Market research isn’t fun. That is, unless you can get your answers instantly in real time! Embrace Mobile enables market research surveys to be presented over mobile phones.

John Merrells, the Embrace Mobile CEO, thinks his offering is so great, that he’s moved from mobile-friendly Europe, to the carrier-heavy and difficult American mobile industry. Find out why he’s so confident that Americans will embrace him as Europe already has.

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Interview with John Merrells, CEO of Embrace Mobile (5 minutes, direct download)

SponsoredReviews, which recently launched, is yet another service that promises to pay bloggers for their opinions. They do this by connecting advertisers and bloggers in a harmonious relationship of money and reviews. In a perfect world, this would mean that the blogger, showered with money, would still be totally unbiased in his opinion of the products. Many people are highly skeptical that this would ever be the case.

Tony Hung makes a good point by saying

While more details are sure to come in SponsoredReviews, when bloggers set their own price, and it turns out to be a princely sum, how can anyone possibly be expected to write an unbiased review?

The real issue is that anyone, no matter how much integrity they may claim to have, will, with enough money, become biased. The price point may be significantly different for different people, but, the price point will always exist.

A BETTER SOLUTION
I used to write for a blog on the Weblogsinc network, and was paid a few dollars per post. But, the difference was that I wasn’t being paid by advertisers, but rather, an intermediary. Weblogsinc never took money from advertisers and demanded that we write about their products. On these networks, bloggers are more apt to write unbiased reviews and opinions.

Paying bloggers directly is always going to be a slippery slope. A better solution is to form a hybrid between services like PayPerPost and Weblogsinc. The service would have various blogs focusing on different categories of products, and, a number of certified bloggers in each category. Advertisers would pay the service to have their product promoted, but, the amount paid would never be shown to the bloggers.

The bloggers would then be able to see products that are requesting to be reviewed, and based on how interested they are in the product, they would review them. Only after they review them would they be paid an appropriate amount for their post. In this way, bias would be kept at a minimum.

It’s a bit frightening to think of a blogosphere teeming with bribed bloggers, and hopefully, these services won’t be riding on the slippery slope. Perhaps what we need is a microformat that contains information about how much an advertiser paid for the blog post:

<span class="amountpaid">$30</span>


SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 9 – As the Macworld keynote fires up, all the press and attendees focus on Steve Jobs as he gives his presentation on stage. As usual, the drama and theatrics are high at this flagship event. Steve is a master at creating suspense and wooing the crowd. However, the vast majority of people can’t see him at all. Instead, they’re huddled in front of computer screens, staring intently at static text and pictures that are updated almost in real time as the presentation unfolds.

Welcome to the world of live blogging, where passionate bloggers beam out the instant scoop regarding current events and news. Unlike normal blogging, which is asynchronous, live blogging is more akin to a one way IM conversation. The people who really care about the topic will keep the post open, and refresh constantly to find out what’s happening. In the case of the Macworld keynote, blogs were the only way for people not in the room to get the scoop. I was one of many people who oohed and ahhed as Steve unveiled the details of the iPhone.

Blog posts as instant messaging
Live blogging is not a new thing, and has been around since the early days of blogging. Whether it’s the Macworld keynote, the CES conference, or the Oscars, there will be people live blogging on the scene. How people consume these live posts is very different than normal posts. As I mentioned before, live posts are like one way instant messages. The audience expects updates on the order of seconds and minutes, not hour or days.

During the Macworld keynote, there were dozens of blogs that were engaged in live blogging–some more successful than others. The two leaders were Engadget and Mac Rumors. Both were providing pictures along with the text, and keeping the post updated at least once every few minutes.

However, there was a key difference between the two. Mac Rumors actually implemented an AJAX refresh that updated the post without needing to send an HTML refresh of the page. This served to reduce the bandwidth needed to push out the information to a large audience, and also to reduce the potential wait time to get the information. This made the Mac Rumors live blogging experience to be more fluid and timely.

Using the right tools
The problem is that most blogging software isn’t well suited for live blogging. The blogger needs to continuously edit and save the post, using a potentially clunky interface involving form submissions. A better solution would be a chat-like interface where the blogger simply types in the next bit of news, and the post would be automatically updated in place with a timestamp without the need for a page reload. Mac Rumors probably cooked something up on their own for their AJAX live blogging page.

Live blogging is a great tool for instantly disseminating information. With the addition of comments, live blogging creates a virtual forum in parallel with the unfolding events. In many ways, this is somewhere between static blog posts and IRC. It would be interesting to peruse a whole network of live blogs, where you can peer into events across the world in real time.

