Just for grins…

Doubtlessly the bird with the best sense of rhythm on the planet!

http://birdloversonly.blogspot.com/2007/09/may-i-have-this-dance.html

Enjoy!

Thought about Blog Research

It’s a little bit funny (now I’ll have THAT tune in my head all evening!), as I research educational blogs, e-learning blogs, corporate training blogs,  to add to my blogroll (blog worthy-of-link), I am surprised at the number with most recent post dates months ago – some even last year or later. There’s another research topic there: contemporary topic web sites that seemingly have their authors evaporate. If contemporary, wouldn’t the author be “on spot” and relevant? (hmmm, how frequent will MY updates be?).

Second Life, Second Class?

In this morning’s issue of The Wall Street Journal, Marketplace section, Media & Marketing page “Marketers Explore New Virtual Worlds” Emily Steel writes “A year ago, on-line virtual world Second Life was being hailed as the next big phenomenon.” and Ruben Steiger, CEO of Millions of Us, a company that builds marketing campaigns in virtual worlds says “This is now a category rather than a single phenomenon…we’ve moved beyond Second Life.”

The article notes the failed marketing efforts to draw traffic to Second Life citing Media Metrix’s figures of only 235,000 unique visitors last month compared to 4.4 million registering at zwinktopia and six million at webkniz.

Apparently, the required download and difficult navigation “were off-putting.” And “I’m like most people with Second Life. I became a member to check it out and never went back,” says Eric Hirshberg, chief creative officer of Interpublic Group’s Deutsch LA

The article closes with a quote from Jonathan Nelson, special advisor to Omnicom CEO John Wren “People have been ignoring the fact that there are 12 other virtual worlds out there that have hundreds of thousands of visitors.” (see list at end of post)

Included in the article is a chart displaying in millions the total U.S. visitors to these sites during September 2007 and the percentage increase from the previous year. I’ll post it here as soon as I figure out how!

(webkinz.com; clubpenguin.com; zwinky.com; neopets.com; millsberry.com; IMVU.com; barbiegirls.com; gaiaonline.com; habbo.com; redlightcenter.com; kaneva.com; secondlife.com)

Novelty Gadget

Roomba: the robot vacuum that really sucks, really!

Hello world!

Welcome to my blog. I am Ed Tech (aka RichardO) and I am here to help keep you up-to-date with thoroughly and thoughtfully (subjectively) evaluated products in the realm of technology. Chips to interfaces, services and service (or lack there of) providers, my mission in this life (albeit similar to that in SecondLife), is to seek out the newest, research its every aspect and alternatively researched aspects, and report the findings back to you – here on this site!

The opinions published on this page are strictly that: opinions. Formal research may take place and when so, will be reported as so; meantime trust that all you read is hearsay, rumor and, in many instances, direct report from me and my peeps.