Data centres to off-centre opinion

As an experiment, I created an add for my new weather site on Google, Microsoft and Facebook. I used an identical add on the three networks but different tagetting;

Microsoft Adcenter

UI is a bit confusing, the targetting is average (couldn’t find Woking, just Wokingham), the scheduling and budget settings are good.

Google Adwords

UI is better Adcenter but still cluttered and a bit confusing. The targetting is pretty good, allowing the user to target geographic location more accurately than MS (i.e. it found Woking). Adwords also gave you an indication of search volume when selecting keywords and also suggested additional keywords and estimated the #searches that used them per month – useful to expand your reach.

Facebook Advertising

UI is very straight forward and I found it clearer than either of the others. Unsurprisingly, the targetting is very very good, after all you share pretty much every bit of demographic info with Facebook. I targetting a 10 mile radius of Woking which Facebook claimed had an estimated reach of 95,440 people.

Cost Comparison (per click)

• MS ~£0.04
• Google ~£0.17
• Facebook ~£0.33

Impressions (two-day week end)

• MS: 40
• Google: 9,062
• Facebook: 99,233

Click Through Rate (CTR)

• MS: 2.5%
• Google: 0.07%
• Facebook: 0.021%

Traffic

Ironically, Yahoo and Ask both sent more traffic to the website than MS/Google or Facebook. Facebook was highest out of the three tested followed by DoubleClick (Google).

Conclusions

This wasnt a scientific test – the targetting was different on Facebook, which probably goes some way to explaining the low CTR as people were shown the ad based on location rather than a desire to find something about weather in Woking. The MS CTR was high, but with only 40 impressions I dont think you can make a fair comparison.

I’ll leave the ads running for a while then compare a longer period with more data.

The guys over at downloadsquad.com have a good list of free Windows utilities; here. They include, CD/DVD burners, network synchronisation, file transfer, image editing etc.

They’ve also posted a list of Systems Admin utilities here.

I’ve known about Twittervision for a while; basically it plots twits on a map of the world in near real-time. Its fun to sit and watch for a minute or so, but I can’t help but think it needs some filtering and aggregation to make it truely useful.

For example, a filter/search box allowing you to enter a term would show you the relevant twits relating to that subject from around the world. Watching this for a few minutes (or even better, some ability to record and see a timeline) would show you what different parts of the world thought about the subject.

A few colleagues just shared a utility they use to automatically change thewir desktop background image at preset intervals, its called John’s Background Switcher (JBS). I’ve seen literally dozens of these type of utilities over the years and have not been impressed with any of them. Eitehr because their user interface was terrible or I didn’t trust the software not to by spyware. What I like about JBS is the number of sources you can configure for photos – it supports your photos in the the Piuctures folder of your computer plus a load of internet photo sharing sites, including Flickr. What more, you can tell it to use tags, so I’ve set it up on my laptop to display photos tagged with “mountains” it finds on Flickr.

Lets see if I keep this running on my laptop for long, or get annoyed with the number of average photos it finds…

Whilst I was climbing with Beat Schwegler in Switzerland last weekend, he told me about the most recent book he’d read: Microsoft 2.0, How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era by Mary Jo Foley. I read the first two chapters whilst we were waiting for the rain to clear and enjoyed it sufficiently to order it from Amazon. This is unusual for me as I find business books mind-numbingly boring most of the time.

Having read some more, I’m still enjoying her observations and perspectives. I don’t agree with some of what she says, but most of her insight seems rational to me (so far). Whilst the book obviously focuses on Microsoft, I’d recommend anyone pick this up if they’re interested in the future of IT.

A group of organisations including xRez, Microsoft and The US National Parks Service have produced a web site that allows you to zoom into images of certain parts of Yosemite valley in amazing detail.

They’ve taken 1000s of high resolution digital photos then using some clever Microsoft software to combine them all so you can seamlessley zoom in from the widest angle shot showing several miles of the valley edge to a close-up of climbers. You can go close enough to see the color of their socks!

For more about how they did it and to see the results here. Just zoom in until you see an image, then keep going and going and going… I’ve stood in Yosemite valley and been blown away by its size, this technology helps you appreciate just how impressive the valley is.

Photosynth is an application and website developed by Microsoft Live Labs (think of Live Labs as a bunch of mad scientists who get to try out interesting ideas in a lab, and share them with the public) which lets you create a 3 dimensional feeling scene using just normal photos. For example, say you visit the Opera House in Vienna and take a dozen or so photos inside the auditorium – uploading these to Photosynth would result in a photosynth view which you can zoom in out, pan left/right, up/down giving you a real feel for being there. Best of all, its free and you can share your “synths” with the world.

There are some impressive synths already posted to the site – the Taj Mahal is the best I’ve seen. You’ll need to install the viewer to see this (don’t worry, you’ll be prompted when you visit the site). Just think what you could do if you combined this with the photos on Flickr which had be geo-tagged. I bet we see something like this soon.

Go have a play…

I succumbed to the iPhones slick lines and lovely user interface last week, but just like my purchase of a Mac Mini last year, there are some warts under the glossy surface;

The touch-based user interface is a pleasure to use, but the ability to use the phone in landscape mode is only available in a few apps. E.g. If you’re browsing the web using Safari and come into range of a wireless network, the phone will swap back to portrait mode to ask you whether you want to connect to a network. Further, some of the screens lend themselves to working in landscape, but are locked to portrait. Contrast this to my Windows Mobile which allows all apps and user functions to work in landscape – but the iPhone UI is far nicer to use.

I’ve setup my iPhone to fetch email from my work server – which is does nicely. However I can see an obvious way to accept meeting requests which is pretty stupid (it might be me not seeing it).

There is no way to use the iPhone to connect a laptop to the internet. My Windows Mobile has internet connection sharing built-in, and I use it in hotels fairly often.

The AppStore is brilliant and I can’t work out why Nokia, Micorosft, Sony et al did not do the same for their phones years ago. Whilst there are thousands more applications for Windows Mobile, there is no central place to go an get them. Moreover, the experience is disjointed when you do find an app you want to buy: buy, download to PC, copy to phone, install. AppStore = buy and install all in one step.

26/8/8 Update

• If you setup push email, the battery lasts <24 hours
• If you setup syncronisation to occur every hour, the battery lasts <24 hours
• A number of the apps crash with no error – just dumping you back into the home screen (WordPress and Cannon Game on mine)

28/8/8 Update

Last.fm released an app which lets you sign in and listen to music on the iPhone. I installed it and sign-in failed claiming my password was wrong. I used Safari to sign in on the iPhone – no problem, back to the app, still fails. Uninstalled & reinstalled – still the same. Poorly written apps like this could be a big downfall of the iPhone. For me, the shine is rapidly turning to a dull glow (its still nicer to use than my Windows Mobile tho).

I just saw an article and video showing off Microsoft Sphere – something a reseach team came up with. There has been a lot of investment in how humans interact with computers over the year, the most recent leap forward has been Apple successfully integrating touch into their iPhone. Microsoft and other have been working on similar ideas for quite some time (in fact I had a tablet PC which has the same concept as the iPhone) back in 2005, but in honesty the iPhone is more refined.

Anyway, check out the article here, or just watch the video I’ve embedded below;