If the forecast looks like rain, the unit is smart enough to suspend operations. It can even optimize its schedule based on the changing seasons. And the best part is that it isn't as expensive as you might expect. If you already have an irrigation system in place, Cyber-Rain can be added for only $295. So it may actually pay for itself in a short amount of time. [Product Page via GTW via Sci Fi Tech]
According to the NY Times, Facebook's Social Ad platform may be illegal in New York under a 100 year old privacy law that states that "any person whose name, portrait, picture, or voice is used within this state for advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade without the written consent first obtained" can sue for damages, and doing so is a criminal misdemeanor.
Facebook unsurprisingly are suggesting this isn't the case, arguing that William McGeveran, the professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who came to the illegality conclusion, is taking the law too broadly. Facebook say that it would be difficult for someone used in these ads to argue against the use given they will have already identified themselves publicly, implying consent.
Whilst the lawyers can sort out the legality of Facebook's advertising program now, the real risk for Facebook is that given the growing backlash certain jurisdictions may enact laws that outlaw Facebook's program. Concern about privacy online isn't new; who doesn't remember the Government mudslinging when Google launched Gmail. The question is whether States or even the United States Government will care enough to do something about it. The chances are unlikely; law makers are far too busy trying to pass laws that would see the US Government sue Bit Torrent users to care about the privacy of those very users, but you never know.
I didn't expect a high quality of the sound from this made-from-scratch speaker but it performs very well, better than I expected. A speaker is just a magnet, a coil, frame and a cone or any material that can make the air vibrate. Here is the bill of materials that I used to build this speaker:
# List of materials 1 Magnet (neodymium magnet works great) # 1 Business card # Wire 32 or 34 AWG (you may use 30AWG) # Paper bond # Tape # Glue # Scissors # Ballpoint pen # Lego bricks or wood. # Ruler.
I wouldn't really call having to trudge all the way to a Blockbuster location to jack my iPod or whatever player into a big blue box to download a movie "bypassing the need for...transferring videos from a computer." It takes the worst aspect of each form of distribution—leaving your easy chair and middling quality video that's not easy to throw up on my TV—and combines them into one totally not ideal experience. Better idea on Blockbuster's part: integrating MovieLink's direct download store with the Blockbuster site and services. That's the way digital distribution is supposed to work. If I come to your store, I expect to walk out with a piece of shiny plastic. [Electronista, Flickr]
Like your Eee PC do ya? Good, how about a desktop version to go with it? With the unexpected success of their new ultra-portable, Asus is looking to RAZR that momentum with a desktop version of the Eee PC. Jonathan Tseng, Asus president of marketing, says that the new Eee -- Easy to learn, Easy to play, Easy to Work -- will launch in 2008. Good news for us consumers but likely unwelcome tattle for Redmond. As you may have noticed, the recent onslaught of low-cost, low-powered, low-priced (Lll?) PCs are all Linux-happy slabs in order to avoid those heavy Microsoft licensing fees .
New Earth's 2- and 5-kilowatt turbines, sold under the Savonious brand name, are small and designed for the urban and home environment. Think of them as the Mini Cooper of wind turbines. We first read about New Earth when EcoGeek wrote about how the turbine could halve a home's energy bill.
New Earth's systems are just reaching commercialization — the company "soft-launched" in September and its first turbine was only installed in July. But Gardner tells us that already the company has "a pipeline of orders approaching seven figures in revenue," and they "should be delivering on that pipeline in early '08."
The official web site doesn't list a price but, if you trust crowdsourcing, an informative Digg commenter claimed the systems range from $6,500 to $16,500.
There's plenty of competition in the home wind power space. Southwest Wind Power, manufacturers of the Skystream turbines, has received investment from the likes of Denver's Altira Group and Chevron's (CVX) venture capital arm.
Home wind systems works well for off-grid, rural, and even suburban homes, but, despite a few rare exceptions, it's difficult to find turbines installed in the urban settings in which most people live. The fact of the matter is that they are big and quite difficult to install.
Still, wind power is an important part of a future in which distributed energy is a major component of electricity generation. Finding a solution for wind power in urban settings is a good goal, and the first step is bringing turbines to market that have a form factor that can work for cities and the urban cohorts most likely to adopt the technologies.
This working pen is ridiculously awesome, if you believe the uncorroborated early reports: 
Mark Zuckerberg & Co. stood up in front of the advertising community in New York today and unveiled Facebook Ads, an ad system that allows companies to use the Facebook social graph and to develop highly targeted ads. Large brands such as Coca-Cola (KO), Sony Pictures (SNE) and Verizon (VZ) have signed on for this effort. Part of the engine powering this new ad system is called Beacon, which takes data from 44 web destinations and mashes it up with Facebook's internal information to help build more focused advertising messages.
