Archive | July, 2008

How do you spend your time?

31 Jul

As a relative amateur to this blogging game I have to say how much I enjoy seeing what others in our fascinating industry are thinking about, problems faced and new ideas.  I have always loved bouncing ideas around with my colleagues and I love the fact that this virtual office is now widening.  That said this morning has been an excellent example of finding gems out there. 

Big thanks to Drew B who pointed to me in the direction of Will McInnes blog and in particular a piece about what % of our collective time and energy is distributed across three different time-buckets: Noising, Thinking & Executing at the moment?  Do check out his blog and read his musings on this subject.  I think I will run a survey in the office this afternoon to see how my different colleagues would break up their day.

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Wii sales nearing 30m

30 Jul

Although I do like gadgets I have to say I am not your biggest gaming fan.  I never really got past the MegaDrive (showing my age) and that damn hedgehog…..that is until now.  Visiting our God son the other week he introduced to the Wii and it has transformed my life.  How much damn fun can bowling be when you are not faced with the local savages and can actually play in your front room!

My wife Amanda has also announced that one of the lads from her work has managed to shed two stone by playing the Nintendo Wii Fit.  Unbelievable.  No wonder the company has just announced figures showing they have shifted nearly 30m consoles worldwide.  If I get my way they will be selling another one very soon.

That said I have just seen on the BBC that British pro-gaming team Birmingham Salvo have been crowned winners of the 2008 Championship Gaming Series (CGS).

The ten-strong team share the top prize of $500,000 (£252,000) for coming out top of the eight teams who made it to the grand final.  Pass me the control pad!

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Are you in the tribe?

30 Jul

Seth Godin the bestselling author of ten books about marketing, the spread of ideas and managing both customers and employees with respect is running a new experiment alongside the launch of his latest book, Tribes.  He is inviting people to join a members-only tribe. A tribe for marketers, for leaders, for those focused on building communities or creating products or spreading ideas.

This online community will live on a site he has created that will feature blogs, forums, social networking, comments, photos, videos and a job board. And it’s by invitation only until October. Spots are limited and early members get privileges and bragging rights.

For further information about joining Seth’s tribe check out the FAQ – but please note you will have to be quick, after August 10th it’s closed.

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Are you in ATM mode?

29 Jul

I read an interesting blog on Edelman Digital about living in ATM mode.  Appartently this is a concept coined by Ernie the Attorney, a blawger. The story goes that Ernie lost a great deal of his belongings when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and since that disaster has moved a lot of his stuff from physical assets to bits.

Now Ernie is taking this a step further by keeping a lot of his data online “in the cloud” so that he can get access to it from any connected device, similar to the way that you can get your money from any ATM without going to the bank. This has freed him up to travel with just his smartphone.

Cloud computing is currently getting a big push with the recent launch of the 3G iPhone but before you get carried away take note of the story covered on the BBC today about how Apple has set up an apologetic blog devoted to solving the problems of its recently launched MobileMe service. 

Two weeks ago Apple launched the new service to coincide with its 3G iPhone and pitched it to users as its answer to cloud computing.  All well and good so far, but many users found that they were not able to receive or send emails while others were unable to synch their devices at all.  Not so good.

With the criticism mounting in the blogosphere Apple has decided to launch its own MobileMe blog to help users with any teething problems.  Regardless of the problems its customers are facing, I quite like the fact that a large brand is using the medium of blogging to combat problems in the blogosphere.  Are we about to see more of this?

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Back to the mothership

29 Jul

According to a story on El Reg today, Bebo users have the chance to team up with a controversial scientist to compile multimedia packages to be transmitted into deep space on behalf of the human race.  The planet Gliese which has only recently been detected is thought to be capable of supporting life.  The AMFE group (A Message From Earth) and interested Bebo users are hotly debating the burning questions of space diplomacy – namely, just what pictures should be sent to the aliens. Categories include “humans”, “animals” and “celebrities”.  The article explains that the Bebo compilation will be thrown open to all comers on August 4, and close on September 30 and the “best” 500 submissions will be beamed out to Gliese 581 on October 9, and should get there in a couple of decades.

 

It was the couple of decades part that caught my imagination.  This blog would have only been the figment of someone’s imagination a couple of decades ago and a number of the worlds largest brands didbn’t even exist a couple of years let alone a couple of decades.

 

Having worked with a number of clients recently who have been working on a brand re-fresh it made me think about how vital it is to get this right.  Most brands keep the same logo and brand image for many years – think about how often the largest brands in the world change their logo – not very often.  How do you represent something and expect it to still be relevant in a couple of decades time?

