How To Use Google Bookmarks

Google Bookmarks quietly launched a couple of weeks ago, as the search giant looks prise Delicious and Yahoo bookmark users away from the threatened services.

Google’s curation of bookmarks is in-line with their cloud-based philosophy and will a welcome move for users who fear losing data from their normal social bookmarking providers.

The 3 step import process could not be simpler:

Sign in with your existing Delicious or Yahoo details.

You’ll have to wait a moment or two before you are presented with all your bookmarks. Select which ones you want to import – they’re all checked from the start to save you the hassle of clicking *everything* – and click import.

A few more moments later and you’ll be presented with all your bookmarks in order of title. You can change this to date if you wish!

On the left hand navigation bar there are a set of tools:

Manage labels – organize your labels and tags
Add bookmark – add a new bookmark
Import bookmarks – import additional bookmarks
Export bookmarks – export your bookmarks
Delete all bookmarks – delete everything (why would you do this if you’ve just uploaded them?!)
Delete all lists – delete pre-created bookmark lists
Web History – allows you to see your search and viewing history, a function you must enable and download the Google Toolbar for, if you want to use it

Initially this seems to be a great alternative product and may help to qualm many users fears that they’ll be losing all their bookmarks.

It’ll be interesting to see exactly how Google start to develop this embryonic offering.

Local Newspapers Grow Online

Readership of regional and local newspapers online is slowly growing, according to the latest ABCes, reports the Newspaper Society.

Traffic has risen by 23.5% in the last year, an increase felt by 90% of news publishers.

The growth indicates that not only are local papers, upping their game, but more people are looking to consume local news in an easy-to-digest manner.

It is also possible that as high-level broadband penetration throughout the UK continues to propogate through rural and more remote areas of the country, a larger number of people are deciding to use the Internet to get their local news, rather than purchasing their paper from the shops.

Although advertising revenues have not increased as dramatically, there are still encouraging gains in this area.

I think that this shows how important local news still is and that digital delivery of local news has a far greater potential than we first thought.

Do you read your local paper online, and what do you think it could do to improve?

The Rise of The Badge

I’m becoming increasingly intrigued by our use of social media to collect stuff. Be it Foursquare badges or Getglue stickers, we want it, and we want to boast about it to show how cool we are.

The process of identity definition through social media (ie liking a brand on Facebook) has expanded to demonstrating that we know how to have a good time, and where to go to have it.

Foursquare is growing and is the cool thing *right now* – Facebook Places, as Facebook deals develops, will surely replace it – but is the perfect example of how we use badges to demonstrate facets of our character.

By obtaining a badge, you are showing that you a) excel at something b) visit or take part in something regularly, or c) have an exaggerated interest in something.

Badges are the latest form of Internet currency.

I am a guru of Idlewild on Getglue, so by default, the Getglue algorithm reckons I have earned the right to be highlighted as ‘an expert’ because I have completed several associated actions AND had social recognition from within the Idlewild network.

One-off badges play to this, asking users to complete an action set within certain parameters to obtain something that may be unique or unavailable after a certain period of time. You have to interact to earn the currency to prove you are a useful member of the social network, or within the sphere of influence associated with that object.

Fighting off Foursquare fatigue has been combated with incentives, growth in mobile pervasiveness has led to a growing userbase and it turns out that
ease of use is most important to to users, rather than the process of connecting socially, which is after all, what we’re all here for.

And, of course, there are guides to picking up badges on Foursquare, so you can falsely claim to be an influential user within whatever network it is you’re trying to affect.

It’s intriguing that we fall into this, and now we look to unify all of our ‘achievements’ across each network, into one venue, such as Score.ly, to show-off even further.

I’m really interested to know what you make of this, and if you know of any research that details this human behaviour, hoarding, in the digital space.

Spent

Spent is a game developed collaboratively between McKinney and Urban Ministries of Durham to show how many Americans survive, living below the poverty line.

Urban Ministries of Durham aim to support those who find themselves struggling to survive in Durham, North Carolina.

The aim of the game is to educate players about the tough choices that those living below the poverty line have to make on a daily basis.

The game is narrative-based, and asks you to make a decision a day that impacts the way you live, and follows up each choice you make with the result and what happens in real life.

It’s an engaging way to educate people and also has a genuine message that is worth sharing.

Flaming Lips iPhone Symphony

The Flaming Lips have used their iPhones to create a symphonic sound-based cacophony of genius proportions.

Wired says:

Released on Valentine’s Day, the audio tracks that make up “Two Blobs Fucking” are spread across a dozen different YouTube videos. Each of the 220-second clips must be played in sync to create the complete tune

See the how to do it video here:

As usual, The Flaming ips have tried to give their fans a unique experience, innovating with sound, aurality and, importantly, humour. It’s their constant desire to do something different that makes me excited to see what they come up with next.

Twitter and Foursquare Language Updates

Twitter and Foursquare have both announced language updates today, demonstrating the demand for both services in languages that cover more diverse markets.

Foursquare has entered the mainstream European landscape, whilst Twitter has developed for three markets that, on first glance, seem to be aiming for userbase growth.

Those languages in full

Twitter
Indonesian
Russian
Turkish

Foursquare
French
Italian
German
Spanish
Japanese

I’m sure it’s purely coincidental that both announcements were made on the same day, but it just goes to show that native English content producers need to think about countries other than their own when creating and disseminating their work.

Digital Media Consumption Manifesto

Don’t Make Me Steal is a manifesto for the current consumption of media online.

It’s aim is to give content creators a new way of approaching those who consume to make sure that both parties get a fair deal in the content conception, production and consumption process.

The manifesto looks to prove that people won’t steal content if content producers make their content easier to access and to a wider number of people.

The main points that the group want addressed are:

1) Pricing
2) Languages
3) Convenience
4) Choice & Release Dates
5) Rights

PSFK tells us:

The concept was born out of a workshop at the Lift11 Conference in early February that featured professionals from various industries discussing how to end piracy the “right way.”

And with 4,000 signatures and counting, it seems there are quite a few people who would agree with this approach.