internet cool?!

you’re welcome.  :)

this one is for the markup nerds

The image below might look like a regular YouTube video player but the interesting part is that the YouTube video clip will play just fine even if you disable (or completely remove) the Flash Player from your browser.

How? The next major release of HTML, dubbed HTML 5, will include several new tags for embedding <audio> , and <video> as well as several other graphical types of content in web pages. These new tags will let you play video files in the browser without the Shockwave Flash plugin. Yay!

Currently, your browser needs a plugin to play embedded multimedia content. For instance, you need to install Adobe Flash Player for watching videos on YouTube while the QuickTime player is required for viewing movie trailers that are available on the Apple website.

Visit youtube.com/html5 to see the HTML 5 video tag in action.

Note: You need either Firefox 3.5, Google Chrome or Safari 4 to view this video. If you attempt to go with an older browser, it won’t be able to understand the content that’s wrapped inside the <video> tag. You’ll most likely get some kind of error message upon arrival. That said, HTML 5 still looks very interesting and exciting.

Enjoi!

I found this posting this AM from Guy Kawasaki on a new service called Twitterhawk. Basically an app that turns The Tweet into direct marketing on steroids. I for one am not a fan of the Twitter Ad-douche gold-rush, but I must say - there are some compelling points in here. What say you?

from the Twitterhawk site:

TwitterHawk is a real time targeted marketing engine…with true CPC link tracking…that will find people talking on twitter now by your chosen topic and location, allowing you to really hit your target mid conversation with ease. It will periodically search twitter for you and either auto-reply or generate a list of matches for you to respond toor reject from your twitterhawk account.

from Guy’s article:

Twitterhawk is a “real-time, targeted-marketing tool”—or the ultimate spam machine. First, let me tell you why I’m telling you about it: Because it can help you use Twitter as a marketing tool. Second, let me tell you how it works. You create keyword searches like what you can do at Search.Twitter.com.

For example:

• “Fashionweek”
• “Homeschooling”
• “SEO” within 50 miles of 94031
• “Audi” within 50 miles of 94031

Then you compose up to five responses to the tweets that it finds for each search condition and schedule the search intervals. An Audi dealer in Palo Alto, for example, can use this to find sales or maintenance prospects on Twitter. Twitterhawk will then tweet your responses for when it finds the right keywords in the right area.

Essentially this is a way to monitor public conversations for keywords without being the NSA while Dick Cheney was running things. In other words, this is as good as it gets for targeted marketing. The closet analogy I can think of is how Gmail searches your email and inserts ads based on the words it finds in your messages.

This is when the panic ensues: “Holy kaw, if many people started using Twitterhawk, it would mean the death of Twitter as a means of social networking and communication!” Let me tell you why this isn’t true:

1.  Twitterhawk charges $.05 for each tweet that it sends. What spammer can afford to pay $.05/tweet in order to ask you to help get money out of Nigeria or to sell you penis-enlargement products? By the way, Twitterhawk tracks how many times people clicked on the link, so that you can determine your per click cost.

2.  There is a blacklist of terms that Twitterhawk will not respond to. I don’t know what’s on the list, but I suspect words like “the” are probably on it to prevent too many matches.

3.  There is a limit of twelve fully-automatic tweets per day per search. At this rate, it will take a long time to find someone to help get money out of Nigeria or a man who wants to get his aforementioned penis enlarged.

4.  You cannot send the same person more than one tweet based on the same search. This means that the Audi dealer cannot send you a tweet every time you mention the word “Audi.” The dealer gets one shot at you.

5.  You can edit each outgoing tweet when you set Twitterhawk to manual approval. This means that you can use Twittehawk to find tweets to respond to and queue them up for individual answers. (The reason to manually approve each tweet is that you wouldn’t want to send a tweet such as “We’re an Audi dealer located in Palo Alto. We’d love your business,” in response to a tweet like, “I’m so glad I just sold my 1970 Audi. It’s given me nothing but trouble.”

At this price and at this rate, Twitterhawk is hardly a spam tool. It is, however, a very powerful marketing tool if you use it sparingly and precisely. The Audi dealer, for example, might find that it sent out 100 tweets at a total cost of $5 and got one oil change customer out of it. That’s probably worth it—particularly if the customer returns for more expensive work or buys a car.

