Blog

1. (Un-edible) cookies (with an illogical direction)

If you've not heard the EU directive (and now UK law) that's made the majority of websites in Europe illegal, don't worry. You've got until May 2012 to comply with what is quite possibly one of the most ridiculous laws ever. As of May last year, all European websites have to...

"gain consent for the use of cookies or similar technologies to comply with the law."

Or face a fine of up to half a million pounds. Wonderful!

To explain what a cookie is and why the law is entirely flawed (you can't track that a user has requested your website to not use cookies without using cookies), we thoroughly recommend watching the entertaining video above.

2. Google face a bit of an uproar with Search+

If you've not been following the repercussions of Google's announcement about integrating content from (only) Google+ into search results, it's worth reading through some of the responses.

Ex-TechCrunch boss Michael Arrington writes of how Search+ is reminiscent of Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer with Windows (which led to antritrust lawsuits) in the 90s; Harvard advertising law specialist Ben Edelman writes about the (il)legal implications of Google's initiative and "search engine guru" Danny Sullivan explains what's wrong with Search+. All well worth a read.

3. Goldfish, but not as you think they are

We like fish (if you hadn't noticed) here at Hoop – so when we saw the video above we knew it'd somehow end up on the Hoop blog. Truly amazing stuff from Japanese artist Riusuke Fukahori.

4. Save Herne Hill velodrome

As well as liking fish, you may have noticed us Hoopsters are pretty keen on bikes. When we spotted this post on the Brooks blog, about 91 year old (1948 Olympic medallist) Tommy Godwin returning to Herne Hill velodrome and riding the race-winning bike again we then discovered an audio interview with Tommy on the Guardian travel section. Both are well worth reading!

5. Addicted to the internet

Ever struggled stealing yourself from reading updates on Facebook or staying on top of the latest tweets? According to preliminary research from Chinese scientists; there may be such a thing as 'web addiction'. The sample size is tiny (only 17 addicts sampled) but this research could potentially pave the way for treatment for those of us who just can't get off Facebook.

3. Leap

Geosocial networks – or location-based aspects of established social networks (like Facebook Places) – are becoming increasingly popular. Twitter, Facebook and startups like Foursquare all allow users to share their locations either publicly or with a selection of contacts. But if you're a new startup trying to get noticed in an often crowded field, how do you tempt users into using your service?

The popular answer at the moment seems to be gamification (i.e. turning sharing your location into a game) or monetary rewards (but we'll save that for a later blogpost). Cincinnati's Leap are one of these startups using gamification with their new (mobile first) geosocial network.

Leap lets you create challenges and compete with your Facebook friends. You can create your own challenge or choose one that's popular on Leap and compete with your friends by snapping photos and earning points. From spotting people in your city with Hipster Hunt to making sure you stay healthy with Breakfast Champion, there's a challenge for any group of friends. Just remember: pics or it didn't happen.

Leap's users will (the product is publicly launching in a few weeks) be able to complete tasks, share their locations and climb the Leap leaderboard by sharing photos, via the Leap iOS app; perhaps influenced by the social successes of photo-sharing mobile app Instagram. Users will be able to complete tasks already present on the Leap system or create group tasks for their own social contacts. The startup is hoping to scale its userbase by using Facebook Connect to encourage users to signup, which you can currently do from the Leap website.

Until the app debuts on iTunes, you can follow the Ohio-based startup on Twitter, Facebook and their company blog. We'll be following "the first mobile app for social group challenges" with interest!

We've covered Google's apparent attempts at becoming social at length here on the Hoop blog; but have always been a little suspicious of their true motives. When we discussed Social Search back in October, we concluded the post with the following:

It's the '+1' button that is going to make or break their attempt to become social. Google+ is just a novel way to encourage people to sign up for a Google profile – which then gives Google access to users' social data but more importantly the '+1' in search. A 'truly social' search experience.

On Tuesday, Google Fellow Amrit Singhal (the engineer partly responsible for the algorithms that Google's search engine is based on) published a blog post entitled "Search, plus Your World" – which is summarised below.

• Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
• Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you're close to or might be interested in following; and,
• People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.

Over the next week, Google are rolling out the above three features (which we'll call Search+ for now); all of which result in personalised search results to live search queries. These features will be available to the 40m users with Google+ accounts; producing individual results for each user's query, populated with content from (only) Google+.

On the one hand, the (opt-out) Search+ intiative is wonderful – and will provide Google+ users with truly personalised (and relevant) content from their social circles. It's also worth noting just how much Google appear to be supporting social data. Just think how (much more) useful Google would become if it were to feature content pulled from every one of your social networks! But then on the other hand, Search+ raises some interesting questions.

