bmf sticky

Sticky

2011-05-23T12:42:00.002+10:00

Hi all,

as you have no doubt realised, posting has pretty much dried up here. That's not because we haven't found any more cool new to share, but rather that we are moving over to a more 'official' blog as part of the BMF website. This will be launching sometime in the next month or so and i'll post a link here when it does.

Thanks for your interest and look forward to sharing more stickiness with you on the new space soon.

Cheers

The question of reputation

2011-02-23T18:41:00.003+11:00

Insightful post from Techcruch outlining some of the players and positions in what may well turn into the next big battle ground in the socialization of the web: your reputation

The Q&A land rush is on. Quora, of course, has been hyped to the moon, and not without reason. Fortune magazine recently profiled five more Q&A sites, and three new ones just launched: Cloudy, where your friends answer your questions via SMS; InboxQ, Q&A on Twitter; and Setlr¹, which is like Twitter for yes/no questions. Is this a bubble full of copycats doomed to wither into Yahoo Answers Redux? Maybe – but I don’t think so. I think there’s something important going on here, and it’s more than just questions and answers. I think these are the first skirmishes in the reputation wars.

The identity wars are already over. Facebook won, Twitter snagged the silver medal, and OpenID lost. Log In With Facebook and their associated Open Graph have succeeded so thoroughly that Facebook increasingly defines users’ online identities across a whole panoply of sites. But who will define and codify our online reputations? That’s a question whose answer will matter – a lot.

Right now we only have ad-hoc measures to determine online reputations: LinkedIn’s recommendations, Twitter users’ following:followers ratio, third-party influence measurements a la Topsy, and raw friend/follower/connection counts. That last is the crudest and least useful, which is why Facebook itself isn’t really built for reputation measurement. Quora, however, is a serious contender, if they get their PeopleRank algorithm right.

But there’s another massively successful Q&A site out there, one whose reputation measurement already has significant effects: StackOverflow, a problem-solving-for-programmers site cofounded by Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software. While Quora gets all the hype, StackOverflow quietly racks up sixteen million unique visitors a month. It’s by far the most professionally useful site on the Internet. Like many if not most developers, I use it every single workday. One of my complaints about Google is that it should, but doesn’t, catapult StackOverflow into its top five search results for almost every software topic. I like Quora a lot, but if I had to choose between the two, it’d be no choice at all. Quora is interesting; StackOverflow is important.

Lately, though, Joel, his partner Jeff Atwood, and the StackOverflow community have spun off dozens of other Q&A sites under the “StackExchange” umbrella, in an attempt to beat Quora and the like at their own game. And are they ever screwing up. Their policy is to spin off new sites built around themes suggested and approved by their existing community. So what do you get as spinoffs from a coder community? A bunch of StackOverflow subsets for super users, sysadmins, etc., and a hodgepodge of sites focused on photography, mathematics, Apple, video games, board games, role-playing games, and science fiction. Interesting? Sure. Important? Hell, no.

StackOverflow’s killer value is that it’s where people go to solve the problems they’re having at work. That’s a feature that almost all of its spinoff sites completely lack. Having a high StackOverflow reputation is a definite plus, in the software world. I’ve seen it featured on resumes, and it influences hiring decisions. Coders are canaries in the coal mine; in the years to come, members of other fields too will increasingly value their online reputations. But who beyond a vanishingly small minority will care about your reputation on “Atheism”, “Board and Card Games,” or “English Language and Usage,” to pick three new StackExchange sites?

Joel and co. should do more than pander to the enthusiasms of their existing community by letting them vet new sites. That leaves them stranded on a social peninsula only tenuously connected to the rest of the world. Before Quora eats their lunch, they should also try to build Q&A communities – and reputations – focused on other professions: law, sales, etc. (And while they’re at it, they ought to clean up their very Web 1.0 UX, and let people log in with Twitter ~~and Facebook~~ (edit: Correction – they support Facebook logins already. Mea culpa), to make StackExchange reputations easily exportable to other platforms.) It won’t be easy to seed them and spin them up to critical mass, but it’ll be more than worth the pain, and miles better than what they’ve got now. StackExchange could be a real contender, but first they need to change their strategy.

¹Full disclosure: Setlr was incubated by my sometime clients HappyFunCorp.

Thinking Cap Sparks Creativity Via Electrical Current

2011-02-11T18:14:00.001+11:00

Great stuff from Sydney Prof here... via PSFK

February 10, 2011

Scientist Allan Snyder at Australia’s University of Sydney’s Center for the Mind has developed a ‘thinking cap’ that sparks creativity by passing low levels of electrical current to the right, creative half of the brain, while simultaneously suppressing neural activity in the left. Allan said the goal was to suppress habits and opinions gathered through life experiences to help users see problems and situations as they really appear. The device was inspired by accident victims who experienced a sudden surge in creativity after damaging the left half of their brains.

Simple math tests were administered to test the contraption. Out of a sample 60 participants, three times as many people who wore the cap were able to complete the tests.

University of Sydney’s Center for the Mind

[via The Sun

The Psychology of Facebook: Implications for Social Commerce

2011-02-11T17:44:00.001+11:00

Nice post from Paul Mardsen via Social Commerce Today, on the why's of facebook usage

Thinking of using Facebook as a social commerce platform? Then it can help understand the social psychology of the Facebook user. Here are 7 evidence-based insights from recent psychology research into why we do what we do on Facebook (to learn more, check out Jeremy Dean’s wondrous PysBlog – an Aladdin’s Cave of practical insight)

It’s all about ‘Social Capital’, baby: Facebook is used to manage social capital – the power, privilege and possibilities we have by virtue of the social networks we are part of. Ellison et al. (2008) found that Facebook users had higher levels of ‘social capital’ – in other words more ‘friends with benefits’. Social Capital is a BIG concept in understanding social media – more in upcoming posts. How could social commerce help improve the social capital of Facebookers, whilst helping them shop smart with their social intelligence?
The Facebook 7s. Tap into one or more of the 7 core Facebook activities (‘uses and gratifications‘) identified by Joinson (2008). Note: connecting with or buying from brands and businesses is not one of them)
1. Connecting (with People)
2. Participating (Group Behaviour)
3. Sharing (Media)
4. Using (Apps)
5. Updating (Status Updates Sharing/Learning)
6. Surfing (People – Virtual People Watching)
7. Investigating (People – Social Surveillance)
The Disinhibition Effect: Facebook disinhibits people – they say, share and do things they wouldn’t share, say or do in face-to-face situations. Nosko et al. (2010) found that young, single people were particularly likely to disclose sensitive information about themselves. How could you use the ‘disinhibition effect’ to build a revealing social commerce strategy (think blippy)
Beautiful People: Walther et al. (2008) found that attractive friends boosted the perceived attractiveness of participant’s profiles (unlike the contrast effect in real life). Boost the attractiveness of Facebookers by helping them mix with beautiful people.
The magic number of 150: People can manage relationships with 150 people – and Tong et al. (2008) found Facebooker’s social attractiveness peaked at around this number. Help people manage relationships.
Jealousy: Compulsive Facebook usage is a sign that your partner may be a jealous type (see social surveillance above): Muise et al. (2009) found that participants who spent more time on Facebook were more jealous of their partner. Opportunity to build apps that play on partner paranoia?
The Truth is Out There: Strangely, people tend to be honest about themselves on Facebook: Back et al., (2010) found that Facebook profiles generally reflected their owner’s actual rather than idealised selves. Harness honesty in social commerce.

Collective Vigilance

2011-02-07T09:58:00.006+11:00

Great new start-up using crowd sourcing to find those nasty hidden surprises in your bills. I imagine it's quite a challenge for the team to get the platform set up and running, especially for international roll-outs across different banking systems, but some potential for real value-add to end users here.

http://www.billguard.com/

Near field communications - the death of the password?

2011-02-07T09:45:00.004+11:00

Bit slow off the mark with reposting this, but a nice article from Computer World about how near field communication (NFC) enabled devices, like the new Android Nexus (can't wait for them to be released here in OZ), could not only change things like credit cards and micro-payments, but also how we handle secure access to data and services.

How Apple and Google will kill the password
Prediction: Your phone is about to become a universal biometric ID and debit card

By Mike Elgan

January 29, 2011 07:55 AM ET

Computerworld - Imagine sitting down at a public PC, surfing the Web, visiting Facebook, checking your online bank account and buying something on Amazon.com -- all without entering passwords or credit card information.

It gets better. You get up and leave without even logging out. Some shady criminal type sits down at the same PC and finds his attempts at cracking your password foiled at every turn. Your accounts can't be accessed because your phone is no longer on the desk.

It gets better still. Hop in your car and press the "Start" button -- no key necessary. The car knows it's you after you wave your phone over the dashboard, and it adjusts the driver's seat and steering wheel just for you.

On your way to work, you swing by Starbucks to grab a Trenta Iced Cafe Mocha with whip. To pay, you wave your phone over a terminal on the counter, grab your drink and head for work.

Arriving at the office, you sail past security with doors unlocking automatically as you approach them. When you walk into your office, the lights and PC come on auto-magically.

But what's this? While you were out, IT replaced your old-and-busted PC with the latest and greatest. The PC is a blank slate, and it's unaware of your data or settings. No worries. Just drop your phone on the desk, and the system instantly implements your settings and begins downloading your work documents from the cloud.

While all this is happening, a co-worker walks in talking smack about the game yesterday -- and the ill-advised bet you lost. You owe him $10, so you both pull out your phones. You launch an app, type in the number 10, and tap the phones together to transfer the money.

All this has taken place without a single password or credit card.

The magic happens when you can combine a biometric ID system (which uses some kind of scan from a smartphone to verify that you're actually in possession of the device) with a secure short-distance wireless communication technology that other devices (cash registers, PCs etc.) can read.

What's wrong with passwords?

Why do we need a new ID system? Because most users don't create secure passwords, and they can't always remember the ones they create.

On any public system -- like, say, Facebook -- if a hacker tries the 20 most common passwords on enough accounts, he'll eventually break in. Any two-bit suburban script-kiddie can download free software to crack the majority of passwords on a public system within hours.

Many people use a single password for all accounts. Once a hacker gains access to the password, he can wreak havoc, steal your identity, destroy your credit, ruin your relationships and expose your secrets.

Password protection -- or lack thereof -- is the IT industry's dirty little secret. Passwords are a broken and obsolete model, yet everyone relies on them and pretends they do what they're supposed to do.

The obvious password replacement is biometric identification -- the use of a system capable of recognizing unique physical attributes, such as fingerprints, iris patterns or voices.

Far too many people don't trust biometrics because it feels like Big Brother technology. But I believe that if the biometric system resides on the user's cell phone, and is under the user's control, such technology would be far more acceptable to the public.

How Apple will kill passwords

Apple doesn't discuss future product plans, but it appears likely that the company is aggressively pursuing the development of technologies that replace IDs, passwords and credit cards.

Two years ago, Apple was in the news for patenting a range of biometric ID tools for the iPhone, such as a voice recognition system, a retinal scanner that uses the phone's camera or, most likely, a system that uses the screen to scan fingerprints.

Last year, Apple hired an expert in Near Field Communication, or NFC, to head up the company's Mobile Commerce department. NFC is technology that enables the transfer of data over distances of just a few inches -- a model that's far more secure and reliable than, say, Bluetooth. Other inside sources have been quoted as saying that Apple plans to build NFC into the iPhone 5.

Apple has also recently advertised three job openings related to payment platforms and short-range wireless data transfers.

And Apple has been granted NFC-related patents.

Apple is in a unique position to add biometric ID and the short-range communication technology that would make it effective.

Because Apple makes both handheld devices and PCs, it could easily build support into both. And because Apple already maintains one of the largest e-commerce systems in the world -- the various iTunes stores -- it already has most of the infrastructure for payments in place -- and the credit card numbers of millions of customers.

Most important, however, Apple has proved to be the best company in the industry at taking research concepts that have been going nowhere for years and mainstreaming them overnight. It did that with multitouch user interfaces, cell phone videoconferencing and touch tablets. And it could do it with biometrically secured NFC ID and commerce systems.

In other words, all Apple needs to do in order to turn the iPhone into a universal debit card is to add a tiny, inexpensive chip to the device. And all Apple needs to do in order to make the iPhone a universal secure ID is to add a fingerprint scanner to the phone and put another chip in its various desktop systems.

Of course, it could be a while before you can use an iPhone as a universal debit card. It could take Apple some time to establish the partnerships and programs necessary to get every gas station and grocery store to support iTunes. But the password-killing ID card functionality could exist on Apple systems as early as this year, or most likely next year.

How Google will kill passwords

Google, meanwhile, does discuss (some) future plans. CEO Eric Schmidt announced late last year that Android Gingerbread 2.3 and later versions will support NFC at the software level. It's up to Google's hardware partners to build that functionality into Android devices.

Google is already using cell phones to improve security. The company has a universal password log-in that grants admission to most of its many online services, from Gmail to Google Latitude. Google encourages users to associate that single sign-on password with their cell phone number. If someone hacks your Google password, you can get a new password sent to your phone.

The Android platform has also been at the forefront of workable biometric solutions for cell phones. In fact, you can already download Android apps that do face recognition and iris scanning.

What doesn't exist yet is a Google-approved or Google-designed system that ties it all together -- NFC, payment and biometric ID. But with Apple apparently taking the lead when it comes to using a cell phone as a debit card and a universal ID, you can be sure Google will step up and do whatever is necessary to compete.

I believe that it will soon be possible to live without passwords or credit cards. If Apple builds in these capabilities, you can be sure Google will. And if Apple and Google do it, so will all of their competitors.

It won't be easy -- we can look forward to messy standards and privacy battles. But once they ship cell phones that can replace both passwords and credit cards, I think life will be more convenient -- and more secure.

Mike Elgan writes about technology and tech culture. Contact and learn more about Mike at Elgan.com, or subscribe to his free e-mail newsletter, Mike's List.

Slow start to 2011 - but not for facebook

2011-01-28T14:59:00.003+11:00

Hi all and apologies for the hiatus in posting. End of the old year and start of the new have definitely provided more than a few distractions. In any case, back into it now and hoping to be able to provide more frequent Stickyness in 2011.

To get things rolling, here's a couple things that caught my eye this week:

Facebook is making big strides towards having its own economy. With Facebook Credits out of beta and set to become the mandatory currency for all social gaming purchases (Thanks Mashable: http://mashable.com/2011/01/24/facebook-credits-out-of-beta/), and the recent announcement that Facebook is testing a Group Buying scheme using the credits as currency ( http://mashable.com/2011/01/26/facebook-buy-with-friends/), it certainty looks like the site is setting itself up for a transition into a more commercial environment, and one that it pulls all the levers in. Who's taking bets on Facebook Credits being listed as a tradeable currency within 2 years? I've got a case of red on it if there are any takers?

And, the New York times is thinking of creating its own version of Wikileaks (Thanks Cutline: http://yhoo.it/fU3SDA) The ironic nature of the relationship between Wikileaks, Assange and main stream outlets like the NYT aside, this is certainly an interesting development that might not bode well for Wikileaks in the long run, certainty feels like a good move for news. I'm just left wondering about how much we can trust the main stream outlets when it comes handling really explosive info.

Happy weekend

Google launches it's online 'shopping mall'

2010-11-19T12:39:00.000+11:00

With Youtube getting on the shopping band wagon and Facebook launching 'deals' it was only a matter of time before Google also took part in the conversation.

On Wednesday, Google launched Boutiques.com, it's very own online shopping centre. The website is designed to give users a personalised shopping experience allowing you to browse through designers, follow them and be followed. It includes bloggers recommendation pages, celebrity style pages and popular trend pages. Perfect for those who need inspiration to build their wardrobe.

Googles Product Management Director, Munjal Shah wrote:

"It lets you find and discover fashion goods by creating your own curated boutique or through a collection of boutiques curated by taste-makers -- celebrities, stylists, designers and fashion bloggers. These days, bloggers, stylists and everyday fashionistas are expressing their sense of style online. We invited them to create boutiques so people could shop their diverse styles. But you have a unique and independent style too, so Boutiques also lets you build your own personalized boutique and get recommendations of products that match your taste."

The site is set up to let users filter their searches by size, silhouette, patterns and colors. Google also is offering what it's calling "inspirational photos." If a user searches for brown boots, photos will pop up on the right showing brown boots with matching outfits.

However, Boutiques.com is currently only available in the U.S. and only for women's fashion. Google has said that it intends to expand but has yet to state when.

New Google phone a 'virtual wallet'

2010-11-17T11:19:00.002+11:00

A new Google mobile phone which has a chip embedded that makes it a virtual wallet so people can 'tap and pay' is poised to make its debut.

The successor to the internet firm's Nexus One smartphone runs on fresh 'Gingerbread' software and is fitted with what's called a 'near-field communication chip' for financial transactions, according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

"I have here an unannounced product that I carry around with me," Schmidt said while pulling a touch-screen smartphone from a jacket pocket during an on-stage chat at a web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.

"You will be able to take these mobile devices that will be able to do commerce," he said, "essentially, bump for everything and eventually replace credit cards. In the industry it is referred to as tap-and-pay."

The near-field chips store personal data that can be transmitted to readers, such as at a supermarket checkout counter, by tapping a handset on a pad.

Schmidt hid markings that might reveal which company made the mobile phone, and playfully stuck with referring to it only as an unannounced product.

Google worked with Taiwanese electronics titan HTC to make the Nexus One handsets it released in January in a high profile entry into the booming smartphone market.

Nexus One smartphones built on Google's Android platform won rave reviews for their capabilities but weren't a hit with buyers.

Inside Retail

It's all going to be lost

2010-11-12T16:54:00.001+11:00

The internet is almost 20 years old

Just under 30% of the entire population of the earth is hooked into it

All those people have pumped unfathomable amounts of effort and creativity into it… information, content, ideas, tools, services, art, science… you name it, it’s online.

It’s changed our world and how we live our lives by providing a whole new reality and environment

But none of it is real and the thing that amazes and enthralls us today, will have vanished without a trace by tomorrow

Sure various types of data persist, but eventually if someone severs the connection… it’s gone.

The creativity of the past is treasured in galleries and museums, our ancestor’s innovations are resurrected from the earth and marveled at, even the mundane records of our daily lives warrant a more permanent presence… but what of all the online brilliance, creativity and ingenuity? That incredible site, that fantastic new tool, that indispensible new service or community… how can we make the day they are superseded, which they all will be, from also being the day they are lost to history?

That’s why I love this idea: http://www.storyworldwide.com/digital-archaeology/

find something by looking for something else

2010-11-10T10:24:00.003+11:00

Take a great piece of utility like GPS navigation, add a new twist of accidental discovery and you get the genius that is Serendipitor http://www.serendipitor.net/ (Thanks Pop-Up City)

Serendipitor from mark shepard on Vimeo.

