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Happy Spamiversary! Fifteen years ago today, the term "spam" was coined by Joel Furr, referring to an accidental auto-posting of 200 messages to a Usenet group. Today, the term has become so common, it ranks as the second disambiguation on Wikipedia and is estimated to cost Americans more than $13 billion per year (That’s enough to fund the state of Utah).

While spam used to be confined to the world of email, spammers have recently branched out to new frontiers: blogs, social networks, and search engines. It seems that no online garden can stay a spam-free Eden forever (perhaps an inapt metaphor: the apple represented knowledge, not pharmaceuticals).

What all these techniques have in common is that they put practically the entire cost onto the recipient. While direct mail, junk faxes, and robocalls at least have a cost to the sender, all the methods of spam that I discuss here are pretty much free, once you have the system set up for delivery.

More on these new theatres of spam warfare below the fold:

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What happens when you mix technology and design with the biggest names in the web industry, throw in a dash of geek-idol worship, and top it with a few thousand of the smartest and most creative people in the world as the cherry? South by Southwest Interactive, that’s what.

It’s taken me 2 weeks to digest everything I saw, read, heard and experienced, but here’s one designer’s attempt to document my trip down the rabbit hole in Austin.

As a newbie to “South by”, it just took a glance at the session list (five days of pure geek glory) to know this was going to be one wild ride. With the latest in cutting edge design, technology and creative thinking as my goal, I took a deep breath and plunged headlong into the conference, hoping I’d come out the other side of the in one piece. And without a tattoo on my…. But I digress.

I am happy to report not only did I survive the mosh pit (un-inked, thankyouverymuch), but I crowdsurfed my way to a new level of creative enlightenment and passion for this crazy little thing we do called The Web. With huge heart-felt apologies to David Letterman & Jon Stewart respectively, I give you my Beaconfire Top Ten South By Moments of Zen:

10. Bearing witness to the Mark Zuckerberg keynote train wreck heard round TwitterWorld.

9. Nibbling a cheeseburger and laughing myself stupid at the icanhascheezburger panel.

8. While walking through the convention center, meeting someone who reads (and comments on) Beaconfire Wire.

7. Adding up Jim Coudal’s General theory of creative relativity, and learning how organic projects like “Booking Bands” keep their agency creative.

6. Giving my business card to Derek Powazek.

5. Mike Rohde’s interactive sketchnotes.

4. Jared Spool doing magic tricks onstage to highlight the idea of using illusion to simplify designs.

3. Adaptive Path’s fascinating comparison of creative web environments to worlds of theatre, orchestras, restaurant kitchens and screenwriting.
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2. Watching Jeffery Veen and Gary Koepke almost come to blows while debating the eternal question “Do web analytics help or hurt design?”. Oh, and Clement Mok as icing/moderator didn’t hurt.

And my Beaconfire number ONE South By Moment of Zen …

1. Frank Warren’s astounding keynote about PostSecret’s amazing journey from art project to Internet sensation, encouraging everyone to “Free your secrets and become who you are.”

I could go on and on (and on and on and on) with more lessons learned, inspiration found, tales of creative eureka, and large hand gestures trying to explain that really-cool-thing-that-this-amazing-person-did. But I’ll spare you the multimedia interpretative dance version of “What I Did on My South by Southwest Adventure”, and leave you with this one thought.

We all have the best jobs in the world, hands down.

Today’s Washington Post business section included a story about Beaconfire’s company culture -

"[Trading Spaces] was great fun, and we learned a lot about each other," said Lynn Labieniec, one of three partners at the 26-person Arlington Web firm, which focuses on nonprofit groups.

"We want it to be a place they enjoy working at and grow and learn from," Labieniec said.

Read the whole story here. If you’d like to see photos of trading spaces and some of our company outings, check out our Flickr feed.

Call me a Luddite or a libertarian nut, I only share my cell number with those deep in the “inner circle.” Until recently, I had never shared it with a Web property. Until Epicurious.com convinced me the value of sharing was greater than my privacy concerns.

The quick backstory: Our home Internet connection went down. 10 guests coming for dinner in 3 hours. Printed recipe for seared scallops had gone missing. Panic.

A quick search on my Treo yielded dozens of recipes. And every one of the first 7 taps took me to Web sites that were a usability nightmare on my Treo. Even my favorite - Cooks Illustrated - failed my “this is too much of a hassle on my Treo test.” (Ok you iPhone users, no need to comment on that one, I know your gadget is superior!)

Then enter Epicurious. I tap their link on Google, they detect I’m on my mobile, reroute to a WAP version of their site and serve up a simple login screen that fits my window:

Please enter your mobile to unlock your recipes, create a shopping list, search and more.

Hmm. Why do I need to enter my phone number? (more…)

The New York Times has inspired me to coin a new motto:

What Would You Do Offline?

Not though an editorial, a news story, or a blog post, rather they inspired this with their homepage ad usage.

While it’s not present today, earlier this week, and at various times past, their homepage was adorned with a gigantic "Mac vs PC" ad that used both a banner and a skyscraper in tandem. While various people have opined on the ad content, including a much-dugg story on Gizmodo indicating that those weren’t really reviews to several posts praising the creativity of the ads to a post indicating that the ads tend to crash some browsers, I haven’t seen any commentary on with regard to the Times and other publications that ran the ad.

In short, I was amazed that the Times was willing to give up so significant a percentage of their above the fold homepage for this ad - would they really do the same with their offline edition?

