Flying an iPad-controlled, dual-cam, Quatrocopter. First impressions, ARdrone

I’ve owned my ARdrone since Monday. Here are my first impressions. For those of you who don’t have a clue what ARdrone is, it’s a helicopter – or rather “Quatro-copter” since it has four rotor-blades – which you control with your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. It has two video-cameras, one in it’s nose and one in it’s belly, streaming live to you, so you can see where you fly, even if the drone (as unmanned flying vehicles are called) is not in sight. But actually flying is not what ARdrone is about. It’s about gaming. Load a game to the drone, and virtual enemies, who will try to shoot you down if you don’t shoot them first, will be appear on your i-device-display.

Here I am with my ARdrone:

Hard to fly
As you can tell from the picture, it takes a great deal of concentration to fly the drone. Especially outside – it’s very sensitive to wind, so you wanna be very careful. It easily drifts away, threatening to collide with by-standing trees, cars, hedges or what you have.

Indoors there’s no wind, and you can actually fly it. It’s doable – but not comfortable. At least not if you, like me, don’t have a free indoor space with a diameter of eight meters. The free operating range at my house is more like one meter, at the best.

4-5 crashes
I’ve crashed four or five times by now with no visible signs of damage to the ARdrone. But I suspect that’s more luck than anything else. The ARdrone itself seems very fragile! Made out of lightweight polystyrene, with it’s propellers and landing gear exposed to all and any bypassing obstacles. So be careful – this is not a toy you want to throw into the arms of your 8-years old son (though he’ll beg you to do so).

No gameplaying yet
This far, flying the drone is great fun! I don’t know, however, if this will still be the case in a week or two from now. By then I’ll (hopefully) have learned to control the drone. And by that time, I’ll also be familiar with the game-playing part of the ARdrone experience – a part of the pleasure I’ve not yet been acquainted to. This far it’s all been about how to control the plane in a decent way.

The drone cameras work perfectly, however. Here I am, controlling the flying drone with my iPad, as seen form the front-facing camera of the drone. This image, is the one on my screen as well:

Poor battery
The battery is one of the ARdrones greatest weaknesses. It only lasts 10-15 minutes – then you’ll have to re-charge it for some one-and-a-half-hour to fly again. The minute you want more than just test-drive the drone, this will be a serious problem. Better buy a spare battery right away.

Easy assembly
Assembling the drone was quite easy. It comes neatly in a box, all you’ll have to do is to put together 2-3 different parts. Then your’re done. Connecting the drone to the iPad-controlling device was quite stratight-forward as well. (Though I haven’t managed to connect my iPhone to the drone yet – but I haven’t tried very hard either).

Built-in wi-fi
The ARdrone is connected to the controlling iPad/iPhone/iPad through it’s own built-in wi-fi. That is: you do not depend on a wi-fi being available at the spot you want to fly. You can take the drone to the woods, and fly it there. As long as you, the pilot, are within a distance of some 50 meters, it should work out. Within that range, your controllling device will simply pick up the ARdornes sigenal.

This is it for now, folks. Stay tuned for more info.

Welcome to my personal (social) news

A few weeks ago I installed Flipboard on my iPad. Since then, I’ve pulled it up on a daily basis, using it to check out Twitter in particular – only in a much nicer and richer version, than the endless streams of oneliners and links floating through my regular Tweetdeck, Twettelator and what have I of traditional twitter-clients.

Here’s why:

Instead of small textonly bites of info, Flipboard follows links in tweets and take the pictures and text of those pages pages and displays them beutifully on my iPad-screen. While text-only tweets are displayed as quotations (like the Anders Høgh Nissen piece on the above screenshot). Tabbing the screen with my finger brings up a larger version of the story, with links to the original web-version. Swiping the screen turns the pages in the “social magazine”. In this way, Flipboard actually makes what looks like a cool iPad-personal newspaper. (You can integrate more than your Twitter-account to Flipboard. Your Facebook, eg).

I actually use Flipboard – and have been doing so in a month time as we speak. And it works.

It’s not entirely clear to me how Flipboard prioritizes. From a start it was in (reverse) chronological order – just like your twitter-stream. But if Flipboard wants to be a newspaper, it’ll have to do more than that. On a newspaper, I expect the most important things to be displayed most prominently on the frontpage. Not the most recent ones with links to the largest picture.

Just today I stumbled across a web-service, which does kind of the same. Paper.li. This is what it looks like (the screenshot is taken only a minute of two prior to the Flipboard-one above):

I haven’t really tried to use paper.li yet, so I should probably refrain from commenting to much. (I must admit,  however, that I like the Flipboard version much better from the first look). And although it looks different, it does the exact same thing as flipboard.

