Gary Corbett Blog

Being in the zone, or a state of flow is something we’ve all experienced. It’s where you are super productive at the task in hand, be it a computer game, perhaps a sport, some work and in the case I’m going to talk about – programming.

Flow unleashes peak productivity, it allows you to write that 2000 word essay in an hour or so (but you would need to have done your research and have notes ready before hand). Time goes quicker when in the zone, and work is not such a challenge or a chore, you’ll feel good or content doing it.

Csikszentmihaly has research flow and is an authority on the subject. According to Csikszentmihaly; flow occurs when a task has a  high skill level, and the user has a high skill level to match. If a challenge requires a too high a skill level; the individual experiences anxiety, if the users skill level is too high compared to the task, boredom can result, in both cases flow will not be reached.

Human distractions can really effect being in the zone, – they will take you straight off task and so must be eliminated as much as possible. Familiar music via headphones can be good to help you focus if in a noisy environment – I say familiar as you don’t want it putting an extra workload on your brain.

How to reach Flow while programming:

• Have a challenging task
• One window open (or the amount minimum required)
• No human distractions (close your door, let people know you’ll be busy for the next couple of hours)
• A clean desk – easy to manoeuvre around and reduce distractions to your eye and brain.

For more info on the author of this article, view my – about page

The UK government has launched a scheme called Startup Britain. This excited me at first, finally are going to attempt to match the US’ innovation. I was a little disappointed to say the least with what the site offers. Mainly it seems heavily funded by corporate sponsors, to the point I’m thinking this is helping reduce the UK’s debt as a money earning venture rather than a true gift to budding entrepeuners.

My favourite ‘deal’: 1 Month’s free line rental when you signup with O2. I mean, really? There are many more deals on the front page but the main substance seems to be in guides, or courses to signup for,  and conventions to attend.

Realising startups are not confined to anyone business sector, but also noting the growth of internet companies, let’s look at the startup internet companies from the UK:

• Spotify

Now the US:

• Google
• Nearly every other internet company.

I can’t see this changing from this scheme, however there are a lot of factors why the US excels in internet entrepreneurship, probably beyond the scope of this post. I won’t be all negative, it is good to get people thinking about starting a business, but I was hoping for something a bit more from a Government backed scheme.

Actually one more negative: the site had a link to a malware page.

An article on the BBC telling how due to traffic statistics, Myspace lost 10 million users between January and Feburary this year. I’m taking these stats with a pinch of salt, but they are still staggering; Myspace has 63 millions users, down from 110 million in February last year.

Murchdochs Newscorp bought Myspace for £330 million back in 2005 in a bid to get themselves a foothold on the growing net marketplace. At the time Myspace was visually quite a mess, but was the biggest go-to site for every teenager in the West and they had control of it.

Facebook emerged and put real pressure on Newscorps big venture. They decided to change stratergy from a pure social network to an ‘entertainment destination’ – focusing on music; providing a platform for artsits and people to listen and engage with them. After all focusing on music sets it apart from Facebook and Myspace had help launch the careers of many music stars, such as Arctic Monkeys, Kate Nash and Lily Allen.

This brings me to question Murdoch’s stance with the paywall – requiring users to pay a subscription to view the content of news articles.

It is a bold move without a doubt and has had many questioning it. Google have made it easier for paywalls with Google OnePass facilitating the payment for content. Murdoch is an effective businessman in the traditional world, but will his paywall venture pay off? Maybe with some help from Google. Content being hidden behind paywalls could mean a reduction in quality content to general non-fee paying users across the net, possibly presenting opportunity for smaller news outlets to flourish. Will this venture go the way of Myspace? This author believes there is a place for the paywall model but as with everything -it will come down the execution.

Facebook has blocked Google AdSense from its list of approved ad providers. This means third party developers for Facebook cannot use one of the worlds biggest internet advertising networks to provide adverts and earn revenue from. Amazon.com is missing as well (they give out adverts now).

The list of acceptable advertisers is not completely finalised, but rumour has it Google and Amazon haven’t made it yet because they have not agreed to Facebook’s restrictive terms of service. (They don’t want advertisers taking any of Facebooks user data, which they use to target the ads – if they do receive it, they must alert FB and delete right away.)

All this comes after just a few months ago Google stopped users being able to import their Google contacts into Facebook, due to Facebook not allowing it to work the other way – Google claimed. Added to fact that Facebook boasted more display ad impressions last year than Google, Microsoft and Yahoo combined tells the story of how Facebook is rising to become a real competitor to Google, and both companies know it.

Developers of Facebook third-party applications are not happy and having two huge ad providers off the list, and mentioning if this reduces their income, we can expect a decrease in the development of Facebook apps.

There is still time for Facebook, Google and Amazon to reach a deal and be included on the list, however its developers who will have to adapt to the situation in the meantime.

BT’s long running advert on TV now suggests a BT Facebook page to visit instead of a more usually assumed bt.com/page website.

BT Facebok Page

I think this is quite a landmark in the business appeal Facebook, and how companies view its potential – especially one as large as BT. Other companies may have used Facebook pages to promote their company before, and have had good or bad (Nestle) adventures but this is a widespread TV advertisement directly sending people to a Facebook page.

In under a week the page has over 55,000 likes – not bad, since the advert really asks people to engage with the company and help decide the outcome of the adverts fictional couples wedding. The couple in the wedding have been running since 2005 and follow their relationship growing and aging, being assisted by BT products and services.

Regardless of the website pointed to, the TV adverts will be and are considered a success. They use a favourite actor of many in the UK, Kris Marshall from the TV comedy My Family, and his funny likeable character comes across in ads. Some are genuinely considered with the outcome of the couple, sort of like a long running sitcom, I’m not on that level but the outcome of all this will be interesting.

Will we be seeing more businesses taking up Facebook to engage with consumers and promote their brand on a more social level or will this be not meet BT’s demands and we see them reverting back to promoting their own domains through adverts?

More reading:

http://www.btlife.bt.com/entertainment/help-plan-adam-and-janes-wedding/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kris_Marshall

Hacker News – the social news site focusing on tech and startups is surprisingly popular and influential.

It was originally called Startup News, but in 2007 changed to Hacker News(HN) and I think this is a major part of its success. ‘Hacker’ has a certain edge, people can feel a little special using it, all users know what the site is really about and the mainstream term for ‘hacker’ – malicious practises and breaking into peoples computers or networks does not apply here. The term is more based on ‘hacking things together’ – putting pieces of code etc to get something working.

Reddit – another popular social news site with is noted as being a model, which HN aims to replicate the early days of, while wishes avoiding the the standard of content being lowered due to a quick influx of new users. Veteran users who have accumulated a certain amount of upvotes on their comments and submissions can vote-down items, while standard users can only up-vote. This techniques have so far helped to a degree, but there are still users whom say the site used to be better before its popularity increased.

The site has a very simple user interface, deceptively hiding it’s popularity from the start and form and function are heavily favoured over design. This is not to say the site couldn’t be improved, but the minimalist design sort of adds to the sites charm, and underground quirkiness I believe many users like about the site – again relating to why the ‘Hacker’ word in the title helps the sites popularity.

I’ll let you Google the site to find it