Whodeani’s Official Blog

Realtime Search is a project I’ve been developing since March 2009.
 
I have been watching the explosive growth of Social Media, in particular sites like Facebook and Twitter.
 
I noticed that while there were some great sites developed to help people search these vast databases of user generated content, there wasn't something specifically for the Australian market.
 
Enter Realtime Search, a simple site that allows you to search in real time for what Australians are currently saying about any topic.
 
You can visit Realtime Search here.
 
http://www.realtimesearch.com.au

As you can see from the image above, the site is quite basic and currently in 'Beta'. We are already at work on the next major update to the site which all going to plan should go live before the end of June.
 
For now though I was keen to get the basics live and into the Australian online space and see what people think. Good, or bad, all feedback will influence updates and new features on the next version of the site.
 
OK, so what is Realtime Search and why would you use it?
 
Firstly, what it is 'not' is a replacement for Google (or for that matter any of the other search engines operating in the Australian space.) Google, and others like it, are the best place to go when looking for information that isn't time-sensitive, be it company web sites, the official homepage of your favorite band or where you can buy the latest electronic gadget (as examples.)
 
If however you are looking for something more immediate, be it a variety of opinions on the recently released Star Trek movie, the latest news on the Swine Flu outbreak as it happens or what people are saying about 'me', Whodeani :) then Realtime Search is a good place to start.
 
A good example of just how powerful and 'useful' this style of website could be can be found in a fairly significant announcement that was made in Australia earlier today about Telstra, one of Australia's largest companies.
 
Telstra announced earlier today that they have hired a new CEO, David Thodey. As a result social media users here in Australia has been very active.
 
So while traditional news services have done a great job of reporting the actual story, that David Thodey was hired (see the ABC news story here http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2564513.htm) etc... where would you go to see what people are saying about this story 'now' (that is minutes or even seconds ago) as its breaking?
 
See the screen grab below for an example of what people were saying about Telstra shortly after todays announcement (this was taken around 30 minutes ago).

You can see what people are saying 'right now' about Telstra by visiting Realtime Search (http://realtimesearch.com.au/search?q=telstra).
 
The above results are interesting as not only do you get links to the various stories posted on the topic 'as they are published' and other interesting commentary on Telstra in general, you also get to see what people 'think' on todays CEO hiring at Telstra ranging from "Good news that David Thodey is new CEO of Telstra!" to "Why does everyone think the new Telstra CEO is going to be better than the American?"
 
The Realtime Search site is now live in Beta and we of course welcome any feedback, comments (add them below.)
 
As above, the next major update of Realtime Search is due before the end of June. If you would like to keep track of Realtime Search's progress, please 'follow' it @realtimesearch.

You can also follow me, @whodeani on Twitter.

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As you may have noticed from my previous updates, I’ve been very busy of late establishing and developing many varied projects. 

But help has arrived and it couldn’t have been better timing!

Lindy Waldeck (my previous PA at Ansearch Ltd.) has officially started as my EA (Entrepreneur's Assistant) early last week, Tuesday April 14th, 2009.

Lindy will be actively supporting all things Whodeani allowing me to free up some much needed time to venture into new projects and do more with existing projects.

In addition to this I will be working with Lindy to bring to life two very exciting ideas she has bought to the table.

They’re still rather hush hush and in the early developmental stages but she has let me tell you one is a form of travel aid which will probably have you saying “why didn’t i think of that” and the other a funky re-design of the standard wine bottle, that works in a way yet to be seen or heard of.

Both very, very clever ideas.

With Lindy now with us, and the next phase of Whodeani’s development in motion, now is as good a time as ever to provide a quick recap of ‘some’ of the more interesting projects I am working on currently…

Quick Whodeani project re-cap

• My father and I recently launched the Better Sports ‘Golf Guide’, as an iPhone application and the response has been positive. The printed version of the Golf Guide is also now available and we are in the process of preparing the product for retail sale (POS display packaging etc.) Both versions are available on the Better Sports Golf Guide website.
  
• Real Time Search Engine. The Real Time Search Engine (which you may be familiar with from the recent blog post here) is set to go live in a matter of days. I will of course update this blog when the site is launched so stay tuned. 
• Some of you may remember my mention of developing an 'action movie'. It’s been a dream of mine for many years and last year whilst holidaying on Calicoan Island in the Philippines I set myself a deadline to have a script written by the end of 2009. Just recently I returned from a 6 week working retreat in Bali where I was joined by Tim Giles who is co-developing the script with me. The ball is now well and truly rolling. Stay tuned for more exciting updates, maybe even a casting call or better yet casting couch... :)
• Another exciting project nearing completion is a book I am co-writting with two good friends of mine, Richard Mataska and Tim Giles (yes, the same Tim working with me on the movie project.)  We don’t as yet have a title for the book however much of what the book is about has been covered in very basic form in a recent blog post of mine titled ‘The 4 Pillars of Measurable Marketing’. In essence the book will cover anything and everything needed to get more ROI from your businesses online marketing efforts.
  