While it seems to be a clever idea, a quick review reveals that Beacon might turn out to be a privacy hairball for the company.
The 44 sites that have partnered with Facebook include everyone from Kongregate, LiveJournal, NYTimes (NYT), Sony Online, Blockbuster (BBI), Bluefly.com, STA Travel, The Knot, TripAdvisor, Travel Ticker, TypePad, viagogo, Vox, Yelp, WeddingChannel.com and Zappos.com.
These partner sites put a little a piece of Facebook javascript on their web site and certain information, cleverly (and innocuously) labeled as a user alert, is sent to Facebook. For instance, Fandago users can publish information about the movies they saw. It all seems like a clever idea because it lets Facebook triangulate your likes and dislikes even more, and deliver more focused ads.
Facebook Beacon provides advanced privacy controls so Facebook users can decide whether to distribute specific actions from participating sites with their friends.
Reading that line prompted the following questions, which I put to Facebook:
Their PR spokesperson emailed me this response:
Users can opt-out of Beacon on a per-site basis. They can opt-out for each action, or they can opt-out to never have an affiliated site send stories to Facebook. For instance, a user that buys The Notebook from Blockbuster can stop a story from being published about it, or she can opt-out of having Blockbuster publish any actions she takes on the Blockbuster site.
The response doesn't seem to answer my questions and basically makes it seem like users have control over this data, when in reality, this is a privacy disaster waiting to happen. The javascript on the Fandango site pops up a little screen which asks if you want to publish the information on Facebook. If you say no, your friends won't see the information, but apparently Facebook still receives it. This means that if you are a Facebook member, Facebook will know what you are doing on each of their partner sites. And there is no way for you to opt out of that. Or is there? I asked Facebook to clarify and I am still waiting for them to write back.
As for the rest of their announcement, while long and elaborate, it doesn't contain any information we haven't already seen. MySpace (NWS) has been doing brand specific-pages for a while now, in addition to using other targeting techniques.
Augustine: Facebook's method is right and it's the next thing after Adwords.
Both Facebook and MySpace have launched profile and network targeted advertising and marketing products. As they both use member interests and the communities which they are part of, trust continues to become key in adoption as information is passed along the network. The sheer size of MySpace's member base, as well as the thriving local business membership will lead to success. Facebook, which brings a unique solution evolves advertisements to endorsements and encourages members to subscribe to a brand in what we are calling "Fan-Sumers" (an evolution of the consumer). As consumers share their affinities, brands can advertise using trusted social relationships.
Data: Highest trust comes from friends or acquaintances
(Left Graph: Consumers trust their friends and acquaintances far more than any other sources --Forrester Research, 2007) Trust is and will continue to be one of the most important attributes in the decision making process.
Communities form online, trust develops How we get information continues to evolve as communities form online organized by individuals with similar interests. Just like in real life, we identify our interests, and are often influenced by opinions and experiences of trusted peers in our communities. For many, social networking sites embody these relationships and influence how trusted decisions are made.
MySpace: Brands have a home and can hyper-target ads The already active MySpace platform is leveraging their already active member profile pages, encouraging the many small and medium businesses to setup a online storefront and providing tools to make it easy to self-serve advertisements to their customers. It's easy to make the case that demand and inventory are present.
Webmaster not needed: MySpace profile for businesses Small businesses can continue to build their online profile on MySpace (many of them already have), but now, because of their familiarity with self-marketing (restaurant, nightclub, and other local businesses and their customers) on Myspace.
Self-service ads remove middle man When friction is removed, efficiency is created. With MySpace's "Self-Service" ad network small businesses can target ads across a variety of affinities (over 300) and deploy ads on users' profile pages. These ads, which should (by theory) be relevant and contextual to a user who has self-populated their profile page will have these ads displayed.
Advertising balance required in already busy MySpace With marketers already with a strong presence in MySpace this could continue to erode away at early adopter "cool kids" from embracing MySpace. But as cycles have shown, where communities form, marketers follow.
User experience continues to be free-form These ads, which will conform to IAB advertising standards (sizes) will give advertisers the freedom to create the ads in the style accustomed to the network. Yes, expect more blinking text.
To watch: OpenSocial As OpenSocial starts to be deployed across MySpace and other partners, expect profile ads to be tied to widgets and vice versa; a fabric of links. I've already outlined How to explain OpenSocial to your executives.
