Organizing Video

I stumbled on the site Videojug today while I was looking to see if anyone had already come up with the concept of a 'videopedia' product. Then I found the site, www.videopedia.com - don't even bother, it's not that great.

Videojug is good though, and well worth a look if you want a video to explain something to you.

Their tagline is: Life Explained. On Film - love it!

The only problem with Videojug is that its original content clips are, well, uninteresting. Production value isn't that high and the voice-overs lack personality (I have only seen a few, so maybe my selection was skewed, will wait and see).

I was expecting a cross between Mahalo Daily and Scobleshow - but it's more like the BBC on YouTube.

When is Jason Calacanis (the force behind Mahalo) going to realize that cataloging and arranging video on the web will be so much more useful (as a business and to web users) than human powered search?

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Radio ad comic relief

I love radio ads. Not because I think they are particularly effective, but because there seems to be so little oversight of what actually makes it in! Which makes for some great comedy.

Case in point. I just heard an ad for increasing your reading speed. It claims to boost your speed by a huge amount. The claim, pretty much verbatim is:

This program will increase your reading speed 1000 times! Which means, in the time it takes for most people to read 1 book, you can read 10!!

Pity the program doesn't also improve your math skills.

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R.I.P Sir Edmund Hillary

Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to conquer Mt. Everest and one of the greatest New Zealanders to have ever lived, died yesterday at the age of 88.


It's hard to describe what Sir Ed meant for our country. Words don't do him justice because he was a man of so few.

He climbed mountains.

Enough said.

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#FREE - is Marginal Cost relevant?

I was dusting off a few old economics textbooks this weekend to try and get my head around this idea of Marginal Cost Pricing - where the next unit of a good is priced at its Marginal Cost.

In the dismal science that is Economics, Marginal Cost (MC) is what it costs to produce one more widget. So if making one widget costs you $20 but making two costs you $25, the MC of the second widget is $5. In perfectly competitive markets with beautiful supply an demand curves, the market price of that second widget is also $5.

This is all well and good. And I can understand the basic rationale behind the model (Wikipedia has a page in it here). However, it seems destined to run into problems in the digital world.

Back when Marginal Cost pricing was theorized, products had physical inputs - it was ALWAYS going to cost you x to produce an EXTRA unit. In the digital world, the short run MC of a good is always zero. It costs almost NOTHING to reproduce ones and zeros.

Using this model, as Chris Anderson does in explaining FREE, all digital goods should be priced at $0 (or close to it). Not too sure if I buy this. I don't think you can take a theory based very much in the physical world and declare it valid in the digital one. You've just ripped the entire manufacturing and production process out of the system and replaced it with.... nothing.

It will be interesting to see if he (or others) address this issue as his book idea unfolds.

Personally, I prefer the arguments around abundance driving price low rather than Marginal Cost. Marginal Cost is heavily distorted in a digital market. Especially when the cost of reproduction to the CONSUMER is also zero. Things just get too messy.

Imagine a world where all Marginal Costs were zero and consumers could replicate all goods for nothing? You wouldn't have any incentive to produce anything. I wonder if that's how some music artists feel?

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Over Researched

Have been having a few problems with my Internet connection recently - it keeps cutting out and going slow.

Through all of this I have made multiple calls to the cable company (Cablevision). Overall, they have been pretty good but one major annoyance is their invasive customer satisfaction research.

After each call with a rep. they ask me to take a survey. Not after a set period of time, not randomly, not even after every second call. After EVERY call. This gets very annoying.

The decision to do this was based on an average number of surveys needed per rep. to assess performance. To hit this number, it turned out they needed to survey everyone. IN ADDITION, if you don't take the survey they call the next day and ask you to take it, again. Ugh.

When your customer satisfaction survey starts pissing off customers you have a problem.

It's an easy one to fix. It's even easier not to make the mistake in the first place.

PS: HSBC sent me a survey about their online banking system the other day. It was the first one they have ever sent me and I was happy to fill it out.

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The advent of Free

Chris Anderson of The Long Tail fame is researching another book to do with Free - how democratization of technology when distribution costs fall close to zero can enhance creativity and generate alternative revenue streams.

This is going to be a fascinating discussion.

He talked about his new hypothesis here at a Nokia conference- 46 mins in length but well worth the watch.

It caught my attention because I wrote a post about 'free' back in October that echoed some of these ideas. I certainly didn't make them up, but I think they touch so much of what we do these days that its vitally important for anyone dealing with consumers to understand the consequences and effects of 'free'.

I think 'free' will be a big theme in 2008. I, for one, will be following it with interest.

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Welcome to 2008!

Happy New Year everyone!

Have been light on blog entries as we just got back from a nice 10 day trip to the UK and Italy. Nothing like waking up in the morning on a crisp, clear Florence day to see stunning sights like this...


I'd post a picture of London but it was cloudy and gloomy the whole time (what else is new?) so I don't have a suitably uplifting snap. Sorry.

You haven't lived until you have eaten in Italy. Even the most gaudy tourist hangouts have food to die for. And anything remotely authentic looking... well... it's simply heaven.

Despite all the eating and drink though, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had dropped a few pounds on the trip. Put that down to a wife who was born without the ability to sit still for longer than 5 minutes if a photo opportunity is begging - they need to isolate that gene and try to extend the tolerance to at least 30 minutes.

Among all the walking and photo-taking, we still managed to catch up with family over the week and had a great stay. Big thanks to my sister for hosting the always tiring 'family get together'.

So what does 2008 bring? For me, the only resolution I have made is to learn to, finally, speak Italian. I have an Italian passport courtesy of my Father by way of a grandfather who globe trotted in the early 20th century looking for work - and ended up in New Zealand. I am at least determined to get past 'grazie', 'ciao' and 'grasso pagliaccio' (the unfitting name my wife called me the entire trip when my attempt to teach her some Italian backfired).

As for this blog in 2008? Firstly, thanks to everyone who comes and reads it on a regular basis. I know a few of you. Thanks for all the comments and encouragement.

Later in the year I am going to try and fill a few more more posts with the trials and tribulations of starting a tech company. As there have been a few. The light posting on this topic has been due to the semi 'stealth' mode we're in as my business partner works through some issues. When it's all sorted out, will hopefully make some interesting reading.

Till then, I am going to be devoting much of the first part of this year to my freelance work - which is a mix of planning/research/marketing. I hope to get permission from my clients to talk about some of this work here - should also make for some interesting posts.

And then there is just random ideas and thoughts that float in and out of my head - for better or worse, there will always be a few posts on those.

Well, Happy New Year again everyone. Hope you are all fit and well.

Thought for the day:
Walking around the British Museum it occurred to me we are only approximately 15,000 years into this thing we call 'human civilization'. Some people consider it a failure wanting to happen. I think, given our nature and incentives, we're doing ok.

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