And, in case you’re kept awake with nightmares of data sniffers recording what sort of bread your web enabled toaster of the future is going to be serving you, it’s also well worth taking a look at the sentient city survival kit Serendipitor is part of http://survival.sentientcity.net/

Sentient City Survival Kit - Quick Start Guide from mark shepard on Vimeo.

Ted Baker London encourages styling via Twitter

2010-11-10T09:33:00.001+11:00

At 2 p.m. ET on Friday, Ted Baker London will open the first live, Twitter-operated styling studio.

Over a two-hour period, a rotating selection of seven U.S. fashion bloggers will use a live video stream and Twitter (Twitter) to direct hair stylists, makeup artists, runners and models to create a number of different looks from 450 pieces of Ted Baker’s Autumn/Winter 2010 collection. Spectators can follow the styling session, which takes place at Ted Baker’s headquarters in London, live on takeonted.com and on Twitter by following @ted_baker.

Viewers are also encouraged to tweet in their own styling suggestions with the hashtag #takeonted. The best ideas, the company promises, will have a chance of winning a prize.

We think this is a clever promotion to raise awareness of Ted Baker’s clothing line among fashion bloggers and their readers, and is sure to boost the follower count of Ted Baker’s Twitter account, which currently sports a little less than 600 followers, as well. This marks the first big social media promotion we’ve seen from the company.

Lauren Indvik - mashable

A Foursquare For Beer Lovers

2010-11-08T09:54:00.007+11:00

Untappd is basically Foursquare for beer lovers. Rather than checking in at a location per se, you check in with what type of brew you are enjoying. You can also attach the physical location of your hops-flavored concoction.

Untappd is a mobile web app. It works on iOS, Android, webOS and BlackBerry 6.0 and higher. What we really like about Untappd is that despite being a mobile web app, it could easily pass for a native app.

Graphics, animations, pop-up notifications and navigational structure are all akin to what you see in native apps like Foursquare or Gowalla. The app is also quite responsive and can use your location.

Untappd uses Foursquare’s mapping API for business names, which makes checking into specific locations a snap. You can also push your checkin back out to Foursquare. Like other location-based social sites, you can earn special badges based on when you check in, where you check in and what kind of brew you declare as part of your checkin.

What makes Untappd different from just a “Foursquare with beer badges” concept is that you can comment on what beers your friends are drinking. You can link your Facebook and Twitter accounts to find your Untappd friends, see what they are drinking and then comment or toast that drink. The app also shows you beer recommendations and shows a list of what beers are currently trending.

The website for Untappd lets you comment or toast others’ entries and view your checkins and badges. You can’t check in via the website; instead, Untappd wants you to use the mobile experience.

We really like how Untappd integrates with Foursquare for its checkin process, because it makes it easy for Foursquare fans to adopt. You can also choose to post your beer-flavored checkin to Facebook or Twitter.

We love the user interface. Seriously, this is one of the most well-done mobile web apps we’ve seen. We also appreciate how easy it is to check in, search for beers and even add beers to the database of drinks.

As niche social sites go, Untappd is very well executed and offers a good value-addition to an already popular social network.

There is some real potential for Untappd, especially if bars or breweries want to get involved in any sort of location-based deals promotion. How cool would it be to get a listing of happy hour specials or weekly promotions? We think any brand that paired Untappd with happy hours would have something really special.

Christina Warren - Mashable

Use Your Phone Number to Make Online Purchases with paymo

2010-11-08T09:35:00.000+11:00

Online shopping once required a credit card. Boku makes it possible to make purchases online using a mobile phone number instead. Rather than keying in your credit card number, address and security code, all you need to make a purchase using Boku’s payment option, Paymo, is your phone number.

Because the cell phone carriers charge merchants fees as high as 35% for this kind of transaction, Boku started out by exclusively targeting virtual goods. The production cost for such goods is minimal, and therefore their retailers can typically afford the high carrier fees. The company has since expanded to providing its payment option for online services like dating sites and for digital goods like music downloads.

Co-founder Ron Hirson says that the company next aims to expand as a payment method for pay-walled content. Eventually, as carrier rates come down, it aims to be an easy checkout option on ecommerce sites and for frequently purchased physical goods like fast food, coffee and transit.

Boku launched in 2008 when Hirson, Mark Britto and Erich Ringewald — all of whom had founded and sold other companies at this point — acquired mobile payment companies Paymo and Mobillcash. Since then, they’ve raised more than $40 million in three rounds of funding and have partnered with carriers in 64 countries, most recently Brazil and Israel.

While Boku faces competition from companies like Zong, onebip and Fortumo they claim to have the largest reach. Their partnerships with more than 200 carriers gives them access to about 2 billion potential customers. How successful Boku will be at making their payment method an option on more of these 2 billion people’s purchases will depend largely on carrier fees. The high fees that carriers currently charge merchants will unlikely outweigh the convenience that Boku provides its customers.

Partnerships with Vodafone in the UK and AT&T in the U.S. have inched Boku closer to becoming a plausible option for a wider variety of goods by creating higher price points, which allow consumers to make larger purchases and lower carrier fees.

With the company already making about one transaction every second, we’re not making an astounding prediction by betting on its success. Boku was smart to target the global market from the start. There are about 5 billion mobile phones worldwide, and — especially outside of the United States — not all of their owners have credit cards. Enabling these people to make online purchases increases merchants’ potential customer pools.

Boku also takes advantage of three things the world is becoming increasingly obsessed with: online shopping, convenience and secure payments (eBay CEO John Donahoe recently pronounced mobile the safest way to pay online). Although Boku declined to comment on rumors that both Apple and Google (Google) want to acquire it, we understand why they’d be interested.

Sarah Kessler - Mashable

Augment your foraging - technology that helps you find a free feed

2010-11-05T16:22:00.006+11:00

While this application is not about to lead me to a feast of wild strawberries in downtown Sydney just yet, is is a fantastic example of how technology can be used to bring us closer to our natural world rather than take us further away.

Mashing up crowd sourcing and citizen science principles, Boskoi feels like exactly the sort of approach that could help get a screen focused generation back in touch with the world around them. Imagine using AR tech for this and other crowd sourced/citizen science created ways to explore the urban environment, rather than to win a car (no offense MINI Getaway... i love that idea as well)

Here's more details on the application courtesy of The Pop-Up City

Augmented Foraging With Boskoi

By Joop de Boer | Published: Thursday November 4, 2010

Everywhere in the world you can find plenty of remarkable fruits, vegetables, mushrooms and herbs in the wild. Not only in the forests of Africa, but also in metropolitan areas around the world an enormous variety of edible species can be found. Boskoi is a new open source project that aims to unlock the collective knowledge about these edible species and their location. Boskoi is a tool to explore and map the ‘edible landscape’ wherever you are while using your mobile phone.

The app enables users to submit own findings and post these to the map. Additions to Boskoi will be reviewed by an editorial board, considering toxicity, pollution and endangered or rare species. Findings can be reported on the website or through the beta app for Android phones. The team has set up some rules though to respect nature, ownership and health: (1) be friendly (ask permission if ownership is unclear), (2) be generous (how much do you really need? Leave most for others), (3) be alert (beware of toxicity and do not tread on other plants when picking), and (4) be careful (only add locations that are robust and can survive limited foraging).

Boskoi is a project by the Amsterdam-based foragers of Urban Edibles, initiated by research and design collective FoAM and supported by Urbanibalism and Pollinize. The app is based on Ushahidi, an open source platform for mobile phones that people in crisis situations use to report what happens. The app was built for the post-election crisis in Kenya in 2008. Ushahidi was also used to map the catastrophe in Haiti and the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico. For Boskoi “report an incident” is changed to “report a find”. The app aims to highlight what is growing and living in our daily environment as it stresses the quality of the eco system close to the city. The makers of the app found out that the diversity of plants in The Netherlands is higher in the urban than in rural areas. The idea of Boskoi is to develop new networks between people and their living environment through ‘augmented foraging’.

In several countries online mapping networks regarding freely available fruits and vegetables are already running, for instance the Urbana-Champaign Fruit Map. To combine the data collected by all of these ‘sidewalk harvesting’ projects, the initiators of Boskoi are planning to create a ‘Forage Markup Language’ in order to make the knowledge available to everyone. Another future innovation could be a culinary plug-in with special recipes.

Facebook retail 'Deals'

2010-11-05T09:26:00.001+11:00

Facebook has a new offer for users willing to share their locations in status updates: deals from nearby merchants or big-brand marketers such as Starbucks, Gap or McDonald's. Facebook is launching the Deals service with 22 big brand partners -- Starbucks, McDonald's, H&M, and Gap -- and 20,000 small-to-medium-sized businesses can start creating Deals on their Places page inside of Facebook.

The social network announced "Deals," an extension of its Places mobile feature, which allows users to check in at locations such as bars, coffee shops or malls. Users will be able to claim those deals by walking into a merchant and checking in on their phones or other mobile devices, giving marketers the ability to reach consumers and potentially attracting them into a given store.

The new service combines two of the hotter trends in local marketing: location-based check-in services such as Foursquare, and local group deals services such as Groupon or LivingSocial. "There are many changes in mobile, and there's a revolution in the social space," said Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, which has 200 million mobile users. "Mobile is as big as that -- when you combine mobile and social, industries can get disrupted."

But like everything Facebook does, it has the potential of taking a niche phenomenon now exploited by a coterie of small startups and turning it into a mass phenomenon. "While businesses have been able to use other geolocation services to incentivize customers to some extent, Facebook Deals allows global brands to do so at massive scale," said Michael Lazerow, CEO of social marketing firm Buddy Media.

Facebook announced the Deals Platform and another feature called "Single Sign On," which allows users to log into any app on their iPhones and Android phones, eliminating the need for remembering passwords and typing on tiny mobile keypads. There are 550,000 games and applications available on Facebook, and developers can now build the single sign-on into any of them or build new apps with the feature.

Facebook is launching the Deals service with 22 big brand partners -- Starbucks, McDonald's, H&M and Gap -- and 20,000 small- to medium-sized businesses can start creating Deals on their Places page inside of Facebook. Merchants create a Facebook page where there is an option for choosing the kind of deal they would like to offer: individual, loyalty, friends or charity. Individual and loyalty offers are digital
versions of the traditional coupon and loyalty cards, where a customer gets a punch hole for every coffee or sandwich purchased. The friends offer is a strictly Facebook style deal, where if a user checks in his or her friends, they get a discount. The charity deal is where the merchant will donate $1 for each check to a charity.

"The Deals concept solves the long term," said Facebook's director of local, Emily White. "For a long time, merchants have been told to get online. This solves that problem for them and turns the fans into real dollars."

Gap decided to immediately participate in Deals, offering 10,000 pairs of jeans for free to all users who check into one of the 900 Gap stores nationwide. "It's important for us to connect with our customers where they are," said Olivia Doyne, a Gap spokeswoman on hand at the event at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto. "This can be used in so many ways. If a store has too much inventory, we can use Deals for that. We can tailor the deals to our customers' locations."

Facebook does not earn money in the Deals promotions, and Ms. White said this project is very much in a beta state. But inadvertently, by having more businesses create pages on Places and having more people checking into those businesses, there will be a natural increase in Facebook traffic.

Marketers have long seen mobile phones as a powerful means of reaching consumers while they're out shopping or physically close to a given store. "This is continuing Facebook's empowering of small businesses," said Dave Marsey, senior VP of Digitas digital media. "We're gonna see the biggest response with small local businesses that can more directly and electronically manage attracting new customers and rewarding loyal customers."

Mr. Zuckerberg said that, as always, Facebook's focus is to make things better for users. "Whether the deals platform turns into something more commercial, or we choose to monetize something else -- though we have no plans of doing that any time soon -- that works for us too."

The Future of Ad Agencies and Social Media

2010-11-01T11:19:00.001+11:00

To keep up with ever-changing advertising and marketing options, ad agencies are rapidly adopting new strategies and outlooks on how consumers interact with brands. While many ad agencies have been slow to adopt social media, others have been keeping up with the trends quite well.

But keeping up with change is never good enough in this industry; the most successful, game-changing campaigns are generally a bit ahead of the curve. It’s not enough to hitch your star to an existing facet of viral content; you have to create the content yourself. And you can’t wait for mass markets to catch up to new technologies before you begin thinking about how to incorporate new tech into campaigns and creative; you need to test how that tech will work now. Mobile and social ads are no longer new; what’s more interesting now is figuring out how brands can integrate creatively and effectively with location apps and casual games.

We talked with five people who are familiar with the connected worlds of digital media and ad agencies, and here’s what they had to say about the future of social media and advertising.
Software Is the New Medium

Tom Bedecarré is CEO of AKQA, an agency well-regarded for its digital and interactive work, a field in which AKQA specializes; you can see some recent examples of that work on the agency’s Facebook page.

He told us in an e-mail recently, “One of the newest forms of media is not media at all, but software and platforms. Increasingly, AKQA is developing applications and marketing platforms that provide greater utility, entertainment and information to our clients’ customers without relying on traditional media channels. One example of this is the Fiat eco:Drive application we created that allows Fiat drivers to monitor their driving skills and fuel efficiency and helps drivers to lower CO² emissions.”

More and more, agencies will be called on to be (or at least have the capacity to behave as) short-order web and mobile dev shops. You’ll need to make sure your creatives have access to skilled hackers and experienced web designers; you might even consider including a few highly technical, very creative engineers in your creative team, not just as part-time or freelance collaborators.
Groups and Friends: The Power of the Hive Mind

If you want to get inside your clients’ customers’ heads, just take a look at what their friends and peers are doing, saying and buying.

We asked David Armano, Senior Vice President at Edelman Digital, if he thought group or friend buying behavior could be used as a recommendation system for goods and services. His answer was resoundingly affirmative.

“If the numbers behind Groupon’s recent success with The Gap is any indicator, the answer is yes.” For reference, the partnership between the group-buying site and the national retailer completely smashed sales records for both entities with a simple digital coupon.

But group buying is most powerful when combined with sharing across social networks.

“The key,” continued Armano, “is that the group buying activity needs to be be present in your friends’ streams. Combine ‘likes’ with mass purchase behavior, and you’ve got the perfect storm of a signal that says, ‘Your friend got in on the deal, maybe you should too.’”
Transparency Is Still a Long Way Off

Part of the art of selling is the illusion that the company is doing what’s best for the consumer and not for their own bottom line.

We asked Jeremy Toeman, founding partner of San Francisco-based agency Stage Two if he thought online marketing has (or should have) more or less transparency in this regard than traditional marketing.

“This might sound odd,” he began, “but I actually think online marketing has less transparency than traditional does.

“In traditional marketing, your advertising was effectively blatant, from TV/radio/newspaper ad buys to junk mail to billboards on the side of the road. Online companies use tactics like SEO, spam/spam-blogs, pop-ups, text-link-ads, fake viral videos, etc.”

Steve Hall, creator and editor of industry blog Adrants, wrote in 2008 that most of the “viral” videos then (particularly the “guys backflip into jeans” clip that ended up being part of a Levi’s campaign) were, in fact, advertisements. And earlier this year, another tattoo-related fake viral video was discovered to be a marketing gimmick from Ray Ban. Fake virility isn’t limited to YouTube (YouTube); often, we find commercial entities trying to “push” supposedly non-commercial content on platforms such as Digg (Digg), Facebook (Facebook) and Twitter (Twitter).

Of course, consumers don’t figure it out… until they do. And they’re getting more savvy about fake transparency all the time.

Toeman believes brands and agencies should strive for more genuine methods of bringing an advertising message to consumers. “Personally,” he said, “I’d nix all the ‘hide the fact that this is an ad’ tactics completely and eliminate the methods of gaming systems.”

If you need more convincing that labeling ads as ads might be a good thing, consider Old Spice’s recent campaign. Pure creativity and Internet (Internet)-culture awareness drove a YouTube campaign that was very clearly advertising; still, the company’s sales doubled as a result of the YouTube clips.
Location Campaigns Are the New Targeting Mechanism

In the past couple weeks, Foursquare took over Times Square and Facebook launched Places. Clearly, location-based services and related ad campaigns are going to become huge very shortly.

“We’re right at the beginning of an exciting time for the development of location-based services and marketing that integrates geo-location into advertising and applications,” said Bedecarré. “Recent announcements by Facebook and Google (Google) reflect the importance of location services.”

Hall says location-based marketing “will change everything.” He explained:

“With the ability to target people only when they are within purchasing distance, brands will be able to come that much closer to targeting nirvana. Offers can be made only to those meeting certain location (and even demographic) requirements, reducing waste and actually saving a brand a lot of money by minimizing its old school spray-and-pray mass marketing techniques. In a nutshell, mobile will, once and for all, make it possible for a marketer to target without waste.”

Getting your clients thinking now about how to integrate location and checkins into a campaign is key. While we can’t yet construct fully formed campaigns around Facebook Places, there are a slew of other services you can use as case studies for an at-scale campaign.

Starbucks, which does an excellent job in the social media advertising and marketing category, has seen good results from a recent Foursquare (foursquare) campaign, as have many other brands. And they were right to jump on the bandwagon early. Between the intelligence you can gather about your clients’ customers and your ability to find more highly qualified targets than ever before, location is indeed the holy grail for advertisers.
Display Ads Are Evolving

Jesse Thomas runs one of the most forward-thinking creative agencies around, but he’s not ready to pick out a headstone for display ads just yet. However, he did tell us that “the usual suspects” of banner ads and skyscrapers are definitely undergoing a change.

“Facebook’s ads have singlehandedly made ads social,” he wrote to us in an e-mail. “The idea of ‘liking’ an ad is genius… The idea of advertising a Page in Facebook via the Facebook ad engine and being able to access special advertising powers is nothing short of revolutionary. In a world of [expletive] Google text ads, Facebook’s social ads are a breath of fresh air. But we have a long way to go!”

And not all of Google’s ad-buy offerings are as excremental as Thomas thinks the text ads can be. “Google offered the ability to integrate the Facebook checkout (one-click purchase) option to their ads, and that was awesome at the time. You will see more of this in the future: Making ads better by integrating features from other parts of the platform that are no longer cool anymore.”

In other words, display can still be part of your ad buys and collateral, but you have to think creatively, target carefully, measure thoroughly and react accordingly. Use all the tools at your disposal to do so.

Jolie O'Dell for Mashable.

Unlogo

2010-10-26T13:40:00.002+11:00

Thanks Lester for the tip. Interesting AR project that aims at removing specific items from digital reality, rather than adding them. In this case icons from videos

Unlogo Intro from Jeff Crouse on Vimeo.

