Think & Play
Thoughtplay is the creative team behind various popular websites and other projects. At this blog we give away bright ideas regularly, and comment on interesting trends both online and off. The thought channel is for more business-related trends, play looks at entertainment and leisure, and thoughtplay introduces our own creative ideas, as well as news about our projects.
Park here | 190307
Park at My House (UK-based) is one of those ideas that's so good and simple it barely needs explanation: a classic example of how the web brings needs and suppliers together without fuss.
Categories: thought
Is Scribd too cribbed? | 180307
Scribd has been described as 'Youtube for documents'. Users upload text documents to the site in pretty much any format - then visitors can view them in a nifty embedded flash viewer on the webpage. The intention is that it opens up all of those documents you have lurking on your hard drive to a global audience of potentially interested readers. Even better if someone wants a printed, bound hard copy of content by using a tie up with Print(fu) - with Scribd and the uploader taking a cut of the revenue generated.
So far, so neat. But what happens if someone disobeys the rules, and uploads content that they don't own the copyright to? Well, for the item to be removed Scribd require "A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."
To put it bluntly, Scribd will allow for uploaders to potentially make money from copyrighted material that they have no rights over unless the copyright owner takes the time and trouble to continually check the site for infringement. We're no IP experts, but we think it safe to say that our tame IP lawyer would have kittens if we tried something like this - the $300k Scribd got in seed funding won't last too long if (when) someone takes issue with this. If publishers are up in arms about Google enabling segments of texts to be read online they are going to totally lose it with Scribd.
We imagine that the rationale behind this approach is that it is too hard to actively police the uploaded materials - and that a wiki-type group monitoring approach is open to abuse. This might make practical sense, but it won't stand up in a court of law. Surely using the precautionary principle and allowing the flagging of dubious material would make better sense? Thoughtplay finds it hard to believe that Tom Morrow owns the copyright to both Asterix and Dilbert - or that it really should take a letter from the trustees of the estate of Bertrand Russell to get Mega Therion to take down A History of Western Philosophy.
Categories: play
Mashing up the stats | 120307
Further to our observations on correlating T-shirt sales to political success, data fans will love Swivel - a site which invites users to submit sets of data of any kind, and then make daft (or possibly insightful) comparisons between them. For example, this chart want to suggest wine drinking and violent crime are mutually exclusive. No great surprises there, perhaps.
Categories: play
Should politicans be getting shirty? | 070307
Thoughtplay is always interested finding new ways of predicting the results of elections - especially if the system involves looking at group behaviour - so were keen to see how successful our new method is. The Cafepress site allows users to design T-shirts, mugs and other items and share the revenue generated from the sales of these products. The early-starting US Presidential race has led to many designs being created - but can anything be learnt from this?
Our theory is a simple one - that the more popular a candidate is, the more designs relating them likely to be created. The rationale behind this is that the designers are commercially motivated - the greater demand they perceive, the more likely they are to create a design. So how do the candidates compare?
From the Republicans the three leading candidates break down as follows:John McCain has 700 designs, Rudy Giuliani has 870 and Mitt Romney 566. How does this compare to current polling? Well, a Fox poll at the end of February had Giuliani on 39%, McCain on 19% and Romney languishing on 6%. So far, the model works, but how about the Democrats?
Hillary Clinton has an astonishing 6,580 designs, John Edwards has 1,830 and Barack Obama 3,980. As for the polls, the most recent had Clinton on 34%, Obama on 23% and Edwards on 12%. So our Cafepress prediction model works? Well, perhaps.
Clearly there are factors other than popularity (or perceived popularity) that influence the number of designs on Cafepress. The fact that all of the Democratic candidates have far more designs than their Republication counterparts is probably more indicative of a liberal bias in Cafepress shoppers than a likely landslide in 2008. There is also the fact that there is a limit to the number of designs you can create about a candidate who is, well, perhaps a little dull. Finally, not all of the designs indicate popular support. A quick review of Hilary's designs suggests that approximately half, far from being supportive, are downright insulting about the Senator.
So are we writing off this shirt-based form of political prediction? No. We still have confidence in the wisdom of crowds and think that in this instance the shirts are ahead of the polls. Whilst Barack Obama had around 60% of the number of designs of Hillary, they were almost all - especially the best-selling items - positive. The official Thoughtplay prediction for the 2008 US Presidential candidates is therefore Rudy Giuliani for the Republicans and Barack Obama for the Democrats - let's see if history bears us out.
Categories: thoughtplay
X marks the spot | 070307
There an awful lot of Google Maps mashups around (visit Google Maps Mania for a huge list of them). But for simplicity we particularly like Pin in the Map: zap the location, add some text, and send the link to your buddies.
Categories: play
«-- back