Archive for April, 2009
On any given Sunday, Brian Lawrence might be playing softball or golf or restoring an old car. He might also be in his basement brewing up the occasional batch of beer. We hope his beer is good and that his golf game has more birdies than bogeys. And why should we care? It turns out Brian Lawrence is the brain behind the future of digital media storage. One of the brains at least.
The latest technology buzz is all about holographic storage, where one disc holds the equivalent of 500 CDs. More than 4,000 times the information that the human brain retains in a lifetime. No word on whether the comparison brain belongs to someone like Brian Lawrence or some lesser functioning pea-brain such as – well several names come to mind but this is where discretion and certain ten foot pole come in handy.
So exactly how do they accomplish this larger storage capacity? While there are scientific explanations galore, here’s a simpler version. It’s a bit like filling up a large jar. So you put some large rocks in the jar until it’s full. Someone else comes along and adds pebbles. You had no idea there was so much room. Someone else adds sand. And finally, someone else comes along and adds water. It’s all a matter of how you use the space.
In the case of the holographic storage model, the fillings are ones and zeroes in beams of light that get bent at various angles to form patterns. They’re layered and stacked up in that jar, except the jar is a plastic material that interacts with the light. In this way they store light years of information in a small space. Okay, if you’re a scientist you take issue with that because a light year is really a distance measure. We get that. But we enjoy taking occasional creative license in the name of fun. Read about the science here
People who buy Macs also like to dance. Fake ID users are more likely to be happy at startups. People who think alien abductions are real, are likely to also blame Nancy Pelosi for the financial crisis. When there are dark clouds in the sky, it is more likely to rain. If you go to a mall you’re either there to walk or shop. If people laugh when you’re not telling a joke, you die a little inside.
Not all, but some of these are correlations found by researchers for the startup Hunch site, founded by Caterina Fake, who co-founded Flickr with her husband. (Unconfirmed rumors are, they’re no longer together.) According to Fake (what an original name), Hunch is slated to be the hottest new thing since Eve made the decision to eat the apple. Or was that Adam who made the decision after Eve tempted him? It’s so hard to be sure if you weren’t there.
Animal, mineral, vegetable or other, asks the little electronic game that “guesses” what you’re thinking in 20 questions or less. Hunch uses a similar format to help you make a decision. Should you buy the 8,000 square foot house or the 10,000 version? It depends – do you clean or do you hire cleaners? Do you collect grand pianos or souvenir key rings? Do you have 14 children? You get the idea. Pick a credit card, a digital camera, a college for your kid. Hunch makes your decisions for you.
Rumors are that they ask hundreds of questions about you because they have trouble figuring you out otherwise. Some speculate that Hunch could market your data to companies or they could stack the data for certain products and monetize by collecting from those companies. For now this is just something to watch as Hunch.com doesn’t have enough machine learning to count as a trend yet. We made the bold decision not to sign up to see how Hunch.com works. Oops – perhaps we should have checked with Hunch on that decision.
In recent news, British R & B singer Joss Stone became the most recent Flake Girl. And this is not a girl who is flakey as the label might suggest. Flake Girls have been around for decades, advertising Cadbury’s Flake, a chocolate product. The ads are racy, with the Flake girls getting so involved with their chocolate bars that they forget to turn off the bath faucets, for instance. Whatever it may say about sex and chocolate, the Flake product, made from chocolate that spilled out of the molds as they were filled (usually discarded), gained massive popularity.
But chocolate doesn’t need to be racy to attract attention. Experiencing a downturn in its direct mail business, London’s Royal Mail executives set out to emphasize the sensory experience of mail, as opposed to digital messages. They created a personalized mail pack, made entirely of chocolate. They packaged the 6,000 chocolate letters in a heat proof container. Paper copies were included in case clients ate the chocolate version. Good thinking there – we should know. The letters to its direct mail customers were a hit. By the time the campaign was over, the Royal Mail had made $2.5 million on a $400,000 investment. Oh the ROI envy.