Debenhams Interactive TV

2010-10-26T11:22:00.001+11:00

Debenhams has launched an interactive TV channel today (Monday) to attract new customers by offering fashion and beauty advice, alongside the opportunity to buy.

Debenhams TV, which is available on Debenhams.com, Youtube and Debenhams’ iPhone app, includes interviews with top designers such as Ben de Lisi, Henry Holland and Matthew Williamson and expert fashion advice. There is also a ‘how-to’ focus with online fashion workshops and beauty lessons.

The station is expected to generate 1.5 million views in its first week. Customers can purchase products using a click-to-buy feature as they watch.

Menswear shows on the channel will feature exclusive footage from the launch of Debenhams latest brand, FFP, and other behind-the-scenes footage and interviews from photo shoots, fashion shows and launches.

Debenhams said it hopes to “attract the attention” of shoppers who might not already be using Debenhams.com.

Debenhams online trading director Simon Forster said: “Our online TV channel is a brilliant way for our customers to get style and beauty advice, see the latest fashions and just be entertained. You can see it on our website, through our iPhone app, on Youtube and coming soon – in our stores.”

Retail Week

Brand Campaigns Drive Most Social Media Following

2010-10-19T18:45:00.003+11:00

Nice insight... Cheers Brian. Via eMarketer

OCTOBER 18, 2010
Three-quarters of Facebook fans have signed up with pages after invitations or ads from brands

Research on social media users who follow brands has shown marketers the importance of offering deals and discounts on Facebook fan pages as well as the nature of brand following as a form of self-expression, through which advocates can show support for a company they love. But what triggers Facebook users to “like” a brand is typically some form of outreach.

Most commonly, that outreach comes from the brand itself. Three-quarters of Facebook users worldwide who had “liked” a brand told DDB Worldwide and Opinionway Research in September 2010 that they had been spurred to do so by an invitation or advertising from the brand they followed. More than half had also followed a brand based on an invitation from a friend. Many of those invitations are likely a secondary form of brand outreach as well, as marketers encourage current followers to become brand advocates on their behalf.

Only about half of all Facebook brand fans ended up following brands after their own research, making action by marketers critical in building up a following on social sites even though most users already know and like the brands they become fans of.

The effort brands must put into amassing fans doesn’t stop there, of course. While the top reason former fans gave for unsubscribing from Facebook pages was waning interest in the brand, complaints about the information offered on fan pages were also a major factor. Posting too often or posting uninteresting information, taken together, turned off nearly half of respondents.

“Unsubscribers, at 36%, are something to watch out for. And though the majority of fans now unsubscribe by deleting a brand from their friends list, brands, when trying to measure the value of their community, are going to need to be more mindful of those who just hide the brand's message in their newsfeed," said Catherine Lautier, director of business intelligence at DDB, in a statement.

Keep your business ahead of the digital curve. Learn more about becoming an eMarketer Total Access client today.

Check out today’s other article, “Online Video Big Draw on Health Sites for Marketers and Consumers.”

Jay-Z: Decoded Campaign

2010-10-19T12:24:00.003+11:00

Great project from Droga for Jay-Z. Via creativity

Niche focused, technology restricted (Silverlight required) and expecting a lot of effort from participants… all strategically sound based on a clear understanding of the audience and the subject matter.

Provides a really good example how we can integrate digital technology with the offline environment to influence and motivate real people to do real things in the real world. Which in this case are then tied back to further interactions in the online experience, then back offline, then online, etc ,etc … fantastic. Just wish i liked Jay-Z then i'd be into it!

Jay-Z spreads himself all over the map.

Droga5 New York goes all out in its launch of Jay-Z's upcoming memoir Decoded with a massive multiplatform campaign that takes every page of the book and brings it back to its birthplace, literally. The book, published out of Random House imprint Spiegel and Grau, is set to release on November 16. Until then, the campaign will recreate each book page on a traditional outdoor, or not so conventional space—think billboard, the lining of a suit, or bottom of a pool—all of it relevant to where the contents of each page originally took place.

"We've made canvases out of some pretty extraordinary places," says Droga5 Creative Chairman David Droga. "We've turned everything into outdoor—350 pages are outdoor and another 100 and 150 are things that money can't buy." The latter will involve some familiar other big names, which at press time Droga could not disclose. "A lot of other big global brands and icons have stepped up to turn themselves into canvases," he says.

"We're trying to do something that's consistent with the Jay-Z brand," Droga explains. "He does all these incredibly bold things in the music industry. He wants to do the same thing to the publishing industry. What's bolder than putting every single page of your book out in the real world, so if someone wanted to read it or discover it, they don't have to buy the book? He's so confident that the story's compelling, the reader will get so caught up in looking at this that they'll want to buy the book."

But fans need not be as jet-setting as Jay-Z to see each execution. A partnership with Bing maps gives the audience a chance to search for each page online via a scavenger hunt, which will provide daily clues to each of the various page locations. "I'd seen that Bing maps presentation from TED, which was extraordinary, and thought, Imagine if we could lay that over the top and suddenly you've got something that's global," says Droga. "You could be sitting in Arkansas and you could walk in the streets of Brooklyn." The agency had been in talks over the last year and a half with Bing to do a nontraditional promotion and finally found an opportunity when the book project came up.

The thrill of the search and book pages aren't the game's only rewards, however. The First players to find a page get a hard copy of the book with that page signed by the artist himself, and all will get thrown into a draw for the grand prize, a ticket to see Jay-Z and Coldplay in concert on New Year's in Vegas.

Edge Shave Gel Uses Twitter for Random Acts of Kindness

2010-10-15T17:55:00.003+11:00

Great idea... that's actually being followed through. Via Adage

From Football Tickets to Megaphones, 'Anti-Irritation' Platform Grows

By Jack Neff
Published: October 14, 2010

ORLANDO, Fla. (AdAge.com) -- When a New England Patriots fan last month was irritated at his inability to get tickets to a game against the New York Jets, he tweeted his issues to the Edge shaving gel brand.

Edge has created an 'anti-irritation community' at its website EdgeShaveZone.com.

Within days, the fan, Matthew DeCoste, an interactive designer at Euro RSCG, New York, had tickets to the game as part of an "anti-irritation" campaign in which the Energizer Holdings brand is seeking to soothe some of the many gripes lodged in social media.

Mr. DeCoste had heard of the promotion from a friend at a time when Edge was giving out iTunes and Starbucks gift cards, and he thought he'd try upping the ante, he said in an email.

Of course, Edge can't solve every problem. Mr. DeCoste, who said he got tickets 20 rows back in the end zone, tweeted friends jokingly about the goal post blocking his view. "As the game started getting away from the Pats, I was getting text messages from the same Jets fans about the train schedule back to Manhattan in case I wanted to leave the game early," he said. "So, that was kind of irritating. That being said, I'm still appreciative."

Via its @EdgeShaveZone Twitter handle and #soirritating hashtag, Edge is slowly developing a following of gripers like Mr. DeCoste as part of a long-term campaign with big aspirations to own the position of irritation prevention.

Jeffrey Wolf, Edge's senior brand manager, terms it "the anti-irritation platform," which started last month via Edelman. It included releasing a ranking of the 50 most-irritated U.S. cities (Atlanta was first, thanks largely to traffic) and the Twitter campaign, which is backed by promoted tweets and e-cards to brand fans. Edge also has an "anti-irritation community" at its website, EdgeShaveZone.com.

Ultimately, the brand has bigger things in store for the effort, including as-yet undisclosed work coming later this year under development by WPP's JWT, New York, promo shop Ryan Partnership and media shop MEC.

The social-media effort has started slowly, with still fewer than 900 followers since it launched last month. But the following is likely to swell once more of the Twitterverse, a veritable cauldron of gripes, catches on to the chance of getting problems solved by adding the #soirritating hashtag in a sweepstakes for the social-media age.

Edge last month also sent a megaphone to a University of Alabama professor who said her husband wasn't listening to her and a Blu-ray disc player and the movie "Office Space" on DVD to ease the irritation of an employee annoyed by a coworker.

A few irritations are harder to tackle, such as recent ones about a neighbor's barking dog, a UPS package stolen from a porch, a ham-handed blood drawer, high Ticketmaster fees and a "power-mad boss" who's made employees cry for eight straight days.

Mr. Wolf is part of a panel of Energizer and Edelman employees who review the irritations and then decide which to address and how.

He's not sure what tangible effect the effort has had on brand sales just yet, but notes that it's part of a shift from a heavy focus on promotion under former Edge owner SC Johnson to more brand-equity-building activity since Energizer bought it last year. Energizer and Edge have continued to gain share in shave preparations since the sale (up 5.1 points for the four weeks ended Sept. 5, thanks in part to sibling Schick entering the fray earlier this year, but despite a new push by rival Procter & Gamble Co.'s Gillette Fusion ProSeries products).

"What I'm most encouraged about is where we're going to take this brand moving forward with this robust campaign we'll roll out within the next year," Mr. Wolf said.

Edge led the category with the introduction of shave gels 40 years ago, he said. "What I'm hoping to do with this brand is be the innovator or thought starter in marketing communications as well."

Boomers -- Yes, Boomers -- Spend the Most on Tech

2010-10-11T10:12:00.002+11:00

Nice piece from Adage revealing the real age of the technophiles amongst us

Due to Broad Demographic Grouping Problems, Biggest Misconception About Group Is That They're All the Same

by Beth Snyder Bulik
Published: October 11, 2010

YORK, Pa. (AdAge.com) -- Marilynn Mobley has a desktop at work, a laptop at home, a netbook for travel, an Android smartphone and just last week she bought an iPad. She time shifts all her TV viewing using DVRs and enjoys watching Blu-ray movies at home. She's also 63 years old.

Tech Use

"The misconception that boomers do not appreciate tech crosses all generations. I've heard it from fellow baby boomers who say, 'Wow, you're so into technology,' and on down to 20-year-olds who are also surprised," said Ms. Mobley, a strategic counselor for Edelman in its Boomer Insights Generation Group.

However, she's not nearly as unusual as the media portrays. Boomers are almost as likely as Gen X and Gen Y to own computers, access the internet daily, own mobile phones, DVRs, digital cameras and GPS systems. And while boomers do trail in areas such as early adoption of new devices and services, many of those generation gaps are closing.

"It's actually a myth that baby boomers aren't into technology. They represent 25% of the population, but they consume 40% [in total dollars spent] of it," said Patricia McDonough, senior VP-analysis at Nielsen Co.

In fact, spending on technology is one area where boomers are ahead of their younger counterparts. The 46- to 64-year-old group now spends more money on technology than any other demographic, according to Forrester Research's annual benchmark tech study. That includes monthly telecom fees, gadget and device spending, and overall online purchases. They averaged around $650 spent in online shopping vs. Gen X ($581) and Gen Y ($429) over a three-month period.

And adoption rates of the tech areas where they do lag are soaring. In 2000, baby boomers made up 28% of the internet population and accounted for just 24% of the traffic on a typical day, according to Pew Internet & American Life Project data. But by 2010, those percentages had climbed to 34% of the internet population and 32% of all traffic. Ten years ago, only a quarter of boomers went online every day; in 2010 that number jumped to 70%.

Among 50- to 64-year-olds, social-media usage grew by 88% from April 2009 to May 2010, up from 25% to 47% of all users in that age group, according to Pew Internet. And one in five of them now use social media every day, up from one in 10 last year.

Along with the timeless youth platitude that "old people just don't get it," the misconceptions about boomers and technology incompetence may also be a demographic grouping problem.

The age range in many market-research surveys and studies, for instance, often puts the oldest demographic group at 50 and older. However, Robert DiLallo, director of Grandparent Marketing Group, New York, said that designation is too broad.

"People who are 65 and older were at the tail end of their careers when the real tech revolution began and did not get introduced to the internet that way," he said. "I'm 60 years old, but I'm no more like a 70-year-old in my tech use than I am an 18-year-old."

THE FACE OF TECH CONSUMPTION: Edelman strategic counselor Marilynn Mobley

Forrester's research, for instance, found that among seniors ages 66 and older only 67% owned cellphones. However, 84% of young boomers ages 45 to 54 and 80% of older boomers ages 55 to 64 owned cellphones.

Boomers also use their phones for more than calling, vs. seniors. According to Deloitte's annual media research, 66% of boomers send text messages, trailing Gen X-ers at 80% and millennials at 88%, but way ahead of the 28% of matures (64-plus) who text. Another 37% of boomers have accessed the internet by phone, just behind Gen X at 42% and millennials at 55%, but again ahead of matures at 20%.

Grandparent Marketing Group research notes that the boomer generation and millennials are strikingly similar demographic groups. Both number around 80 million and both grew up in some of the U.S.'s most prosperous eras ('50s/'60s and the '90s).

So it should be no surprise that boomers' internet behavior is more similar to millennials, according to Pew research. Both groups overwhelmingly use email (91% of boomers/94% of millennials), search engines (88%/89%), research health information (78%/85%), get news (74%/83%) and check out online ratings (30%/31%).

The key for marketers to reach boomers is not to dismiss technology as irrelevant to them, but rather to figure out what technology they prefer.

"Which platforms resonate with which demographic?" said Ed Moran, Deloitte director of insights and innovation. "Take gaming for example. For male mature users aged 60 to 75, the PC is the preferred platform, while for the under-15 age group, it's consoles or the iPhone."

Ms. Mobley concurred: "I think the biggest difference in the way boomers use technology vs. the younger generations is that we tend to see it as a way to get something done -- whether that's something at work or staying in touch with friends and family. Gen X and especially Gen Y just see it as a part of life."

Game mechanics

2010-09-29T09:15:00.002+10:00

Had this sitting in an open tab for so long that i figured i better share it one day. i've found this small, game engagement mechanics come in handy when articulating how i see interaction working. Enjoy

Thanks Tech Crunch and SCVNGR

SCVNGR’s Secret Game Mechanics Playdeck

Erick Schonfeld Aug 25, 2010

Some companies keep a playbook of product tips, tricks and trade secrets. Zynga has an internal playbook, for instance, that is a collection of “concepts, techniques, know-how and best practices for developing successful and distinctive social games”. Zynga’s playbook has entered the realm of legend and was even the subject of a lawsuit.

SCVNGR, which makes a mobile game with real-world challenges, has a playdeck. It is a deck of cards listing nearly 50 different game mechanics that can be mixed and matched to create the foundation for different types of games. I’ve republished the accompanying document below, which should be interesting to anybody trying to inject a gaming dimension into their products.

Rght now, that should be a lot of people. Every six months or so, a set of features sweeps across the Web and every site and app feels the pressure to adopt it. We’ve seen this with social, geo, and now game mechanics. Of course, all games on the Web have some sort of game mechanics—those elements of game play which make them fun and addictive. But game mechanics are spreading to all kinds of apps, most famously Foursquare (which makes you check into places for badges and rewards). At our Social Currency CrunchUp in July, we had a panel which explored how game mechanics are invading everything. (One of the CEOs on the panel was SCVNGR’s Seth Priebatsch). Every site from Mint to the Huffington Post now has some sort of game mechanics.

SCVNGR’s playdeck tries to break down the game mechanics into their constituent parts. Some elements are as basic as “achievements,” “status,” and “virtual items.” But there are also more complex ones such as the “appointment dynamic” (a player must return at a specific time and perform an action to get a reward, like in Farmville), “free lunch” (a player gets something because of the efforts of other people,like in Groupon), “fun once, fun always” (a simple action that maintains a minimum level of enjoyment no matter how many times you do it, like Foursquare’s check-ins), and “cascading information theory (give out information in the smallest dribblets possible to keep players guessing and moving forward). SCVNGR employees are instructed to memorize the flash cards. Now you can too. There will be a quiz.

SCVNGR Game Dynamics Playdeck

Guide To This Document: This list is a collection of game dynamics terms, game dynamics theories that are interesting, useful and potentially applicable to your work here at SCVNGR. Many of them have clear applications within the SCVNGR game layer (progression dynamic, actualization), many of them don’t… yet (status, virtual items). Many of them are just interesting for your general education on game dynamics theory (epic meaning, social fabric of games). Many of these game dynamics concepts are well known and are sourced from all over the internet and from researchers such as Jane McGonigal, Ian Bogost and Jess Schell and articles on gamasutra (which I highly recommend reading). Others are used exclusively internally here and won’t make any sense outside of HQ. Along with a link to this document, you will have received these dynamics in a set of flash cards. Please memorize those. If you’re on the engineering / game-design team you can access our internal game dynamics visualizer (with the most up to date dynamics) through your account. Download the SCVNGR app for iPhone& Android (if you haven’t already) and start playing. Find places where these game dynamics exist or places where you could implement them by building on the game layer using our tools, or others.

1. Achievement

Definition: A virtual or physical representation of having accomplished something. These are often viewed as rewards in and of themselves.

Example: a badge, a level, a reward, points, really anything defined as a reward can be a reward.

2. Appointment Dynamic

Definition: A dynamic in which to succeed, one must return at a predefined time to take some action. Appointment dynamics are often deeply related to interval based reward schedules or avoidance dyanmics.

Example: Cafe World and Farmville where if you return at a set time to do something you get something good, and if you don’t something bad happens.

3. Avoidance

Definition: The act of inducing player behavior not by giving a reward, but by not instituting a punishment. Produces consistent level of activity, timed around the schedule.

Example: Press a lever every 30 seconds to not get shocked.

4. Behavioral Contrast

Definition: The theory defining how behavior can shift greatly based on changed expectations.

Example: A monkey presses a lever and is given lettuce. The monkey is happy and continues to press the lever. Then it gets a grape one time. The monkey is delighted. The next time it presses the lever it gets lettuce again. Rather than being happy, as it was before, it goes ballistic throwing the lettuce at the experimenter. (In some experiments, a second monkey is placed in the cage, but tied to a rope so it can’t access the lettuce or lever. After the grape reward is removed, the first monkey beats up the second monkey even though it obviously had nothing to do with the removal. The anger is truly irrational.)

5. Behavioral Momentum

Definition: The tendency of players to keep doing what they have been doing.

Example: From Jesse Schell’s awesome Dice talk: “I have spent ten hours playing Farmville. I am a smart person and wouldn’t spend 10 hours on something unless it was useful. Therefore this must be useful, so I can keep doing it.”

6. Blissful Productivity

Definition: The idea that playing in a game makes you happier working hard, than you would be relaxing. Essentially, we’re optimized as human beings by working hard, and doing meaningful and rewarding work.

Example: From Jane McGonical’s Ted Talk wherein she discusses how World of Warcraft players play on average 22 hours / week (a part time job), often after a full days work. They’re willing to work hard, perhaps harder than in real life, because of their blissful productivity in the game world.

