The depo blog, looking at business in social media + virtual worlds
Aug 17th, 2008 by Peter
Four Tet - A Joy
by Jonathan Hopkins
music | 2006 | London | 3 min
A man is chased by a mutated Teddy Bear through London in an high-octane comedy rampage.
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Aug 15th, 2008 by Peter
I have looked at Dan Millers blog, Economics of Virtual Worlds, before but I neglected to add it to our blog roll. This is now corrected. Dan is a Senior Economist on the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress. Okay - I’m impressed
Anyways, until looking at Dan’s blog I hadn’t realised that Ben Duranske of Virtually Blind (who is on the roll) had actually got his book out - Virtual Law. We’re often asked why lawyers are so interested in virtual worlds - it’s partly because they see that these environments have the potential to challenge many aspects of law and regulation - from intellectual property through to corporate domicile. It’s an interesting area.
I can happily recommend a look at Dan’s blog - and why not buy Ben’s book? The world is changing and the lawyers are ahead of the wave on this one
Jul 30th, 2008 by Peter
I’m a big fan of Joy of Tech, and their latest comic “Stupic Facebook Apps” hits the nail on the head.
Jul 22nd, 2008 by Peter
I was chatting with a friend the other day about customer experience. He’d read somewhere that all experiences are either positive or negative. This is a fundamentally flawed view of customer experience design - and it is actually pretty dangerous.
I would content that the majority of interactions are actually neutral from a customer experience perspective. What I mean by this is that the customer has an expectation of the level of service; this expectation is generic (supplier independent) and they will not give you any credit for delivering against that expectation. They will, however, react very negatively if you don’t deliver against their expectations.
An example might be the cashpoint machine. There was a time when the provision of cashpoint services was a positive experience. Quickly, though, it became neutral. Dull, boring, utility.
If however, as happened to me a couple of weeks ago, the machine eats your card, or fails to give you money, or can’t give you a balance - now we’re looking at negative experience territory.
The reason this is important is that unless you understand that the customer doesn’t care about most aspects of service, you really can’t define your experiences as clearly as you should. In the cashpoint example you have to be able to distinguish between the neutral and the negative. The customer does not think, “I’ve had 500 positive experiences, let’s balance this negative against them - it’s only reasonable”. You are actually getting no credit for the 500 neutral experiences.
This approach places the negative experience in context - and helps to define the responses necessary from the organisation. In my example I got good service from my bank which balanced this out.
If you understand that the customer doesn’t care about you unless you do something badly, then it makes you work harder to explore the possibility of generating some positive experiences.
That has to be a good thing.
Jul 19th, 2008 by Peter
The Tree Officer The Tree Officer is a stop-motion animated comedy shot in a documentary style. Set in the Tree Officer’s department of a town council, it focuses on the day-to-day running of the office, and in particular the Tree Officer, Gary Dremmel.
Passionate about botany and horticulture, Gary is wearied by the endless requests from the town’s citizens for trees to be cut down. Resigned to his fate, he signs his daily quota of death warrants with an air of droll melancholy, assisted by his two colleagues: Matt, a sardonic temp with a stapling addiction; and Avril, a dedicated worker with an unreliable arm and a dysfunctional relationship with technology.
I hope you enjoy the film! If you are new to the cinema, details on how to get there and how to watch a film can be found here.
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Jul 18th, 2008 by Peter
Following on from David Naylor’s seminar, the SL Bar Association have Tamiko R. Franklin speaking on Intellectual property enforcement in virtual worlds.
The note on the event says that “Second Life provides its users tools to create and market their own “in-world” content, frequently leading to alleged violations of intellectual property rights, complicated by potential application of various international jurisdictions. Ms. Franklin will discuss international harmonization of copyright and trademark laws, and how attorneys can help their clients enforce both registered and unregistered rights in intellectual property.”
Tamiko Franklin is the Director of International Legal Services for Matijevich Law Offices
Date: July 22, 2008 Time: 12 noon (Pacific Daylight Time)
Location: SLBA Office
Click here to register
Jul 16th, 2008 by Peter
Just following on from my earlier post about the use of personal information by Facebook. Graham Cluley of Sophos has picked up that the birth date information that you provide to Facebook can be viewed even when you’ve ticked the “Don’t show my birthday in my profile” checkbox. Graham’s blog has a video showing how this works, or doesn’t depending on your perspective
He sensibly advises that you go and change your birthday to a false one to prevent any rascals getting their hands on it even though that, strictly speaking, breaks Facebooks T&Cs.
Jul 14th, 2008 by Peter
IBM and the Linden folks have cracked the tough nut of interoperability. So says Chris Nutall on his FT blog.
This really is excellent news. The ability to move from a private to a public area is absolutely critical to increasing business usage of Second Life.
I know that there are platforms, such as Qwaq, that provide facilities for meetings behind the firewall, but we’ve been less than enthusiastic as that route cuts out so much of the benefit of an open virtual world such as Second Life.
You may be saving the costs and carbon associated with real life travel, but you are missing out on networking, socialising, learning and really getting to understand the essence of virtual worlds.
This announcement is really important.
Respect is due to IBM - I’ve been really impressed with their investment into virtual worlds regardless of the prevailing mood of the day and this is a great outcome.
Read more on the SL blog here
Jul 13th, 2008 by Peter
I’m sure that it’s my having worked for years with marketers and IT folks that is making me especially touchy about this, but the whole Facebook applications thing is fundamentally flawed as far as I’m concerned.
Today, a family member in Spain sent me a ‘Guardian Angel’. To see this I have to accept the application. Here’s the text that goes with that decision:”
Granting access to information is required to add applications. If you are not willing to grant access to your information, do not add this application.”
To be blunt, there is no Facebook application so compelling that I’m going to answer ‘yes’ to that statement. That’s for two reasons.
Firstly, I don’t see why the vast majority of these apps needs to see any of my information to do whatever it is that they do. Secondly, Facebook don’t define ‘information’ in this context at the point of decision. I actually don’t have any commercial relationship with them - but what if, sometime in the future, I subscribe to a service. Would my payment details count as information to be shared?
I totally accept that I am more cynical than most - but I cannot say that I’m comfortable with ticking that box - and the other choices on the list don’t exactly increase that level of comfort as leaving those boxes ticked would allow the angel to pretty well take over my profile - take a look:
This is not really an issue with the developers of the applications, I think it is a problem with the way that social media folks are framing their relationship with their customers. I think it is too assumptive and too stark. Their intention may not be to take liberties, but it smacks of a lack of respect for their users.
Jul 12th, 2008 by Peter
Two of the depo park members, the SL Law Library and Field Fisher Waterhouse, are involved with a new Speaker Series looking at virtual law issues. First up is Solomon Cortes - David Naylor, a Partner at Field Fisher Waterhouse - who will be speaking on Tuesday, July 15th at 12 Noon PDT
Duration - 1 hour
Location - SLBA office
Register here.
The seminars are free of charge and well worth popping along to.