January 17th 2009
Web Videos of Oakland Shooting Fuel Protests “The devices people carry in their pockets give them the ability to turn what would normally be a case played out in the courtroom into one in which anyone with an Internet connection can serve as virtual judge and jury.” This both shows how online movements start, and […]
January 15th 2009
Dr. Dimitri Christakis of Seattle Children’s Research Institute and Dr. Megan Moreno of the University of Wisconsin analyzed MySpace profiles of 18-year-olds. Better than half contained information about high-risk behaviors: 41 per cent mentioned substance abuse, 24 per cent sexual behavior and 14 per cent violence. Sex, drugs and violence on the minds of teens? […]
January 13th 2009
Tim Stanley, Carl Malamud, and the the team at Altlaw.org are tenacious, creative and on a mission. Individually, each is finding creative ways to make America’s vast quantity of legal documents available over the Internet at no charge to the public. Together, they are opening up America’s legal system to the public through the Internet. […]
January 11th 2009
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one of the heroes of this blog. My friends who have made this effort both possible and fun, Carolyn and Brandon, also admire EFF. And if you’re reading this, I suspect you may dig EFF too. So, in honor of all that, for each new subscriber to UsefulArts.us from now until […]
January 8th 2009
Marketing Vox has a nearly day-by-day analysis of Firefox’s increasing popularity during the US election and holiday season. Microsoft’s share has eroded a bit, and other competitors such as Chrome and Safari just aren’t growing like Firefox. This puts Firefox on the right side of the 80/20 divide, which is how many developers assess what […]
January 7th 2009
The Consumer Law & Policy Blog describes a case of arguably false advertising, in which a “face lift” firm paid for keywords relevant to people complaining about their trademarked service, but connected them to a site singing its praises. Their apparent intent was to draw those seeking information for detractors to a forum which only […]
January 5th 2009
The sky is falling on ICANN’s ill-considered gTLD policy. I’ve been a skeptic of ICANN due to its incredibly slow response to fixing its own rules enable domain tasting.Also, last year its own domain was hacked, which didn’t increase anyone’s opinion of its chops as the world’s domain authority. I’ve read in disbelief as this […]
December 30th 2008
A quick look at our log shows which stories visitors viewed most in 2008 on Useful Arts. I had forgotten how important, and frequently bizarre, this year’s topics were. Three posts towered above the others: CAN-SPAM, teens behaving badly online, and Tiffany’s contributory infringement case against eBay. January: Catherine Douglas started the year off with […]
December 23rd 2008
Holiday cards are perhaps the purest opportunity for marketers to put brands on center stage without pesky offers or product data messing getting in the way. It lets us see pure branding and get some sense of how firms think of their clients and themselves. Here are three examples from internet marketing companies, the very people who […]
December 21st 2008
Software as a Service (SaaS) market leader and service provider Salesforce.com recently hosted a presentation by Bessemer Venture Partners, which has funded many of my favorite SaaS enterprises, including LinkedIn, Postini, Keynote, Eloqua, Skype, Force.com, and PTC. Since this presentation is locked up in a hard-to-search format, I’m republishing its insights for your enjoyment here, […]
The future of digital experiences will be built by strategists who grasp the full array of emerging business, social, and technical models. Specialties in user experience, branding, application design, and data science are laying the foundation for richer user experiences and business models breakthrough products and revenue based marketing.
UsefulArts is a soapbox to discuss the front line of digital experience, and the agencies and platforms that enable it. Digital business needs a cadre of leaders who can connect c-level enterprise thinking with the ways these new interaction models can help organizations to matter more to their most important stakeholders.