Of course at any given point in the process the campaign could very well not have made it. Numerous brilliant concepts never make it past the brainstorming. There’s a budget to be approved. Then there is the effort and logistics all of which could go horribly wrong at some point. Oh for a crystal ball in the conference room. Of course when the subject is chocolate, it’s probably a pretty safe bet. Crystal ball not necessary.
Merging chocolate with advertising has definite possibilities. Chocolate makes people happy. Advertising informs people. It could be the happy marriage of the industry. We’ll admit that maybe it’s too big a job to ask for chocolate to fix the ailing economy, but some of us are willing to die trying because death by chocolate is probably better than any other kind. But we’re not in a hurry to prove this.
Here is a webisode for a a hot new series by Northern Five. This show has been picked up by STARZ. Northern Five is an emerging production company in LA with a bright future. They are gifted artists. Would you believe the budget for this first concept video was less than the cost of a cafe latte?
It could have been an abundance of time on his hands or extra creativity bubbling out of his brain. It could also have been a compulsive drive to separate the blue Lego bricks from the white, green, red and other colored Lego bricks, each in its own drawer. Wherever he may have started, Nathan Sawaya transitioned to making his living as a Lego artist after a career spent exchanging briefs – okay, they were legal briefs. Additionally, his work is headed for museums from Alberta to Peoria and back.
It is at the very least an odd thought that folks can make a living playing with Legos. But several people are doing so. Sure, toy companies usually have people working in the play world but for Nathan Sawaya and others who work with the little plastic bricks, there are commissions to be had. Everyone from Donald Trump to Pete Wentz has hired him to replicate one structure or the other in Legos.
All of which goes to show there is always a market for creative, fun stuff with an element of surprise. For most people Legos are those annoying little things that you step on during house cleaning. And isn’t this mostly a painful experience? Not to mention the chore of getting them back in the box once they’re scattered about.
But artists aren’t like most people. They look beyond the brick or whatever medium and imagine something other than trying to get the Legos back into the storage bin. Nathan Sawaya was a lawyer whose relaxation routine included sculpting projects from clay and candy. Who would have thought candy? No word on whether he created Downward Dog sculptures in his spare time.
One day he created an eight foot tall pencil. No one expects an eight foot tall pencil – made with Lego bricks. So the gawking began. It was what Seth Godin might call a Purple Cow. Maybe every business should get an eight foot tall Lego pencil in these economic times. From that pencil came commissions for a variety of Lego sculpture, and pretty soon Sawaya had quit his day job to play with Legos. And, we don’t know if it’s compulsion but he has 1.5 million Lego bricks organized according to shape and color. Here’s an example of his work.
The New Social Engagement: A Visit to Zappos
Most Mashable readers have probably heard of the online retail company, Zappos. You may have learned of them via Twitter (Twitter reviews) and count yourself among the 400,000+ people that follow the CEO, Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay but who people refer to as Tony), or from a friend after she had one of the best customer experiences in her life.
No matter how you heard of them, we wager to guess that you did so through word-of-mouth. And word about Zappos has been spreading. . . . Read Mashable Blog
We they learned:
1. Your relationships are your brand
2. Deliver a positive experience
3. Embrace transparency … it’s gonna happen whether you like it or not.
Who said the trend is your friend? Sometimes that can be hard to believe. But for those that have situational awareness, it is simple truth. And Yes, the truth will set you free.
But why is it your friend? Because it shows direction and momentum. However, it can only be your friend if you are paying attention. If you are not … if your middle name is ostrich … then just rinse the sand off your rose colored glasses and enjoy the Corona, because you don’t have many sips left.
Why didn’t anyone ever tell us that change is hard? Or did they while our head was in the sand?
UNDOUBTEDLY, the advertising and PR industries are changing dramatically. Where are they headed and how fast? … and in that future world how will you DRIVE business? Let’s get our hands around this trend. Please share your thoughts in the form below. We’ll compile the results in a future post.
