Disqus - Latest Comments for kennyhemphill

Re: 3 Ways to Improve Your Web Usability Mojo

kennyhemphill — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 07:36:42 -0000

I agree. Too many designers and developers build sites for themselves, rather than their users. And only by knowing who your users are and how they use the site, is it possible to know what they want and understand how to give it to them.

Re: Try out RememberTheMilk - coming (soon!) to iPhone

kennyhemphill — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:43:59 -0000

Remember the Milk is indeed excellent. Easily my favourite online task manager. I love its implementation of tags. One neat way to use it on a Mac is to navigate to your overdue tasks list (or any other task list) and use Dashboard's Web Clip feature to grab the list. That way, any time you want to view the list quickly just hit F4 to call up Dashboard. Because it's a Web Clip, it's automatically updated.

One thing: the optimised iPhone/iPod touch version is one of the features that you have to pay for at the end of a 15-day trial. It's well-worth $25, though.

Re: Something I don't understand about The Long Tail

kennyhemphill — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:42:42 -0000

Except that there's an upper limit to the number of people at the head who will blog, Twitter, and otherwise buzz a release, and the more money that big media companies spend on promotion the more likely they are to reach a point where making communication infinitely easy will have no effect because they've saturated the population of potentially interested consumers.

Down at the tail, the increase in ease of communication has a much bigger effect because the market hasn't been saturated with blanket promotion.

As far as game theory goes, the only thing I remember from studying it is that if two players collaborate rather than compete the end result, assuming it's not a zero sum game, is better for both parties. Not that that helps here.

Re: Something I don't understand about The Long Tail

kennyhemphill — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:57:35 -0000

No one would describe themselves as fans of hit albums or blockbuster movies. However, there are a vast number of people whose decision about what music to buy or film to see is determined by what radio station they listen to, magazine they read or particular form of marketing they respond best to. Radio 1 and Heat for example, have large audiences, drawn from people with an array of interests, but the one thing they have in common is that they buy music, see films, read books because they're popular rather than because they fall into a specific category of interest.

If you look at the Top 40 again, you'll see that while there is an apparently wide range of music in there, relative to the universe of possible genres it's tiny. When was the last time a jazz, folk, blues, metal, or country record made the top twenty? Those that do only do so because they've been heavily promoted and so become popular by being popular.

Hits don't "emerge" they're planned very carefully, manufactured, and then promoted.

Re: Something I don't understand about The Long Tail

kennyhemphill — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:35:16 -0000

The point, I think, that Seth is making (albeit unusually poorly) is that there is a market for hits and a market for Jamaican polka music, and they're very different. You can choose, as a musician or record company, to aim for the Top Twenty. But if you do, you'll almost certainly fail because the competition is ridiculously tough and those people interest in Top Twenty music have a huge choice when the come to spend they're £12

On the other hand, there are far fewer people making Jamaican polka music and so your chances of succeeding in that market are significantly higher. Fans of that type of music have far less choice when it comes to spending their £12. They may spend it on a CD from a genre related to polka, but they're highly unlikely to by a chart CD.

All of the CDs aren't competing for the same £12 because fans of Top Twenty CDs are unlikely to be interested in Jamaican polka dot, and vice versa. If all buyers of CDs were equally interested in every possible type of music, you'd be right. Thankfully, we're not, and so there are niche markets where its possible to sell relatively few albums and still make a profit.