I will however break this down and give you some feedback for them:

Eyeblaster = Meccano, extremely powerful, can be slightly complicated.
Double-Click = Lego Technic, powerful but simple to use.
FlashTalking = Sticklebricks, if you’re slightly retarded and know nothing about rich media, you can still make a rich media ad.

I think FT have had enough of an ear bashing from me. And last week at Eyeblaster (Mediamind) beta ‘Blocks’ forum i gave them an earful about Workshop, DC have had it fairly easy this year!

But really FT your favourite? come on, you can’t favour an ad server because it’s easy to use, it’s only easy to use if you do really easy stuff which they have templates for. Try and step outside of what they think a rich media ad is.. Then it gets complicated, or should i say custom.. which basically means you’ve found a way to break their platform doing things you can easily do in EB and DC, trust me, i know!

Also it shouldn’t be easy to create rich media ads, it underplays the skill set required to do it. I’ve also spent five years developing these things and can honestly say i find FT the most difficult one to work with, they have everything so tightly sewn up that you can’t breath, they’re like an overbearing mother. Fine if you wanna make a bunch of shit ads and aren’t really familiar with Flash, ie most designers, but if you do know what you doing you can’t beat EB and DC for flexibility, i don’t understand the need for hand holding or help files or pathetic warnings about rich load weights, just give me the API calls and that’s job done, surely??

And if a designer doesn’t understand what an API is or how to use the calls, then give the job to someone who does. You wouldn’t operate a chainsaw unless you knew how, furthermore being handed a butter knife won’t cut it! Which is 90% of ads that FT produce.

and two more i particularly don’t like:

Atlas, never again! what a waste of time, they should shut up shop now, i’ll never work with them again, what is the point of that platform? just so you can preview ads? why bother??

Eyewonder, same thing, never want to work with them again, and they’re full service! either get an MXP and document your API or don’t try and compete!

the stats that you quote I guess also have a different angle, in that 66% of those who succeed fail the next time, a statistic that in isolation would show that success isn’t all it’s cracked up to be either. It’s an interesting article that examined failure in a curious way – it treats failure as a macro level outcome for a business. Failure on a micro level, ie. in a few projects, but success at the macro level is probably the crucial thing here, where you have the opportunity to learn, and then improve as you say, to fight again another day.

At the end of the day, celebrate both success and failure, just don’t make fear of failure something that’s completely negative.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve failed plenty and learned from it every time. But all you really learn is what not to do. You still don’t categorically know you should have done instead.

And contrary to conventional wisdom, it seems that a few bits of research show failure isn’t as great as its made out to be.

Rework by 37signals mentions how a Harvard Business School study found that already-successful entrepreneurs were far more likely to succeed again (a rate of 34%) than entrepreneurs whose companies had been liquidated or gone bankrupt. Learnings from failure seemed to present no advantage with this second group having the same follow-on success rate as first-timers (23%).

Check the article it referenced on the NY Times website at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/business/22proto.html

Instead it makes more sense that you learn from your successes. You can repeat these, you know what worked.

And that’s were I do agree Robin. What’s key is that people take time to try things.

Try it, succeed, and improve on it. And don’t get too hung up on the failures.

I like the idea of a friends list linked to your account. It’s likely that your friends share some common interests, and this could be a fun way of discovering great new apps.

Currently developers are hoping people will share score and achievements via social media sites to promote discovery. While this works to some extent, it takes some balls to post socially as it’s largely out of context to the rest of your conversations. The Farmville feeds backlash on Facebook is tangible.

The diagrams are great, based on Christopher Alexanders diagrams from Notes on the Synthesis of form (which is also great)

It’s really interesting to apply the patterns to non-software development organisation of people in any project.