however, I have often found myself wanting more out of my TV time. I sit with my tablet looking for additional content or I talk with friends via the old school social channels of Twitter and Facebook. But those simple social channels don’t seem connected to my TV programing and the communication is fragmented and/or limited.

And, it seems I’m not alone in my search to optimize TV time.

Fact:
A Nielsen study found that 88% of tablet owners use their portable device while watching TV. Smartphone users were not far behind with 86% engaging with their mobile device while watching TV. While some of this is simple multi-tasking, undoubtedly others are searching for a richer social TV browsing experience.

Discovery:
About six months ago, my inner couch potato and my inner usability geek were delighted to discover a few new tools that consolidated many of my TV experience needs. My favourites among the SocialTV 1.0 mobile/tablet apps are IntoNow, GetGlue, Yap.TV, TunedIn, Zeebox and Viggle. These SocialTV tools have extended my experience in six great ways:

1. Sharing +
   In addition to the expected Twitter stream, IntoNow, Yap.TV, TunedIn and Zeebox feature polls and real-time in-app dialogue that seem to make sharing an integrated part of the show (I love the clap meter). You can also easily pull in your Facebook friends and create a somewhat private conversation.
2. Deeper content
   For shows that you love to watch and love to talk about, Yap.TV and IntoNow give you great dinner conversation nuggets. You will often find additional videos, photos and special content about the cast.
3. Discover new programs
   Using your browsing/viewing history and that of your friends, IntoNow, Viggle and Yap.TV are able to recommend programs. Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to program your DVR from the app; however, several players including Zeebox are working with the cable companies to integrate tablets and smartphones with cable/DVR boxes.
4. Schedule future programing
   Several of the apps, including Viggle, allow you to add simple push notifications and email alerts for future broadcast times. This feature will be limited at best until cable/DVR box integration is complete.
5. Rewards
   In addition to social rewards via badges, Viggle offers viewers points for viewing ad and program content. The points can be redeemed in the Viggle reward store for free products from major brands, including Starbucks and Papa John’s Pizza. Combine free pizza and coffee with a night of TV and I’m there.
6. Shopping
   As part of SocialTV 1.0, Viggle integrates shopping into the TV viewing experience by linking programs to a set of keywords that feed to Amazon and iTunes. SocialTV 2.0 promises to be much more robust. New tools will offer the ability to purchase merchandise being advertised during commercial breaks as well as the products/props that are within the content of the show.

As a usability/experience marketer, I love the digital potential to build brand engagement via these tools. As a couch potato, I find amazing digital utility that creates a different level of entertainment from my old school TV. I’m really looking forward to the next wave of these apps.

So, I guess I really want my SocialTV 2.0…

Tags: GetGlue, IntoNow, multi-device viewing, Multi-tasking, Smart TV, Social TV, Social TV viewing, TunedIn, Viggle, Yap.TV, Zeebox

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