blogs by magic

The Public Data Explorer
As you can see, people are interested in a wide variety of data and statistics, but this information is only useful if it's easy to access, understand and communicate. That's why today we're also releasing the Google Public Data Explorer in Labs, a new experimental product designed to help people comprehend data and statistics through rich visualizations. With the Data Explorer, you can mash up data using line graphs, bar graphs, maps and bubble charts. The visualizations are dynamic, so you can watch them move over time, change topics, highlight different entries and change the scale. Once you have a chart ready, you can easily share it with friends or even embed it on your own website or blog.

Looks like Google has created their very own version of Gapminder. It's not a terribly powerful tool as of yet, but they have some pretty interesting data sets, including one for retail sales. I never realized that car sales were so volatile—more so than petrol. I hope Google continues to update this and doesn't let it stall out.

If you're prone to falling down the stairs and dying, it's a great resource for figuring out where to live. Seriously, South Dakota, what the hell?

With Ubisoft's fantastically awful new DRM you must be online and logged in to their servers to play the games you buy. Not only was this DRM broken the very first day it was released, but now their authentication servers have failed so absolutely that no-one who legally bought their games can play them. 'At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games.' One can only hope that this utter failure will help to stem the tide of bad DRM.

It's almost as if Ubisoft has done this on purpose in order to promote piracy of their new game. Almost.

I would love to be in the meeting where the people who build these kind of DRM abominations manage to sell them through to publishers. I'm not sure if it's an internal team, or all their DRM security controls are built by a third-party, but whoever is selling publishers on this crap has to be seriously good at selling rubbish to senior executives. What kind of bullshit charts and graphs do they show to convince publishers that forcing their consumers, who've already paid for a product, to jump through hoops is a good idea?

How dumb do you have to be to fall for this kind of nonsense? You would think that someone in a senior position over at Ubisoft would, you know, go on the Internet once in a while. Ever single time someone comes out with a new DRM measure it's cracked within hours of release. If it's a popular game, it's often cracked and released before the game even hits shelves. Investing in DRM is like flushing hundreds of thousands of dollars down the toilet. There a grand total of ZERO use cases where DRM has effectively controlled media piracy.

A fully interactive map showing everyone who follows BBH Labs (@bbhlabs) on Twitter. Also visualized as a heatmap.

Twitter is still something of a mystery to those of us in advertising and marketing. Everyone thinks they need to be on top of it, but no one is completely sure now to use it. Even fewer people have an idea of how to measure whether or not they’re using it effectively. Most of the time brands think about Twitter like this: Create an account, start tweeting, and then measure success by looking at how many followers we have. But that doesn’t tell you the whole story. In fact, that tells you almost nothing.

Here's a little something I wrote up about how to use the Twitter API and Google Fusion Tables to draw insights about those who follow you (and others) on Twitter. It's amazing how much data is publicly available, and the kind of analysis you can do with a few lines of code. If you ever wanted to know how to map 12,000 points on Google Maps, this is your chance to learn how.

Gelocation information provided by modern mobile devices puts analytics data into an entirely new context. Not only do you know what someone did and when, but now you know where. I'm particularly intrigued to see how these kinds of APIs develop in the future, and at what point brands start using public API data to aggressively target their competitors consumers in a very hostile manner. We aren't far away from the breaking point where you can challenge massive incumbent brands by targeting their most vocal consumers right outside of their house.

In 2009, a small team lead by Mark Shuttleworth, conducted a review of our key brand values and identity. Based on that work, a set of visual treatments were produced, and shared with key members of the Ubuntu Art community, spanning the core distributions, derivatives, and aligned efforts like the Forums. Representatives from Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Xubuntu, Mythbuntu, SpreadUbuntu and more came to London and worked with the Canonical design team to refine the designs and work together. The results of that work are presented here.

Ubuntu rose to be the number one consumer Linux distribution pretty much since the day it was released, and it's no wonder why—it's the only distribution that even bothers thinking about design. It's nice to see how far come, but I feel like a lot of the roadblocks that will continue to prevent mainstream adoption are a result of focusing on the design elements that have to do with how the operating system looks and feels, and ignoring the design elements that have to do with how the operating system itself functions.

That being said, look and feel is a big part of getting people in the door, and stepping away from the brown humanistic theme is a giant leap forward. That theme was simple atrocious. Who thought that was a good idea in the first place?

Wow. Looks like OS X might see both Steam and Source in the not to distant future. That would be pretty epic.

Even I was dubious about the rumor the other day of Steam coming to the Mac, but now here's something straight from Valve hinting that it might actually happen. MacRumors got an image of Half-Life's Gordon Freeman via email... with an Apple logo on his chest. MacNN got another picture, this one showing turrets from Portal and Team Fortress 2 parodying the "I'm a Mac" ads. And Shacknews got a third, with the Heavy from TF2 eating a sandwich shaped like an Apple logo in a parody of the iPod dancing ads.

I wonder if they actually rewrote the Source engine to work with OpenGL, or they are just going to run it under a WINE like CCP did with EVE Online. Either way it's going to be pretty freaking awesome playing Portal natively under OS X.

