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A new study released earlier this month seems to contradict findings from Pew Internet Project's February report on the declining blog authorship and blog readership among the youngest generation of online users. Instead of seeing a downward trend in blogging, the latest research appears, at first glance, to have us questioning those prior reports. According to the latest study, this one from BlogHer and iVillage (red flag?) and co-sponsored by Ketchum and The Nielsen Company , young adults known as "millenials" are the top demographic group in both reading and writing blogs with nearly one-third reporting they read blogs and just over 40% saying they blog themselves. So was the earlier study - the one claiming "kids don't blog" anymore - wrong? Sponsor Odd Demographics Studied In the new study, the focus was on four age groups: millenials (ages 18-25), Gen X/Y (26-42), Boomers (43-61) and Seniors (62-76). This is a confusing segmentation of demographic groups because they've lumped in some of the millenials with the the "Gen X" group to create a hybrid group called "Gen X/Y." The term "millenials," however, is often used interchangeably with "Gen Y," so it's unclear why they've decided to break up that demographic group in this way. To boost Gen X's numbers, perhaps? We can't be sure. Ignoring Those Under 18 More importantly, the study simply ignores the youngest generation, the one we like to call "generation I" or the "iGeneration" (you can guess why), which was a major focus of Pew's study. In fact, Pew's study showed that only 14% of tweens and teens ages 12 to 17 now report that they blog , down from 25% only four years ago . And only 52% reporting reading and commenting on their friends' blog, down from over three-quarters back in 2006. In other words, the Internet's newest users aren't blogging or all that interested in reading blogs. Instead, they prefer Facebook, said the study. It's their method of communication between friends and for getting the latest news. Yes, sigh, Facebook is the new Internet. And the social network's latest moves will only further solidify that position with the launch of the universal "like" button for the entire web, the "instant personalization" provided by websites like Pandora and Yelp (to start), the "sign in with Facebook" boxes that appear on seemingly every site now and so on. How this youngest online generation uses the Internet is an important trend to watch. Although their habits may change over time, it's worth considering that their general disinterest in sharing their thoughts, feelings, news and ideas via blogging is a trend that will continue as they age. After all, who needs to blog when you have Facebook? BlogHer/iVillage's Findings For what it's worth, the BlogHer/iVillage study found that those 18-25 were the group most likely to write or read blogs, with 40.4% reporting the write blogs and 30.3% reporting they read them . The mysterious Gen X/Y group was a close second with 28.1% of the group saying they were blog authors and 29.3% saying they were blog readers. Some of the other numbers are questionable, although we have no way of proving their legitimacy or lack thereof. But really: 12.8% of bloggers are seniors? This is perhaps the most shocking number of them all. Nothing against seniors, of course, but I live in a state filled with them , and I have yet to meet a single senior who even knows what a blog is, much less authors one. At the end of the day, the study's numbers just feel a little too bullish on this whole blogging thing for my tastes. Plus, there's little info about the methodology included in the report and, then there's the fact that BlogHer, a blogging community for women, is, in part, behind the research. The truth of the matter is that neither this latest study nor Pew's research is likely painting an entirely accurate picture of the blogging landscape. We've questioned Pew's methodology many times in the past and we're skeptical of positive studies put out by those who would benefit from the news.
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Just 13 days after it launched to the public, the iPad is the subject of the latest Silicon Valley developers' unconference event. At 5 PM this evening iPadDevCamp kicked off at the PayPal/eBay offices in San Jose. The photo above of developers waiting in line to enter was posted to Twitter by Portland, Oregon based iPhone (and now iPad) push notification service Urban Airship . Build some cool apps in there, folks! Sponsor
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Developers Line Up to Build iPad Apps
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For most startups in the early-stages of development, much of the building process includes repetitions of prototyping, testing, receiving feedback and iterating the product several times over. The toughest part of this process isn't building or making changes, it's getting that valuable feedback on where your product could be improved. Concept Feedback , a simply named online service, wants to help your startup with constructive criticism from its quickly growing community of over 5,000 designers, developers, marketers and entrepreneurs. Sponsor The process at Concept Feedback is pretty simple: users can upload their concept work for the community to view, other members comment and provide their opinions and feedback for the concept, then the original user can upgrade their product, and even resubmit for further feedback. Companies can choose to post a "premium concept" which will be more visible on the Concept Feedback homepage and for which they can offer cash rewards for the most constructive comment or piece of advice. Most of the items are site are full web or logo design mockups, but there were a few rough wire-framed sites scattered through the concepts. Other, less popular entries, include films, posters, business cards and a whole lot more. For a small startup team looking to get some fresh sets of eyeballs on their latest project, Concept Feedback could be an excellent resource to do so. With most of the feedback based around design and aesthetics, startups may still need to look elsewhere for direct usage and feature feedback for their product. The truth is, with this type of feedback, you want people taking a deep dive and playing around with your product for some time before providing their opinion; Concept Feedback seems geared at providing mostly visual feedback, so usability and functionality reviews are much less common. There are several ways of gathering feedback from actual users of your site; one such service we mentioned in January allows companies to automate phone surveys and displays the results as charts and graphs. But if your goal is to show off the latest design iteration of your site, Concept Feedback is a great place to unveil it and receive some educated opinions to make it look its best before launch day. Discuss