7. Cascading Information Theory

Definition: The theory that information should be released in the minimum possible snippets to gain the appropriate level of understanding at each point during a game narrative.

Example: showing basic actions first, unlocking more as you progress through levels. Making building on SCVNGR a simple but staged process to avoid information overload.

8. Chain Schedules

Definition: the practice of linking a reward to a series of contingencies. Players tend to treat these as simply the individual contingencies. Unlocking one step in the contingency is often viewed as an individual reward by the player.

Example: Kill 10 orcs to get into the dragons cave, every 30 minutes the dragon appears.

9. Communal Discovery

Definition: The game dynamic wherein an entire community is rallied to work together to solve a riddle, a problem or a challenge. Immensely viral and very fun.

Example: DARPA balloon challenge, the cottage industries that appear around McDonalds monopoly to find “Boardwalk”

10. Companion Gaming

Definition: Games that can be played across multiple platforms

Example: Games that be played on iphone, facebook, xbox with completely seamless cross platform gameplay.

11. Contingency

Definition: The problem that the player must overcome in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.

Example: 10 orcs block your path

12. Countdown

Definition: The dynamic in which players are only given a certain amount of time to do something. This will create an activity graph that causes increased initial activity increasing frenetically until time runs out, which is a forced extinction.

Example: Bejeweled Blitz with 30 seconds to get as many points as you can. Bonus rounds. Timed levels

13. Cross Situational Leader-boards

Definition: This occurs when one ranking mechanism is applied across multiple (unequal and isolated) gaming scenarios. Players often perceive that these ranking scenarios are unfair as not all players were presented with an “equal” opportunity to win.

Example: Players are arbitrarily sent into one of three paths. The winner is determined by the top scorer overall (i.e. across the paths). Since the players can only do one path (and can’t pick), they will perceive inequity in the game scenario and get upset.

14. Disincentives

Definition: a game element that uses a penalty (or altered situation) to induce behavioral shift

Example: losing health points, amazon’s checkout line removing all links to tunnel the buyer to purchase, speeding traps

15. Endless Games

Definition: Games that do not have an explicit end. Most applicable to casual games that can refresh their content or games where a static (but positive) state is a reward of its own.

Example: Farmville (static state is its own victory), SCVNGR (challenges constantly are being built by the community to refresh content)

16. Envy

Definition: The desire to have what others have. In order for this to be effective seeing what other people have (voyeurism) must be employed.

Example: my friend has this item and I want it!

17. Epic Meaning

Definition: players will be highly motivated if they believe they are working to achieve something great, something awe-inspiring, something bigger than themselves.

Example: From Jane McGonical’s Ted Talk where she discusses Warcraft’s ongoing story line and “epic meaning” that involves each individual has motivated players to participate outside the game and create the second largest wiki in the world to help them achieve their individual quests and collectively their epic meanings.

18. Extinction

Definition: Extinction is the term used to refer to the action of stopping providing a reward. This tends to create anger in players as they feel betrayed by no longer receiving the reward they have come to expect. It generally induces negative behavioral momentum.

Example: killing 10 orcs no longer gets you a level up

19. Fixed Interval Reward Schedules

Definition: Fixed interval schedules provide a reward after a fixed amount of time, say 30 minutes. This tends to create a low engagement after a reward, and then gradually increasing activity until a reward is given, followed by another lull in engagement.

Example: Farmville, wait 30 minutes, crops have appeared

20. Fixed Ratio Reward Schedule

Definition: A fixed ratio schedule provides rewards after a fixed number of actions. This creates cyclical nadirs of engagement (because the first action will not create any reward so incentive is low) and then bursts of activity as the reward gets closer and closer.

Example: kill 20 ships, get a level up, visit five locations, get a badge

21. Free Lunch

Definition: A dynamic in which a player feels that they are getting something for free due to someone else having done work. It’s critical that work is perceived to have been done (just not by the player in question) to avoid breaching trust in the scenario. The player must feel that they’ve “lucked” into something.

Example: Groupon. By virtue of 100 other people having bought the deal, you get it for cheap. There is no sketchiness b/c you recognize work has been done (100 people are spending money) but you yourself didn’t have to do it.

22. Fun Once, Fun Always

Definition: The concept that an action in enjoyable to repeat all the time. Generally this has to do with simple actions. There is often also a limitation to the total level of enjoyment of the action.

Example: the theory behind the check-in everywhere and the check-in and the default challenges on SCVNGR.

23. Interval Reward Schedules

Definition: Interval based reward schedules provide a reward after a certain amount of time. There are two flavors: variable and fixed.

Example: wait N minutes, collect rent

24. Lottery

Definition: A game dynamic in which the winner is determined solely by chance. This creates a high level of anticipation. The fairness is often suspect, however winners will generally continue to play indefinitely while losers will quickly abandon the game, despite the random nature of the distinction between the two.

Example: many forms of gambling, scratch tickets.

25. Loyalty

Definition: The concept of feeling a positive sustained connection to an entity leading to a feeling of partial ownership. Often reinforced with a visual representation.

Example: fealty in WOW, achieving status at physical places (mayorship, being on the wall of favorite customers)

26. Meta Game

Definition: a game which exists layered within another game. These generally are discovered rather than explained (lest they cause confusion) and tend to appeal to ~2% of the total gameplaying audience. They are dangerous as they can induce confusion (if made too overt) but are powerful as they’re greatly satisfying to those who find them.

Example: hidden questions / achievements within world of warcraft that require you to do special (and hard to discover) activities as you go through other quests

27. Micro Leader-boards

Definition: The rankings of all individuals in a micro-set. Often great for distributed game dynamics where you want many micro-competitions or desire to induce loyalty.

Example: Be the top scorers at Joe’s bar this week and get a free appetizer

28. Modifiers

Definition: An item that when used affects other actions. Generally modifiers are earned after having completed a series of challenges or core functions.

Example: A X2 modifier that doubles the points on the next action you take.

29. Moral Hazard of Game Play

Definition: The risk that by rewarding people manipulatively in a game you remove the actual moral value of the action and replace it with an ersatz game-based reward. The risk that by providing too many incentives to take an action, the incentive of actually enjoying the action taken is lost. The corollary to this is that if the points or rewards are taken away, then the person loses all motivation to take the (initially fun on its own) action.

Example: Paraphrased from Jesse Schell “If I give you points every time you brush your teeth, you’ll stop brushing your teeth b/c it’s good for you and then only do it for the points. If the points stop flowing, your teeth will decay.”

30. Ownership

Definition: The act of controlling something, having it be *your* property.

Example: Ownership is interesting on a number of levels, from taking over places, to controlling a slot, to simply owning popularity by having a digital representation of many friends.

31. Pride

Definition: the feeling of ownership and joy at an accomplishment

Example: I have ten badges. I own them. They are mine. There are many like them, but these are mine. Hooray.

32. Privacy

Definition: The concept that certain information is private, not for public distribution. This can be a demotivator (I won’t take an action because I don’t want to share this) or a motivator (by sharing this I reinforce my own actions).

Example: Scales the publish your daily weight onto Twitter (these are real and are proven positive motivator for staying on your diet). Or having your location publicly broadcast anytime you do anything (which is invasive and can should be avoided).

33. Progression Dynamic

Definition: a dynamic in which success is granularly displayed and measured through the process of completing itemized tasks.

Example: a progress bar, leveling up from paladin level 1 to paladin level 60

34. Ratio Reward Schedules

Definition: Ratio schedules provide a reward after a number of actions. There are two flavors: variable and fixed.

Example: kill 10 orcs, get a power up.

35. Real-time v. Delayed Mechanics

Definition: Realtime information flow is uninhibited by delay. Delayed information is only released after a certain interval.

Example: Realtime scores cause instant reaction (gratification or demotivation). Delayed causes ambiguity which can incent more action due to the lack of certainty of ranking.

36. Reinforcer

Definition: The reward given if the expected action is carried out in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.

Example: receiving a level up after killing 10 orcs.

37. Response

Definition: The expected action from the player in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.

Example: the player takes the action to kill 10 orcs

38. Reward Schedules

Definition: the timeframe and delivery mechanisms through which rewards (points, prizes, level ups) are delivered. Three main parts exist in a reward schedule; contingency, response and reinforcer.

Example: getting a level up for killing 10 orcs, clearing a row in Tetris, getting fresh crops in Farmville

39. Rolling Physical Goods

Definition: A physical good (one with real value) that can be won by anyone on an ongoing basis as long as they meet some characteristic. However, that characteristic rolls from player to player.

Example: top scorer deals, mayor deals

40. Shell Game

Definition: a game in which the player is presented with the illusion of choice but is actually in a situation that guides them to the desired outcome of the operator.

Example: 3 Card Monty, lotteries, gambling

41. Social Fabric of Games

Definition: the idea that people like one another better after they’ve played games with them, have a higher level of trust and a great willingness to work together.

Example: From Jane McGonicgal’s TED talk where she suggests that it takes a lot of trust to play a game with someone because you need them to spend their time with you, play by the same rules, shoot for the same goals.

42. Status

Definition: The rank or level of a player. Players are often motivated by trying to reach a higher level or status.

Example: white paladin level 20 in WOW.

43. Urgent Optimism

Definition: Extreme self motivation. The desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success.

Example: From Jane McGonical’s TED talk. The idea that in proper games an “epic win” or just “win” is possible and therefore always worth acting for.

44. Variable Interval Reward Schedules

Definition: Variable interval reward schedules provide a reward after a roughly consistent amount of time. This tends to create a reasonably high level of activity over time, as the player could receive a reward at any time but never the burst as created under a fixed schedule. This system is also more immune to the nadir right after the receiving of a reward, but also lacks the zenith of activity before a reward in unlocked due to high levels of ambiguity.

Example: Wait roughly 30 minutes, a new weapon appears. Check back as often as you want but that won’t speed it up. Generally players are bad at realizing that.

45. Variable Ratio Reward Schedule

Definition: A variable ratio reward schedule provides rewards after a roughly consistent but unknown amount of actions. This creates a relatively high consistent rate of activity (as there could always be a reward after the next action) with a slight increase as the expected reward threshold is reached, but never the huge burst of a fixed ratio schedule. It’s also more immune to nadirs in engagement after a reward is acheived.

Example: kill something like 20 ships, get a level up. Visit a couple locations (roughly five) get a badge

46. Viral Game Mechanics

Definition: A game element that requires multiple people to play (or that can be played better with multiple people)

Example: Farmville making you more successful in the game if you invite your friends, the social check-in

47. Virtual Items

Definition: Digital prizes, rewards, objects found or taken within the course of a game. Often these can be traded or given away.

Example: Gowalla’s items, Facebook gifts, badges

Nokia & Burton = push snowboarding

2010-09-23T09:39:00.004+10:00

Fantastic open source approach and what a pointer to what Nike+ could have been if Apple didn;t do it ;)

http://blogs.nokia.com/pushburton/

Try before you buy

2010-09-20T15:38:00.001+10:00

'Tryvertising' - a new trend that lets consumers experience a product virtually before they buy it - has prompted an online watch retailer to develop an app that lets would-be customers see how a watch looks on their wrist before they commit to it.

Canadian Nuevo Watches offers a form of virtual tryvertising with its new app, reports global trend monitoring website Springwise.com.

Click here to find out more!
Compatible with the iPhone and the 4th generation iPod touch, the Nuevo app from Monokromik lets users try on and select watches in the Neuvo watch collection without physically touching them.

The free app is available for download from the iTunes store (search 'Monokromik'); it requires iOS 3.1.3 or later. Once it's downloaded, users can virtually try on any of Montreal-based Nuevo's four CAD 45 watches, which come in black, bronze, gold or silver. The watches are only sold online, which makes the app especially useful.

Website: www.neuvomonde.com

Thanks to insideretailling.com.au

Store renovations

2010-09-20T11:02:00.012+10:00

We all know that store windows, when done well have the ability to really lift public mood. So given that insight it's nice to see some retailers going to town on their refurbishments. After all, why should a renovation leave the window looking shabby and dull.

I think all retailers should take a leaf out these guys' books:

Gucci in New York

Nespresso in Paris:

Christian Dior, New York:

And then of course no-one can forget Gap's famous demolition ad of 2005:

eBay for Wine Lovers!

2010-09-20T10:58:00.001+10:00

Opening today is Australia's first dedicated wine auction house - Crackawines.com.
The brainchild of Wine Ark founder Dean Taylor and digital media specialist (and current COO of Carsales.com.au) Shane Pettiona.

Cracka’s Wine Auctions will begin everyday at 1pm, seven days a week where prices start at the RRP and continue to fall until all the stock has been sold. When you click to purchase it locks the price. Shop too early and you could miss out on a super-low price. Leave it too late and there may be no more stock left.

It follows a similar model to that of theoutnet.com, whose 'Going, Going, Gone' sales are the same reverse type of auction - once the sale clock starts counting the price drops - and will only run for a limited time.

And delivery is quick aswell with Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane customers assured to expect delivery of their auction purchases within 48 hours.

And as if you needed more reason to start bidding Cracka Wines is offering a $25 credit to new members and a chance to win $5000 in cash. In addition, all buyers go into a weekly draw for a bottle of Penfolds Grange during 2010.

Foursquare works!

2010-09-17T17:50:00.002+10:00

Via mashable

McDonald’s Foursquare Day Campaign Brought in 33% More Foot Traffic
With so many brands trying their hand at location-based marketing campaigns, one has to wonder: is Foursquare really effective as a platform for bringing in new business? McDonald’s seems to think so; the company’s head of social media Rick Wion recently spoke of the fast food giant’s big wins from a spring pilot program using Foursquare.

At the Mobile Social Communications conference yesterday, Wion shared that McDonald’s was able to increase foot traffic to stores by 33% in one day with a little Foursquare () ingenuity. McDonald’s total cost for the successful campaign was a measly $1,000.

Econsultanty reports that McDonald’s, with Wion driving campaign direction and strategy, opted to try and take advantage of Foursquare Day (4/16) to bring in more business. The company used 100 randomly awarded $5 and $10 giftcards as checkin bait to lure in potential diners. The bait also worked to attract the media’s attention and resulted in more than 50 articles covering McDonald’s Foursquare special.

The campaign worked in both digital and real world capacities. Patrons flocked to McDonald’s restaurants for the chance to win giftcards in exchange for checkins, and 600,000 online denizens opted to follow and fan the brand on social media sites.

“I was able to go to some of our marketing people — some of whom had never heard of Foursquare — and say, ‘Guess what. With this one little effort, we were able to get a 33% increase in foot traffic to the stores’,” Wion explained to conference attendees.

A company of McDonald’s size spends millions on advertising every year, and yet a simple $1,000 Foursquare campaign netted the company measurable success. Of course, the metric here was checkins (not sales), and there were likely several other factors contributing to the campaign’s success, but it’s still a story that many an agency should pay heed to.

McDonald’s is not alone in their Foursquare success. Earlier this year, Domino’s UK attributed social media, and its Foursquare pilot program in particular, as a primary factor in helping the company increase profits by 29%.

Mobile Myths Debunked

2010-09-15T16:06:00.001+10:00

Nice summary from Adage on the 'real' status of the mobile phone world

----------------

Blackberry Is Not Dead, Steve Jobs Isn't King of Handsets, and Other Conventional Wisdom You Should Reconsider

by Kathryn Koegel
Published: September 13, 2010

Mobile is a confusing marketing space, and we're in the midst of a hype cycle perhaps equaled only by the dot-com frenzy of years past. And whenever there's hype, misconceptions aren't far behind. Here's a look at four of them -- and a reminder why you shouldn't believe everything the soothsayers say.

[Excerpted from "What You Need to Know About Mobile Marketing," a recent Ad Age Insights report.]

It's not an all-Apple world ... and it never will be
There seems to be an app for just about everything at this point (with more than 250,000 available, and counting). And while Apple seems to have a lock on the app market, in fact it represents just a small part of the U.S. mobile market, according to ComScore. Gartner, which tracks phone shipments rather than usage, pegs Apple's 2009 U.S. market share at 5%. The iPhone is a game-changing phone, however, as its interface is the one that managed to alter consumer behavior irrevocably; as a result, it has enjoyed the greatest interest from developers.

Source: comScore custom survey, November 2009

The iPhone audience is a distinctive one. It is youngish (but not too young; consumers under the age of 24 are not likely to be able to afford an iPhone, or to be locked into a long-term AT&T contract). And it is made up of early adopters, those who influence the purchases of others and who are a marketer's dream. If Apple's exclusive contract with AT&T is done with this year, as has been reported, and a Verizon version hits the market, there is no telling how much Apple's penetration will spike. Until that happens, there are other platforms marketers must pay attention to.

Blackberry is not dead
Research in Motion's BlackBerry is still a significant presence in the market and will continue to be, especially in the business world. The BlackBerry is supported by most Windows-based concerns. For marketers looking to reach the business audience, high-net-worth individuals and a slightly older demo than the iPhone, targeting through the BlackBerry is a smart (nay, essential) move. The BlackBerry challenge has been that, with the mass of devices having a trackball rather than a touchscreen, it's simply not as interactive an interface, and can make it difficult to even locate apps. BlackBerry has plans to introduce a new browser.

Consumers love Google, and now, to ride the wave of that affinity, the company has rolled out Android. Research on future phone purchases from ComScore and ChangeWave indicates T-Mobile's ads touting its 3G capabilities -- plus the fact that not all consumers want a contract with AT&T, and that the Android is a close-enough facsimile to the iPhone -- suggests we are at the dawn of a phone war that stands to benefit all consumers, as it likely will lead to better service and pricing [see chart 16, pull from page 14 in white paper].

Microsoft ceded its early dominance in the smartphone market to RIM and BlackBerry, but this fall it is launching Windows 7 for mobile. Reports from the Mobile World Congress earlier this year, where the system made its debut, were positive.

Not all people do all things on all phones: market accordingly
At this point in the evolution of mobile as a marketing medium, the number of consumers who perform activities such as downloading apps or looking at the mobile web or WAP (wireless access protocol) is relatively low; comScore estimates that 34% of those with cellphones consume some sort of mobile media (WAP or apps), 31% use SMS (but do not consume any media via the phone) and 35% use phones only for making calls. This is changing rapidly, however, along with the adoption of smartphones. What people do on their phones is predictive by age and gender. The younger a consumer is, the more likely he or she is to personalize his or her phone, or purchase a ringtone or wacky screensaver. The older, more business-oriented consumer, however, is more likely to have an unlimited data plan and, thus, to use the phone for web access. Guys are more likely to listen to music and purchase games on their phones. [see chart 17, pull from page 15 in white paper].