Both Flipboard and Paper.li points in the exact same direction.  And it’s a direction, that yet again poses threaths to traditional news outlets. A direction spearheaded years ago by Google news. Smart aggregation of news, made up all for you by a clever machine. Only this time the news are Social – and much more personal.

Hvorfor er Engadget, Huffington og Techcrunch blogs?

(For you Non-Danish speakers: What distinguishes blogs as Engadget, Huffington and Techcrunch from traditional media outlets. Are “blogs” really special, or just variation in style?)

Time Magazine har netop offentliggjort deres egen liste over de 25 bedste blogs i verden. Et af mine egne favoritsites, Engadget, er med på listen. Og Techcrunch, som jeg også læser tit, er med som en essentiel en af slagsen.

Men jeg har nu aldrig rigtigt tænkt over dem som blogs. Jeg har tænkt på dem som net-magasiner. De ligner ihvertfald alle andre nyheds-sites, med flot layout, redaktører… Er det overhovedet blogs? Og hvorfor?

Huffingtonpost er også en blog, siger de. Det har jeg lettere ved at forstå – selvom også Huffington har en flot prioriteret nyhedsstrøm. Her er forfatterne til artiklerne krediteret mere som enkeltstående bloggere. Men forskellen er alligevel ikke så enorm.

Jeg mener: hvad er forskellen egentligt på disse blogs og mere traditionelle nyheds-sites. Er det i virkeligheden mest et spørgsmål om stil?

Ugly websites rock

Danish news-sites ekstrabladet.dk and bt.dk both redesigned in the spirit of ugly duckling Norwegian success-site vg.no. The result is anti-aesthetic. And it works. This is what I found, when I digged into the stats.

Sharper editorial prioritization, better overview and more options for the user to choose from. This is the essence in the wave of redesign which have washed upon the shores of the Danish online scene for the past two years, following the success of Norwegian vg.no. The redesign, and the new editorial focus brought with it, are clearly marked in the site-stats of ekstrabladet.dk  and eb.dk – the two largest Danish newspaper websites: loyalty and stickiness both takes off following the two sites redesigns.

Sticky B.T., big brother Ekstra Bladet
In particular I find the loyalty of B.T.-users to surge following their June 2009-redesign. Users returns more often; the number of visits per user having growing 27 percent comparing pre- and post-redesign periods. Also I find post-redesign bt.dk to be much better at keeping users at the site, once they’ve hit the site. In average users now conducts 28 percent more pageviews. Bt.dk has become more sticky.

Also the March 2009 redesign of ekstrabladet.dk has let its marks, falling somewhat below those of bt.dk, however. Loyalty increased 13 per cent, stickiness seven.

Before running of to wreck up your site, you should notice a few aspects. First, bt.dk owes parts of their success to the relatively poor pre-design performance. They simply had low-hanging fruits, ready to be picked up. Another, and vital, part of their success is due to a reorganization of the entire editorial staff at B.T., leading all journalists to write to and for both print and online-editions, gearing up the editorial machine and enabling it to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by the redesign.

Ugly duckling
The Norwegian VG-design in this way proves it’s effectiveness also in a Danish context. First time I laid eyes on vg.no I couldn’t believe what I saw. The site was – and is – … hmmm… ugly. Headlines being written in all kind of different sizes, a page-layout looking like a garbage can. Lots of annoying animated graphics and ads. And yet a huge success in terms of traffic.

It was only later I realized the brilliant master-plan behind the site.  How it freed the storys from the confinement of standard database-driven layouts, giving the editors and journalists a set of great tools, allowing them to  tap into the new powers of the web. I’ve wrote about in this post “vg.no – revealing the beauty of an ugly duckling”

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“Grimt design virker” 15 pages.

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Best-ever generator of innovation in the firing line

The Google/Verizon blow at net neutrality does far more than just make the web run smoother. It risks messing with the fine-grained mechanisms which has spurred the largest wave of innovations ever seen.

Article published in Politiken today. Online version available here.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all websites are created equal… This is the spirit of the Internet, as we have known it this far. Like another Lady Justitia the Internet has from it’s very inception been blind to the content and applications running through its veins, treating all of them equal.

This is soon to be history, however – if Google and Verizon – and the telecommunication industry at large – have their way, that is. At least on the wireless Internet. The somewhat odd pair wants to open up for telcos to prioritize traffic on the Internet, making it possible for websites and applications to pay their way to the fast lane, bypassing others, smaller, less powerfull services. Endangering the openness of the Internet, endangering the innovative spirit, endangering the mechanisms of innovation so deeply ingrained in the basic architecture of the Internet.