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How cool do bloggers think cuil is?

29 Jul

Following my blog about Cuil yesterday I thought I would have a look around the blogosphere to see what other people made of the new search engine, especially after so much noise for such a new company.  The following three caught my attention first and all made some good points.

First up was the excellent Stephen Waddington’s blog which did make me chuckle when I saw what you could find yourself looking at if you misspelt the site name.  He also made a good point about Cuil being case sensitive which is a little disappointing.

Rather interestingly Alice Marshall has decided to use Cuil as her default search engine due to its privacy element.  According to Cuil when you search they do not collect any personally identifiable information, and do not have any idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies. 

My colleague Jo Jamieson at Berkeley PR also had a play with Cuil this morning and found some interesting results if you search for it on Google.

I would be interested to hear what anyone else out there thinks.

Too Cuil for school

28 Jul

Cuil, A new search engine is being unveiled by a few Google alumni trying to upstage their former employer.  Cuil is pronounced ‘COOL’ and is only the latest in a long string of start-up companies that have been founded and financed with the goal of competing with the big boys of search. 

 

Looking at their site it certainly isn’t shy and on the day of its launch was already claiming to be the biggest search engine on the planet, by indexing  more than 120 billion pages so far.

 

I have only had five minutes to play around but have to say I thought it looked quite……cool and definitely intend to run some search experiments over the next few days before I make a call on its potential.  I did how ever try to search for this blog which sadly didn’t feature.  If you are in the same boat as me and would also like Cuil to crawl your site and have it included in its index you can do so by clicking on this link and emailing them.

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PR Blog League Table

26 Jul

Mathew Watson a PR consultant with Rainier last week released an interesting league table of the top PR specific blogs.  The list has been compiled according to the AdAge Power 150 and Mathew readily admits it is by no means perfect since it only features blogs on AdAge with PR, Public Relations or Relations in the title, but it still makes interesting reading.  I have to say I found it quite insightful and was pleased to discover a few new blogs I hadn’t read before. 

Hopefully this blog will feature next year.

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Big brother

24 Jul

I had my security hat on this afternoon and was researching some of the most recent stories out there when I stumbled upon a story on Silicon which claimed that officials made more than 500,000 requests to snoop on private phone and internet information in the UK last year.

More than 1,400 requests per day were made to spy on phone call records and web traffic last year, up on the average of less than 350,000 per year over the previous two years.

Quite interesting reading and again makes you think about the big brother nature of all communication devices.  Although, surely it is human nature to be a little nosey and isn’t the success of Facebook based upon the fact that you get to know what people are up to without them knowing who specifically is reading their entries?

This leads me to another story I read about Facebook’s plans to broaden its reach online and predictions for the market.  I have spent a fair bit of time over the past few weeks looking at social networks and was intrigued to read about his predictions that there would soon be a wave of social web sites built on top of the information users give to social networks.

One of the features being launched is Facebook Connect, a way that other sites can integrate parts of Facebook’s service. Web sites can ask users for their Facebook user name and password, instead of creating an identity verification system themselves, and offer their users the ability to import their list of friends from Facebook.  The interesting part of Facebook Connect is it is a two-way highway — information about a user’s activity on those other Web sites also travels back and appears on the “news feed” on Facebook, where it is seen by that person’s friends on the service.

Saying that it is not just the internet people should worry about.  I actually borrowed a laptop this evening to do some writing at home which had been owned by an ex colleague.  I have to say it was quite eye opening to see what said colleague had been searching for – nothing sinister just plain stupid I am afraid and rather embarrassing if I am honest.

Is nothing we do actually private anymore?

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You are the weakest link goodbye

24 Jul

One of my colleagues Emma has secured the chance to be a contestant on what I think is quite easily the worst TV game show around – the Weakest Link.  According to Emma the best the winner can hope to win is £10k which don’t get me wrong I would be over the moon to recieve but only the winner has a chance of recieving this. 

During lunch today we were all sat around the table helping her practice by reading questions from The Weekest Link book.  I was struck by how rubbish my general knowledge was and there was a concensus that I was infact the weekest link.  Charming.

Any way, agent Emma has been set the task of trying to sneak in our company name of one of our clients during the filming – not an easy ask as they are quite strict over at the Beeb!  Good luck Emma – can’t wait to see you on the show even if I do hate it.  What a hero.

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