RIM's market share and the demographics of mobile media activities

"People need to stop looking at mobile consumer activity across modalities -- browsing, apps, and SMS/MMS -- and think that one form will predominate while others go away. More importantly, marketers need to stop wishing for this to happen. While it might be easier to exist in a world where mobile consumers only used apps, the reality is that SMS and browser-based activity will continue to reach audiences that apps cannot and, in the case of SMS, be a more effective medium to drive response," Evan Neufeld, VP-marketing, GroundTruth, said.

Smartphones are not likely to ever penetrate the entire market
Just as there are people out there with analog TVs with those funky converter boxes, some people just want to use their phones to talk and will not ever be incented to pay fees for data. Some people simply do not want e-mail and media whenever, wherever. Due to behavior displayed by younger consumers, the group described here will likely concentrate in older demos. Smartphone adoption may be somewhat analogous to the digital video recorder. While the TV industry worried that DVRs would achieve much larger penetration in a short period, in truth, DVR usage stalled out at around 30% of TV households in 2009, according to Nielsen. Not everyone wants to pay for the service, and not everyone, clearly, desires that much control over their media.

It's not as complicated as it sounds
Not all types of mobile marketing apply to all companies, and the "crawl, walk, run" principle should be employed with mobile. Pick the discipline that most relates to your product category and start there. For some content providers and retailers, it may be optimizing their sites for mobile (a surprising number of companies have not yet done this). For retailers with successful email programs, it may be developing an SMS program to appeal to the legions of "textirati" who prefer SMS to e-mail. For any marketer using print, TV or outdoor, activation programs can extend the effectiveness of their campaigns by helping to generate opt-in lists or hand-raising customers. Whatever you do, don't just develop a one-platform app and assume that you've got mobile covered.

Meet YouTube's Most In-Demand Brand Stars

2010-09-14T13:10:00.001+10:00

Great summary from AdAge about the future face of 'talent'

For Marketers, Web-Video Celebrities Offer Trusted Voices and an Engaged Viewership

by Irina Slutsky
Published: September 13, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) -- Once upon a time, YouTube was considered the Wild West -- its so-called "stars" more likely to produce cringe-worthy performances than to displace the pitch-men and -women of traditional media. But now big-time brands like Lancome, McDonald's, Ford and Kellogg's are trusting YouTube celebs with their money and reputations. "The reason we turned to them is because they have a valid voice in their community, and people trust what they say and what they think," said Scott Monty, head of social media for Ford Motors.

They've got trust and, it turns out, engagement.

"What these YouTubers have proven is that they have engaged viewers -- they comment, they talk on the YouTuber's Facebook page, on Twitter. The brands want millions of views, but they also want engaged viewers," said Caroline Giegerich, director of innovation at Initiative, which was one of the first agencies to run a successful YouTube stars campaign with Carl Jr's. "If they're engaged with the stars, clearly they are engaged with the brand ... it means someone is not just seeing an ad and forgetting about it."

In the beginning, neither the brands nor the YouTubers themselves had much of an idea how much they were worth. But the price of hiring a YouTube celebrity to pitch a product is now comparable to hiring a B- or C-level Hollywood celeb.

Ryan Higa publicly lists his starting rate as $75,000 per appearance, a fraction of what someone like Paris Hilton charged for her Carl's Jr. commercial. Some, like Joe Penna, a.k.a. MysteryGuitarMan, feel as comfortable pitching themselves to brands as they do their audiences. "I get millions of hits, and I know my demographic -- I know what kind of video will be in line with my channel," Mr. Penna, a 23-year-old former pre-med student, said. "The best thing the brands can do is come to me with a blank slate and ask me, 'What can you do with this product for us?'"

Ad Age teamed up with TubeMogul to find the stars racking up the views.

CHARLES TRIPPY

Charles Trippy

WHO IS HE? Mr. Trippy, 26, and Alli Speed, 21, vlog a "home-made reality show" called "Internet Killed Television" that is widely known as CTFxC. Mr. Trippy has been on YouTube since 2006 and continues to vlog almost daily -- he hasn't lost interest or enthusiasm for the venue.

CONTENT: Daily life vlogs with his fiance.

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 159,489,749

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 2,122,380

BRANDS: Gillette, Google, Xacti Passion

DUDEPERFECT

dudeperfect

WHO ARE THEY? Garrett Hilbert, Cory Cotton, Cody Jones, Sean Townsend, Panda, Coby Cotton, and Tyler Toney -- a team of trick-shot basketball entertainers from Texas

CONTENT: Impossible basketball shots

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 27,712,318

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 3,241,856 (top campaign for GMC snagged 1,917,028 views)

BRANDS:GMC, NBA (Sacramento Kings)

FRED

Fred

WHO IS HE? Lucas Cruikshank

WHAT HE MAKES: Videos in which he pretends to be a child in a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic mother

CONTENT: Screechy voice, occasional meltdowns

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 585,136,315

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 101,698,863 (includes promos for films and his own merchandise)

BRANDS:20th-Century Fox, Hot Topic, Nickelodeon, Taptivate

IJUSTINE

iJustine

WHO IS SHE? Justine Ezarick, 23, LA-based freelance graphic designer. Ms. Ezarick's almost unbelievable ability to create videos several times a day, her deft editing skills, her Apple obsession and her long, blond hair and good looks snagged her a young, male techie fan base.

CONTENT: Techie girl vlog

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 171,403,990

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 7,408,587 (top campaign was GE, with 1,913,481 views)

BRANDS:AT&T, Fox, GE, Intel, Mattel, Nikon, Mozy, MTV, Carl's Jr. and Dick Clark Productions

MICHAELBUCKLEY

Michael Buckley

WHO IS HE? Michael Buckley, 35, is a comedian who started with a public-access chat show called "Table for Two." He's benignly malicious -- the opposite kind of meany to Perez Hilton.

CONTENT: Celebrity memes/gossip

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 261,715,708

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 4,370,345 (top campaign was for Fox's Teen Choice, with 865,885 views)

BRANDS:ABC Family, BabelGum, 20th Century Fox, Discovery Networks, Fox television, Nickelodeon, OpenFilms, PriceDoc, Pepsi

MICHELLE PHAN

Michelle Phan

WHO IS SHE? A Vietnamese-American who gained popularity afterher Lady Gaga "Poker Face" make-up instructional got 20 million views. Before YouTube stardom, Ms. Phan worked as a waitress in a sushi restaurant and studied illustration.

CONTENT: Cosmetics tutorials

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 221,989,434

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 22,095,935 (of which Lancome Paris represents 12,234,338)

BRANDS:Colgate, Lancome Paris, PriceDoc, Sandisk, Verizon

MYSTERYGUITARMAN

Mysteryguitarman

WHO IS HE? Brazilian-born Joe Penna, 23, is an L.A.-based filmmaker, guitarist and animator who graduated from UMass with a pre-med degree.

CONTENT: Music videos and clever mash-ups of himself in his apartment in front of the camera

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 138,614,194

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 5,125,862 (top campaign is for Microsoft, with 8 million-plus views)

BRANDS:Garnier, Pop Tarts, Microsoft, McDonald's, Coca-Cola

NIGAHIGA

Nigahiga

WHO IS HE? One of the highest paid YouTube stars, Ryan Higa is a Japanese-American comedian from Hawaii who started making lipsyncing videos with his friends during college breaks. YouTube stardom followed, and his content is now varied and wide.

CONTENT: Comedy, short films, parody videos, "rants," how-to comedy videos ("How to Be a Gangster"), advertising spoofs

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 546,333,874

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 13,405,781

BRANDS:Google, Carl's Jr.

RHETT & LINK

Rhett & Link

WHO ARE THEY? Comedy duo Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal

CONTENT: Humor that's actually funny; not as viral but high-quality videos like "Facebook Song," and "T-Shirt War"; actual commercials

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 66,294,209

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 25,093,462 (top brand campaign was Microbilt, with 9,986,225 views)

BRANDS: Alka-Selzer, AJJCornhole (not a joke), Baby Ruth, Coca-Cola, Dentyne, GM, McDonald's, Spy Associates, Taco Bell, Microbilt

SHAYCARL

Shaycarl

WHO IS HE? Shay Butler, 30, lives in Idaho with his wife and kids and produces family vlogs with a funny, edgy "cool dad" twist. His user name is ShayTards, his baby is BabyTard, and his other children are PrincessTard and SonTard. You get the idea. His most recent Footlocker campaign takes place in a school cafeteria and involves a giant food fight.

CONTENT: Family vlogs

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 250,954,220

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 5,725,254

BRANDS: AT&T, A1, Google, Kia, Kodak, Sanyo, Footlocker

SMOSH

Smosh

WHO ARE THEY? Comedy duo Anthony Padilla and Ian Andrew Hecox, both 22, gained initial fame with the "Pokemon Theme Music Video," and this led them to be featured in Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year issue.

CONTENT: Sophomoric teen humor; video games

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 465,534,527

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 12,310,844 (top brand campaign was GE, with 4,717,047 views)

BRANDS: Carl's Jr., GE, Google (Nexus One), Kia, Nintendo, Puma

VENETIAN PRINCESS

Venetian Princess

WHO IS SHE? Jodie Rivera, 26, studied opera at the New England Conservatory of Music before becoming one of YouTube's first partners. Ms. Rivera has said, "I can make anywhere from the mid-five to six figures per one- to two-minute video with product placement."

CONTENT: Parodies of popular music videos

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 258,098,945

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 1,697,996 (top campaign, for Pop Tarts, notched 1,562,269 views)

BRANDS: Pop Tarts, Samsung

WHEEZYWAITER

Wheezywaiter

WHO IS HE? Craig Benzine, went to school for TV, radio and film, worked as a waiter at Big Bowl before YouTube success. He's a hungry up-and-comer with a promising start.

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 13,350,225

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 290,145

BRANDS: Ford

10 ways data is changing how we live

2010-09-13T18:45:00.001+10:00

Interesting post from the telegraph in the UK about how some different ways data will start changing our lives. Several of these are effecting me already... how about you?

"Social London", or the city as Social Archipelago, by Anil Bawa-Cavia from UCL's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis.

Shopping

Supermarkets have always kept track of how people shop, but in the last few years the extent to which retailers collect data has rocketed. Tesco owns a majority stake in Dunnhumby Ltd, which carries out data mining and analysis for large group of retailers including Coca-Cola, BT, Mars, Vodafone and other leading brands. Dunnhumby operates the Tesco Clubcard scheme: using data collected from the scheme, Tesco can predict when people will shop, how they'll pay for their items and even how many calories they will consume. Dunnhumby recently reported a 32 per cent rise in operating profits to £53.4 million, and has grown from 300 employees at the start of 2007 to nearly 1,250 this year. The data collected by Dunnhumby has changed the way we shop.

Relationships

Dating site OkCupid.com runs a regular series of blog posts analysing data from the site's 3.5 million active users. By collecting user profiles and site messages, it's possible to calculate everything from the perfect profile picture (apparently, the perfect profile picture is taken on a high end camera, in the mid afternoon, without a flash) to the right language to use when replying to messages ("your" beats "ur", and "hot" is a turn-off, whereas "fascinating" is a turn-on). The data has also shown that on average, users add two inches to their height, and over-report their salary by 20 per cent. The large datasets collected by dating sites have also attracted academics, so look out for more data-based date advice in the future.

Business deliveries

In the last few years, advanced mapping tools have allowed businesses to use data to increase the efficiency of their deliveries. Where companies used to plan deliveries on paper and in small teams, they now use advanced mapping software, routing data and live traffic information. MapMechanics produces several of these tools, with its clients delivering everything from the Yellow Pages to milk. Those clients now do their deliveries using complex and live-updated views into data that used to be limited to the shift manager's desk.

Maps

The way people find shops could also be about to change, thanks to a new view into an existing set of data. Since Google introduced Street View three years ago, rival services have since appeared from the likes of Microsoft and Mapquest. Microsoft's Bing Streetside (their version of Street View) has been remixed by a group of researchers, turning it into Street Slide. Street Slide takes the data from Streetside and turns it into a strip of businesses with clickable logos and building numbers. It's a different and intuitive view into the average shopping street, and could change window browsing forever.

Education

The LA Times has been running a story based on new data that has shaken up how schools are assessed in the city. Until now, parents have used overall school test results to assess the quality of teaching at local schools, which reflects the circumstances of the parents more than it does the quality of the teaching. The LA Times obtained data on test scores from 600,000 students between 2002 and 2009, allowing it to calculate "value added" scores, or a measure of the progress students have made between different stages of education. This analysis shows that some schools have improved the academic achievement of its students at a greater rate than other, more respected schools. Although there have been questions raised about the methodology behind the analysis, it's still a great example of how new and previously unseen data can add a different perspective on a subject that affects everyone's life.

Politics

Spending data for the government is being released on a much greater scale, with the release of COINS spending data to be supplemented by itemised spending above £500 from local government. Several bodies have appeared that aim to provide a clear picture of how the Government spends money, including Where Does My Money Go?, OpenlyLocal and Armchair Auditor. Although they're operating on a relatively small scale at the moment, they've achieved a lot in a short time. It's not a stretch of the imagination to see WDMMG? achieving its ultimate goal of tracing where everybody's tax money, down to the nearest penny, has gone. The London Datastore and Data.gov.uk are campaigning for and highlighting open data releases from the Government, and the Government itself is planning a raft of data releases. With more data becoming available about how our Government operates, it'll inevitably be pressured to change.

Society

Location data has powered the creation of several major new social networks, including Foursquare, Gowalla and Google Latitude. With the addition of Facebook Places, location data could be part of the lives of an additional 400 million users. University College London's Centre for Spatial Analysis has churned out some amazing views of location data, the latest from doctoral research student Anil Bawa-Cavia. He's recently published maps which take snapshots of data from Foursquare and turn them into a view of "social London". The data shows that Shoreditch, London Fields and Covent Garden are among the most popular locations. That may say more about Foursquare's users than it does the "average Londoner", but Facebook Places will change all that. Bawa-Cavia thinks the data provided by Foursquare "can help us understand how the social lives of cities relate to their spatial structure. By analysing geo-social datasets we can hope to understand the basis for a more sociable, more usable city".

War

The Wikileaks War Diary is the most comprehensive set of data about a war ever released. Putting aside criticsm of the data (and the motivations behind its release), the information contained within the reports on civilian deaths, increased attacks on coalition troops by the Taliban and revelations of Pakistan-Taliban links has demonstrated the futility of the war more comprehensively than a decade of war reporting.

Advertising

No story about the use of data changing people's lives could omit a mention of Google. Unlike the other examples mentioned here, Google works with data in the Petabye scale, where traditional ways of organising data fall apart. Google relies on mathematical models and the input of more (and more, and more) data to increase revenue and its success. As Wired's Chris Anderson wrote two years ago, "Google conquered the advertising world with nothing more than applied mathematics. It didn't pretend to know anything about the culture and conventions of advertising — it just assumed that better data, with better analytical tools, would win the day. And Google was right".

Linked data and the future

The examples of data mentioned in this article are innovative, exciting and life changing, but the best is yet to come. The majority of the information that we use in our daily lives is "dumb", or unconnected. The next step is "linked data", or data that talks to each other. In the UK, Tim Berners-Lee and the team behind Data.gov.uk are aiming to create a linked database of Government information. By providing all data the Government produces in a linked format, individuals will be able to pull in different sets of data to produce new and innovative ways of understanding how our Government and the world works.

FluidDB, a start-up company run by Terry Jones, and with backing from Tim O'Reilly and Esther Dyson and others, is tackling this field from a different angle. FluidDB wants to create a "writeable world", where physical objects have virtual identities, which can be updated and called upon by any individual with access to the internet. That could mean tweets and status updates about everything from a brand of toothpaste to the Eiffel Tower could contribute to a collective database. The possibilities for collaboration are endless.

Future os Screens - Experience video

2010-09-13T10:48:00.002+10:00

Some more interesting stuff from the guys at TAT. Some of this stuff is really not far off...

Capacitive screens has now become a commodity for touch screen devices. Screen technology is now taking the next leap and the coming years imagination is the only thing stopping us. We will soon have dual screens, malleable screens, screens built into wifi connected mirrors, desks or backside of gadgets clothed with e-ink screens, tactile feedback, color screens with great contrast in sunlight, holographics/stereoscopic screens, color e-ink touch screens, or screens actually knowing where they are in relation to other screens thanks to ultrasonic emitters and microphones.

We want to show some of these things in an "experience video", that shows a normal day in a couple of years when all these technologies are affordable enough to be used everywhere. This video is the result of our experiment with open innovation, read more about our experiment here. Big thanks to all the people from TAT and around the world who helped out and sometimes shared their ideas and sometimes gave us homework on our own ideas.

Mobile interfaces

2010-08-25T11:07:00.003+10:00

Well never done this before, but just loved this post from the Amnesia Blog that i had to copy the whole thing here. Awesome mobile interface stuff and yet another reason why i'm backing Android to be the dominant, universal OS of the future. Thanks @eunmac and @razorfish

The future of the mobile UI is behind a velvet curtain

I have seen concepts from this company before (more about this below) and they always seem to be taking different approaches to the rest of the world.

The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) has yet again showcased a UI they call Velvet – pull out a widget or Google Maps query, and a sheet of your desired result waves with the virtual wind, before stretching out flat for you to more comfortably interact with.

This is what TAT has to say about the Tablet UIs out there and why they are different:

On one hand we have companies that scale phone UIs to tablets. On the other hand we have companies offering the full blown desktop experience scaled down to tablet size. We believe that both of these approaches will result in crippled user experiences. For example, the tablet form factor is perfect for media consumption and this could be manifested in the UI. TAT recognizes tablets as a radically different type of device – personal and mobile yet powerful and creative. We are now on a quest to design fantastic UIs that are optimized for this device space.

Here is the Velvet UI in action

As I said before these guys have some pretty awesome, yet radical ideas – check this augmented reality ID out – TAT augmented ID

I have an Android phone and I have been looking for a decent home screen and I really hope this little beauty will hit the market at some time soon – TAT Home

These guys are definitely someone to look out for in the future – if you want to learn more about them, check out their blog

Gaming... serious business

2010-08-24T08:51:00.002+10:00

Love the thinking around social being 'done' (from tech perspective at least), about reality being 'broken' and the general divergence and convergence between the real world and game driven environments.
Approaches utilising understanding of what drives engagement and motivates interaction are definitely going to be at the core of the next digital wave.

Thanks TED and DICE2010 for these great talks:

PC Games - E3 2011 - Guitar Hero 5

Also recommend reading Jane McGonigal's paper on Engagement Economy http://www.iftf.org/node/2306

Now this is a service - Ticketfree

2010-08-10T12:06:00.003+10:00

An awesome utility idea that i would so use - thanks Springwise

More than 41 million speeding tickets are issued to drivers in the United States each year, according to TrafficTicketSecrets.com. With an average cost of USD 150 each, that amounts to more than USD 6 billion lost annually by US consumers. Therein lies the motivation behind Ticketfree, a site that ensures its customers will “never pay a speeding ticket, red light ticket, photo radar ticket or traffic violation again.”