This is what my analysis in Danish newspaper Politiken today is all about. Read the article (in Danish), at the Politiken website

English-speaking readers, take a few minutes to walk through Barbara van Schewicks excellent seven-pages defense of the innovative spirit of the Internet as we known it

News on royal pregnancy re-allocates traffic on Danish internet

Friday August 6 at 3 pm the Royal Danish Court announced the pregnancy of crown-princess Mary. In my latest report I show how the news led the Danish Internet-landscape to change shapes as the dunes of visitors drifted in new patterns.

Newsletter send out at 15.46 on friday August 6 by number four fastest growing site, kristeligt-dagblad.dk.

The Internet is, this is a well-known fact, eminent for the distribution of breaking news. Whenever news breaks, users flock to the Internet to learn more. But what sites gain and who loses out? And what are the dimensions of this fluctuation of user interest? These are the questions I shed light on in my survey of changes in online traffic on the Danish Internet in the period from 3 pm till midnight on August 6, 2010.

As for the magnitude, the sites of the two leading gossip-magazines – “Se og Hør” and “Billedbladet” – both increased traffic by more than 50 percent – while no other sites grew more than 20.

However not only traditional gossip-sites took advantage of the royal breaking news. Number three on the list of most growing websites, tv2.dk, is the allround portal of one of the two dominant Danish TV-stations (while the traffic on the other, DR, actually decreased). And number four on the list is the website of the Christian newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad, traditionally thought of as a non-gossip serious media outlet (helped by pushing out an extra newsletter to its subscriberbase of what turns out to be a relatively royal-savvy audience).

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“Kongelige Breaking News flytter online-trafik” 12 pages.

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Penny-aution site hustles users, makes millions

100.000 Danes visits the penny auction sites ziinga.com a month hoping to make a bargain. Probably the only winner is ziinga.com themselves, making profits of 4 million dkk a month.

I don’t mind gambling. But I do mind hustling. And that is for all I know what ziinga.com is about: a site which systematically plays down the cost, while high-lighting potential winnings.

When I looked into the ziinga.com-business I found the site to conduct some 480 “auctions” a month, generating som 5.7 million dkk in revenue – at least four millions ending up as ziinga.com profits. I also found 131.000 adult Danes to have visited ziinga.com i April 2010 – and 90.000 in May.

The trick of ziinga.com (and most other penny-auction sites for that matter) is that bidding is not free. It cost 5-6 dkk per bid. And each bid only raises the price with 0,08 dkk, resulting in a situation in which any auction requires hundreds or thousands of costly bids before ending.

I also found ziinga.com to deploy a range of mechanism to hide what it’s all really about, among others:
- No mentioning of the cost of bidding – before they’ve had you registered and had their shot at getting you hooked
- No mentioning of shipping costs, which typically cost significantly more than the item you buy
- No mentioning that you actually bid against bidders from several other countries – not only your fellow citizens

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“Øreauktioner – auktion, lotteri og flosset forretningsmoral. Ziinga.com-casen” 19 pages.

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First Danish fullblown online grocery store misses mark

Half a year after opening up it’s online operations, the website of Danish retailer Superbest comes in ten of ten in reach compared to the websites of other Danish retailers, even though Superbest is the only of the competitors to offer full-blown online grocery shopping. This is among the findings in my latest report. I say: lower the prices (convenience alone won’t do it), start building trust through social networking activities and make the services known through advertising.

Largest grocery store retail-websites in Denmark. Adult users (15 years+). Source: FDIM/gemiusAudience, April 2010.

Ten of ten is really not impressing
Superbest.dk reached 90.000 adult danes during april 2010. That’s not a high number. In total 795.500 Danes visited at least one of the top ten Danish grocery store websites. Superbest.dk in this way only had a grab at 11,6 percent of all visitors. A number which is spot on the Superbest market share in the “real” world measured in terms of total sales (11,5 percent in 2009). Only none of the competing websites offered more than at most sales of non-food items from their websites. By that token superbest.dk should have performed better.

Also the visitors to the superbest-website was found only to visit the site some 1,4 times in average during April 2010. A score which once more puts superbest-dk near the bottom of top-ten list. If users really had embraced the online grocery shopping concept, they’d have visited the site several times a week.

Convenience won’t do
The reason why superbest.dk isn’t doing any better is, I think, threefold. First, the declared value proposition of superbest.dk is to make things easier – not cheaper – for the consumer: do the grocery shopping in the night or during the day-time, whenever it suits you best, at work or at home. Manage your own time – and be willing to pay for it: the regular offers from the physical outlets don’t apply online.

Looking at the data, however, there’s nothing to suggest the actual users of superbest.dk feels this way. Those most in need of time – families with two or more kids – are underrepresented at superbest.dk with 13.000 visitors in total in April while those with plenty of time – the singles – are overrepresented, featuring some 25.500 adults living by themselves.