Any day now, news is about to break that Amish leaders have endorsed widespread use of cell phones in their communities. Or not. Not exactly known to be early adopters of technology, the Amish have been considering the issue of cell phones for ten years – back then text messaging was yet to become ubiquitous with its own hybrid language. Who knows when all the evidence will be convincing enough to make cell phone usage an easy and unanimous decision for the Amish community? And should they really wait for that beyond the shadow of a doubt moment before jumping in? Should anyone?
It isn’t as though there are no cell phones in Amish towns. Long ago some decided that wireless was a way to get around rules about not having wires to the outside world. But theirs was a house divided. It turns out there are varying degrees of adherence to the Amish rules that frown upon widespread adoption of technology. It is perceived to dominate individual lives while leaving family values behind. Some of us believe there is room for peaceful coexistence here.
Yet, while the concept of Technological Singularity is being discussed in the wider world, the Amish shouldn’t be written-off as pre-historic technophobes. Visitors have found them to be extremely well informed. There are computers – in libraries because technology should be for the public good rather than private entertainment. This along with “steam-punk-nerds” and “air-punk-geeks” who retrofit electrical appliances into pneumatic versions shows that it is possible to say no and yes to technology at the same time.
And lest we begin thinking that the Amish with their well-made quilts and wooden furniture are a world apart from our technological lives, there’s news. It seems we are moving toward their world. News from the $1.4 billion, romance novel, bookselling world says that Amish love stories are flying off the shelves, enjoying popularity among non-Amish readers. So the romance is not very steamy, and though G-rated by comparison, they are not widely accepted in “true” Amish circles. But several anonymous Amish folk have admitted to furtively reading them under the sheets. So much for conventional thinking about the goings-on between the sheets. Who knew it was just reading?
In today’s blog by Seth Godin, he is writing about a societal trend that is/has changed because of social media… Visit Seth’s Blog
I believe the point here is that your reputation is your brand, and that “the crowd” is going to see through any facade that corporations/individuals had previously been able to erect. As Mitch Hislop says, “You no longer control your brand. Your clients control your brand.”
What’s interesting about this is that we are human and we all have scars, or we are corporations run by humans and are therefore not perfect. This transparency is going to scare many, but it is an unstoppable force. The world is changing.
So, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time, or NOT. “The crowd” will see truth.
This is creating a fundamental shift in Branding a.k.a. Reputation…
Like skateboarders to an empty swimming pool, developers have flocked to Apple’s App Store en masse. By now, less than a year after opening day, there are over 35,000 apps and counting as fast as we can. Downloads are close to a billion, and just yesterday Apple posted earnings beyond expectations. But news of the Shaken Baby app gone awry is just the tip of the behind the scenes iceberg – is there an app for that?
Air Canada has a medical form requiring doctors to measure the human derriere for airline seat fit. At Apple they vet the apps for App Store fit. It seems Shaken Baby, which allows the user to shake the iPhone until the virtual baby’s death, originally missed the vetting process but was quickly shown to the door of the store. Apparently app vetting is a bloody sport with numerous apps trying to charge through the doors.
Behind the scenes all is not quiet on the app developers’ front. Thwarted developers have taken the cage fighting to the next level, opening unauthorized app stores for their rejected wares. Everything from Cycorder, which turns the iPhone into a camcorder, to PdaNET which allows it to be used as a modem, and some adult content are in the works. All of these require jailbreaking into the iPhone to allow unauthorized content. And once they’ve been jailbroken how will you ever get them back on the App Store farm.
With 25,000 apps in the app-osphere, the streets can be mean. Developers, from big companies to freelancing individuals clamor for a top 10 spot on the app charts. How else do you gain fame and fortune? Rumors are that big companies need a top 10 spot for profitability while an individual could do well in the top 50.
Climbing the chart is no easy task. Let the invectives fly. It seems some developers are trashing the competition’s apps while issuing fake good reviews of their own. Such original thinking that. All the while folks eagerly await the next big thing to capture the imagination. Knock, knock! Whos’s there? App. App who? Not App Who, Apu – from Much Apu about Nothing.