Not only is this an incorrect assessment, it’s also missing the point. Apple only has a strong brand because of the quality of its products, yet even this isn’t a direct causal relationship. In the words of Kathy Sierra, Apple’s products enable their customers to kick ass; the customers then do much of Apple’s marketing for them in a peer-to-peer, conversational way.

In fact, you could almost call Apple’s marketing team’s activities “buzz creation” rather than “marketing.” They seed the ideas; the customers take them and run with them because the customers are genuinely passionate about the company and the products.

One other thing: traditional marketing wisdom says “we must control the message” and is very much about a monologue of approved, on-message communications handed down from on high. A news flash: the internet enables conversation, both between customers and (hopefully) between companies and their customers.

In the conversation-enabled climate in which we now operate, any attempts to be the single, approved voice representing a product or company is doomed to a slow, painful death of irrelevance. Customers are grasping the opportunity to converse on a massive scale, and very often trust their peers more than they trust the “official” communication channels.

There are several people out there on the Web blogging about these issues and helping to redefine what marketing is in a Web world. I recommend checking them out:

Tara Hunt

Tara has written a book called The Whuffie Factor

Everyone knows about blogs and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. And they’ve heard about someone who has used them to grow a huge customer base. Everyone wants to be hands-on, grass roots and interactive. But what does this mean? And more to the point, how do you do it?

Eric Weaver

Eric blogs at Brand Dialogue and is an experienced marketing professional. He writes in this blog post about how interactive agencies still don’t understand Social Media:

Social Marketing represents a massive opportunity for marketers: not to create more inbound links, not to push your message to places where people congregate, but to package and demonstrate relevance and value amongst consumers and to leverage their trust and connections as advocates of your offering.

OK, so he said “leverage” but we’ll let that slide.

Kathy Sierra

Not blogging at the moment, but her blog archive is a rich goldmine of tips on Creating Passionate Users.

An aside

Ex-IOPP employee Tim Marsh pointed me in the direction of a very interesting blog post:

There has always been a clash between those that make a product, and those that sell it.

Software engineers are pessimistic, negative and cynical. All engineers have to be. I don’t mean that they have negative personalities as such - they just need to constantly worry about what might go wrong. You never want engineers to just ‘hope for the best’.

Sales people are optimistic, positive and deal in certainty. They have to be. As often as not they’ll have absolutely nothing to do with actually delivering the product, yet they are always happy to promise that it’ll be fantastic. They’re not dishonest, they’re just assuming that the best outcomes will happen.

Art Kleiner puts it particularly well in his article Corporate Culture in Internet Time (free registration required), where he refers to it as a clash of hype against craft. His solution, which I’ll briefly over-simplify as build a cross-discipline team culture, is a good one - especially for small entrepreneurial organisations.

– http://bizvprog.blogspot.com/2008/06/hype-versus-craft.html

The tension between design, technical, marketing and sales has worried me for a while. Jeffrey Zeldman called for the creation of multi-disciplinary Web teams and Art Kleiner backs this up. It avoids the “toss requirements over the wall” mentality which can and does happen when you have a client-provider situation and encourages all parties to work together towards a common goal. Well, maybe not, but it would at the very least help each employee to understand the other parties’ rôles better.

I recall Phil saying I was “all about the 2.0″. And I still am, in that I think the New Web needs to be about real community if you’re going to profess that your site is a Community Website. With the increasingly common use of the term “Web 3.0″ (usually taken to mean The Semantic Web) in The Valley and similar bleeding-edge places, and “Web 4.0″ (both serious and satirical) the danger is that we’ll find, like Microsoft did with its software, that the version numbers soon get a little silly.

Their answer was to use years instead (Office 2003 etc.), but the answer for the Web is not to use artificial version numbers at all. It’s not as if there is anything fundamentally different, technologically, between the so-called “Web 1.0″ and “Web 2.0″. It was always meant to be a state of mind or a way of seeing the Web experience, not a particular technology. Web 2.0 (or the concept meant by it) is any, all or none of the following:

• Ajax / rich interfaces / RIAs
• Blogs
• Wikis
• Social networking sites, like MySpace, Facebook etc.
• User-generated content (YouTube etc.)
• Forums (though these are as old as the hills)
• New things that almost defy description (Twitter)
• “Communities” (however you define them)
• Mashups, APIs and easily-linked resources

The trouble is that you can ask ten different people “what is Web 2.0?” and you’ll likely get ten different answers, possibly including some of the above list.

I do believe that Tim O’Reilly couldn’t have predicted what the monster he created has become, and the term was actually useful in 2003 to get a handle on the ways in which newer Web sites differed from old ones. But that time has passed, and the term “Web 2.0″ (and all succeeding x.0 versions) needs to be retired. Now.

I just wonder whether Twitter has reached a natural end. You know “it was fun while it lasted” sort of thing. And it was fun, until relatively recently. Then the number of “spam” followers increased, thanks to the ease of scripting against the API, no doubt; on the other hand, the API also allowed fantastic tools like the Twitter Twerp Scanner to me made, so I don’t think Twitter shouldn’t have an API.

