Category — Opinion

Trying to advocate all the opportunities in new media can be a real hazzle. Because more often than not you’re greeted with scepticism, platitudes and downright nastiness.

My guess is that it’s because the people throwing these utterances are feeling threatened, and they try to defend their positions by striking a blow well south of the waist line. In some ways maybe understandable but still something that makes me sigh out loud for all the opportunity being lost. [Read more →]

I remember about 5-6 years ago when mobile SMS premium services started out. There was no limit to the potential, and people setting up gateways were already spending the gold they had yet to collect from charging hapless mobile users endless amounts of micro-amounts for logos, ringtones, jokes etc.

Well, in some markets they succeeded. In others not quite so. And rightly so, I might add. Because it was totally driven with a blatant disregard about real, tangible end user value. A lot of companies died, and that would be the end of it. Apart from the fact that I’m starting to see some of the same with mobile social networking. [Read more →]

For years it hasn’t been much of a secret in Denmark that if the public authorities entered into any kind of IT project, there was every chance of it ending in a big scandal.

Usually it was reserved for large backend systems, but there are signs that it might spill over to internet related projects as well. And when you take a look at the basis on which decisions to invest are apparently made, you stop wondering why it is so. [Read more →]

Normally I am not that much into award shows, but when the invitation says its time to decide on ‘New Media of the Year’ at the Danish New Media Days conference I glance at the nominees in the hope of seeing something there, which I think is truly worthwhile acknowledging.

And each year I’m slightly disappointed. Because I don’t see that one thing among the nominees that have both a very broad appeal and is truly meaningful. So how does it look this year?

[Read more →]

In Denmark there is growing criticism that the authorities spend 37M DKK a year (approx 5M USD) on it’s public health-portal, Sundhed.dk, without that many people actually using what it has to offer.

I completely understand where the sceptics are coming from. When a portal, with the stated purpose of being the one stop solution for health information and services in a country of 5 million people, has less than 20.000 users a day - logged as well as non-logged - you have to wonder, if you could do better, I think. [Read more →]

If you had to start building a media website from scratch tomorrow, which parts would you include? Which would you exclude? And what would be your arguments in both cases?

I ask because a post on precisely this issue by Kevin Anderson has bugged me for a while. And now I wanted to give it a go. [Read more →]