I explore this phenomenon, and how it applies to NPOs, below the fold.

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Last week, a whopping 10 Beaconfire employees headed down to New Orleans to learn about how nonprofits are using and can use online technology, and also to connect with others doing work like ours. Here are some of our reactions to the conference:

1. “This year’s NTC had an energy and edge more than any other. The conference reflected the reality that space is changing fast…innovations are popping everywhere and integration isn’t just something to talk about, it’s getting down. It felt very familiar, like 1999 all over but this time smarter, more focused and intentional.” - Michael Cervino
2. “Always a rewarding experience. An interesting spread of perspectives from the most basic to the most advanced.” - Eric Eckl
3. “The major vendors such as Convio and Kintera are making real headway on open APIs since last year’s NTC. And, new products coming on the market seem to know that having an API is an important element of their marketing collateral, even if the API is not really written or just partially written, just waiting for a partner or opportunity to really flesh it out. While the goal of making it easy to connect different systems and exchange data is still far away, it’s encouraging news. On the downside, it’s also clear that the progress on the API front has not helped to answer the fundamental question for nonprofits who experience the pain of siloed data but need to make the case before making the leap: what will it cost me and what are the benefits of integrating my organization’s data? If I invest in a data integration project now, what is the ROI in organizational efficiency and effectiveness? There is much interest in how organizations can better use their data – for example, interpret their web site statistics using Google Analytics or present their data using dashboards and rich media. This year’s NTC confirmed for me that this issue is still relevant and in need of answers.” – Jennifer Stuart Bagnell
4. “Bigger and better than ever. Sessions were solid and many of the speakers were experts in their field. Nice to see more large organizations. I’m continually amazed at the diversity of the nonprofit sector in terms of subjects, size, and maturity of online programs, however they all share a passion you don’t find in other sectors. Great fun.” – Jeff Herron
5. “On the tech side - less buzzwords and more substance. Vendors have begun delivering on their promises of opening up their systems and new start-up products know they can’t compete unless they offer extensive APIs and data exchange components. Unfortunately, non-profits are still struggling to figure out how it applies to them. Next year, look for more real-world examples of how organizations are benefitting from the freedom of owning their data.” - Alan Gallauresi
6. “NPO’s are experimenting more effectively with social networks and how they can be leveraged to further their goals. However, results often are still more qualitative than quantitative, with strategies for success and effective campaign execution still being worked out…Many NPO’s are continuing to leverage the ever-growing, free, and powerful Google tools on the Web (Search, Google Analytics, Google Checkout, Google Sites, etc.) and within the organization (Google Apps, Gmail, Google Calendar, etc.)…More players are ramping up constituent based software that allows for modules to be plugged in and provide integrated features for donations, advocacy, email marketing, fundraising and CRM.” – Mark Leta
7. “In our world of email and IM, it was a great opportunity to connect and put names with faces!” - Kristin Niemi-Gillig
8. “With the rapid advancement of online technology, nonprofit marketing and communications strategies are (or should be) reverting back to basic principles of human communications. With more and more constituent and donor touch points from blogs to mobile advocacy to social networking, successful efforts will be those that are the most simple, tangible, authentic, high quality, and those that empower their supporters by giving them an unfiltered voice to connect and relate to a community. These are some of the concepts we’ll help nonprofits think through.” – Ali Cherry

Since the advent of YouTube, we’ve been advising people that the average user attention span is about 4 minutes, and that making anything longer just means that people will click away.

But this political season has been challenging that assumption, when some of the most viewed videos have been extended speechs of thirty minutes or more.

Are we reaching the turning point for web video where users are willing to watch longer content? Are people willing to reach the Illiad in addition to a haiku? And how do you test the proposition of a long form piece of content versus a shorter one.

I explore these questions below the fold…

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I reneged on my promise to deliver my NTC presentation while juggling chainsaws and swallowing flaming swords. But I did have a PowerPoint! And here it is: The User Generators: What Makes Them Tick.

Thanks for the great questions.

Whenever someone wants to build an accessible Web site, I always try to conceive the design from the simplest elements on up, rather than most complicated pieces on down. That usually means some more intricate components, like a Flash application, are usually out. Yes, I know it’s a generalization. Yes, I know you can make Flash accessible. But it’s not always easy, especially if you’re making more advanced applications. Even the Adobe site gives us caution:”Creating this kind of content may require guidance for novice developers.”

But if you’re not ready to give up your Flash application or your site’s accessibility, you still have some options. But you need to plan for it. You can’t make the Flash application now, and then decide to make it accessible later. And for your more advanced applications, you need a competent Flash developer who will work with you and understand your accessibility needs.

Flash actually offers some elements that make it more accessible than standard HTML web content. Two that are of note:

• Vector images. With vector images, someone with low-vision can zoom in on their screen and the Flash content will remain crisp.
• Key-stroke enabling. You can create interactive Flash applications that do not require mouse interactions.

Using these features, the following tips, and some common sense, you can have your Flash and accessibility too.

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Voting ends tomorrow for NetSquared’s Mashup Challange, a competition to find great mashups for social change. You can sign up and vote for your favorite here and be sure to check out the voter guide (pdf) for more info on the entries.

The twenty projects that win this round will move on to the conference for the final vote; it will be interesting to see which win funding, as well as how many of those that don’t win will be funded independently.

I haven’t had a chance to go through all the entries in detail, but there seem to be a lot of promising choices. Good luck to all who entered!