With or without an API, the problem with Twitter (as has been said numerous times) is that it doesn’t scale. It’s a centralised (if clustered) service unlike email, blogs or Plain ol’ Websites, which can exist anywhere and conform (roughly) to a standard. To Tweet, you must Be On Twitter. This is its fatal flaw while being central to the way it works. Mike Arrington wrote on Techcrunch a while ago on how Twitter might be decentralised.

Twitter: a highly-addictive social experiment that just goes to show, by counter-example, the merits of decentralisation.

My lower 8s (bottom wisdom teeth to non-dentists) have been trouble since they first started coming through in 1999 - the gum pockets got infected before the teeth had even emerged, so I had to have a trip to the emergency dentist (in Melksham, as I recall) and some antibiotics.

I’d had my upper wisdom teeth removed in 1998 on the advice of my dentist; although they were at a bit of a strange angle (they pointed outwards, causing me to bite my cheeks - owie!) they were fairly easily removed under local anaesthetic.

I had heard that lower wisdom teeth were not normally so obliging. After an initial recommendation in 2006 to have them removed, I finally got around to seeing the consultant surgeon, a very genial chap by the name of Mr. Lutterloch, in February this year.

My initial appointment for the surgery, in April, had to be postponed as I had a cold but yesterday on May 21st the day came at last. Mr. Lutterloch reassured my nerves regarding general anaesthetic and my suggestion of sedation instead (”general anaesthetic is like riding on a train; sedation is like riding on a motorbike”) and I went down to theatre just before 9am. I woke up in the recovery room at about 9.40, feeling quite sleepy yet elated - I kept smiling spontaneously as I realised those pesky teeth had gone.

I was back in my private room by 10.10am and able to use my mobile to text Kathy that I was all fine. An hour later my swabs were taken out and I had scrambled eggs (no toast, though - not soft enough) just before midday. Kathy picked me up at 2pm and that was that.

I’ve got stitches in my gums, which will be in for a couple of weeks, and a cocktail of painkillers and antibiotics to take. On the whole, though, I feel pretty normal. Well, as normal as it gets

UPDATE: the normal feeling didn’t last. Once the local anaesthetic wore off, I felt pretty rubbish. I’m still in some discomfort now, which may indicate an infection on one side that requires more antibiotics. Repeat to self: “at least the teeth are gone.”

What can I say? Her passing came as no shock, given the events of the past ten days. Mum suffered a second stroke on Easter Monday, this time affecting the left side of her brain. Combined with the stroke she had suffered to the right side in December 2006, her chances of recovery were low. The doctors gave us three options: all-out treatment; see-how-it-goes treatment; or let her go. We had to ask ourselves “would Mum value the quality of life she would have?” The answer, sadly, was “no” and we opted to let Mum go in as peaceful and a dignified way as possible.

For stroke patients whose relatives have opted in this way, the average time from withdrawal of fluids to death is ten days. The doctors and nursing staff didn’t think that Mum would last past the weekend; in the end she lived on for a week. Despite the damage to her brain, her body was strong and she continued to display the guts and determination that had led her to learn to speak and walk again, albeit only short distances and with the aid of my Dad and a stick, after her first stroke. She was unconscious for much of the time but responded, when awake, with noises and facial movements.

We did as much as we could to make Mum’s last days as comfortable as possible. She isn’t disabled anymore; she has gone to a better place where there is no more crying, no more illness, no more disability, no more sadness and no more death.

Mum is singing now; her beautiful voice is praising God in heaven and will do so for ever.

I love you, Mum. I miss you, but I’ll remember with fondness all the special times we’ve had together, and I’m especially glad you got to meet little Abigail. Thanks for being my Mum.

There are lots of comments on this Guardian article, including this one from martinusher:

I had a quick look at this system today on a technical website and it appears that the system effectively routes all your web traffic through a proxy server which records your browsing habits (and, while its about it, obscures your browsing habits from anyone else downstream from it). This is why they require the cooperation of your ISP – they have to intercept your network traffic before it passes onto the Internet proper. (Typically the link to an ISP is a point to point link just like a dial-up even if you’re using broadband.) This has implications far beyond just figuring out what you’re doing so they can feed you ‘relevant’ advertisements; its nothing less than packet by packet control of everything you do.

This may sound infeasible because of the volume of traffic but a quick look at the equipment suppliers will show that its not — the industry is quite capable of examining and categorizing everything you do CIA style but won’t at the moment because its not cost-effective. The ads will give it the motivation to install the kit, the other uses will follow.

Its also got the potential to cut off the air supply to sites like Google.

