Another Kind Of Popup?

By | November 24, 2011
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Maybe it’s been around a while, but I only spotted it just now: a new kind of contextual, but only mildly relevant, pop-up link advertising. OK, that’s not what it’s called, but it describes it pretty accurately. It’s called IntelliTXT and it comes from a company called Vibrant Media; it appears as a hyperlink to a word like any other hyperlink but it’s in green. Nothing too weird there. Then you notice text appearing in a little help box thing: It’s not a pop-up ad, exactly, but then it’s not exactly what you expect either, as in a link to a site directly related to the word in question.

Here’s an example, courtesy of InfoSync World: the word ‘mobile’ on this page for example, has a link and pop-up box that says ‘Windows Mobile–Your stuff, now available on the fly. Software for Smartphone, Pocket PC, or Pocket PC Phone Edition. Click here to see it for yourself!’ which then takes you to a vibrantmedia page (which seems to be a broken link at time of writing).

The word Internet, meanwhile, offers you ‘DIRECWAY – Internet Access — Surf the Web via satellite. Available nationwide. Only $69.97 down and $99 a month. Includes the Direcway System and professional installation. Always on connection requires no phone line’. That link does, after a lot of waiting while the request goes through the Vibrant Media servers, take you to a Yahoo webpage where you can subscribe to Direcway, if the feeling so takes you.

This is cheeky, though perhaps not offensive. What’s also cheeky is that you don’t have any easy way of telling where the link might be taking you: Right-clicking on the link appears to be disabled. Neither can you view in the status bar of your browser the link in question: instead there lurks more text along the lines of the above.

This reminds me of something called RichLink from Sentius, which does pretty much the same thing (well, officially, ‘software that automates the management of links and metadata to deliver point-of-interest content to end-users at the word, phrase, and metadata level for any Web application’). If I recall it used to provide medical definitions for the Reuters Health website.

Too early to make a judgement, but my first stab is that in a world increasingly annoyed by popups, the danger of alienating readers with links that aren’t anything more than ads of questionable relevance seems to be quite high.

Windows 98 Users Face A Scary Future

By | November 24, 2011
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A by-product of Microsoft’s decision to phase out support for some of its ‘old’ products, citing Java-related legal issues: users are going to be very exposed to viruses and bad stuff like that. Ottawa-based AssetMetrix Research Labs found that more than 80 percent of companies surveyed were still using Windows 98 and/or Windows 95.

“On January 16th, 2004, Microsoft Windows 98 enters the non-support portion of its support lifecycle. Windows 98 is considered obsolete, and security-based hot fixes will not be generally available for users of Windows 98 or Windows 98-Second Edition,” eWeek quoted Steve O’Halloran, managing director of AssetMetrix Research Labs, as saying.

This is daft. According to some reports, Microsoft doesn’t need to do all this until next September, raising suspicions that it’s just trying to make Sun — owner of Java — look like the evil wolf, and to force buying folk to migrate to XP. If any of this is true, I’d like to see Microsoft agree to provide security updates for at least Windows 98 users for as long as they can. I can’t see Sun, or the courts, objecting to that.

Phone Commercials And Sloppy Eaters

By | November 24, 2011
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Alan Reiter, the camera phone guy, has some interesting stuff to say about how phone companies are shooting themselves in the foot with dumb commercials that only reinforcing perceptions that camera+phone=public menace. He points to a TV commercial of a girl snapping a guy eating pasta like a slob, and then sending it to the guy’s fiancee. (I don’t know how this mini-story ends, but I assume the message is: “Buy a camera phone and avoid foolish mistakes like marrying a guy who doesn’t eat nice”.)

Anyway, Alan asks, “Wouldn’t you think that with all the money the handset vendors and cellular operators can spend on advertising and marketing, they would be able to come up with commercials that not only target the right demographics, but also wouldn’t wave a red flag in front of people who want to ban phones?” I agree. The ads I’ve seen in this part of the world only convince me that marketing folk haven’t got a clue about what users could do with these gadgets and so build their commercials around nonsensical scenarios involving butterflies, ocean-going yachts and beautiful people in tight sweaters. I think municipalities should ban the commercials, not the phones.

Use Your Phone As A Barcode Scanner

By | November 24, 2011
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infoSync World reports of new software that allows camera phone users to take a picture of a barcode and then, say, retrieve information about the product: whether it’s cheaper elsewhere, dietary information, or downloading music samples from a poster advertising a new album.

The product, ScanZoom, is made by US-based software company Scanbuy. The article points out that a similar technology is already available in Japan, where phones can recognize e-mail addresses, web site URLs and telephone numbers through their embedded cameras.

Logitech, the Bluetooth Hubster

By | November 24, 2011
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I’m still playing with mine, but on the surface Logitech look like they may be the first to fashion a real Bluetooth hub for the PC. The problem has been to develop a dongle, or some other widget, that can easily turn a non-Bluetooth PC into one that can easily recognise and deal with other Bluetooth devices. I’ve tried a lot and have yet to find one that works seamlessly. (The word ‘seamlessly’ and ‘Bluetooth’ don’t usually appear in the same sentence.)

Meanwhile Logitech has announced that its own candidate, the Bluetooth Wireless Hub, now works with the latest Bluetooth phones from Sony Ericsson and Nokia; new PDAs from Toshiba, HP, and palmOne; as well as hands-free headsets from Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia. It’s worth checking out, although one word of warning: As far as I can work out, the hub will only work if you connect it directly to a USB port — and not to an external hub. If your PC only has one or two USB ports, and you’re using a lot of (non Bluetooth) USB gadgets, that can be a major no-no.