Canadian Ticketfree operates on a simple membership plan whereby an annual fee covers the costs of any tickets members get over the course of that year. A membership fee of USD 169 covers all speeding tickets for a year, up to a maximum of USD 600; for USD 299, red-light and photo-radar tickets are covered as well, up to a cap of USD 900; and a USD 449 fee buys coverage for all of the above plus parking and equipment tickets too, up to a maximum total of USD 1,200. Upon receiving a qualifying ticket, members simply visit the Ticketfree site and enter the details; the company will then pay the associated fine and send the member a confirmation email. Not covered by Ticketfree are DUI and other violations resulting from dangerous behaviour, the company says.

Ticketing is on the rise, Ticketfree notes, so a little peace of mind could go a long way for many frequent drivers. Currently, however, the company covers only those within the United States and Canada; one to emulate in other parts of the ticket-prone and lead-footed world...? (Related: Fare dodgers take Paris Métro for a ride with insurance pots against fines.)

Website:www.ticketfree.org
Contact: general@ticketfree.ca

Spotted by: Michael Henr

Facebook Research: Brands Lean on Interactive Marketing –Yet Lack Social Marketing Skills

2010-08-04T11:47:00.003+10:00

Nice framework approach from Jeremiah Owyang on how to approach, and rate, your facebook page activity.

This is followup data from the Altimeter Report: The 8 Success Criteria For Facebook Page Marketing, you should read this first.

Thanks to your help, Altimeter Group’s latest research on Facebook Marketing Best Practices, which now has over 17,000 views, and over 1,900 downloads (see slideshare stats) in less than a week. While we tried to include as much helpful information in the report, it was only the highlights of our findings. There’s far more data, scorecards, and findings that just aren’t able to fit into the report. Below is some additional information from our quantitative and qualitative study about the findings. Expect us to share more helpful data to marketers over the coming weeks, Altimeter clients can contact us for more details from the specific criteria, data, screenshots and scorecard.

[A fundamental mindset change must occur as brands approach social networks. In addition to interactive marketing (human-to-computer) brands must add social marketing (peer-to-peer) to their playbook.]

In the below graphic, we’ve aggregated the scores of the 30 brands to find out which of the criteria they’re good at –and which ones there are missed opportunities. We’ve then provided additional analysis on why we think brands scored this way, and some recommendations to improve. Research Graphic: Brands Great at Messaging and Branding –Yet Lack at Setting Expectations, Peer to Peer, and Advovacy

Criteria	How They Scored	Our Take: Why Brands Performed This Way	How Brands Can Improve Their Score
Set Community Expectations	2.08 (Immature or”Take off”)	Brands failed to be clear why they were doing a Facebook effort, likely due to the fact that they jumped into the the social network bandwagon. Most brands are experimenting, and are unable to articulate their purpose	Clearly have a business objective and be sure the site goals cascades these objectives. By not doing so, sets company up for a potential backlash as unchecked or unsolved customer woes can quickly cascade to their friends, on brands owns pages.
Provide Cohesive Branding	3.90 (Adolescence or “Climbing”)	Brands showed some sophistication from over a decade of online interactive marketing has taught them how to cascade their experience to all touch points	This is a huge risk. Customer that have product complaints may echo them loudly here, and if the brand doesn’t respond, this public griping could escalate into a full blown groundswell. Continue to reflect the brand in all digital channels, but don’t overwhelm the member experience.
Be Up To Date	5.00 (Exceptional or “Escape Velocity”)	Brands have a strong legacy of broadcast marketing, which is also know as message bombardment. Brands demonstrated an incredible ability to propagate messages at a rapid rate, not unusual for other mediums as well.	Continue this energy of being interactive with their customers, but in addition to populating the Facebook page with up to date updates, ensure they are engaging in a two-way dialog.
Live Authenticity	2.87 (Immature or”Take off”)	Brands suffered at being ’social’ in a social network, and are in many cases afraid to show their human side. Decades of being logo centric has cascaded to social networks and most members may question having conversations with a logo.	Behave in the same way the members are behaving: be social. Put the human side first by showing the team photos, giving human replies, and responding with first and last name.
Participate in Dialog	3.10 (Adolescence or “Climbing”)	Mixed bag of performance, while some brands may interact, often it was inconsistent. Even after a few years of social marketing blogging, forums, and Twitter, brands are still struggling to have real conversations with their members.	Interact with customers by engaging in a two way conversation. To scale, you don’t need to respond to every message, but set expectations on how frequently you’ll respond.
Enable Peer to Peer Interactions	2.03 (Immature or”Take off”)	Poor performance from brands here. In many cases, we expect brands hid from these features as they are difficult to moderate, manage, and risk of conversations going awry.	Better features are needed by using third party community applications, as well as hiring seasoned, well trained community managers to monitor and moderate.
Foster Advocacy	2.27 (Immature or”Take off”)	Brands are barely able to participate in the conversation let alone rely on the advanced features such as sharing or using your own members to share on your behalf.	At the bare minimum, encourage members to share content with each other and to cascade the branded experience to friends. As brands gain confidence, create formal advocacy programs.
Solicit a Call to Action	2.45 (Immature or”Take off”)	Unsure of even interacting with their members, it’s no surprise they didn’t know how to engage them for next steps or even conversion.	Don’t rush this. Until you’re scoring 4 or above on the previous mentioned criteria, I encourage brands to avoid this. Yet, for those that are succeeding in the other criteria, they can help members with conversion.

Summary: Brands Must Learn Social Marketing –Beyond Interactive Marketing
Brands are applying their years of experience of applying interactive marketing and broadcast marketing to the social web and it shows. With the natural inclination to brand and broadcast, we see these same behaviors in the Facebook Marketing. Yet, despite these existing strengths, brands are missing the two way aspect or ’social aspect’ of social network marketing. They must start to leverage peer to peer communications to reduce costs and content publication, show their human side, and quickly set expectations of what’s required –or risk a brand backlash. While setting community expectations doesn’t guarantee that a customer backlash could occur, it could help funnel them to the right place to be quickly supported. Yet, as problems are resolved, don’t shove them under the carpet in the call center, be sure to indicate back to the community they’ve been solved. Above all, brands must change their mindset from interactive marketing (human to computer) to also include social marketing (human to human)

SMS slingshot

2010-08-03T16:07:00.003+10:00

Some cool interactive projection stuff, Thanks Digital Buzz blog.

Always amazes me that this sort of stuff just doesn't seem to have much uptake in Australia

Sony's 360 degree display

2010-08-03T15:56:00.001+10:00

WOW... imagine this on a really really large scale

iButterfly

2010-07-26T13:09:00.004+10:00

Nice AR game / slash coupon app

NIKE WRITE THE FUTURE | DIGITAL PINBALL

2010-07-20T13:31:00.003+10:00

Always loved Double You's work from my time in Spain. This show's they've still got it

Interactive installation located in Madrid and Barcelona's Nike Stores that invite the consumers to play with the Elite Series boots that fit with their game: accuracy (T90), control (CTR360), touch (Tiempo) and speed (Mercurial). Launched in Stores during the world cup, this digital pinball was created and produced by DoubleYou for Nike Spain.

BBC World Cup Website Showcases Semantic Technologies

2010-07-15T10:51:00.006+10:00

Great explanation of how BBC used semantic web approaches to deliver a dynamic and intelligent experience for the world cup. Via ReadWriteWeb

Written by Richard MacManus / July 13, 2010 5:27 AM / 8 Comments

« Prior Post Next Post »

The soccer World Cup has now ended, with Spain the victor. England was unceremoniously dumped out before the quarter finals - but if there was a World Cup for the Semantic Web, then the BBC may have lifted the trophy for its country. A post on the BBC Internet site explains how the BBC World Cup 2010 website used "dynamic semantic publishing" technology.

It's an impressive demonstration of how a large, mainstream website can have added meaning and structure.

ReadWriteWeb's Guide to The Semantic Web:

The BBC World Cup site featured over 700 webpages and was powered by a semantic publishing framework. The site boasted a comprehensive ontology (a map of concepts), that output "automated metadata-driven web pages" created on-the-fly.

Jem Rayfield, Senior Technical Architect, BBC News and Knowledge, explained further:

"The underlying publishing framework does not author content directly; rather it publishes data about the content - metadata. The published metadata describes the world cup content at a fairly low-level of granularity, providing rich content relationships and semantic navigation. By querying this published metadata we are able to create dynamic page aggregations for teams, groups and players."

The basis of this system was an ontology that described how World Cup facts related to each other. For example, "Frank Lampard" was part of the "England Squad" and the "England Squad" competed in "Group C" of the "FIFA World Cup 2010". The ontology also included "journalist-authored assets" such as stories, blogs, profiles, images, video and statistics.

The publishing platform had both manual and automated tagging features. BBC journalists could, for example, tag Frank Lampard in a story about the disallowed goal from England's last-16 loss against Germany. This is a normal part of most modern-day publishing systems (we tag content in this manner here at ReadWriteWeb). But the BBC World Cup site also automatically analyzed journalist content and matched it "against the World Cup ontology." It did this by using what it describes as a "natural language and ontological determiner process." [Update: IBM wrote in to inform us that the technology behind this was IBM LanguageWare.] This is similar to software such as Thomson Reuters' Calais or the new Extractiv product that we reviewed yesterday. In the BBC's case, the resulting tags were moderated before being published.

The BBC used Semantic Web technologies such as RDF and SPARQL to build their World Cup site. The stated goal was to achieve "intelligent mapping of journalist assets to concepts and queries."

The site reportedly served millions of page requests a day throughout the World Cup. The BBC may use this semantic publishing platform for other parts of the BBC sports site; and it will certainly deploy it again for the the London 2012 Olympics.

The official explanatory post has the technical details, should you wish to follow up. Let us know in the comments about other large scale Semantic Web deployments that you know of.

Update: See also The World Cup and a call to action around Linked Data, by the BBC's John O'Donovan. Thanks Georgi Kobilarov for the pointer.

Foursquare Launches Location Layers - This is Big

2010-07-09T18:17:00.001+10:00

I agree... this could be a huge development. Thanks Josh and ReadWriteWeb

Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / July 6, 2010 11:44 AM

Looking at life through rose-colored glasses? How about walking through your town and seeing it as the Huffington Post or the Independent Film Channel sees it? IFC announced a new campaign this morning with leading location-based social network Foursquare that will allow you to do just that. The Huffington Post launched a Foursquare layer today as well.

IFC polled its member base for short descriptions of their favorite places in the towns they lived in or visited, then picked the place-descriptions that best suited the IFC's brand ("Always on, slightly off") to upload into a Foursquare database. Foursquare users can now opt-into getting those tips pushed to them whenever they check in near one of the annotated locations. It's a chance to effectively say, "I want to see this town as IFC fans see it." For marketers, this has got to be incredibly appealing, and for urban explorers it could be one of the best examples yet of effective Augmented Reality.

Location as Platform

In January, Canadian newspaper chain Metro did a deal with Foursquare that tied content like restaurant reviews to specific locations as "tips." When we saw that, we said that the era of location as platform had arrived. Then, in April the Wall St. Journal began experimenting with location-based news, adding interesting news tidbits to locations around New York City on Foursquare. That was getting interesting - not just lightweight content like restaurant reviews but things like a note that a terrorism suspect was once arrested in a particular location!

Please Push Me

Now the next logical step is to enable users to opt-in to having a publisher's content pushed to them. That's what IFC and on a smaller scale, the Huffington Post, have done today. Click to follow these publishers, check in near one of the locations they have annotated and your phone will get special tips pushed to it just like you get when near a place where one of your individual friends has left a tip.

A Psychedelic Journey

IFC's crowdsourcing its data set is very cool. It's not hard to imagine any number of organizations mobilizing their constituents to mark-up the physical world like this. Other organizations already have data geo-located. The Huffington Post Foursquare page is very sparse right now, but imagine if stories were parsed for geolocation (Superfeedr now does that automatically, for example) and populated locations by XML. You might check in downtown and get pushed a note from Huffington Post coverage of a protest or other news event a few blocks away. Not into HuffPo? How about a HotAir layer? Why silo yourself? Let's get a Memeorandum layer in Foursquare!

There may be some technical matters to work out before dynamic content can be fed into Foursquare, but I'm sure the company is working on those. (In response to this article Huffington Post Social Media Editor Rob Fishman tweets that many of the ideas discussed here "are already underway.")

I'm ready to follow the local historical society, an environmental justice organization or two, perhaps an art-graffiti-watchers association - the possibilities are nearly endless. Imagine allowing background location tracking and notification for some layers. "To see the world through the lenses of my favorite organizations" would be a nice addition to the reasons why people say they use check-in apps.

Can Facebook implement this kind of feature once location is rolled into its service? It's a little hard to imagine; this feels like a feature that would best come from a service with location at its core.

In a perfect world, these location-based social networks would act like browsers, able to see and post interoperable location-based data from and to any platform. Don't hold your breathe on that, though. The potential impact of marking-up the world is large enough that single vendors are most likely to try to dominate it all on their own first.

This is a really exciting idea.

LOVE this work

2010-07-09T18:13:00.002+10:00

'Battle of the Cheetos': Social Game To Determine 'Crunchy' or 'Puffy' Dominance via Genwow

Usually choosing variants of snack foods is a personal thing, from plain to ruffled and everywhere in between.

But Cheetos wants to change all that, with Battle of the Cheetos, a social game from Goodby and North Kingdom designed to enable you to choose your favorite battle fields - Mashable, Gawker, BoingBoing.net, you name it - and the call out your friends and others for battles that can be tracked and saved via Facebook. You can even taunt your opponent by activating your PC's microphone.

http://www.battleofthecheetos.com/

Blogger banners - Uniqlo Lucky Switch

2010-06-25T10:18:00.002+10:00

Been meaning to post this for a while... clever

UNIQLO LUCKY SWITCH from HN on Vimeo.

Video: LEGO’s Social Media Strategy

2010-06-23T17:02:00.001+10:00

Thanks Digital Buzz Blog

Diving into LEGO's Strategy Behind Connecting Their Amazing Network of Fans -- presented by Jake McKee from GasPedal on Vimeo.

This is a great video from Jake McKee (formally LEGO’s Global Community Relations Specialist) discussing how LEGO found, supported and incubated their biggest fans from around the world to help pull the company out of a pretty dark time to be back on top of the world, lead in part, by a strong social media strategy.

A word of warning, this is a 30 minute video, from a conference late last year (so skip the first 30 secs) and is not exactly their strategy, but more a case study of success, however, it’s well worth the time, and probably something you won’t have time to watch at your desk today so just make sure you remember to watch it later!

Jake McKee makes three really strong, but incredibly simple (how often do we see simplicity works socially?!) points.

1. Look beyond your target customers
2. Support existing fans
3. Find what works and replicate

1. Look beyond your target customers
Your target market isn’t always your biggest group of talkers. For years, LEGO was focused on kids — that is, until they realized adults had created their own community of enthusiasts. When LEGO started connecting these talkers, not only did they increase their word of mouth, they immediately helped their bottom line. Whereas kids were spending $20 a year on LEGOs, these adults were spending around $1,000.

2. Support existing fans
Without LEGO’s knowledge, adult fans had already created an online LEGO community and marketplace. LEGO approached this group by offering support and resources in the form of an ambassador program. By offering to support what these fans were already doing so well -instead of demanding ownership and control -LEGO was welcomed into the community.

3. Find what works and replicate
The enthusiasm of the adult fans helped teach LEGO how to gain more participation from their other fans- including kids. Jake says that when you find something that works with one fan group, try applying it to other groups of talkers. Because the fundamentals of great communities are the same, strategies behind one fan community can often generate similar success for another community. (via Igor on Viral Blog)

Question: What's a Facebook Fan Really Worth to Marketers?

2010-06-23T16:36:00.001+10:00

Interesting piece from Adage

Two Social-Media Tech Companies Set Out to Answer It With Differing Formulas

Posted by Judy Shapiro on 06.14.10 @ 06:40 PM

True to form, many of the technologies showcased during New York's annual Internet Week wowed, but what really generated attention were efforts to answer the $64,000 question: How do we measure the value of a Facebook fan, especially since Facebook is a dominant part of a marketer's toolkit?

Two clever social-media technology companies, Syncapse and Vitrue, took a crack at answering this seemingly simple question. I say seemingly simple because, in reality, the "value" of a fan can mean lots of things such as actual sales value or value as evangelists or value as a research resource in a crowdsourcing campaign.

And given the ad hoc nature of measurement today, it's no surprise, therefore, that we see wildly divergent answers from these two companies. Syncapse, for instance, assigns the average value of a fan at $136.38, and Vitrue pegs the value of a Facebook fan at $3.60. The wild differences, of course, lies in what you are measuring. Let's take a closer look.

The Syncapse approach
I got to hear Syncapse CEO Michael Scissons present the findings from a joint, proprietary research study his company did with Hotspex. It was designed to calculate the value of a fan based on a set of attributes as described by Synapse in the study:

Product spending -- Facebook fans spend, on average, $71.84 more than non-fans over a two-year period.
Loyalty (meaning ability to influence and promote brand loyalty within a target audience) -- Facebook fans are 28% more likely to continue using a brand than consumers who are not fans on Facebook.
Propensity to recommend -- 68% of fans are "very likely" to recommend a product to family and friends (as opposed to 28% of non-fans).
Brand affinity -- 81% of fans feel a connection to the brand (versus only 39% of non-fans).

Together these attributes (and a few others) roll into a sophisticated formula which yields an average value of $136 per fan. Now, I love the idea of these metrics. I love the scope that these attributes reach for. I appreciate how cleverly they assigned a dollar value to intangible attributes such as brand affinity. And rightly, the study spends a fair amount of time acknowledging that the value is highly dependent on lots of variables.

Yet, the study requires us to take some pretty big leaps of faith since the data is self-reported -- not behaviorally tracked. This somewhat stacks the data deck – after all a fan means they are already favorably predisposed.

But even if one is willing to take these leaps of faith, what are the practical applications of this information? Does a marketer then use this measure to justify shifting dollars from one media into Facebook? Is it a "dollar for dollar" shift? Or is this information best used as a theoretical baseline for some objective measure of progress? While I like this approach because it is innovative and ambitious, its practical application remains to be seen.

