Your Google+ rights explained simply - Google should add legalese to languages it translates
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Sharing useful stories
Web and Social Media Advisor. I help clients create useful content for their customers that is findable and shareable.
Windows onto the world
I've been looking forward to the day that we can print TV screens onto wallpaper and transform an entire wall into any view you chose.
The folks at RationalCraft decided not to wait and improvised with a couple of standard 46" plasma screens and a clever implementation of position tracking using a Wii remote.
As you move around the room (wearing an infrared transmitter), the scene changes - giving you the impression you're actually looking out of a pair of windows.
I think there's going to be a market for high definition (min 1080p) real time camera feeds - and they're going to require a lot of broadband. Here are some views I'd be prepared to pay for ...
I'd love to see an update to this with the Kinect which doesn't require the transmitter.
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What if an energy company opened a gym?
A couple of students (Erik Hogfeldt and Gustav Johansson) take a fresh look at how a large Nordic energy company might use its marketing budget if it wanted to innovate.
The idea delivers much ...
- Create awareness about the product - and how much energy it takes to produce
- Increase contact from a monthly bill to a useful daily habit
- Move brand from staid and boring to fun and active
- Any energy you produce gets removed from your bill - and your waist line
- Single sign on and syncronisation to online hub
- Energy becomes something you manage - through an interest in the bill
- Simple calendar integration so it get scheduled into my life
- Auto status updates based on proximity to gym
- Visibility into which friends are also active
- Turn facebook or twitter status fields replace ad space because this is something people want to share
- Mobile app that allows you to access not only your bill but manage the devices at home
Above all, it makes sense that people would want to get involved - and it doesn't require any significant new behaviours. It's certainly something that could be funded as a trial out of a marketing budget.
One question I have is why didn't Fortum run with any of the ideas? Here's the web site today ...
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language
via vimeo.com
Here's a wonderful rant by Stephen Fry where he shares his love of words and language and cautions against being too pedantic about grammar.
As long as language communicates clearly, isn't that the most important thing? I guess I should finally forgive apple for "Think Different".
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Fun packaging
How fun would it be to receive a package secured like this?
If you have a cool product to ship inside the box, why would you not use this tape?
Order it directly from the clever couple who created it by emailing info@mmiinn.com
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Chapter 1: How we raised over $18K to write a book
About 30 days ago, I happened to see Bud Caddell tweet about wanting to write a book about marketing in this brave new social media world but he wasn't sure any publisher would take it on. Bud is a prolific thinker and writer and I'm a bit of a fan of his Fan Economy presentation - it has contributed to a few strategies I've put forward to clients.
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The Old Spice campaign is clever but it's not viral!
The third installation of Old Spice's ads featuring the impossibly charismatic Isaiah Mustafa was a little unexpected. Isaiah and the creative team have been rather busy of late - listening, researching and responding in very personal and meaningful ways to people who have mentioned the first two ads across all types of media. Currently I count 118 video responses on the YouTube channel - to people ranging from Ellen DeGeneres (33,000 views) to Perez Hilton (61,700) to Kevin Rose (61,600) to dozens of every day people who average 300 views. Note: these numbers tripled in the 2 hours since I started this post.
If you look at the total channel video views, it's an impressive 55 Million - particularly because there was nothing passive about their consumption.
Filed under //
video
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Bicycle Portraits Project
As part of my work with South African Tourism in Australia, I started talking to people about telling a different type of story - not your usual destination reviews. A friend put me onto this project where a couple of mates have started documenting their conversations with all the different types of cyclists they encounter in their travels.
The idea is to create a gorgeous book ...
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How to go from zero to a million users in a year
I love this presentation from founders @drewhouston (dropbox) and @asmith (xobni) where they share their lessons learned about creating products that people want, attracting customers and turning a profit.
Key points:
- Make something people want
- Learn early, learn often - note this is not the same as fail often
- There are lots of tools to help test in market for cheap
- Start small to learn and iterate
Filed under //
startup
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Google doing its part to beautify the web with a Font API
First a cleaner, tighter logo - now this - Google suddenly seems to really care about how the web looks. This will make a huge difference to how usable web sites are - a very simple way to gain fine control over what fonts are on your page - without resorting to images. There are some pretty nice free fonts on offer too.
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