Yes, I know the report is delay (a fair few months) and it may be slightly out of date, but in the past 30 days there has been an increased interest in our review so I’ve decided to upload the report.

To view the report click the following link: Team NVPH – Stack Overflow Report

If there are any questions, comments or concerns feel free to let me know.

Direct YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peYSjTxnzK0
Direct Vimeo Link: http://www.vimeo.com/12230792

Upon getting the beta invite in an e-mail because I joined up with the pre-registration (by the way, not everyone who pre-registered has received an invite), I logged in and got presented with the Welcome screen. It very sleek and gets right to the point.

Login Screen for Guvera Beta

From this point you have 3 main options presented to you:

Random: If you don’t know what your looking for, click on Random. It will ‘randomly’ take you to a channel where you can see what songs are being offered.

Browse: If you want to look by artist, or by channel. (Browsing by artist isn’t enabled at this stage).

Search: If you know what you want, just type it in – (I think everyone knows how a search box works). One nice thing about the search is that it brings up a small photo of the album, song title, artist and gives you the ability to preview the song.

Channels is where it all happens!

Yep, That is right it is all about finding a channel where you can see a list of songs. So far on all the channels I’ve seen you can preview a song for 30 seconds, stream the whole song or what most people I think want – download the full song for free.

So how does it work? Well each channel is sponsored. For example a company or business can set up their own channel that has there branding on it. Additional links and information that is targeted towards the user. Each channel has had a different look, but have the sleek look which Guvera has going from the welcome page.

Your File: A module that shows you the album cover, artist, song, duration, size of the song. (At the moment this doesn’t dynamically update to the song you have previewed or clicked on to stream and not all of the fields are populated like duration and size).

Your Credits: Shows you how many credits you have and how to get more. (At the start you might not have that much but once you re-fill in all the details you did when you pre-registered this increases)

Playlist: A standard set of media controls to play music.

Music: The list of music being offered in a nice grid view (Love grid views). Title, Artist, Duration with button to Preview, Stream and Download. This is essential the main window where you do all you need to do.

Links: Sponsored links such as information, promotion or competitions you can entered provided by the channel sponsor.

Do you really get songs for Free?

Yes, you do. You get credit allocated to you and you can use this up. For example I had 1.60 worth of credit after I updated my profile on each one of the channels I visited. Once I downloaded a song at one channel I had .6 credit remaining. However on the other channels I still have 1.6 credits.

I downloaded a song and got the full length .mp3. Here are some more of the interesting details for those of you who are interested:

Size: 5.5 MB
Bit Rate: 256 kbps
Sample Rate: 44.100 kHz
Format: MPEG-1, Layer 3
Encoded with: LAME3.98

Negatives / Bugs / Feedback

As it is a ‘BETA’ you are to expect bugs, and problems to occur. The idea is to give a small group a test at the system and to address issues found before it goes main stream. Often a users first impression lasts and it could taint them from using it in future. If you are a BETA tester you should keep this in mind, that what you are seeing isn’t the full product. So here is my feedback:

No ability to give feedback: Ironically, I couldn’t find a submit bug/forums/e-mail button anywhere to submit any problems I was having. This is the main reason I’m doing a blog post. I’m hoping this gets back to them and so they can make some improvements.

No ID3 Tags on MP3′s: This would have to be the number 1 problem I have. The mp3 I downloaded (at around 220 Kb/s) had a massive file name that doesn’t describe the song or the artist. I also made the assumption there would have to be ID3 Tags that would handle this instead. This is not the case. There is pretty much no way to identify the song you have downloaded (not unless you manually edit the file name or insert ID3 tags yourself).

Updating Profile / Favourites: There is a fair amount of questions and I had to refill in all this after I had done this to pre-register. It seems like double handling and I don’t like it. Also when it comes to your date of birthday details it actually doesn’t save this correctly. For example my date of birthday is 1 day out, as after I save it and return to the details screen it has entered in the previous day I was born.

Your Song Box: This doesn’t dynamically update to the song you are playing or have selected on the channel.

Multiple Windows: You really can’t go opening multiple windows. You can’t for example up 3 different channels and save those channels to your favourites. It will only do it for the last one you opened and you will soon see that the 3 pages you have loaded up are all the same instead of 3 different channels. You basically have a ‘single click, one window only mentality’.

Address Verification: Not sure how this is meant to happen and there is no information on this. This needs to be expanded and explained further. There also needs to be a ‘why do we need to do this’, ‘why do you need this information’ thing going through my head.

Forums / Chat Room: I would like to see a forum \ chat room made available. I might not use these features myself but I was looking for a way to communicate with other users. Imagine if a channel had its own chatroom available or a forum? It may be a way to engage the audience and create a community where people will come back (not just to download songs). This would provide greater exposure for the sponsors and Guvera and a reason for the user to stay connected. With the targeted information (such as location), it could be easy for a Brisbane radio station to get people in the Brisbane area talking to each other…. – I’m sure this idea can be expanded more and thought out more if it hasn’t already.