Looking at it another way: How else can you find people within driving distance of your dealership who are interested in Audis? Radio, TV, and newspaper advertising? Don’t make me laugh. It’s certainly worth trying—although, in truth, you can try Twitter targeted-direct marketing without Twitterhawk by simply using Twitter’s search capability or most Twitter clients anyway.

I close with an interesting story. When I first heard of Twitterhawk, I went nuts and set up searches for mentions of text like “Fashionweek” which resulted in automatic tweets to visit Fashion.alltop. After sending a few thousand tweets like this (perhaps TwitterHawk created the twelve/day limit in my honor!), my @alltop account was suspended, so I’ve cooled it. Clearly, there is some danger in pushing the edge of marketing, and I’m figuring that out too.

See Guy’s original article on OpenForum here.

Here’s the first episode of Richard Branson’s PitchTV, which is airing onboard Virgin Atlantic planes during June.

Do you want to a chance to be featured on PitchTV and get your business idea seen by thousands business professionals from all over the world? If so, just upload your short video to PitchTV.

Here’s Richard Branson’s introduction to PitchTV:

“As part of it’s 25th Anniversary celebrations, Virgin Atlantic is launching a new show, PitchTV, which will air onboard and will also be available online here.

We’re now inviting entrepreneurs in search of investment and exposure for their business ideas to upload short video pitches.

The community here will vote for their favourite video pitches and each month, the winning videos will feature as part of Virgin Atlantic’s PitchTV show which will air on their inflight entertainment system – gaining exposure to the hundreds of business professionals who regularly fly Virgin Atlantic. Anyone interested in hearing more about the most popular entrepreneurs’ business ideas will then be able to get in contact and maybe help take their ideas further.”

Italian food is famous for being cooked fresh with fresh ingredients, but an entrepreneur wants to popularize his automatic vending machine that will cook pizza with fresh ingredients, including the dough.

A new pizza vending machine will cook an entire pizza with fresh ingredients, flour, water, tomato sauce and ingredients in less than three minutes.

Claudio Torghele, 56, become successful by selling pasta in California, and now wants to sell his automatic pizza vending machines in Italy.

Rad.

Be sure to peep 4:30.

via neonarcade

Ooof. Have a read of this excerpt from the German Publication The Local:

A Saudi Arabian inventor has filed for a patent on a potentially lethal science fiction-style human tracking microchip, the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) told The Local on Friday. But the macabre innovation that enables remote killing will likely be denied copyright protection.

“While the application is still pending further paperwork on his part, the invention will probably be found to violate paragraph two of the German Patent Law – which does not allow inventions that transgress public order or good morals,” spokeswoman Stephanie Krüger told The Local from Munich. 

The patent application – entitled “Implantation of electronic chips in the human body for the purposes of determining its geographical location” – was filed on October 30, 2007, but was only published until last week, or 18 months after submission as required by German law, she said.

Monday, Germany declined the patent application.

But the device, naturally, still exists. Scarier still, we can only presume it’s already in use. Patenting it would just make anyone else liable if they copied and sold it.

Sometimes technology goes too far…

Yes, it’s the yearly beach-outdoor-fun-time and these inflatable sofas for the beach are just what the doctor ordered.

Most people bring some old towels, some bring cheap plastic things that usually turns out to look like a duck, other people buy special blankets that looks very nice. But why not bring something completely rediculous - like your very own Chesterfield sofa.

The Blofield is all about surprise. It’s an inflatable PVC sofa, designed by Jeroen van de Kant. It comes in several seater editions, with an electric pump for sheer convenience.

It’s brilliant and I want five. Kthxbye.

Meet TweetToad. Your little “yes-man” on the interwebz. :) TweetToad.com is a simple service that helps you (re)Tweet just the way the pros do—over and over again!

Know someone who always has the BEST Tweets?! Give them the incessant reassurance they need with all-new TweetToad. Pick ONE friend and TweetToad will give them a Twitter high-five every time they tap a great Tweet.

Or maybe it’s you that needs the love? Get the (re)Tweets you deserve! Set up your own Toady Account and have turn him into your own personal Yes-Man! He’ll tell you how great you are one Tweet at at time. (You ARE great you know.)

Join the (re)Tweet revolution. Before it gets hit by a massive burning truck.

3.16 Billion Cycles from che-wei wang on Vimeo.

from the site: