People have seemed to have a love/hate relationship with Apple’s Siri technology. Since it (she?) first debuted last fall, Siri has received mixed reviews, among them that if you have a foreign accent, you’re out of luck.

Well, foreign or Scottish, that is.

This video is the result of an article that ran the other day in the LA Times, on the good sales of the iPhone 4s in Scotland, despite Siri’s trouble with the Scots’ “foreign” accents. Be warned, there is profanity.

Ever wanted to know exactly who are the folks involved with and working behind the scenes at this growing digital news site? Ever thought about contributing to Flipthemedia.com? Now is the time to come and chat with us in person. We here at the Flip are making a concerted effort to be more visible this year.  We will be attending more events throughout the Puget Sound area and also throwing a couple of our own.

Next Friday, February 10th, we’re putting on a Flipthemedia mixer at Big Time Brewery in the U-District from 6-9pm. It’s all about getting together, having a few drinks and talking casually about digital media. Something right in between a focused happy hour and just hanging out on a Friday evening. Our idea is to make this an informal gathering where people get in the same room and have a few good laughs as we promote Flipthemedia and introduce the editorial staff currently involved with the site.

Big things are brewing with us in 2012 and we’d love to have people come by Big Time Brewery for a drink (or three) and figure out better ways to work together in the future.

About a year ago when I decided to study abroad in Germany, I knew that it wouldn’t be easy or cheap, I also knew it would help me in the long run but I had a hard time identifying exactly how. Now that I’m back in Seattle I’ve begun to see how it affected me. Thanks to Course Hero, I have a fancy infographic with the results of a survey to help illustrate my experience!

Two of the main reasons that I decided to study abroad was to learn more about how wearable computers can be used to change the way we communicate and to better understand the technological differences between the US and Germany. For some reason I had grand illusions that Europe and especially Germany was more technologically advanced than a lot of other countries including the US. What I found was a large digital divide between regions, age groups and social classes much like we have here in the US. Read more…

No internet presence can be successful as an isolated island. Measuring traffic and understanding user behavior gives developers powerful tools in designing effective sites. Google Analytics introduced a new interface this year. Although it is often difficult to navigate, a few features are worth noting, if you can find them.

Visitor flow visualization

A powerful tool in understanding visitor behavior the flow visualization “tracks” user navigation through web pages within your site. For example, we see users coming to FTM from the Internet, and a smaller percentage browses further into the site reading other posts. For a site that is designed to retain user attention, or to encourage users to complete certain processes like entering data or completing a sale, visitor flow provides clues that site designers can use to improve outcomes.

In Site Analytics

Another great visualization tool puts analytics data directly on a site. This is an effective tool for web designers to see what works and what does not. It is like a map of user activities. It definitely helps designers to experiment with changing the layout and placement or look and feel of a sites based on actual user feedback.

Read more…

A great media campaign, like a perfectly balanced wheel, is most powerful when the individual elements come together in perfect harmony. Unfortunately, too many marketing professionals or “hip” executives think that building up one digital media element will make their campaign successful.

Like a perfectly tuned bicycle wheel, the spokes of a well crafted digital media campaign need to be in balance and connect to the central campaign hub. Digital media brings in a new set of opportunities to connect with consumers and more accurate technologies to measure reach and impact. To find out how to effectively manage the digital media channels and tools,  I interviewed co-founders and digital media experts Mike Whitmore and Jeff Dance from Fresh Consulting.

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Gus Hosein is the executive director of Privacy International, a leading international watchdog organization regarding privacy and technology policy reform.

Within thirty seconds of the BBC publishing a quotation from me on the latest round of the nymwars and Google+, my phone rang. Caller ID indicated that it was my colleague at Google. “Had I said something wrong?” was my first thought. I quickly retraced in my mind what it was that I had said to the journalist; I had responded in the article that Google’s recent announcement could be seen as positive but really it was a sidestepping of the larger challenge of identity management. Yes, I’m surprised that the BBC printed the quotation too. Must have been a slow news day.

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Sometimes you will find a blessing in disguise instead of the devil in the details.

Look no further than the “dangers” of political polarization highlighted during Dr. David Tewksbury’s hour-long lecture launching the University of Washington’s Winter 2012 Colloquium Series.

The deeply divisive influences of cable TV and Internet news are accentuated by too many outlets simply “capturing a slice of the audience”; then selectively “shaping content” to attract likeminded listeners and viewers, said Tewksbury, head of the Department of Communication and Associate Professor with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

But is this the doing of the proverbial devil so often found in the details? Or maybe a blessing in disguise? More on those questions in a minute, but Tewksbury makes clear one of his research assumptions before diving into the vast ocean of online news:

Polarization is bad.

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Tablet computers, for all their strengths, still fail to do the obvious thing: behave like paper. For this reason, creative professionals who write, sketch, or prototype by hand still carry Meads or Moleskines along with their gadgets. Why isn’t digital ink and active digitizer technology standard on tablet devices? Three case studies provide some potential insight.

1. The Apple Newton

In the 1980′s, during the time of Steve Jobs’ exile, Apple Computer created the Newton, the first PDA (personal digital assistant). It functioned most essentially as a digital notepad, with a stylus and revolutionary handwriting recognition and drawing capabilities. The Newton failed to become a mass market device and was cancelled by Steve Jobs upon his return because it failed to jibe with his vision for the Mac’s future, which didn’t include pen input: “It’s like we said on the iPad,” Jobs remarked in 2010, “If you see a stylus, they blew it.”

Read more…