The River

The personal professional blog of Pamela Parker -- musings on marketing, advertising, media and technology.

Judy’s Book Open Beta

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Just got an e-mail informing me that Judy’s Book, one of those local search/recommendations firms has launched its public beta test. Other players in the space include Idealab’s Insider Pages.

The guys behind Judy’s Book — Andy Sack and Chris DeVore — have a pretty good track record. Andy co-founded Abuzz, which was sold to NYTimes Digital, and he was also a Softbank entrepreneur-in-residence. Chris was a partner in Adjacency, a Web consulting and design shop acquired by Sapient.

My gripe as a consumer? Judy’s Book started gathering members and recommendations in Seattle — too far North. And Insider Pages started up in Los Angeles — too far South. Thankfully, there’s Berkeley Parents Network — though it could be organized a whole lot better. Looking forward to seeing how these community/social networking/local search plays do as they gather more members.

A9’s Yellow Pages Plans

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Let me start by saying that as usual, this weekend was too short. Only this time, the lamentable lack-of-length was compounded by gorgeous weather here in the Bay Area. I think Michael and I said “what a beautiful day” about 5 times to one another just crossing the Bay Bridge on Sunday.

Now, to more marketing-related matters. Zachary Rodgers, my ClickZ colleague, put together a Q&A with the architect of A9’s yellow pages strategy, which we published today. Interesting stuff.

Quiet Period due to RSS Reader Column

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Was a bit quiet yesterday, blog-wise, concentrating on a column for ClickZ Experts on branded RSS newsreaders. Some interesting tidbits about the Consenda newsreader (which the L.A. Times and the Guardian are using) that didn’t fit into the piece:

  • It’s a downloadable application that integrates with the Internet Explorer browser, rather than a Web-based reader. (Doesn’t work with Firefox.)
  • Users launch it by clicking on a small “N” that appears on IE once it’s installed. It pops up as a small rectangular application, which can be expanded vertically but not horizontally. A news ticker featuring the latest headlines crawls across the top.
  • Embedded ads appear (on the LATimes.com version, anyway) when readers look at their lists of feeds, and when readers look at the feed items themselves (between entries — in the middle of the screen).
  • Consenda has a Web site that integrates with the reader, where users can subscribe to and search for feeds. It’s trying to make it easy for the average non-techie to use RSS without having to cut and paste URLS and such.

    Am not sure how I feel about the user interface. I tend to be a fan of Web-based newsreaders, as one can then access them from a variety of locations without being confronted with the same items more than once. Needless to say, the usability of RSS needs to be improved for it to be accessible to a mass audience, and it was interesting to see Consenda’s approach to accomplishing this.

    UPDATE: Forgot to mention that of course Newsgator announced a similar strategy yesterday. (Brad Feld’s post on it here.) Unfortunately the announcement came too late for me to add much about it into my column for today. Need to check it out.

    • Happy Birthday, Yahoo!

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    Yahoo_billboard This sign is on my way home from work, but an unfortunate construction barrier actually blocks it from view (at least from the right lane, where I normally am) — on the one day where people might actually benefit from reading it. Yes, Yahoo! is giving away ice cream today only. It’s also developed an interesting retrospective on the last 10 years on the Internet. It’s been really fascinating to see, as 2005 has begun, how many companies are celebrating a 10-year anniversary this year. Wasn’t 1995 exciting? Isn’t 2005 doubly so?

    SES New York

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    Wow. 1600 paid attendees at SES New York. So sorry I’m not one of those 1600, but someone’s gotta man the fort. Hope everyone is having a good time and is finding the show as valuable as I always have. I know our roving ClickZ correspondents are soaking it all in.

    Floaters?

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    Am I the only one who is annoyed that the ads we’ve been calling “floating ads” for years are suddenly being discovered by the mainstream — and dubbed “floater ads”? Note the incidence of the term “floating ad” (92 results) on ClickZ as opposed to “floater ad” (zero results). And ClickZ has a huge section authored by Internet marketing practitioners. Even the IAB has guidelines for “floating” — not “floater” — ads.

    My annoyance began with the NYTimes.com piece this week and was amplified when sister site IHT recycled the same story with a different headline.

    “Floater” just sounds somehow… scatological.