Credits: Credits look strangle similar to dollars. I feel like I want to call the dollars or money. I also don’t know how much a song will cost me (money term there). Perhaps this could get looked at. EG: I have 1.5 credits meaning I have 1.5 songs. I have no idea how I get half a song, or how my credits will increase now that I’ve updated my profile. I bit more explanation here guys would be great. That grid view of songs would be good to see how much credits a song costs. I’m assuming all songs cost the same, but maybe they dont?  If this gets a bit more of a look, that would be great.

Conclusion:

Guvera, does what it set out to achieve. I was able to download a song legally as an mp3. It was easy to navigate around and find the song I wanted, however once I got the song on my computer I expected more (ID3 Tags). This has actually led me to deleting the song I download so it won’t ruin my music collection rather than re-naming it myself. There are a few bugs with the site and things that need to get looked at, but see potential.

The music being offered isn’t ancient, but it also isn’t the latest stuff out there. Guvera is working on extending this further, and I look forward to it. I’m keen to see how things pan out and I would like to encourage people to pre-register but at this stage I wouldn’t recommend it to other people in this BETA stage.

Oh and ‘hi’ to the guys working there at Guvera, I believe your office is just down the road in Robina, QLD. I would like to see this work out for you guys, as support local talent is always nice.

Update 14/1/2010:

I’ve received some nice Feedback from Guvera via twitter which I would like to say thanks for taking my thoughts on board. I’ve noticed a ‘report a bug’ button. Once there are more changes, I’ll be willing to go through it all again.

Web 1.0 – Static Pages, HTML Based, very much like a ‘document’

Web 2.0 – Dynamic Pages, Social Networking and generally “2″ way communication

Web 3.0 – The Semantic Web – structured information

Justin Lee, has put together a great slideshare presentation which I would like to share. It explains the direction Web 3.0 is moving and offers a few examples.

Web 3.0 seems like a natural progression, and it is. The ability to have data easier to get to and analyze might not seem that exciting now, but the buzz word is developing and so are the applications. Web 2.0 offers so many different uses and is still expanding today and if the changes that come with Web 3.0 sites and applications is anything like the changes brought forward from Web 2.0 we will be in for an interesting time.

• http://www.jason-v.com/2009/08/01/have-you-googled-your-name
• http://www.jason-v.com/2009/08/10/web-presence-update

To give a bit of re-cap the site was started and the first post went up on July 30th, 2009. At the stage a search for my name on google didn’t turn out to well, and that is to be expected. So how have things gone in this short period?

In the graph below you can see how I’ve gone on a month by month basis. It might be a little early to tell but you can see a steady trend in the amount of visitors to site each month. If you double the current month (roughly halfway through it) this trend continues.

The amount of bandwidth being used though hasn’t been steady as I’ve seen this go up and down. Recently I started uploading more images and photos which has seen the amount of bandwidth being used jump up a fair bit (realistically though it is such a small amount for a website). It might be worth mentioning that I now have caching working on the site as well as a few other optimisations done with some help from Shane (Hosting Guy).

Monthly websites statistics measuring the amount of hits, visitors each month and bandwidth used each month. - 16th October, 2009

So how searchable is my name? Has it improved? Below is a list of searches on two different variations of my name. Jason Van Dyk & “Jason Van Dyk”. I’ve also compared to the results taken on the 10th August 2009.

• Search on www.google.com for – Jason Van Dyk = 6th & 7th vs. 18th & 19th (Improved by 12 spots)
• Search on www.google.com for – “Jason Van Dyk” = 3rd & 4th vs. 25th & 26th (Improved by 22 spots)
• Search on www.yahoo.com for – Jason Van Dyk = 1st, 2nd & 4th vs. 1st, 2nd & 7th (Maintained 1st & 2nd, Improved by 3 spots)
• Search on www.yahoo.com for – “Jason Van Dyk” = 1st, 2nd & 5th vs. 1st, 2nd & 6th (Maintained 1st & 2nd, Improved by 1 spot)
• Search on www.bing.com for – Jason Van Dyk = 2nd & 4th vs. 3rd (Improved by 1 spot and added an extra hit)
• Search on www.bing.com for – “Jason Van Dyk” = 1st vs. 1st, 5th & 10th (Maintained 1st, lost 2 hits)

In summary doing a search for my name will either bring up my site, a profile on a social networking site or some other form a hit which is directly related to me. The results have improved dramatically to have top 10 hit amongst all search engines. This is great and has meant that achieving my goal is working.

How have you gone? What are some of the steps you’ve taken to increase your web presence?