• As Search+ won't include results from Facebook (which blocks Google from crawling it) and priorities Google+ content over the publicly available results from Twitter, is Search+ anti-competitive?
• Will Search+ cause Facebook and Twitter to open up and allow Google to crawl their non-public content – or simply deepen the animosity between the three companies?
• Will the personalisation of results from the world's most popular search engine (by market share) have consequences on how we discover information?

Facebook has always been a closed platform, denying Google the right to crawl its databases – although some public posts are available to the search engine. But then Facebook and Google have never really been best buddies.

Twitter did have the 'Realtime Search' agreement with Google, where the search engine's crawlers could access tweets and profiles. But then, for some reason, the two companies couldn't see eye to eye when the agreement came for renewal. So it wasn't.

It has been suggested, although this is a long shot, that Search+ is an extremely risky move to get Facebook (and to an extent Twitter) – its serious competitors in social – to open up (to search) or face the same antritrust procedures that are currently being leveled at Google. Given the history, it's extremely unlikely this is going to happen.

So what's wrong with Search+? Yes, it's a little anti-competitive and will probably lead to a slap on the wrist from an antitrust inquiry – but it'll do little to clear the air between Google, Facebook and Twitter. Search+ won't cause Google+'s competitors to open up their databases either. It's Google's focus on personalisation and their departure from delivering relevant and unbiased results to queries that is causing the issue – an issue explained by Eli Pariser in his TED talk below.

Google's job, as one of the best and most popular search engines in the world, is to deliver unbiased, un-prioritised results to its users. Even if those results do include Google's competitors.

By forcing Google+ into the results page and skewing the relevancy of results, Google is ultimately moving away from what made Google successful in the first place.

2. viinyl

The record industry, and to an extent the entertainment industry as a whole, has been having a pretty tough time recently. Various factors, including the internet, have been blamed for the rise in piracy and steep decline in sales – to the point where the American Congress are trying to censure the web using the SOPA and PIPA bills (the video below is well worth watching if you're not up to speed on these two acts).

But, on a more positive note, it seems all is not lost. In 2011, there was a 39.3% increase in vinyl sales with over 3.9m records shifted. Obviously the final nail has yet to be hammered into the record industry coffin.

And it seems there are a multitude of technology startups that are doing their bit to enable the (legal) spread of digital music and its sales. There are too many to mention but; Berlin has SoundCloud, London has Mixcloud, Sweden has Spotify and now Montreal's viinyl have set out to do their bit.

The viinyl platform turns your song into an interactive website – a digital version of the 45rpm single with artwork and videos. viinyl sites are optimized to travel the web, engage fans, grow market demand for your band and increase customer loyalty using marketing techniques for the web.

viinyl currently only allows users to share single tracks or mixes, using SoundCloud, YouTube and Vimeo connectivity; but are planning on rolling out their version of the LP format in the coming weeks. As with the single viinyls, the LP format will focus on the visual artwork of each track and introduce the concept of a "visual playlist".

Each track is given a distinct URL and features large visuals (reminiscent of the artwork found on record sleeves), streaming or download options and artist information/ social links. Users have marketing and analytical tools to track how their tracks do and will also have the ability to search for music by genre and artists in the future.

viinyl may not solve the record industry's problems, but their vision of how the digital world could assist record sales – rather than prevent them – is a great one. It's free (although there will be a paid version once viinyl publicly launches), and it's extremely easy to use. So head over and create your account! Once you start spinning viinyl, you won't look back.

1. Aurasma

If we could summarise 2011 in one word, it would be 'mobile'.

There are few areas as ripe for innovation as the mobile space is – especially as it's estimated that 10% of the world's population now owns a smartphone. Roughly 700m people are walking around with truly personalised PCs in their pockets; a situation which presents many unrivalled opportunities for marketers in the coming months.

We've covered augmented reality on the Hoop blog before in the form of QR codes but reckon Cambridge's Aurasma (from parent company Autonomy, who were recently acquired by HP for $10.2bn) might possibly make all other AR technologies entirely redundant.

Aurasma bridges the gap between print and digital – an area media and technology companies have been trying to fill for years – (and mixes it with a location-based twist) with their IDOL pattern recognition engine. IDOL, which is based on theories from an 18th Century mathematician, is capable of scanning, recognising and combining three dimensional objects with video and/ or other interactive media.

Users can create their own tagged media – which may be why, since May of last year, the free iOS and Android app has been downloaded more than 2m times. Aurasma have also recently launched a new 'augmented reality 3D engine' at 2012's CES, as demoed to TechCrunch EU's Mike Butcher.

We think Aurasma are the first company to truly showcase how powerful the smartphone has become, but also (and possibly more importantly) how much potential mobile devices now have – to anyone willing to use it. Download Aurasma from iTunes and the Android Market now and start creating your own Auras, you'll love it. We do!