And I've got to give Valve big props for their brilliant guerrilla marketing tactics in getting these images out. They made headlines across the entire Apple community with a half dozen images. That's strategy and efficiency at it's best.

Linux next?

We've written a fair amount about agencies that go from making ads to making products. In the past 12 months, there's been a not-so-subtle shift in that trend as we've seen the products go from offline to online -- books, candles and the like have given way to agencies increasingly devoting time to proprietary digital products.

I'm glad to see something like this being echoed across mainstream channels. I just wonder how long it's going to take to convince clients that the value of their advertising isn't just reach, it's depth too. As soon as you start talking to clients about application development, they start to get worried about reach.

An iPhone application that use Facebook Connect? But the entire universe is only 28 million (the number of people who've installed the official Facebook application for the iPhone)! We have 100 million consumers! That's never going to work! Quick, water down the concept and make it into a rich media banner!

That's progress though, right? Right?

Pennsylvania-based Tikaro Interactive now offers a series of 2-by-4-inch, Velcro-backed patches with a “mysterious commando” design on top and a QR code on the bottom. The code on each p8tch, as they're called, is actually a URL that can be scanned with a smartphone. Initially it directs scanners to the domain “p8t.ch,” but patch owners can set the redirect target of the URL to whatever page they wish, much like with TinyURL or other URL shortening services.

I had an idea like this not long ago, except instead of patches I was thinking of doing it with business cards. You'd buy a stack of cards with QR codes that link to some preset URL, and then you allow the user to redirect that URL to anything they want on the fly. You might have a companion application on an iPhone or Android device that lets you take a picture of the QR-code and "set it before you hand the card off to someone—like a dynamic business card. And perhaps best of all—you'd be able to Rick Roll people with tangible items.

The study found that 65 percent of the largest 100 international companies have active accounts on Twitter, 54 percent have a Facebook fan page, 50 percent have a YouTube channel, and one-third (33 percent) have corporate blogs. Only 20 percent of the major international companies are utilizing all four platforms to engage with stakeholders.

Do the world's largest multinational firms even need to be utilizing Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and a corporate blog? Seven of the top ten companies on Fortune's list are oil companies. I'm not sure that ExxonMobil is really going to be able to elevate it's brand with a new Facebook fan page or have any kind of meaningful "conversation" with consumers on Twitter. Are there things that they could do? Sure. But you shouldn't get a pat on the back just for showing up.

I'm also bothered by "studies" like this which make zero attempt to calculate the value added from social media. It costs money to create and maintain a voice on major social media platforms. The service might be free, the content isn't. It's only worth the cost if the return is real value, in whatever form that value might take (PR, sales, awareness, etc.). When you start looking through the list of Fortune 100 companies that are using multiple social media platforms you realize that, while they might be there, they don't have anything to say.

Two law firms filed a class-action lawsuit on Tuesday against Yelp, the Web site that lets users post reviews and recommendations for small businesses and restaurants. The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Los Angeles, alleges unfair business practices and accuses Yelp of running an “extortion scheme.”

I've figured for a while that this was how Yelp worked—pay us a premium and we'll give you more control over your business or brand. But is that really illegal?

What I found more shocking was the price: $300 a month for the ability to moderate reviews. For $300/mo you could just pay someone to sit around and leave dozens of fake 5-star reviews.

In late 2006, students at a school in Turin, Italy filmed and then uploaded a video to Google Video that showed them bullying an autistic schoolmate. The video was totally reprehensible and we took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police. We also worked with the local police to help identify the person responsible for uploading it and she was subsequently sentenced to 10 months community service by a court in Turin, as were several other classmates who were also involved. In these rare but unpleasant cases, that's where our involvement would normally end.

But in this instance, a public prosecutor in Milan decided to indict four Google employees —David Drummond, Arvind Desikan, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes (who left the company in 2008). The charges brought against them were criminal defamation and a failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. To be clear, none of the four Googlers charged had anything to do with this video. They did not appear in it, film it, upload it or review it. None of them know the people involved or were even aware of the video's existence until after it was removed.

Nevertheless, a judge in Milan today convicted 3 of the 4 defendants — David Drummond, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes — for failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. All 4 were found not guilty of criminal defamation. In essence this ruling means that employees of hosting platforms like Google Video are criminally responsible for content that users upload. We will appeal this astonishing decision because the Google employees on trial had nothing to do with the video in question. Throughout this long process, they have displayed admirable grace and fortitude. It is outrageous that they have been subjected to a trial at all.

First China, now Italy. I love the way Google talks to nations. I also fear what will happen when Brin and Page walk away from the company. Somehow I don't think Google's "Don't be evil" motto is going to last forever.

Google is completely right in this case though. Can you imagine what would happen if those who own the servers were responsible for everything that passed through them? The Internet, as we know it, would cease to exist. Cases like this are also a detriment to social media adoption by large brands; already afraid of the legal ramifications of playing with user generated content. They don't want to engage in anything that carries even a small chance of a lawsuit.