– You might call it "resistance": 95% say they’ll opt out of ISP’s data-sharing deal

See also:

• Bad phorm
• On Techdirt: Phorm.com are an (ex?) spyware firm
• More Phorm horrors

Update: seems I was a little late to the party (I only noticed it when it made it to The Guardian). The Register’s been rather prolific in chronicling the various angles on this, including the the possibility that BT lied as to its involvement and that the traffic snooping actually violates several laws:

• ISP data deal with former ’spyware’ boss triggers privacy fears
• Data pimping: surveillance expert raises illegal wiretap worries
• BT pimped customer web data to advertisers last summer
• How Phorm plans to tap your internet connection
• The Phorm files

At some point (I forget when), Vox became an OpenID provider. “Great,” I thought, “I’ll use it as my OpenID.” All was well until a few days ago, when I tried to sign in to Vox using Opera Mini on my Sony Ericsson K800i. Here’s a screenshot of the sign-in form:

The orange “Sign in” button is a button — right? Wrong. It’s made up of the following markup:

<a class="command-submit orange-button button"><b>Sign In</b><s></s></a>
<input type="submit" class="invisible-button" />

So, they’ve got a “real” submit button there, which probably attends to an imagined screen reader scenario–CSS and JavaScript off; but because Opera Mini usually behaves — for all intents and purposes — like a desktop browser, it attempts to render the fancy orange button but doesn’t quite have the nous to interpret whatever JavaScript event binding code Six Apart are using to make the orange button submit the form.

I emailed Vox support:

The sign-in button isn’t a ‘real’ html button and therefore I can’t sign in using Opera Mini.

They replied:

We’re sorry you’re having problems signing in to Vox. We would like to suggest that you try using Internet Explorer or Firefox when signing in to Vox. We fully support these browsers and you’ll find that you can use all of Vox’s functions when using them.

For more information about what Vox needs in order to work, check out our Requirements for using Vox article. (emphasis mine)

I replied to them, for what it’s worth:

OK - that’s fine. I would say something about “just use normal HTML and it works anywhere!” but I guess I’ll just find another OpenID provider.

So that’s what I did. I signed up with MyOpenId, who seemingly know how to use normal HTML elements for their intended purpose, rendering the service usable on Opera Mini.

If ever there was a lesson in keeping things simple and using Progressive Enhancement, there it is. For no extra effort, more people can use your service in more places and using more devices and platforms. What’s not to like?

Renault Scenic

Our Christmas trip to Basingstoke (hello, glamorous life!) took place before Abigail arrived; nonetheless, the sheer amount of stuff we took with us and brought back (presents, kids’ toys etc.) rather emphasised how small our little Honda Jazz is. Its small size but generous interior space is one of the reasons we bought it in the first place and its boot is one of the largest in its class, but now we have two kids we’re starting to consider upsizing to a larger car.

At first, I wanted to stick with Honda; the Accord seemed like a good step up, with plentiful supply in our price range (under £4000). Having driven one on Sunday, though, I soon went off the idea. The example in question was a bit older (2000/W), cheaper (£2750) and more untidy, but the low-down driving position and low ceiling common to most saloons & hatchbacks really put me off the idea of any Accord.

The Jazz, while short, is quite tall. It’s not as tall as some full-on MPVs, but it’s got a nice amount of headroom (less important for me at 5′6″ but Kathy, at 5′10″, appreciates it). Consequently, the move to a regular saloon or hatchback just feels…wrong.

Kathy’s dad suggested looking at the Citroën Xsara Picasso or the Renault Scenic (which Kathy’s uncle has). So I did:

• Citroën Xsara Picasso [00 on]
• Renault Scenic [03 on]
• Renault Scenic [99-03]

The newer Scenic has better reviews than the facelifted original, but is a rarer find in our price range. The older one is more common and is the definitive mini MPV but is older technology. Argh! What to decide?

Big Dave has owned both the Scenic and the Picasso and says he prefers the Picasso overall, but admits the Scenic looks better.

And then, using Parkers’ “also consider” feature, I stumbled upon the Vauxhall Zafira:

• Vauxhall Zafira [05 on]
• Vauxhall Zafira [99-05]

The older model is, again, more plentiful, but I’ve found an 2006/06 1.6 Life in red for under £4000 on Auto Trader. Is it too good to be true? I’ve emailed the advertiser; watch this space…

UPDATE

We bought a 2002 52 reg Citroën Xsara Picasso 2.0 HDI Exclusive in metallic mauve. Phoebe calls it “our purple car” though it’s not that purple.

Fast forward to 2007. Three has the best-value data packages of the UK mobile operators: £2.50 per month for 10MB of data, which is plenty for mobile e-mail and the odd bit of Twittering and Mobile Facebooking. You can get “unlimited” (actually 1GB fair use) for £5/month, but that’s overkill for me. It’s the same price as ten train times lookups via the official, paid-for service on Planet Three, so in those terms: why not?

Well, it’s a good job that Three’s 3G coverage is patchy near our house. I do find that I don’t want to miss anything on Twitter, especially, while mobile GMail is a strange mix of regular email, commercial marketing that I have signed up for, and mailing lists. The latter, like Twitter, plug me in to online community to such an extent that I find it hard to resist continuously checking for replies and new conversations.

Perhaps I’m filling a void because I don’t get out much IRL. Hey, having just had another baby, I don’t have the chance to get out much! My evenings are mostly cook (unless Kathy’s done that), eat, clear up, do some housework, rock Abi to sleep and then go to bed - preferably early so I don’t feel the effects of broken nights too much.

Online community is most of the community I get at the moment.