I’ve committed to my goal and have reached it within the time frame. You can now google my name, and results appear. So what is going to happen now? Well I will be posting less about Enterprise 2.0 related topics and instead will broaden the topics to cover more of my interests.

The original Napster was a hugely successful online music sharing service, which was shut down by court order. However it paved the way for many other P2P file-sharing programs. The question of whether these sites are ethical is still a controversial issue.

So what can the music industry do to solve this dilemma? There has been an interesting site discussed on several blogging networks that may just have a solution.

Guvera, a new website has stated that they have found a way to make downloading music legal! “The biggest change to media in history. Music, film and TV for free”. As stated on their Myspace page, Guvera is set to give people access to free music, built around a very unique business model that still pays the artists.

There is a still a lot of mystery surrounding the site, however you can pre-register at www.guvera.com. The site asks its users a number of questions, such as their interests in music, food, films, countries and much more.

For more information, click on the following link:

http://www.promoney.com.au/pdf/client_resources/Guvera_Investor_Presentation_August09___1_20.pdf

http://www.promoney.com.au/pdf/client_resources/pdf2/Guvera_Investor_Presentation_August09___2_20.pdf

It appears as although advertisers will be paying for the free content themselves. This concept definitely sounds like a new and exciting way to gain access to television, film and music content. I think it could represents a new Internet phenomenon.

What are your thoughts on the matter, would you be more tempted to download content if it is free and legal? Or would relying on advertisers to provide this service deter you? I for one cannot wait to see what Guvera presents.

Information on the internet suggests that the planned launch of mid this year has had some unexpected delays but it can’t be too long now.

• http://twitter.com/Guvera – Guvera’s Twitter Account
• http://www.myspace.com/guveradotcom – Guvera’s My Space Account
• http://www.linkedin.com/companies/guvera – Guvera’s LinkedIn Account

iSnack2.0

Vegemite's next generation product - iSnack2.0

The new product from Kraft did engage the community by asking them questions about the old classic Vegemite. In fact over 300,000 people engaged in an online survey to come up with the new product (How Do You Like Your Vegemite Census – 2008). Further on from the survey they opened up a forum to the public where you can share how you eat your Vegemite. I’ve copied a few responses that caught my eye below!

• Vegemite with Spaghetti Bolognaise
• Vegemite with Pancakes
• Vegemite with Tomoatoe Sauce (Toast)
• Vegemite in Mashed Potatoe
• Vegemite with Bananas
• Vegemite Gravy

So getting back to the survey and the new name. Over 48,000 names for the new product were suggested from Australia and New Zealand combined and a Web Designer from Western Australia won it. Now I think engaging the community is great, but perhaps this is an example where there also needed to be a voting system in place as I don’t think this is a good title. I’ve mentioned before that “web 2.0″ (by the way that is where his inspiration was from) is a buzz word and is a trend that is dropping. The lower case i follow by an upper case letter and the rest of the word is also a fad to going on at the moment (think of all the Apple products).

More to the point, where do you draw the line between technology / food / consumer engagement / common sense / control and how will the success of the product be monitored (sales naturally I imagine as money wins?

The new label and product will hit our shelves October 5th which I’m sure will have a take up as people will be keen to taste the new product, I just feel that product such as Vegemite which has become an Australian icon has taken the wrong move with its product name. On the other side, it is a great example how a company has engaged its consumers to come up with a new product and meet the needs, the survey itself was a good idea.

Anyway let me know what you think about the new name and if you are keen to try the product!

Jeremiah Owyang has posted a list of A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media which you should take a look at, but here are 5 of my favorite stories.

• United Airlines Gets the Viral Video Treatment It Never Wanted
• The naked NOKA chocolate uncovered
• Louis Vuitton gets Brandjacked in Anti-Genocide Campaign
• Furniture Company Habitat Self-Evicts on Twitter
• Brit ISPs censor Wikipedia over ‘child porn’ album cover

So a word of warning for companies out there, to perhaps think about your approach to a customer or act as it may blow back on you. Just to finish it off, this blow back effect resulted in the term the’ Streisand effect‘ in 2003 when Barbra Streisand sued a photographer over privacy concerns.

Firstly, where I can I’ve tried to take away results relating to the Star Trek Enterprise, so if you wondering why you see those in graphs…. there you go. So lest take a look at blog posts referring to Enterprise 2 compared to “web 2 on Technorati.

Keyword popularity across the Blogosphere over the last 18 months provided by Technorati

Today I’m taking the steps required to claim your blog on Technorati. I’ve mentioned this place before, but I’ll give you a quick summary:

Technorati is the blogsphere platforms as Google is the directory of the web?… or perhaps…. Technorati = Blogs, Google = Sites.

So here is some yummy food for the Technorati spiders/bots – sg4ji9bahx (and also my code to claim my blog). Thanks guys for putting up with this post.

Also in case you were wondering my rank is now – 1,603,173!