Re: Mikontalo Lights preview

Here Comes Another Bubble - The Richter Scales

A few Good Creative Men

Information R/evolution

Thanks to Robin for pointing this out on Brand Republic (login required). Perfect video if you ever need to explain what tags are for.

The Zune, Widgetised

According to the New York Times, Microsoft

"is creating a social-networking site, Zune Social, to encourage the sharing of samples of songs online, even for fans who do not own a Zune player. Members of the network will also be able to use a small application on their computers to display which songs they have been listening to, and that information can be posted on certain Web sites outside the network or sent by e-mail to friends."

A bit like any number of existing web-based music applications, then.

Think About It

Hyundai USA have launched a new website, http://www.thinkaboutit.com/, which is simple, elegant and thought provoking. I like it.

Facebook: shifting mobile internet demographics?

From the Independent

...the rapidly growing popularity of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook is having a knock-on effect in the mobile sector. A spokesman for T-Mobile said six months ago the top 20 sites accessed on its network were predominantly news or adult pages and most of its users were males over 40. Yet today the most popular sites are social networking pages, triggering a demographic shift in its user base toward 20- to 30-year olds.

Do you Facebook from your mobile?

Be more like the internet

via chroma

Recruitment

I'm getting sick of being regulary phoned, spammed and accosted on LinkedIn about a 'great opportunity' with a 'top digital agency'. At least when it is via LinkedIn it is in direct response to what is essentially a limited version of my CV online. So read with interest Iain Tait's perspective:

At Poke we keep having these odd cyclical conversations about a couple of key senior people we’re trying to hire. We’re looking for entrepreneurial, operationally aware, client facing, creatively minded, inspiring, strategic folk with an interesting set of past experiences - oh and they need to love digital which is our specific bit (simple huh!). The long and short of it is that we’re trying to find creative mini-CEOs. And I don’t think we’re the only ones.

The Infinite Cat Project

www.infinitecat.com

How should brands appear on facebook?

I've made a poll on facebook to ask that very question. Click on the image to see the poll results, and read about the background here.

Facebook vs Myspace

This comment, and others on this page (Facebook registration required), indicate some of the appeal that Facebook has over Myspace:

The only reason I'm on Facebook is because most of the MySpace people are still at MySpace. Once they bring their crap here (hopefully not) I'm out. Same goes for those slideshow apps. If I want to see your pictures, I'll go to your image gallery. Don't show me a slideshow when I go to your profile!

Death of the catchphrase?

My colleague Marty posted about this rather good piece in Media Guardian. A short excerpt:

"The problem brands face is that consumers effectively have a degree in film studies," agrees Robert Senior, founding partner at Fallon, the agency behind Asda's shift in strategy. "Basically, if a brand or company doesn't have a strong moral compass - which may sound a bit pretentious - then consumers are going to stop trusting you, no matter how fancy your catchphrase is."

See also The International Database of Corporate Commands which the people at Fallon brought to my attention recently (nicely tagged under "Ad Agency Deathwatch").

15 days of fame, and counting...

Justin wears the camera 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He says this is for the rest of his life. This is Justin.tv. Meanwhile in the Guardian, Oliver Burkeman provides an overview of other exercises in boredem and banality, including cheddarvision.tv.

Orwellian scenes in Islington

George Orwell used to live in London. At 27B Canonbury Square, Islington to be precise. Not to far from my place as it happens. Within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move. via Gridskipper

Twitter

Now you can know what your friends are doing every few minutes, or read their weird and random thought-fragments, or as Mashable puts it, it's The Evolution of Blogging, Cat Version: There's a public stream, which is a bit like standing at the end of a driving range being hit by golf ball sized thoughts from people you don't know. But I think there is more to it to that, not that I know exactly what it is yet. You can see what I am doing here, but I think I will be lucky to post more than once. There's a more serious discussion about it by Ross Mayfield.

Paris half-marathon

I ran half a marathon in Paris the other week. Although the training plan was pretty loose (and some weeks non-existant), the run itself was not that hard for most of the way. I only really started to feel it in the last third of the race, especially between the 15th and 18th kilometre. Then the last few kilometres seemed to take forever, until Angella encouraged me to go a bit faster near the finish, at which point I managed to pick up the pace and it seemed easier all of a sudden. So having run most of the race together with Angella, I finished looking over my shoulder hoping she was behind me. I ended up about 30 seconds ahead of her at 1 hour 55 mins.

Is blogging killing planning?

An interesting (rhetorical?) question from adliterate: Is blogging killing planning?

Big media rushing to cash in on MMOs

Over in San Francisco, the BBC reports on how millions are being wasted invested into Massively Multiplayer Online Games:

"Five years from now a social networking site without a 3D universe will look like a dinosaur."

Another Gaming CEO:

"You are about to see, and this is happening already in Asia, many different kinds of games that are massively multiplayer and less based on role-playing games... This medium is going to destroy TV - and it's going to happen in short term."

How many times have we heard 'this will destroy TV' before. I'm not holding my breath....

Inaugural Post

This blog has been named from a phrase used by Wired in a story about efforts to detect photo manipulation:Adobe Tackles Photo Forgeries