henrikharsbo.dk

Court Cuts Off Allofmp3

Today a Danish judge ruled that Tele2 (an ISP) is to block the DNS for Russian music site allofmp3.com. The ruling is controversial mainly because it makes ISPs responsible for what is accessible via the Internet.

The case was brought to court by the Danish chapter of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) who argued that ISPs have a responsibility to block access to the Russian site.

So far Danish authorities have been reluctant to call the Russian web site illegal.

Tele2 has decided to try todays ruling at a higher court.

I think the whole thing stinks. Shutting down access to parts of the web by way of the infrastructure is so wrong. It is in fact an attack on the notion of the web itself.

If the record labels find that the russian site is infringing on their business they should move against the business itself. Not the web. Come on now.

Read more about the case (in Danish); http://www.computerworld.dk/art/36251?a=fp&i=1

Does PR belong in Blogging?

Does professional PR have a place in the Blogosphere? The question has been asked many times and has recently again been put forward upon the discovery that the blog "Wal-Marting across America," recounting the travels of a couple from Wal-Mart to Wal-Mart, was in fact funded by Wal-Mart through Edelman PR.

The funding is in no way apparent on the site that heavily brands Wal-Mart by telling stories about the customers of the chain.

In many ways I am stunned that a large PR-firm like Edelman could launch a blog without full disclosure . It is an unprofessional move that you wouldn't think a million dollar PR-corp. could make.

When it comes to a professionally planned or any other type of blog hyping a brand there is no way around disclosing the ties it might have to any given corporation. It is the first brick in the foundation, if you want a successful blog.

In a defensive post on the blog one of the authors, Laura, writes:
"So now we’re being attacked. Why? Because we dared to write positive things about Wal-Mart."

My reply: Nope, what I am attacking is not the fact that you wrote positive things about Wal-Mart. I am criticizing the fact that you didn't tell that you were being paid by the corporation for doing so!

Usability Is Like Oxygen

Quick quote of the day:

Usability is like oxygen. You never notice it until it is missing.

Warfare Or Marketing?

Advertising is war! At least it's kind of creepy how much of the lingo spoken among advertising professionals stem from military jargon:

• We aim our message at a target group
• Hoping to hit them with our punch lines
• Some times we use guerrilla marketing
• Or seek to infect the market virally
• ... via a well planned campaign
• And then we sit back to measure the number of hits to our web sites

Who said that we are now in the era of dialog marketing?

Pricey Phone

Wanna get your hands on a very expensive phone? Meet Vertu Constellation. Available in satin steel, black leather or gold models which all come with sapphire crystal screens the phone is due to be launched sometime during October 2006.

Vertu comes with a concierge button that lets you call for help with dinner reservations, theater tickets or limo service no matter which time zone you might be in.

Vertu is made by Nokia.

The price has yet to be revealed. But other Vertu models trade for around 6000-7000 Euro.

It's all about appearances, baby :-)

Via MobileCrunch

Branding And User Experience

Listbeth Klastrup links to an interesting article about branding and user expericence. The article is from UX Matters and is entitled: Brand Experience in User Experience Design.

We all know that brand value is as important in online communication as in any other form of messaging but as the article points out it is not always clear how user experience guys and girls should juggle this aspect in the design process.

Intuitive prototyping

In my prototyping work I have recently switched from Powerpoint and Visio to Axure RP. And boy is that a sweet change!!

The program is madly intuitive and makes it possible to work with both masters and drag-and-drop widgets. Thus it becomes possible to communicate ideas in wire frames that look a little more like the end result than any wire frame I produced earlier on.

Both Visio and Powerpoint suffer from the fact that they were not originally intended for prototyping. Axure RP is intended for nothing else. And it even produces annotated specs for designers and programmers and html-prototypes for clients.

Of course there is always room for improvement. Better template capabilities and a slightly larger widget library are on my wish list.

But all in all I'll recommend the program any day.