The Vitrue approach
Vitrue's approach to the question, "What's the value of a Facebook community?," is to associate fan value to the value of impressions generated in the Facebook news feed. It then applies display banner advertising pricing to the number of Facebook fans (at $5 per CPM) for a value metric. The results of the study are based on Vitrue's own client data that had a combined 41 million fans. With this approach, one can theoretically increase monthly media impressions significantly so that, for instance, a marketer with a large Facebook fan base that posts twice a day can deliver 60 million more impressions/ month. Here is a recap (and many thanks to Webtechuniverse's blog post) of the formula: 1M impressions x 2 posts x 30 days = 60M impressions 60M impressions / 1000 x $5 CPM = $300,000 $300,000 x 12 months = $3.6M $3.6M / 1M fans = $3.60

This approach is valid and similar to the methodology used to assign media value to publicity received in the news. "It's important to understand that once you build that fan base, you want to make sure you're leveraging it," said Michael Strutton, chief product officer at Vitrue, and they provide a nifty tool to help you measure your value Facebook fan page.

While this approach is more focused than the Syncapse approach (though less strategic), even within the more limited scope, here too we must be willing to take a leap of faith, which is that all impressions perform equally irrespective of environment within which those impressions are delivered. And then the inevitable "Now what?" problem also raises its head because we are not clear on how to apply this learning in the real world. Does this suggest that a wholesale dollar shift will deliver comparable results? (I'd love to hear from the Vitrue folks on this point.)

Conclusion
I fully appreciate the need to put an ROI face to the question (pun intended), and I much applaud the efforts by these companies to give guidance. But it seems fair to step back for a moment and ask ourselves a bigger question: "What is our Facebook marketing investment worth?" The way to answer that bigger question might be, in fact, to reframe it within the context of specific marketing campaigns like direct marketing rather than looking at this problem in a "monolithic" sense. As David Armano, senior VP, Edelman Digital, observed in a session on Facebook; we would do well to think of Facebook as part of a larger marketing "ecosystem" where there are practical and actionable set of measures like customer lifetime value, acquisition costs and sales.

The way forward
There is a rising chorus of voices demanding a coordinated industry approach to metrics and methodology used in the measurement of social media that integrates the disparate trade organizations' efforts while introducing the best thinking from innovative companies like Syncapse and Vitrue. This will allow the industry to come up with an accepted standard set of metrics that provide true actionability. It's time we roll this initiative out in earnest -- so if you have a voice or want to help, feel free to e-mail me.e-mail me

So what did I learn about the value of a Facebook fan in the last week? At least I learned enough to say, "It all depends..."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Judy Shapiro is chief brand strategist at CloudLinux and has held senior marketing positions at Paltalk, Comodo, Computer Associates, Lucent Technologies, AT&T and Bell Labs. Her blog, Trench Wars, provides insights on how to create business value on the internet.

Gatorade’s Social Media Command Center

2010-06-23T16:29:00.002+10:00

Now this is monitoring the social web... thanks mashable

Inside Gatorade’s Social Media Command Center

In the realm of marketing, Gatorade is probably best known for splashy commercials featuring some of the world’s most famous athletes. However, a new effort behind the scenes of the PepsiCo-owned sports drink maker is putting social media quite literally at the center of the way Gatorade approaches marketing.

The company recently created the Gatorade Mission Control Center inside of its Chicago headquarters, a room that sits in the middle of the marketing department and could best be thought of as a war room for monitoring the brand in real-time across social media.

Mission Control

The room features six big monitors with five seats for Gatorade’s marketing team to track a number of data visualizations and dashboards –- also available on to employees on their desktops — that the company has custom built with partners including Radian6 () and IBM. Below are a few of the visualizations that we got to check out in an interview last week:

This monitor is a visualization of tweets that are relevant to Gatorade; the company is tracking terms relating to its brand, including competitors, as well as its athletes and sports nutrition-related topics.

This monitor measures blog conversations across a variety of topics and shows how hot those conversations are across the blogosphere. The company also runs detailed sentiment analysis around key topics and product and campaign launches.

This video from Gatorade shows all of the different types of data being monitored from Mission Control.

Mission Control in Action

While certainly impressive visually, the first question that came to mind when being introduced to Gatorade Mission Control was how it’s actually being used on a day-to-day basis, and if its lead to product and marketing changes at the company that might not have happened without it.

Gatorade’s Sr. Marketing Director, Consumer & Shopper Engagement Carla Hassan offered a few examples, starting with the company’s monitoring of its “Gatorade has evolved” campaign. The commercials featured a song by rap artist David Banner, which, Mission Control quickly saw was being heavily discussed in social media. Within 24 hours, they had worked with Banner to put out a full-length version of the song and distribute it to Gatorade followers and fans on Twitter and Facebook, respectively.

On a day-to-day basis, Gatorade’s tools are also being used for more conventional marketing tactics –- like optimizing landing pages and making sure followers are being sent to the top performing pages. As an example, the company says it’s been able to increase engagement with its product education (mostly video) by 250% and reduce its exit rate from 25% to 9%.

The Future

The goal of the project, says Hassan, is to “take the largest sports brand in the world and turn it into largest participatory brand in the world.” To that end, the company’s not only monitoring its brand on social media, but giving its fans increased access to its athletes and scientists.

During the Super Bowl, for example, Gatorade let fans interact with a number of its NFL starsUstream () as they tested out the new Gatorade G Series Pro. More recently, Hassan told me the company has been doing more regular small-scale live events, such as having a sports nutritionist answer questions from fans through Ustream and Facebook. through

If that strategy is successful, expect to see the Mission Control approach applied to other businesses within PepsiCo says Bonin Bough, director of global social media at the company. “We believe what we’re building here is an example of a sandbox of tools and processes we can use across the organization,” he said.

Billboard yourself

2010-06-17T17:10:00.002+10:00

Some nice real-world-diginess. Thanks Piero via Adverblog

Billboard Magazine video instalation from Marcos Kotlhar on Vimeo.

Mobile charging wellies!

2010-06-11T11:32:00.001+10:00

Thanks to a new prototype, powering up a cell phone can simply mean using heat from the feet. The catch is it takes a lot of walking.

European telecommunications company Orange is displaying a new phone-charging prototype in a pair of rubber boots. The company is unveiling a set of Wellington Boots that have a "power generating sole" that converts heat from the feet into electrical power to charge battery-powered handheld appliances.

The boots were created in collaboration with renewable energy experts GotWind. They came about through Orange's efforts to find alternative, sustainable and eco-friendly mobile phone charging technologies. The boots are debuting at the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, where patrons can check them out.

GotWind explains that the power is collected through a process called the "Seebeck" effect. Thermoelectric modules created from pairs of "p-type and n-type semiconductor materials" are located inside the power-generating sole. They form thermocouples that are connected to other thermocouples and placed between two thin ceramic wafers.

Heat from the feet are applied to the top side of the water and cold is applied to the bottom side from the cold of the ground, causing electricity to be generated.

The company states that 12 hours of stomping should produce enough power to charge a phone for an hour. Hotter feet mean more energy

Orange stated in a press release that the Orange Power Wellie follows other innovations created for use at the festival.

Whole Foods - Map of Local growers

2010-06-10T10:17:00.001+10:00

Map of Local Growers

Whole Foods has recently developed this cool map of local growers and vendors. It is still a work in progress but well worth a look. Local partnerships are added all the time and some of Whole Foods' regions and stores aren’t represented yet. Users can search for locally grown producers near them or near a specific store. Check out their interactive local growers map.

Online retail awards - finalists

2010-06-08T16:58:00.002+10:00

OK, it's often the business, rather than the sexy end of digital, but it's where the ROI rubber hits the pixel road... and these guys are being recognised as getting it pretty right. Worth checking some of these out

Thanks Alf, courtesy of http://www.onlineretailer.net/

1. Best Pure-Play Online Retailer

This category is open to new and established pure-play online retailers without a physical store, who demonstrate best practice in merchandising, service, functionality and customer experience. Judging will be based not on overall size but on efficiency, ingenuity, dedication to customer experience and return on investment.

SHORTLISTED NOMINEES

Deals Direct | www.dealsdirect.com.au
Appliances Online | www.appliancesonline.com.au
Little Dance Invitations | www.littledanceinvitations.com.au
Trixan Body | www.trixanbody.com.au

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2. Best Multichannel Retailer

Multichannel is open to retailers demonstrating best practice in integrating traditional retail with online retail in an innovative, effective way to grow the overall retail business. Judging will be based not on overall size but on efficiency, ingenuity, dedication to customer experience and return on investment.

SHORTLISTED NOMINEES

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3. Best New Online Retailer

This award is for the best new start-up (launched post Jan 1, 2009), be it pure-play or multichannel, who demonstrates a sound, innovative and effective business strategy and a growing customer base.

SHORTLISTED NOMINEES

Clive Peeters | www.clivepeeters.com.au
JasonL | www.jasonl.com.au
Birdsnest | www.birdsnest.com.au
Trixan Body | www.trixanbody.com.au
Shoes of Prey | www.shoesofprey.com

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4. Best Use of Technology

For the online retailer who best utilises available technologies or proprietary systems that deliver improved efficiencies for the business, better customer experiences and valuable analytical data to continually improve.

SHORTLISTED NOMINEES

JasonL | www.jasonl.com.au
City Beach | www.citybeach.com.au
Metro Cleaning Services | http://metro.cleverappz.com.au
Shoes of Prey | www.shoesofprey.com
Jeans West | www.jeanswest.com.au
Trixan Body | www.trixanbody.com.au

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5. Most Innovative Online Retailer

We're looking for the most imaginative initiatives in the online retail space, whether that be in site design, usability, customer experience, service, fulfillment or any other area of the retail discipline. What we're looking for is something original, exciting and practical. Must be able to prove demonstrably how innovation has led to tangible, positive results.

SHORTLISTED NOMINEES

Shoes of Prey | www.shoesofprey.com
Domino's | www.dominos.com.au
General Pants | www.generalpants.com.au
Sportsgirl | www.sportsgirl.com.au

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6. Best Online Retail Marketing Initiative

An award for the best online retail marketing initiative, via a single channel or an integrated campaign, such as email, mobile, social media, search, offline, live events or a combination of many. Must be able to show a link between the marketing initiative and increased traffic and sales.

SHORTLISTED NOMINEES

Shoes of Prey | www.shoesofprey.com
Red Balloon | www.redballoon.com.au
Personalised Plates Queensland | www.ppq.com.au
DealsDirect | www.dealsdirect.com.au
General Pants | www.generalpants.com.au

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7. Best Customer Experience

Site usability, product and content, efficiency of delivery, customer service and marketing are among the factors that will be taken into consideration when judging the customer experience award, with contenders requiring high scores in all areas.

SHORTLISTED NOMINEES

Mooo | www.mooo.com.au
DealsDirect | www.dealsdirect.com.au
Appliances Online | www.appliancesonline.com.au
BirdsNest | www.birdsnest.com.au
Clive Peeters | www.clivepeeters.com.au
Proactiv | www.proactiv.com.au

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8. Emerging Star

This is for the fast-thinking, entrepreneurial innovator (either individual or company) whose new ideas, approaches and strategies have had an impact on the industry in the last 12 months and will help influence the future of online retailing.

SHORTLISTED NOMINEES

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9. Best Site Design

This award is for the best overall site design from an aesthetic, usability and technology perspective.

SHORTLISTED NOMINEES

Around the World in 80 Days goes QR

2010-06-02T18:09:00.006+10:00

Ha... love this so much. It's just so damn quirky, clunky, mixed up and obvious that it gives some real 'ye olde world' charm to digital. Even down to the awesome 'snuggiee-esque' infomercial. I'm ordering one right now. Thanks Mr McCrudden

6 Smell Sensors That Are Changing the Internet of Things

2010-05-28T12:16:00.003+10:00

Ok... been slack at sharing again, but here goes with some new verve!

Found this fascinating post on ReadWriteWeb a while back about Smell Sensors and there future role in the internet of things. The mind boggles.

Got any great ideas on what we could do marketing wise with say a smell-capable RFID? Maybe a Lynx campaign in their somewhere?

-----

Written by Deane Rimerman / May 19, 2010 3:00 PM / 4 Comments

« Prior Post Next Post »

Sensors that smell help save lives everyday. From cars that won't start because court-ordered breathalyzers smell alcohol in the operator's blood stream, to bomb-sniffing machines at the airport, to complex medical tests that analyze your breath - we are designing machines that smell to make the world a safer place.

Smell sensors are essential to the future of the Internet of Things. From RFID stickers capable of smelling food through the package and updating the food's status to the Web, to our next phone being a "smell phone", engineers are finding innovative ways to help protect our families from being exposed to toxic hazards.

Breathalyzers

Sensors that measure blood alcohol content by smelling your breath have been around since 1938 when a professor named Rolla Harger invented the Drunkometer. His success in marketing the device was due in part to his work with the National Safety Council to legislate alcohol limits - as well as legitimize his sensor data as evidence in a court of law. Today, the innovation that's occurring with these sensors is the dramatic decline in cost. So next time you want to know if you're legal to drive after you drink, you can just blow into a Mini-Key chain Breathalyser, a device that will set you back less than $10.

Smell Sensors In Medicine

In Israel, Russell Berrie of the Nanotechnology Institute at Technion developed a sensor that can verify lung cancer by smelling a patient's breath. The sensor searches 42 different lung cancer biomarkers, and is built out of nine cross-reactive chemiresistors. These resistors are built out of gold nanoparticles, each with different organic functionalities. A similar sensor from the same institute can be used to detect kidney disease sooner than traditional urine tests can. The research for that particular sensor system is titled Sniffing Chronic Renal Failure in Rat Model by an Array of Random Networks of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes.

Smell Phones

Michael Sailor, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at U.C. San Diego is working with startup Rhevision to develop a smelling device that will attach to your cell phone. The system is based on a camera that takes a picture of porous silicon. Each of these microscopic pores are individually shaped, or tuned, to change color when a specific chemical is encountered. Thanks to the current megapixel resolution of today's phone cameras you can take a single picture of these pores, or sensors, and load it to the Web where it can be analyzed in real time. One application would be that these smell phones could rapidly map out chemical spills and other exposure threats.

RFID That Smells

General Electric is currently testing RFID-configured smell sensors. These small stickers can not only detect the presence of hazardous waste, they can also detect and report food spoilage. One example is a milk carton with an RFID sticker attached to the outside. The sticker periodically smells the milk through the packaging, and as soon as the milk goes bad the RFID sends a wireless alert.

Bomb Smelling Sensors

Ion Mobility Spectrometry machines are currently the most common bomb-smelling sensors in U.S. airports. Austrian manufacturer Ionicon Analytik was recently featured in Scientific America because of its new Ionicon Analytik's Proton-Transfer-Reaction Mass Spectrometry (PTR-MS) machine. This machine is about the size of a refrigerator and is so sensitive that it can distinguish between molecules that are nearly identical. The device works by creating "protonated" water vapor, which is essentially water vapor with extra protons. Many organic compounds, including explosives, have an affinity to grab those extra protons and in turn become positive themselves.The positive ions produced can be extracted and analyzed to reveal their chemical composition.

Non-Destructive Carbon Dating

Traditional carbon dating methods required that a small piece of the object must be destroyed through burning. The carbon is then measured for age based on degeneration of the radioactive isotope Carbon 14. Yet with many artifacts the destruction of even small portions of it is sometimes prohibitive. A new non-destructive method allows the object to be placed a container that is filled with an electrically charged plasma gas similar to the plasma found in a high-definition TV. The plasma gently oxidizes the artifact, which will release trace amounts of carbon dioxide that can then be used for Carbon14-decay analysis.

These six ways are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what's currently being developed. For example, perspective search service GlobalSpec lists thousands of companies designing gas and chemical sensors. How many of these sensors will one day generate data for the Web? If you have a sense of scenarios that will make this happen, please post your comments below.

Image by Patrick J. Lynch, medical illustrator

Some great thinking on using search and content to DOMINATE

2010-05-28T12:13:00.001+10:00

Thanks @Ben_Phillips

Converse Domaination from Ross Martin on Vimeo.

Personal cities

2010-05-11T18:40:00.002+10:00

And to follow on from that, a great concept post from my favourite guys at PSFK:

Intelligent Cities: The Personal City

May 10, 2010

The development of systems that allow city wide exchange of data and the reaction to that data is important to study. The impact of what is sometimes called the sentient city is not just at a city level but it also impacts communities, neighborhoods and families.

Intelligent Cities can create personal, helpful, efficient and communal cities. In four articles on PSFK, I’m going to describe each of these four aspects and the manifestations occurring today that point to a better urban future.

We are broadcasting information about us more than ever before and we can interpret this data to help us understand our quantified selves.

Devices collecting personal data about our lives give individuals deep levels of insight on their habits and behaviors. These systems are often passive, gathering data in the background from day-to-day activities. Over time, this information gives people the tools and motivation for people to improve their lives.

Manifestations Of The Personal City

Check In & Share

The popular Foursquare service provides a simple example of how people appear to be more willing to provide their personal information. Foursquare is a combination city guide and social game that encourages people to explore their cities while broadcasting information about their location. Users are motivated to share this personal data as part of a competition with their social circle, receiving points each time they check in at locations such as restaurants and bars.

Passive mobile apps monitor sleep habits over time

Mobile applications like Owl and Sleep cycle track a user’s sleep habits passively during each night. By monitoring a user’s movements, snoring levels, and other ambient data from the environment, these services collect a comprehensive database of information that helps to better understand one’s behavior.

Shared Traffic Info

Waze is a free mobile application that enables drivers to build and use real-time road maps, alerts on traffic and accidents, and data. Drivers can actively report and update other users with what’s happening on the road including accident alerts, police traps, weather hazards, cheap gas offers and more.

Connected body scale wirelessly sends weight data to the web

The Withings Connected Body Scale measures a user’s weight, fat mass, and lean mass, and sends that data wirelessly to a personal profile online. The device syncs with Google Health to build a long-term picture of the user’s health information.

Future Developments

How could the Personal City enhance our lives? Here is some of the suggestions we received at a recent presentation with Asian/Pacific region bloggers:

1. A weight monitoring system tells you what to eat

2. In-depth data allows for better matchmaking service

3. Find likeminded people to sit together when you travel

4. Monitor energy consumption

5. Understand the relationship between food types and your weight gain

There are plenty of other ways the Personal City can evolve. Leave your suggestions in the comments box.

