Friday 28 August 2009

Winding down....Mario takes us into the weekend

Everyone's favourite plumber is back - yeah sure its like a regular platform - but with added wii technology



Here in November - GET EXCITED!

The Impatient Chef

All arbitrageurs of good taste should head directly to this site...do not pass go and you wont gain 200 pounds

www.theimpatientchef.com

Yes of course its a shameless plug for a good friend's (and skilled media practitioner)new website.

The impatient chef is a wonderfully simple idea - cook fantastically nutritious dishes in 30 mins or less. Genius!

Everything here is done with the busy in mind, short cuts, emailable lists of ingredients and categorisation based on mood.

Words from the impatient chef...

" I usually work every hour that God sends and a few years ago I came to rely too much on, well, unhealthy food. Before I realised what was happening, I was marched off to see a gastroenterologist who told me my guts were screwed, although she had a medical term for it. What followed was a total transformation in my attitude to eating and – a long story short – I decided to eat properly no matter how busy my life would get.

Fast forward a few years and here we are: I have created a collection of wholesome recipes that anyone, even with basic cooking skills, can prepare after a long day at work. All you need to do is “invest” up 30 minutes of your time, follow the simple instructions and you will have an honest meal to end your day. No tricks, no advance chopping, no extra preparation or hidden steps in the instructions to make you double-guessing – all straight forward so you can actually relax while you are preparing your supper.

And – as you would expect from someone with no patience – I even made your shopping experience as quick and hassle free as possible. Just email your list to your mobile and off you go"

All delivered in Gera's trademark no nonsense style - you go girl!

Wednesday 26 August 2009

And everything was alright

This is nice.

Maybe its just the kind of day I am having but this really resonates

And everything was alright is the story of a lonely bear who wants to travel to space. There is a film, a picture book, a website, and an art exhibition. It has drama, humour and a touch of surrealism

And Everything Was Alright from Placeholder Films on Vimeo.



Camera angles are incredible and the music adds to the message of loneliness - if you have a spare 8 minutes - actually even if you don't have 8 minutes you should watch this film

Boom!

Turn it up; Nokia owns mobility with their launch into 3G notebook territory. Whatever you say, Nokia are still the reigning kings of mobile phones, if you want to surf, text and call all day and all night long you have to turn to Nokia on battery life alone. Give your iphone to the kids and don't get me started on my storm (maybe its time for a curve)



The Booklet has an aluminum case, weighs 1.25 kilograms, 10-inch screen is HD, integrated Bluetooth, GPS, a webcam and an SD card reader and it has a 12-hour battery life. Nokia is hitting hard in a field dominated by HP, Dell and Sony but for mobile connectivity on a laptop with style.... analyticsarbitrage rates Nokia

Tuesday 25 August 2009

Friend Wheel

I know I am late to this particular party, hey two of my friends have it! I found a FB app that looked so cool I added it to my profile. I know that admitting that is a big deal; I deleted booze mail and scrabulous ages ago - but this is data visualisation and social networking in a simple form and we all all love simple

The Friend Wheel scans your friend list, creates a linked circle and then maps them to friends of yours you know

Here's mine; get yours here http://apps.facebook.com/friendwheel/iframe.php



I can see how my friends divide into groups (home, true friends and work friends), but I also see that people i never thought were connected somehow know each other - creepy!

One of the interesting things about this is the idea of how some people collect loads and loads of friends - I wonder from a chart like this you can get to your 'true' friends and what would that chart look like? I imagine you would have clusters like mine...but maybe with more connectivity?

Monday 24 August 2009

RIP TheLondonPaper

Ok, so this doesn't work for everyone, but I think TheLondonPaper beats London Lite. It has done a better job of aggregating celebrity gossip and is just superficial enough to last you 5 stops on the 'tube'. For non-London readers TheLondonPaper is an early evening freesheet for commuters.

However I have heard today that News International is to close TheLondonPaper. News International have cited the downturn in advertising and the resulting huge losses as being the key cause of the paper’s demise.

So what is happening over at News Int? Murdoch also announced that they plan to charge for access to all his news websites, including The Times, The Sun and the News of the World. So they just can't rely on ad revenues any more, and they need to maintain those lifestyles don't they?

I just can't see anyone really paying for 'news'. News is everywhere - even twitter is news. Sure, FT.com can charge but there you are paying for analysis, not news.

So I suppose there will be more consolidation, lower operating costs, sharing of printing and distribution, and further and further decline over time. The big guns of WSJ, FT have scale but will still have to tier their paid content services and build out social networking features and UGC.

Either way, on any given day, I check the news twice a day on my pre-built screens (where I have chosen what will appear where), but on Sunday morning, I love reading the newspaper; I read the bits I want (news, culture, business, sport) and disgard the rest - that way it feels more like a magazine but more topical...maybe there's something in that?

Tuesday 18 August 2009

Still love the tapes

Strictly old school, I remember ripping tracks off the radio onto TDK D90s. With that in mind I am going all out to get one of these



Sort of defeats the object but that's the point of irony isn't it?

Why would you Kindle?

Just back from a short break; at the airport was a guy with a Kindle. I just don't get it. It looks ugly for a start but let's not get caught up with aesthetics - I can't see why anyone would fall for a Kindle - here's why:

- Books take a long time to read, and you only read them once - why don't you just carry a book (which, incidently is smaller than a Kindle)

- I use my ipod to run with, we listen to music everywhere - i just can't see myself doing that with a book...it needs more concentration

- You can't beat a book; people like to look at your bookshelves, a barometer of taste. You can also lend them to friends and trash them at the beach

I don't think anyone will be using a Kindle this time next year - sell yours on ebay now (unless you like it that is...)

Friday 7 August 2009

Getting Social

Readers, I need your help!

Measure it, prove it, why should I do it? Man...that's all we seem to hear when talking about embracing social media. We are doing a lot of work in the area of capturing brand sentiment online with a friendly family partner. By doing this I finally think we have stopped talking about campaigns and started thinking about conversations

The old world mindset of one-way marketing messages always appears to be our start point in all of this and that's our biggest problem. This suggests we as a community of analysts are yet to come to terms with the fact that the days of control over brand and message are gone, and gone forever.

The effectiveness of monitoring and participating in brand conversation are constantly taking place , however, cannot be measured with the old tools of yesterday's media. I would love to see some studies that show that brands doing social well perform better than their peers...does anyone have that? Email me at steve.simpson@groupm.com

I think by switching on these new datastreams that track conversation we are onto something, but we still havent worked out how to integrate that data into a bigger whole. Anyone want to get involved?

Tuesday 4 August 2009

Welcome to googleworld

Eric Schmidt had to resign from Apple's board of directors due to conflict of interest. Once you have safari and Chrome and iphone and Android what can you do?




Jobs and Schmidt cozied up back in 2006 as they were worried about the giant that was Microsoft. Now Microsoft looks like a lumbering oaf against a context of the world's greatest innovators. Now that google do operating systems, browsers and applications aren't we starting to see the final demise of Microsoft?

For a company that touts 'Do No Evil' is it just me that feels this is all little 'Four legs, good. two legs bad?'