Convenience, it seems, won’t do the trick alone. However much Danes want to save time, they also want to save money! While they might be willing to pay to have the goods delivered to their doorsteps, they don’t like the goods themselves to be overpriced.

(I suspect the fear of cannibalization to be a part of the the reason for adopting the convenience strategy. Fear however has never been a good advisor. And lack of cannibalization not a measure of success in it’s own right.)

Confidence is needed
Several surveys have shown confidence – broadly speaking – to be one of the main obstacles to e-commerce. People want to be sure they get what they’ve ordered, delivered at the right time to the right price with no hidden fees. And online, consumers are always have this nagging fear, that something in the online store, it’s payment or delivery processes may be broken in some way. Or, worse, that someone in the process is deliberately trying to hustle you.

This is particularly true about Superbest, who fights a distrust legacy. In September 2009 – just prior to the launching of the online store – it was revealed how seven Superbest-stores had re-packaged, re-labelled and sold old meat, causing a public scandal and forcing Superbest to fire those responsible for the handling of meat. As a consequence consumer trust in supermarkets dropped, and Superbest suffered a severe loss of credibility.

Online, however, nothing is done to address concerns like these. The online grocery store looks fine and professional – and actually works just as you’d expect. But the dialogue is missing. The ability of the site to let consumers raise concerns and ask questions – and to let Superbest answer those question, sorting out misunderstandings or -perceptions whenever they occur – are non-existing. Customer testimonials are non-existing. Likewise, there is no integration to external consumer-sites, who could endorse – or criticize! – the workings of Superbest.dk. No official Facebook group. No Twitter-profile.

Customers are consequently left without any way to find out whether Superbest.dk is or is not worthy of being entrusted with their shopping list.

Tell us about it!
One final factor contributing to explaining the Superbest.dk-lack of success is – advertising. Superbest simply hasn’t been running any ad-campaigns telling customers to get online. And it goes without saying, that as long Superbest themselves tries to keep their online store a secret, nothing much happens.

As mentioned, Superbest may have had other corporate communication priorities for the past half year than to ensure maximum launch of superbest.dk. Namely trying to minimize the consequences of the “old meat scandal”. This also could explain the lack of social networking: when threatened on it’s life, many corporations seek as much control over the situation as possible. Even though a proper use of social media might actually have helped Superbest regain consumer-trust at large.

When (and if) things settle down, Superbest might have a second shot at the online retailing market. When the meat scandals are forgotten they might find a way to go forth and meet the market and the consumers face to face. Embracing criticism, comments and dialogue, and shouting out loud that Denmark has now a first-class online shoppping store.

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“E-handel og dagligvarer på nettet i Danmark. Superbest.dk-casen” 18 pages, 4 illustrations.

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Mobile surfing explodes in Denmark

2010 is the year when the mobile internet finally breaks through. That’s the conclusion you’ll have to draw when looking at how mobiles are increasingly used to surf the web.

These are among my findings in my latest report “2010: Mobile web-surf breakthrough”. In the report I also make it clear that the driving force of the mobile internet is the advent of touchphones. While the use of traditional Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones running Symbian stays largely the same, iPhones have more grown more than 500 per cent since January 2009. And Android-powered phones have really gathered momentum during April 2010, growing almost as fast as iPhones.

Based on available market information I estimate the number of iPhones and Androids to reach some 700.000 this year. And those users will conduct some 5-10 per cent of their total web-surf from their phones. On top of that you’ll have to add app-usage (which is huge) – like eg. Facebooking! (Not to mention emailing and texting). The mobile internet is getting real. Now.

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“2010: Mobile web-surf breakthrough” 13 pages, 2 illustrations.

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Youtube brought to standstill in Denmark

Some two weeks ago, on May 17, 2010, Youtube announced on their blog, that it now “exceeds over two billion views a day” – a doubling in less than a year.

Looking at figures for Denmark however, gives  you quiet a different picture: Youtube has been brought to a near complete standstill. That’s one of the main findings in my latest report “Online video consumption in Denmark – Youtube, DR and JP.dk TV”. Here’s the key graph:

I also looked into to which extend youtube videos are actually viewed outside Youtube.com itself, embedded on thirdparty-sites. From what’s available of data, it looks like only 1/2 a per cent of views are conducted on social media networking sites facebook.com, myspace.com, Hi5.com and orkut.com. A group of sites which should be expected to be among the leading thirdparty-distribution channels.

As for the Danish market, I did find Youtube to be as clear a market leader as anywhere else on the globe, more than 30 times larger than the largest Danish TV broadcaster, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation DR (a station which live-streams its channels on the Internet as well as through cable, satelite etc.).

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“Online video consumption in Denmark – Youtube, DR and JP.dk TV” 14 pages, 7 illustrations.

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