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Get Quick Impressions of Your Latest Product Iteration with Concept Feedback
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Concept,
latest,
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Augmented reality (AR) has a long way to go before it achieves widespread acceptance and exposure to the public, but thankfully, many of the leading companies are continuing to make large strides towards this goal with commercialization of applications and the growing popularity of AR advertising. Earlier this month, metaio , one of leading vendors of AR software and services, updated its iPhone application junaio to version 2.0 in an effort to keep up with the growing AR browser market, but it is a truly useful implementation of AR in this app that will help the emerging technology reach more users. Sponsor Previously, the junaio app was its own social network that allowed users to create AR scenes by importing 3D models into still images captured from the phone's camera, but with the latest version of the software, junaio is now competing with Layar and Wikitude and others in the AR browser space. A few weeks after releasing the updated application, junaio announced it had formed a partnership with BART, San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit system, to bring live train data to the app. Subway maps have been one of the more popular implementations of AR on mobile phones, especially with Paris-based developers Presselite and their popular, award-winning Metro Paris Subway application. With this latest release, junaio is taking advantage of the API provided by BART to not only place locations of nearby stations in a user's field of vision, but also estimated arrival time of trains at each station displayed live in real-time in the AR point-of-view. The AR community needs more partnerships like this to be formed; it is practical applications like this that will push AR into the mainstream. There are a dozen different ways to find the nearest pizza place via an AR app on mobile devices, and frankly, that's getting a little old. It's not enough to just point me toward something, and I don't think that will be enough to convince enough of the general public to embrace the technology. Desktop-based webcam AR is way ahead of mobile AR in terms of providing practical applications. Examples include the USPS virtual box that helps customers determine which size box to use for shipping; the virtual mirror technology which helps customers try on sunglasses, hairstyles, clothing, makeup, shoes, etc.; and more recently, Samsung's TV sizer AR experience that lets users see what a new TV might look like mounted on their wall (see video below). These are the kinds of applications that are helping AR kick the reputation of being a gimmicky novelty technology and instead build one of practicality and usefulness. If mobile AR solutions are going to continue to gain corporate ads and sponsorships, they will need to find innovative ways other than pointing things out to survive in the long run. Discuss
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Practical Application is the Golden Ticket of Augmented Reality
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virtual
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The New York Times' new Doc Viewer 2.0 is, depending on what you value, either a pasted-on ornament of no real use to a typical news consumer, or it's an open-source, crowd-sourcing game changer. With information-taming technologies like search engines already at a reader's fingertips, there is debatable value in the Doc Viewer's ability to annotate a story with "raw" information. However, the fact that the Doc Viewer's code is due to be released on an open-source basis introduces an additional value to it. It is not just the back-end that a media source, of whatever size, will have access to, but the whole megillah. Sponsor Want annotated source materials embedded in your kitty blog without having to churn code until the tears flow? You can do it. This latest viewer by the New York Times is the latest iteration of a two year development process. The viewer allows reporters to augment stories by including evidentiary documentation and providing context to news stories. The viewer keys documents to words or phrases in the source story, allowing viewers to pursue the process to the depth they prefer. These "annotations" are similar to an old-fashioned "hot link" but with a new-fangled dynamic delivery. Future versions will open up the annotation process to readers, instead of just the writers and editors. Additional features may include an embeddable version for blogs, a search-friendly version without JavaScript, variable image file type control and the ability to create custom annotation shapes. The open-source software behind Version 2.0 will be released "in the very, very near future," according to the newspaper, and will be available on the Times' Github page. The key criticism to this undertaking, of course, is: so what? BayNewswer quoted Aron Pilhofer, the paper's editor for interactive newsroom technologies, as "recognizing that news organizations are slowly but gradually becoming more and more like technology companies." They are, that is, more likely to triumph if they leverage a wider distribution of invested community members. Alan McLean, interface engineer at the Times, says his focus is on the Doc Viewer as a reporting tool. "Fundamentally what we are trying to do here is get as many tools in the belts of reporters as we can to assist them in telling stories online," he told RWW. "Seeing it as a publishing platform is somewhat limited. It really depends on the kind of content that is being published." However, Chris Heisel , in a post on an earlier version of this viewer, said, "In a world where I can easily find more information than I can ever possibly use does the public really need more access to raw information." We read news in a politically and socially polarized environment. The most common charge against the NY Times - this most mainstream of MSM - is bias, that there is nothing more than a writer's unexamined feelings or political secret sauce to support the angle of a given story. With foundational documents appended to the story itself, the reasonableness of the reporter's approach should prove easier to determine. But that is posited on the not-altogether-likely notion that reason and reality will overpower the desire to froth. The New York Times is a syndication partner of ReadWriteWeb. Discuss
Originally posted here:
New York Times Juices Up Its Document Viewer
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