In addition to the projects mentioned above, Lindy will be helping me bring the Whodeani brand to life including development of the Whodeani logo.

Being that the brand is the essence of me personally and professionally we need to to bring to life a brand that I’m absolutely passionate about.

With considerable research over the past 6 months or so, I now have a very clear idea of how the Whodeani brand will be represented. The design brief is almost completed and I will shortly launch a competition on 99 Designs, as I did previously for 'Real Time Search'.

Following the completion of the logo/branding project, the official Whodeani website will then be set for launch. (Currently www.whodeani.com  houses a basic temporary website.)

So that’s some insight into just a handful of projects circulating within the Whodeani space. Watch this space for further updates.

If you cant wait for the next blog post to learn more about whats happening at Whodeani, feel free to follow us on Twitter. @whodeani.

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A little over a week ago (Saturday March 21st, 2009), I posted a 1 week competition to develop a new logo for a 'Real Time Search' engine that I am currently developing. The prize for this competition was set at $150 USD and would be awarded to the winning entry (only.)

The summary brief for this project follows...

Over the past 3 - 6 months, there has been an explosion in interest in 'social search'... more specifically 'right now' search or 'real time' search.
 
In essence, Real Time search is where the search engine provides search results from what people are saying 'now' about a particular topic as opposed to what was archived by a major search engine yesterday, last week or last month.

I wish to develop a simple (to start with) search engine providing real time search results for Australian users.

All up there were over 100 designs submitted from 31 different designers.
 
As per my previous post on this competition I was not only keen on finding a quick and affordable way to develop a logo for a new project I am developing in the 'Real Time Search' space (called appropriately enough, 'Real Time Search') but I was also keen to use so called 'crowd sourcing', the heir apparent to traditional outsourcing.
 
What was especially attractive about the particular service on offer from 99Designs (http://www.99designs.com) was how their model resolved what was for mine one of the inherent weaknesses of other 'crowd sourcing' models, most notably sites like eLance.

With eLance you post a project on the site and service providers bid for your work.
 
This usually means service providers from all over the world bid against each other to win the job. And by bidding against each other this often means one party undercutting another.
 
The winning service provider is most likely a combination of being cheap (sometimes the cheapest), has a good folio of past work completed, is well established and has good customer feedback.
 
While someone's folio of work, the price they quote you and their aggregated feedback score may point you in the direction of a particular provider, who's to say they will 'get' your particular job and create something as good for you as their previous work that helped you chose working with them in the first place...?
 
So the issue for mine with sites like eLance for creatively driven services, is that you may chose someone that on paper is perfect for what you require yet the work they end up doing for 'you' isn't what you were after.
 
Don't get me wrong, I think eLance is an exceptional resource for many services (and in fact I will be using eLance shortly for some web development) however I think it isn't a good fit for creatively driven services, ie Graphic Design.
 
99Designs' model (and others like it) is for service providers to provide design work for you on spec in a live competition where you, the competition owner can rate and provide feedback on designs developed for you in real time.
 
While admittedly this isn't an ideal process for designers (and there have been many posts from designers up in arms over these sorts of services) it works brilliantly for people requiring basic, easy to brief design work.
 
In my particular case I developed a basic brief and posted it to the 99Designs site Saturday March 21st, 2009.
 
The initial set of designs were very professionally developed but not 'on message'.
 
As the site allows for, I modified the brief to include more of my personal wants and don't wants for the competition. I also provided detailed feedback to the contest as a whole 'and' to individual designers on submitted designs both to weed out those that weren't appropriate and to hopefully have those designs that I liked, improved and re-submitted.
 
This particular part of the process is the knock out punch for these types of services and what really sets them apart from early crowd sourced sites operating in the space.
 
The quality of designs being submitted improved (in my opinion) markedly over the week of the competition as did their appropriateness vs the brief.
 
With 3 days to go I I had narrowed the process down to 3 designs from 3 different designers and was at that stage satisfied that with some further revisions, one of those 3 designs would go on to win the competition.
 
With only 48 hours to go, I had a flood on new designs submitted, including several by a 20 year old designer going by the name of Hagios whom would eventually go on to submit the winning entry (number 75 as shown below.)

All in all, an extremely positive experience and one which I am confident will be even more so with the next competition I post (and there will be many more.)

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