About

Melanie McBride is a researcher at Ryerson University’s Experiential Design and Gaming Environments (EDGE) lab. See her About page for more information.
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Smartmobs: Bad dataplans killing iPhone adoption in Japan, Canada

By Melanie, on February 28th, 2009

Back in June of 2008, many tech writers speculated that the iPhone might not go big in Japan. For my part, I wondered if philosophical and cultural differences might constitute barriers to adoption. I reasoned that the challenges would be practical as well as aesthetic.

Read the rest of my article at Howard Rheingold’s Smartmobs.

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Web Weekend Vancouver: Magazines get user-centric

By Melanie, on February 25th, 2009

I just returned from another thrilling adventure in innovation at Magazines Canada’s Web Weekend series in Vancouver.

My talk: “The Sharing Revolution, ” outlines key trends, tools and barriers to adoption with social and participatory media approaches. I shared the bill on Sunday with fellow content producer and former Tyee marketing manager Lisa Manfield, [...]

Writing for the Web2.0: Usability is still king

By Melanie, on February 6th, 2009

Since graduating with an English literature degree ten years ago, I’ve made a good part of my living writing web and interactive content. Much of what I learned comes from online journalism practices, web usability via Nielsen and the web style guides I’ve worked with on various projects.

Last year, I put all the [...]

Heading to Web Weekend Vancouver

By Melanie, on February 6th, 2009

Excited to be heading off to Vancouver as a speaker at Magazines Canada’s Web Weekend series for Canadian magazine professionals. This is my second year presenting in the series.

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Web marketing, analytics and metrics for online publishers

By Melanie, on February 4th, 2009

The Google doc above is a very basic Google docs presentation I created to show to my classes and clients. It’s essentially a point form overview of the basic considerations for marketing an online publication – whether it’s a blog or large scale magazine. Remarkably, many publications that have a strong print strategy still [...]

“De-tagging” college students rethinking reputation

By Melanie, on February 1st, 2009

Over the past few years I’ve observed, with great interest, my students’ varying opinions about their identity and behaviour online. And because I teach professional, post-graduate industry courses, I have different expectations of maturity from 20-something university graduates than I would for at-risk teens.  A person in their mid to late twenties, seeking a career [...]