I was reading an interesting bit in Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail about how top 10 lists of things that are spread thinly across multiple categories tend to be banal. His primary example is that of top 10 lists of artists from all genres. Any casual reader of such a list would immediately recognize the loss of focus inherent in such a list–it’s simply a jumble of popular artists with barely any depth.

While reading the example, I was reminded of a top 10 contest two of my friends and I played during my years in college. We had decided to create a list of the best songs of all time. We would each come up with 10 songs that we felt would make the list, and we would go down the line and eliminate songs from each others’ lists until we only had 10 left–presumebly, the 10 best.

We were really excited, as if the final list would be a miracle list straight from the heavens.

We quickly went to the task of whittling down the 3 lists. One person would exclaim, “No way that song would ever be on my list. That’s out!” And thus, this went on for another 30 minutes. We all had similar tastes in music, but just different enough to cause arguments of religious proportions. At one point, the two of them threatened to skin my alive if I blackballed Soul Asylum’s Runaway Train.

But, as the number of songs dwindled, we began to notice something. The list was becoming quite familiar. Yes, we had all seen it before. It started to look like a Billboard music chart.

We were horrified. This wasn’t what we had intended. Our tastes are eclectic and niche. The last thing we wanted was a final list that mirrored the pop charts.

The real problem underlying it all was that our tastes were different enough to cause a “graying” of the final list. Combining our tastes into one list resulted in a bland popular songs list, without any artists that delved deeply into a genre.

Just like with our music charts, it’s important to remember that social media and the filters that sift through them need to flexible enough to compare things in a focused genre. It’s much more interesting to see the top 10 horror films that included a clown than it is to see the top 10 hits of the century. By leveraging modern filters and searches, we are at a point where producing such niche lists is just as easy as finding the top hits.

This week will be a quiet week for those not attending CES or Macworld. Most of my colleagues will either be in Las Vegas or in the Moscone Center. This year, I’m not previlaged enough to attend CES.

But, even if you’re one of those unlucky souls not to be at either event, don’t lose hope! These are some of the events of note during this week:

January Ruby Meetup
When: Tuesday, January 9, 2007, 6pm
Where: CNET HQ, 235 2nd St, SF, 1st floor conference rm - “Magma”

Meet with other Ruby and Ruby on Rails enthusiasts for hack sessions and networking.

Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Sweet 16 Party
When: Thursday, January 11, 7pm
Where: 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna Street, SF

All teenagers have big dreams for their sweet 16, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is no different: we want to throw the Best Party Ever, we want a new car, and we want to secure your digital rights.

We’re kidding about the car, but please do join EFF for a birthday bash to celebrate 16 years fighting for your rights. The party will be on January 11, 7-10 PM at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco. DJ Ripley and Kid Kamel…

SFlickr Meet
When: Thursday, January 11, 7pm
Where: Crossroads Cafe, 699 Delancey St, SF

Monthly meeting of San Francisco Flickr users. Meet other Flickr fans, socialize, and show off your latest work or camera gear.

The San Francisco New Technology Meetup will be kicking off the new year with its first meetup tonight. It’ll be good to get back into the swing of Web 2.0 in the new new year.

When:
Wednesday, January 3, 2007, 7:00 PM

Where:
CNET HQ
235 Second Street (between Folsom and Howard)
San Francisco , CA 94105

The companies that will be presenting are:
Podaddies
BizMile Tracker
Zemble
ComicVine

So, if you’re in the area, drop by for some great presentations and, of course, networking.

I hate using the 511.org Trip Planner, which is the only integrated solution for mass transit trip planning in San Francisco. The interface and functionality can be maddening–maps are displayed separately from directions, locations can’t be saved, and the maps are horrible to navigate around in. I always end up using a combination of 511.org and Google Maps in order to fully plan out my trips.

Enter Google Transit, which may be the saviour for people that are tortured daily by mediocre local mass transit planning sites.

The interface for Transit is identical to Maps: you simply type in the origin and destination, and Google calculates the best route. In this case, however, Google assumes that you can use the local transit system. The result are directions to your destination broken out into walking and transit segments.

A nice feature is that Transit allows you to choose between different transit times–for example, you can either choose to board the bus at 1pm, or earlier at 12:30pm. The map and directions update instantly, complete with estimates of walking times.

Google Transit currently works on a few select transit systems, including Portland’s TriMet, Orange County’s OCTA, and Honolulu’s TheBus. I’m definitely going to keep my eye on Transit as it expands to other cities.

And, maybe, I’ll just be rid of 511.org for good.