Inaccurate user profiles could result in mis-targeting of ads We know that many members do not make their profiles accurate which could yield inconsistencies in how and where ads are displayed. While MySpace has assured they're accounting for rogue outliers, expect some inefficiencies in advertisements.
Our Call: Sheer mass will yield successWe think this to be a win for MySpace, given their great reach, there are millions of users with active profiles, and there's also plenty of inventory as many small and local businesses that are present will be comfortable deploying ads where their community already exists.
Facebook: Rise of the Fan-Sumer Going beyond just profile matching of advertisements, Facebook allows consumers to self-identify with brands and becoming fans. In turn, brands can use these "Fan-Sumers" as endorsers to their own trusted networks, resulting in trusted word-of-mouth. Brands can also self-manage their own campaigns, and there's some unique opportunities for eCommerce widgets or applications to be part of this formula.
There are three major components to today's announcement, they include the following:
1) Facebook Pages: Brands get their own profile For the first time, businesses will legitimately be able to setup profile pages, much like MySpace's business profiles feature. Next, Facebook members will add these brands as 'fans' (much like friends) and this will produce a connection between the parties. Members will self-identify with brands in what we are calling "Fan-Sumers". Furthermore, this service, called "Beacon" gives third parties the ability to share information on the newsfeed and provides lots of unique opportunities. Sponsored groups will start to evolve into this new form brand profile as this system gets adopted.
2) SocialAds: Endorsements at the friend level lead to eCommerce Once a member has indicated they are a fan of a brand, that brand can choose to purchase SocialAds (from Facebook Sales or via a self-service platform). A unique endorsement of a product or brand will now appear on that individuals news feed or banner or skyscraper ads. Advertisers can purchase social ads target by profile demographics and profiles, as well as by activities done in Facebook. Payment is an auction-based system available to marketers via both CPM and CPC pricing.
3) Use "Insight" for control and flexibility This self-service dashboard called Insight gives the marketer detailed knowledge how their advertising campaign is working on Facebook. It's expected that advertisers will have flexibility, control over the type of ads they deploy, in what quantity, and the demographics they want to target.
A likely scenario: Shauna, who enjoys Revlon products, indicates she's a fan of the brand and becomes a Fan-Sumer. Marketers at Revlon can then purchase SocialAds, which will then display on Shauna's newsfeed or on ads on her profile. If Shauna purchases Revlon makeup from Amazon, her newsfeed could indicate an eCommerce links recommending it to her 100 trusted friends, resulting in further sales.
Implications for Facebook:
Members have more control over ads Facebook users can opt to turn off social ads, and friends of that user can 'dial down' endorsements they see using preferences. We believe that Facebook is attempting to respect the rights of users by giving control to members to 'opt-in' to become a Fan-Sumer.
Quest for Fans will cause brands to beg Since social ads only work if a member has indicated they are a fan, brands will be working to earn and buy fans to accept them as members. Expect a lot of noise to be generated from this activity as brands run campaigns to encourage members to add them as fans through discussion boards, banner ads, and special offers.
Hard to qualify a "business" Facebook is limiting these features to 'real' businesses and organizations. Expect an entire team to be crawling and dealing with this qualifying the issue. As recent member accounts have been disabled from Facebook, expect businesses and organizations to encounter same issues.
Limited ad supply to raise prices Because Facebook members will see only two social ads per day, we expect the supply of ads to be in scarce supply and thus raising prices and not matching the value. This could shift ad buying to large brands who have experience buying and managing search and direct response ads.
Our Call: Brand affinity leads to community endorsements and more trusted marketing. We see this as a win for Facebook, this highly targeted system isn't just about web advertising but about brand affinity and hooks into what's really important, trusted endorsements from people in a network. This truly is the next generation of advertising. Facebook tells us that the worst case it will be 2 times click through rate over the performance of (existing is 4-26%)
Next Steps For Brands
Experiment: Because of the control and flexibility, we recommend to brands that are currently on either of these social networks to experiment and test.
Learn how to efficiently manage your campaigns. There's clearly a trend towards self-service, which provides efficiencies for both businesses and the platforms.
To know: Marketing has changed, advertising is no longer a sole-solution. Marketers must also learn how to be part of communities, engage with them, and be part of the conversation.
To know: Marketing is now distributed, brands must embrace communities where they currently exist, rather than solely driving them to their corporate website.
This digest not only explains what is happening, but why it matters to you. If this was helpful, please pass it on. Love to hear your thoughts, please leave a comment, even if you don't agree.
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