Next Steps

PSFK has prepared a unique presentation on Intelligent Cities. If you would like to invite our staff to present it to your team and discuss possible opportunities for your company to explore, contact PSFK’s Jeff Weiner – jeff.weiner@psfk.com

Facebook Poised to Take  Geo-Networking Mainstream

2010-05-11T18:13:00.003+10:00

Wow... been so lazy/busy that i've not posted anything for ages .Anyway going to to try get back into things with this from Adage:

Geo-location and making the real world interactive have long been personal favourite topics of mine, and with this little move from facebook it seems like it's all about to kick off big time. Which while i'm happy about that, i'm kinda pissed (but not surprised) that facebook is making a play here... do they really have to be EVERYTHING on the web?! I'm kinda fond of my geo-location stuff being on nice, not-evil, foursquare

Social Site Announces Location-Based Functionality, Marketers Eager to Leverage 'Check-Ins' Look for Scale

by Michael Learmonth and Emily Bryson York
Published: May 10, 2010

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- This could -- finally -- be the year of mobile marketing. But not exactly in the ways first predicted.

The combination of location and social networking -- once confined to tiny players like Foursquare, Gowalla, MyTown, Whrrl, Loopt and others -- is about to get massive scale in the form of Facebook, which as of last month had 450 million users and is adding a million new users each day.

MAC ATTACK: Facebook is building a location-based functionality that lets users 'check in' at restaurants and share menus with friends.

Facebook is expected to launch location-based functionality as soon as May, according to an exec with knowledge of Facebook's plans. Marketers will be allowed in soon after.

Last week Ad Age reported that McDonald's is building a location-based functionality with Facebook that will allow users to "check-in" at restaurants and share menu items with friends. That campaign is expected to be rolled out some time after the consumer launch, when Facebook integrates brands into the system.

The social impact of including a physical location in a virtual sharing app is immense; so is the marketing application as brands are then able to turn their physical locations into media channels connected to real people across Facebook's social graph.

"People talk about location-based advertising, but location removes the need for advertising," said Seth Goldstein, co-founder of SocialMedia.com. "If you know where the consumer is, and that she is physically touching your brand, then you do not need to rely upon traditional mass-media channels to reach her."

Mr. Goldstein sees marketers adding location as a key part of the value exchange with consumers. A store could, for example, offer free Wi-Fi to patrons who share their location to their friends.

McDonald's declined to comment on its Facebook plans, but one can imagine it could allow users who "check-in" the ability to share an offer or promo, as well as their location, with their social connections.

Jumping on bandwagon
Brands quickly recognized the power of location-aware social networks, and Pepsi, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, Bravo, Warner Bros. and others jumped on the bandwagon and did deals with Foursquare.

But location-based marketing is very much in an experimental phase, mostly because the medium is tiny. Foursquare just signed up its millionth user, for example; MyTown has 2 million; Loopt has 3.5 million; and Gowalla still under a million. For a marketer that needs to reach hundreds of millions daily, geolocation social apps just can't provide the scale yet.

"Today no one can do location-based social marketing at scale other than potentially Facebook, should they release something," said Mike Lazerow, CEO of Buddy Media.

But with the proliferation of smartphones and location-aware networks -- including Facebook -- lots of marketers are betting that the sharing of physical location is about to become as natural and ubiquitous as a status update. Indeed, where you are could become the most valuable part of social networking. See a friend is having a coffee down the street? Why not join him?

Budgets devoted to this kind of marketing are tiny, just like social media budgets were a few years ago. But unlike some other recent social phenomenon -- take Twitter, or even Facebook itself -- it didn't take marketers long at all to figure out that the marketing potential is immense.

"We're always looking for the next big thing that isn't just a passing fad, but a viable wave in consumer behavior," said Chris Fuller, emerging media director at Pizza Hut. "Geolocation services appear to be just that." Pizza Hut built a Facebook ordering platform in 2008.

But the greatest opportunity for geolocation apps could be for local businesses, for which scale is less important than reaching the right people to generate foot traffic. "This will be the biggest thing to happen to local businesses since paid search," said Ian Schafer, CEO of DeepFocus, which just launched specialty practice GEOFocus. "It enables people to move in flocks or herds; you create waves of people."

Boon to local businesses
Some local businesses are catering to their Foursquare "mayors" with offers and special services. The Scholastic Store in New York is offering visitors 10% off any purchase, just for checking in while visiting.

Facebook, incidentally, has a self-serve ad platform created for small advertisers, the types most likely to benefit from location-based services.

Still, some wonder if this could be too much. Facebook is a platform that allows people to share their lives, and it makes sense that location would become part of that. But each feature Facebook adds -- such as its recent Open Graph function, which brings its social graph to third-party sites -- brings pushback from users, mostly in the form of privacy concerns.

"Being fully connected and available 24/7 to all your peeps and tweets may not be as healthy as it seems," said Scott Bedbury, CEO of BrandStream. "Not being available, being off the grid and being fully present in whatever moment you're in, and with whoever is with you, is my measure of 'engagement.'"

John Lewis captures the hearts of Britain

2010-05-03T09:58:00.001+10:00

Created by UK agency Adam & Eve for department store John Lewis, the retailer says that the ad – which features a reworking of Billy Joel’s Always A Woman To Me soundtracking a woman’s life story – has resulted in an astonishing 39.7% leap in sales.

It’s certainly capturing the public’s imagination in the UK. Several mainstream British papers have written about it, and I think it’s the first time my parents have ever emailed me about an ad. As The Observer puts it:

“All over Britain, women are kneeling in front of their tellies, heads low, shoulders shaking, tears and mucus dripping from their reddened faces like rain from a suburban gutter.”

I can’t think of another ad, which has such a positive response from the mainstream press so quickly:

* John Lewis ‘Spend it before you die’ ad puts sales up 40% – Observer
* Genius of John Lewis’s everywoman ad wins female vote – Guardian
* She’s ad us all in tears – The Sun
* John Lewis advert prompts iTunes release of Billy Joel cover – Telegraph
* John Lewis’ £6m advert becomes a YouTube hit - Metro
* The £6m ad that’s got Britain talking – and sobbing – Daily Mail

Mind you, at a reported $10m, it had better shift some units.

And as John Lewis isn’t in Australia, if I was Myer or David Jones, I’d be looking at the possibilities of licencing it for this market before my rival does.

Thanks to Tim Burrowes Mumbrella

HMV collaborates with Curzon

2010-04-29T11:34:00.001+10:00

The UK’s most successful music and movie chain HMV has opened its first in-store cinema...

HMV Group's conversion from main street music retailer into multi-format entertainment operator is a combined music store and cinema in London.

HMV was on the ropes in 2007, struggling to stay relevant in a music market hit by cost-cutting, the growing consumer trend towards buying digital music, and copyright-breaking file sharing. So it embarked on a major restructure which saw it broaden its portfolio of retail brands and formats. It shed many music retailing assets outside its core markets of the UK, Canada and Hong Kong (although it still has two stores in Singapore), to focus on a network of 692 stores in seven countries, including specialist English language bookstores in Europe and the Waterstones book chain.

While rival Borders UK went into administration, HMV returned a healthy profit, opened new stores and explored new opportunities, such as February's purchase of venue owner Mama Group. It's all part of a strategy blending new brand positioning and store design and driving many other initiatives, such as gaming websites, music streaming, ticketing, live entertainment venues, a revamped loyalty program and a stronger online presence.

Amongst new formats being trialled by HMV Group is an in-store cinema concept, the first of which was opened in the London suburb of Wimbledon.

David Wright, partner with Dalziel and Pow Design Consultants in London, which designed the concept, says it fits the new HMV ‘Get Closer’ marketing statement, with the company aligning itself more closely with people’s emotional relationships with music, films and games.

The instore cinema follows Dalziel and Pow’s design of HMV’s ‘next generation’ store concept, launched in 2008, now being rolled out rapidly, with great results, including in Westfield London.

"The Wimbledon store concept creates a compelling, multi-channel shopping experience that becomes a destination ‘social space’ for people to visit, spend time in and, ultimately, shop," says Wright.

The first HMV Curzon is a 263-seat, three-screen cinema on top of the HMV store. This will not only enable HMV to venture into the as yet largely untapped arena of in-store cinemas, but the retailer will also be able to do more cross-marketing to promote the latest DVD or games releases, using the cinema screens as a base where fans can interact. HMV claims that music now represents just 28 per cent of its UK and Ireland sales, while DVDs bring in 45 per cent and games/technology comprise 24 per cent.

Consumers reach the cinema by entering the front of the store, which will advertise the films on show, and then taking the stairs or lift to the second floor. An entrance at the front of the store allows direct access from the street, which is open during store trading hours and also for evening shows.

Once in the cinema, the multifunctional lobby has a club-like vibe, there is a bar selling food and drink and space to hang out. Customers are encouraged to buy their tickets online and print them out beforehand – a service only offered at the moment in London by two Showcase cinemas – but there is, of course, a box office too.
The screens will be traditional in feel but modern in execution; each named after their colour (red, blue and green) rather than a number.

"The HMV customer in Wimbledon is beginning to see their local HMV as an entertainment venue – as an alternative to the local Odeon, but with so much more to offer. All of this supports the brand vision: to create experiential spaces, not just another transactional space," says Wright.

Project: HMV Curzon
Location: Wimbledon, London
Size 200sqm (500sqm incloding screens)

thanks to insideretailing.

First mobile OS (android) based TV?

2010-04-08T18:13:00.006+10:00

Not sure if this is a first, but either way it's a clear pointer towards the future of device convergance

Thanks Tech Crunch

Swedish Company, People Of Lava, Creates An Android-Based TV

by John Biggs on Apr 5, 2010

Remember Android? Don’t worry. You’ll remember next week once this whole iPad thing blows over. Anyway, a Swedish company called, inexplicably, People of Lava has announced what they’re calling and Android-based TV. The TV, called the Scandinavia, comes in a 42-inch configuration that costs about $2,500.

The Scandinavia Android TV – which will first be released in a 42” version, followed by 47” and 55” – is built without compromises. It features top-of-the-line components and is carefully put together by hand to ensure the kind of quality that customers expect from a People of Lava Full- HD LED TV set. Its Android platform and internet capabilities provide a wide range of functionalities, including:
- Out of the box Android TV applications such as: – YouTube, Google Maps ,Weather, Time, Calendar, Internet Browser
- Downloadable Apps, both free and from coming App-store: – Facebook, Twitter, Email and more…
- Internet connection
- USB connection

Read the rest of this entry »

Paypal to split checks and collect money

2010-03-31T11:19:00.000+11:00

PayPal has launched an updated version of its new Send Money application for iPhone.

Version 2.0 of the PayPal Send Money app allows PayPal and iPhone users to access to their money securely, including bump money transfers, split check and collect money.

With bump users can put two iPhones together, and funds are transferred between their PayPal accounts. The split check feature allows users to divide and reimburse each other for the cost of a meal, including a tip, for up to 20 people. Collect money lets users request money from multiple people for a joint gift, concert tickets, and more. Users can send gifts of money on the spot for birthdays, anniversaries or any moment of impulsive generosity.

Smartphone sales have surpassed 172.4 million units in 2009*, and consumers worldwide are expected to spend $119 billion** by 2015 via mobile phones. PayPal mobile transactions have increased almost six-fold, from $25 million in 2008 to $141 million in 2009.

“Today, you leave the house with three critical things: your phone, your wallet and your keys,” said Frerk-Malte Feller, MD of PayPal Australia.

“PayPal Send Money lets consumers access their wallets through their phones. Because with PayPal, the wallet lives in the cloud – the mobile phone is just one device customers can use to access it.”

Send Money users can set reminders for recurring payments, donate money to, and manage their PayPal accounts from the iPhone. For international transactions, it also features a global currency calculator and 15 languages. A PIN or password is required for every transaction to prevent unauthorised use.

The application is available to download free at the Apple iTunes store.

Posted from InsideRetail 31st March 2010

Pictures that move, not moving pictures

2010-03-29T15:25:00.003+11:00

Ok... i'm not about to buy an iPad anytime soon, but thinking like this does make the format seem way cool

VIV Mag Interactive Feature Spread - iPad Demo from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.

Form Usability and UX goodness

2010-03-25T14:31:00.003+11:00

Nice UX/ usabaility tips/links from John Van Der Loo, our front end developer. Enjoy

When we’re designing forms there are some simple things to keep in mind with regards to the UX and usability side of things that will make them that much better for our audiences.

Good Usability has two very useful articles about validation and preventing issues on web forms, well worth a read.
Preventing issues on web forms: http://www.goodusability.co.uk/2010/03/preventing-issues-on-web-forms/
Form validation: http://www.goodusability.co.uk/2009/08/form-validation/

Alistapart has an article regarding inline validation that shows us the wonderfulness of using real-time inline validation vs. validating by submission. By giving people an indication that their input is correct (or not) while they are filling in a form results in a far greater success rate and of course there is a much better experience for users.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/inline-validation-in-web-forms/

Some other excellent websites to read where UX/Usability is concerned:
- Boxes And Arrows
- UI Scraps
- UX Booth
- Smashing Magazine has a few articles about usability and user experience that are worth reading.

Video: PSFK Conference NYC: Kevin Slavin’s “This Platform Called Everyday Life”

2010-03-25T14:18:00.001+11:00

Another older one, but love this guy's point of view... thanks PSFK

April 28, 2009

At PSFK Conference NYC, Kevin Slavin gave a captivating presentation on “This Platform Called Everyday Life”, in which he discussed the evolving nature of the objects surrounding us. Kevin, Managing Director and co-founder of Area/Code, explained how pervasive technologies are changing the way we relate to our physical environment and everything in it – from playground balls, to houseplants to sneakers.

Kevin opened his talk with a story about a fascinatingly bizarre woman who had such intense feelings for the Berlin Wall that she married it. Through his talk, Kevin demonstrated how the woman’s relationship with the Wall, while extreme, parallels the relationships we’re developing with the material objects we love, use, play with, and wear. Technologies that give an object an ‘identity’ and make it ’smarter’ (RFID, accelerometers, QR codes, GPS) are breathing artificial life into our favorite unliving things. These technological innovations are, in essence, moving us towards a complete convergence with the objects in our lives… Maybe we are becoming more dependent and defined by our possessions because they are becoming more dependent and defined by us. The talk is eye-opening – watch it in full below.

The Check-out of the Future: Fewer Humans, More Phones [video]

2010-03-18T18:07:00.004+11:00

Older 'future video' and article from NCR via Fast Company. Even thought it's nearly a year old, i still love signs to a future of RFID/NFC, internet of things...

National Cash Register is one of those grand old American companies that, come the digital revolution, might have gone the way of the rotary phone. Instead, with a trimmed down name (now NCR), and a ramped up R&D operation, the company is transforming the way we handle our money--or its digital equivalent.
We visited NCR’s "Innovation Center," an expansive high-rise display space filled with next-gen ATMs, kiosks, and self-service systems that will let you do everything from check into a hotel (and find your way to your room), to burn a movie (and redeem the old ones you no longer want.)

We were most taken with the possibilities of using our cellphones to conduct business in all sorts of intriguing new ways. We got the company to demonstrate a few cutting edge applications that may soon appear in a bank or hotel near you.

Bloggers Create Social Network Via Snail Mail

2010-03-18T17:49:00.000+11:00

New skool gets old skool... thanks psfk
March 17, 2010

Social networks present a paradox; we utilize them as a utility to keep in touch with everyone, and yet people spend hours everyday interacting on them. It’s clear from this that the commodity being played with is time. Moreover, we are accustomed to immediate and self-gratifying communication. In reaction though, many of us still lament older forms of human interactions. Because in a world where birthday wishes are symbolized by animated gifs and two second decisions about whether to post a comment on Facebook, the sincerity can sometimes feel a little lacking.

This is where the Package Project takes it starting point. The goal is to build a network of interactions by sending creative and colorful packages to other bloggers. They write:

The Package Project is an exchange aimed to connect bloggers around the world and to grow the blogging community even further. It is all about swopping pretty packages and handmade delights. The packaging only makes the exchange more fun so get creative…strings, manila tags and ribbons galore. Each package must be a joy to receive and each time you do receive one…pop out your camera and snap away. This way we all get to share in a bit of your excitement.

By participating, you get to learn about your blogging partner through their creativity as much as their contents. More importantly though, the sense of anticipation between each blogger builds a more meaningful interaction because of the time needed to create the project as well as send/receive. Time, here, is still a commodity, but is it possible to feel a little bit of sincerity reinstated when you know the other person has spent just as much time as you have thinking of them?

Pizza Hut on the go

2010-03-18T15:27:00.001+11:00

Pizza Hut has launched an Australian iPhone app to enable mobile ordering of products.

The app features an augmented reality function or ‘GPS Store Finder’, giving iPhone 3Gs users with the ability to find their nearest Pizza Hut store. Users can hold up their iPhone 3Gs, the camera opens and the screen shows what is in front of the user, as well as small tabs highlighting the direction and distance of Pizza Hut locations nearby.

All iPhone users will have fun with the exclusive racing game – a great way to be entertained while waiting for their orders to be delivered.

The app gives customers the ability to order a selection of food including pizza, tuscani pasta, sides, and drinks. Orders can be saved as an ‘ifav’, making it quicker to order in the future.

Pizza Hut’s iPhone app has been specially created for the local market and is based on the popular US version.

The app can be viewed at http://www.pizzahut.com.au/iphone and downloaded from the iTunes store.

Pizza Hut will also launch a new ordering service for a variety of other 3G mobile phones in the near future.

To see a demonstration of the app, go to www.pizzahut.com.au/iphone.

From Inside Retailing March 17

Goldstar Beer: Park Fight Facebook App

2010-03-11T15:43:00.001+11:00

Brands trying to generate large numbers of fans on Facebook know it generally involves some serious work over a decent period of time, or in this case (and the much preferred method!), just a very clever idea that has a platform to go viral! This is a new Facebook app for Gold Star Beer (Israel’s #1 Beer), created by McCann Israel where they have created a man vs woman car parking challenge for players recruit friends to help win the battle of supremacy!

You’ve got to park a car perfectly in the fastest possible time to help your genders average parking score! The app has been a massive hit over in Israel, with 200,000 people becoming fans, generating 2.5 million + games in under a week! Check out the Facebook app here! (thanks Nir!)

Oh, women are currently parking in about 53 secs while men are averaging a speedy 42 secs!

Posted from Digital Buzz

Google opens online store

2010-03-11T10:51:00.002+11:00

Google will sell the online services of other business software makers in an effort to fill its own product gaps and persuade more companies to rely on applications piped over the Internet.

The online store unveiled late on Tuesday in the US marks another step in Google's crusade to convert the world to "cloud computing".

The term refers to applications that run in Web browsers instead of individual hard drives.

More than 50 software makers have agreed to sell their Internet programs through Google, which will keep 20 per cent of the sales. The prices are expected to range from $US50 ($A54.73) to several hundred dollars per user annually.

Intuit and Concur Technologies are among the best-known software makers in Google's store.

From Insider Retail 11/03/2010