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Been playing with the Flash client for BBC News. It’s another example of a technology maturing and converging to the point where it just works. I think this longtime Flash-avoider may have found a new friend in Flash as a rich front-end to RSS…
The service is provided by mobizines and even includes the BBC news soundrack to alert you a new edition has arrived :-)
Just uploading the sys file to my N70…
alebic.net � flash, flash lite, multimedia and all related… ;-)
Browsing the Apple website in search of support details and came across this
A robot armada has been unleashed into the night sky. Its ships are unmanned interplanetary probes that fly faster than you will ever go, and cross distances you can’t even imagine. But with nothing more than an Internet connection, you can go with them, catching sights that are as real—and as beautiful—as they are strange.
Not only are the pictures wonderful, but there’s a desktop widget
When Daniel and I were very young junior art directors pounding Manhattan pavement armed with our absurdly large black boxes in search of our first job in advertising, all we could talk about was British ads. It was a great time, surrealism was going strong and creatives and model-makers were getting ever weirder and ever more wonderful. This was the time of we can’t tell you anything about Winston cigarettes so here’s a tart leaning on a bar and the fabulous B&H gold campaign.
I mention this because for the last week I’ve been bikeless and so have been spending time on the tube. I need to spend more time on the tube, it’s a great place to see ads (is it because you stand in front of them for ages?). Anyways, my crappy cameraphone picture doesn’t do it justice, but have you seen this 48-sheet for the Daily Telegraph?
It stopped me because it had the sheer beauty and lightness of touch of those earlier British ads. Not only is the pun relevant and subtle, the production quality is astonishing and I just can’t tire of looking into that etching and wondering how it was done.
Strangely, the idea itself isn’t that great and while the agency has extended the campaign to include other authors the posters don’t work. They lack the chemistry of Des Lyman and the bard himself (a strange cocktail of sexy, rude, witty, manly, curious and creative) so fall a bit flat…
University of Pennsylvania are introducing a tagging system to complement their library’s traditional structure:
PennTags - When card catalogs meet tags. Many-to-Many
I know us advertising types don’t think of library science as particularly cool, but example is relevant to what we do.
Put it like this: It would be like consumers collaborating with brands to design and build information architectures that are relevant to each consumer as an individual. Traditional segmentation struggles to deliver co-creation’s “experience of one” and this is a nice example of how that might work in the future (make that later this afternoon).
(Thanks Mr Monkchips)
Good piece on FMCG blogging over at Positive Impact (one of Hill & Knowlton’s Collective Conversation channels)
He mentions Stormhoek among others and includes a link to comments about Flora pro.activ’s Lulu activity.
Many good points, but I wanted to add a wee clarification about Flora.
I’m currently working with Flora’s agency to investigate and define ways the brands can collaborate (and co-create, of course) with digitally-enabled communities.
While the Lulu activity was before my time, I thought I’d mention that it was never supposed to be a blog (as I understand it the word ‘blog’ never appeared in any of the ads).
The idea (from looking at the work) was to suggest a feeling of closeness with a celebrity (getting past the bodyguards and high fences). Unilever has a page on the Lulu activity on its corporate site.
Once you’re operating in the celeb space the rules change and you need to work with a whole set of assumptions (say, for instance, that celebs don’t write their own copy). I think the man on the street understands these mechanics and I doubt any mums out there thought Lulu was actually blogging her experiences as you or might have.
That said, Lulu did genuinely have high cholesterol. She did eat all the products and believe it or not, they did help lower her cholesterol:-)
This highlights one of the conundrums faced by brand managers who want to enter the co-creation space: many brands have real, positive stories to tell, but even these seem to fear the airing of a single item of bad news or off-message content. Getting over (managing) that barrier is one of the toughest challenges I can see for them.
With all those “experiences of one” going on out there it gets ever more difficult to know what people are talking about. Check out this comment on a psp-tagged page
no shit. there arent even 200 ISOs out there u g0damm nooborz. custom background is custom on every psp tard. font is an old hack. stop takin my bloody words i only get to say bloody. u prolloy dont even own more then 1 psp.
(Of course because I’m very, very sad I do know what he’s talking about, but I’m just wondering how brands are going to embrace infinite customer heterogeneity when it comes to community and language…)
I was gonna get this sexy-looking piece of kit but darn, look at those reviews, one guy is saying it’s great, the next it sucks… Anyone had a go out there wants to point me in the right direction?
While I’m at it, have any of you done some sexy hacking with your PSPs? (I’m thinking Movabletype quickpost, VNC or Akype over PSP, that sort of thing…)
There appears to be some debate about the relative superiority of the Nintendo DS and Sony’s PSP. Unusually for this kind of online debate, the quality of the language is very high.
shutup timD just cuz u cant afford a psp u can suck my balls
you fucking nintendo whores. clearly. you wanna talk originallity? supermario bros = supermario bros ds. repeated kirby games, there all the same!! i dont see the difference, besides that the ds only does games. psp does video, mp3, wireless internet, photos, and VIDEO GAMES THAT ROCK! i do indeed plan on buying a ds, because the new super mario bros. intrigues me. psp = pc based handheld. ds = two game boys brought together with a “stick” to touch itself with.
dude shutt the fuck up or ill take that stylus and stick it up your uretheral sideways!! (if youd dont know what that word is ^ its your penis whole…jackass)
i bet youve never even played either one
thank you person with actuall friggin’ brains!!
…watch me bitch
PSP is better then ds…Accept it. The only thing ds has over psp is games and how the F*** is games better then video,Music and photos combined.
[etc]
I can’t say I had ever heard a stylus described as something to touch oneself with;-)
MediaTalks: Urinal Football? - Only in Brazil!
(Thanks Daria)
Always partial to a good shaving story me, well, here’s Alex B’s first encounter with the MP3Power shaver thingy…
Hey, Andy’s done another redesign and he’s uploaded a song too :-)
So this one sounded good. I’m thinking ‘power and control’ sounds a lot like the mantra du jour “less control, greater influence”. I’m thinking, crikey, they have Naomi Campbell and John Malkovich and they’re doing some super-clever multilevel exploration of them (the company? the artists? the characters?) losing control and gaining influence mixed in with the ‘power is nothing without control’ brand message in a sort of advertising meets internet culture message mash-up…
But no, not really.
Hey, try and watch the film and feel like Eeyore:-(
After mentioning Alex B’s post on shaving yesterday, I spotted this today. James Governor’s MonkChips: On Razors: We’re not consumers we’re advertisers
Funny what we pick up on…
Just came across a fantastic video on youtube. Matt, the guy responsible writes about the adventure on his blog: Where the Hell is Matt? New York, NY It’s Done
What I want to know is, what exactly is the connection between Matt and Stride gum.
If you head on over to the Stride site, you’ll notice the little dancing character on the bottom-left. See how his dance matches Matt’s. Now I’m not suggesting foul play here, far from it—it looks like Matt secured sponsorship from an FMCG company which has allowed him to have a truly life-changing travel experience.
But Matt, could you explain who is the chicken and who is the egg? Is this a brilliant advertising idea or the result of a determined individual’s struggle to fund his dream?
Matt?
Just came across a fabulous post by Joel Spolsky from back in 2001.
What’s the moral of the story? Beware of Methodologies. They are a great way to bring everyone up to a dismal, but passable, level of performance, but at the same time, they are aggravating to more talented people who chafe at the restrictions that are placed on them.
So OK, what’s with the Numa thing? Could someone explain why hundreds of youtubers were lipsyncing to Numa numa and what is it about this gang that the comments are particularly bitchy?
(watch this one first)
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