A good analogy...

'Imagine you’re in a huge building with several storeys, each with an incredible large amount of rooms. Each room has tons of things in it. It’s utterly dark in that building, all you can do is walk down a hallway till you bang into a door or a wall.

All the rooms in the buildings are somehow connected but you don’t know how. Now, I tell you that in some rooms there is a treasure hidden and you’ve got one hour to find it. Here comes the good news: you’re not left to your own resources. You have a jinn, let’s call him Goog, who will help you. Goog is able to take you instantaneously to any room once you tell him a magic word. Let’s imagine the treasure you’re after is a chocolate bar, and you tell Goog: “I want Twox”. Goog tells you now that there are 3579 rooms where there is something with “Twox” in there.

So you start with the first room Goog suggests to you, and as a good jinn he of course takes you there immediately; you don’t need to walk there. Now you’re in the room you put everything you can grab into your rucksack and get back outside (remember, you can’t see anything, in there). Once you are outside the building again and can finally see what you’ve gathered you find out that what is in your rucksack is not really what you wanted. So, you have to get back into the building again and try the second room. Again, and again till you eventually find the Twox you want (and you are really hungry now, right?).


Now, imagine the same building but all the rooms and stairs are marked with fluorescent stripes in different colours, for example a hallway that leads you to some food is marked with a green stripe. Furthermore, the things in the rooms have also fluorescent markers in different shapes. For example, Twox chocolate bars are marked with green circles. And there is another jinn now as well- say hello to LinD.

You ask LinD the same thing as Goog before: “I want Twox” and LinD asks you: do you mean Twox the chocolate bar or Twox the car? Well, the chocolate bar of course, you say and LinD tells you: I know about 23 rooms that contain Twox chocolate bars, I will get one for you in a moment. How can LinD do this? Is LinD so much more clever than Goog? Well, not really. LinD does not understand what a chocolate bar is, pretty much the same as Goog does not know. However, LinD knows how to use the fluorescent stripes and markers in the building, and can thus get you directly what you want.

You see. It’s the same building and the same things in there, but with a bit of a help in forms of markers we can find and gather things much quicker and with less disappointments involved.

In the Linked Data Web we mark the things and hallways in the building, enabling jinns such as LinD to help you to find and use your treasures. As quick and comfortable as possible and no matter where they are.'

The best twitter visualisation of all time!

Yeah, yeah...now i'ma let you finish but did you see the MTV VMAs over the weekend? Actually more impressive was this beautiful visualization of VMA-related Tweets created by Stamen Design



Despite winning 8 gongs at the awards, the gaga phenomenon didn't win this event. It was dominated by the anniversary of Taylor vs Kanye. No matter Kanye being such a prolific tweeter sorry, ranter through twitter he couldn't overhaul the Taylor sympathisers

Instant Ads

Google is out there, filling the MOMA in San Francisco (looks like they have learned a thing or two from Jobs), the new service, Google Instant, delivers faster search results.

The headline screams 'Google Instant could save the world a total of 3.5 billion seconds a day!'
Try it; if you start typing a search query, Google begins guessing what you’re looking for even before you finish. Its like predictive text but predictive search, it doesn't only recommend your search terms; it lists the links in real time!

The technology is cool. It's fast, I mean super-fast...so fast you could get motion sickness. At the launch, Marissa Mayer termed it 'search before you type' - love it. And the company estimated that using Google Instant would save users anywhere from 2 to 5 seconds per search.

Here is the price; those guys at google aren't stupid - thats why they are so rich. Instant delivers links, many more of them and yes, that means more sponsored links (Ads)

I am going to Budapest in a couple of weeks, I wanted to check the weather there so as I type 'B' I get an ad for 'Budget Insurance', quickly google guesses I am looking for Budapest but gives me 'Budapest Stag-Do's' (batchelor parties) before it correctly gets me to where I want to be as soon as I hit 'W'

So yes, the technology is very cool, but if I do 20 searches a day I will see 1.5 million more ads over the next 5 years than under the traditional search approach

IPad was going to win wasn't it?

I really like the way infographic displays enough confusion to show how the IPad is taking on all comers and established old hands but also allows you to dig in a get real insight.

The iPad is fossilizing these other products, its beauty is in the integration of the services (oh and the services themselves)



Each one of these speciality devices has somehow been left playing catch-up...how did that happen. Are we all really being hoodwinked by great design and marketing?

What is your country known for

This is a brilliant map of 'claim to fames'. It's sure to cause some controversy - the USA being #1 in Serial Killers. Living in London I do find CCTV very apt.



One change I would make is for Colombia...surely Cocaine is too obvious - how about coffee?

Tipping point for data in marketing

IBM are good at business intelligence and on Friday they decided that showing us reports on the performance of our marketing campaigns wasn't enough when the acquired Unica for $480m

If you are into the whole marketing automation thing you will know that Unica’s software predicts customer preferences and likelihood to purchase. Then it designs marketing campaigns based on that data. The software also monitors the effectiveness of ad campaigns.

The great thing about this for me is that marketing is becoming much more adaptive these days, we collect feedback on the behaviour of our customers in real time and feed them into a database of intentions so we can act on them. Deals like IBM-Unica really highlight that data is future of marketing and will more and more prevalent.

If you are still reading.... the CEO of Unica, Yuchun Lee, was one of the MIT students involved in the blackjack card-counting teams depicted in the book “Bringing Down the House” and the movie “21.” with Kevin Spacey

Unilever fight back @ Old Spice

My clients at Unilever know what's what in digital marketing, but even my man @babs26 had to nod approvingly when Old Spice delivered their viral campaign that to date has over 130m YouTube views for the varying spots and racked up over 100,000 Twitter followers

However the other thing that Unilever understand is how to harness consumer feedback through data and respond quickly...so while the Old Spice guy was ridiculing the boys at Axe - they didn't expect OhDoctah from Dove for Men to slap them with this



The ladies love pink and I love the ladies!