think richly: usb batteries

So a pal of mine and fellow POKER, Richard Schatzberger (tumblr, flickr) handed me one of these babies today. Awesome. Just Awesome. This intro from the site says it all:

USBCELL - Time to Recharge the Battery Market

With over 15 billion batteries needlessly thrown away each year, and with the increasing demand for portable power by modern electronic devices - the battery has simply not caught up with the needs of modern life. Traditional rechargeable batteries have never been truly portable as they are dependent on chargers or adpators, and so most consumers prefer single use alkaline cells.

Anywhos, this is exactly the kind of thinking an innovation every market needs. What market are you in? How will you shake the category?

track and share your reading

Meet BookTagger.

Each BookTagger profile is a graphical representation of your physical bookshelf on the internet. The bookshelf can then be shared with friends, family and others searching for the next good read. People congregate into book clubs and share reading experiences and catalogue all your books and track to whom they’ve been lent - kinda like personal library.

Could be an amazing idea for a company like Hyperion or Penquin…

$3,000,000.00 for what?

So there’s all this hoopla about Toshiba airing their old commercial about football and what happens after the game and what-not, despite it being you know, not good. Side note - the ads sucked last night. I mean really sucked.

Yah so anyhowse, they aired this ancient commercial. In SD. In limited markets. (I actually don’t even remember it, so there’s a good chance it wasn’t in my market either…). People! IN Standard Def. In LIMITED MARKETS. Why friggin’ bother? Oh I know - so they can get online distribution, right? Um, no. At least not as far as I can see. This AM I couldn’t find it on the myspace page, the nfl page, or hulu. Jaysus talk about blunders.

Hokay so, while Toshiba has every right to spend its money on advertising, what they should have done was spent that 3 Zillion on some innovation. New interactive platform? HD burner / with cheap HD Disc distribution? HULU HD partnership??? Sigh. Nothing they showed in this ad is new in any way - so why pay boocoo for a SB Spot? Because they’re scared, that’s why. And they’re not alone…

We haven’t seen the end folks. In fact, this is just the beginning of the noise your favorite media brands are going to put you through during the next 3 years. They are coming to the realization their old model cannot hold. The writer’s strike. The Blu-Ray war. Hulu. Apple TV. Hell, even Jet-Blue’s TV sets. The signs of change are all around. What do we have to show for it? A tornado of desperation. Sweet.

BTW: If you didn’t watch the SB it had quite possibly the best 4th quarter that I’ve ever seen. (And I’m not just saying that bc I’m a Giants fan). Geaux Giants!! :P

make Obama say anything you want

Peeps, here’s a Rich Idea for ya: Make Mr. Obama say anything you want (like this!) with a handy dandy do-it-yourself Obama Propaganda poster. For better or worse - I’m pretty sure I just wasted the last 30min coming up with phrases for him. It’s simply and sticky. The best part? It’s probably NOT from his campaign peeps, SSK.

But then again, neither was this. :).

Enjoi.

PS, what’s the deal with the Don’t Give Up poster? I have a love affair with sticktoitiveness. Thanks, noodle for the shots!

skidmarks on your megatron badge?

I discovered the book Generation T recently and it inspired me to do come bubble surfing. I stumbled on two things you should take a peek at.

You definitely need to check out Sclipo. It is a video sharing community focused on demonstration and learn through videos and live webcam. You can research just about anything, health, clothes, gadgets, sports, software, cooking, cars, etc. The best part? Scippo features the ability for you manage, promote and teach your own skills via your webcam. Rad.

As with any social network, theres all kinds of distribution and ranking functions in order to “evaluate videos and Sclipo members, helping others find good stuff fast.” Its funny how most of the 2nd generation video sharing networks are becoming more niche in the way you might expect a “channel” on Television to.

Then, while popping around Sclipo I found this video from the Threadbanger bunch. Sweet.

How To turn Your Old T-shirts into new and cool shirts
Uploaded by THREADBANGER

 

Oh, and if you’re really lazy, give  Solo Jones  10 days and your favorite Transformers T and they’ll shoot you back a sweet pair of underoos so you and Megatron and be more snuggly then ever. Weeeee!

 

But enough about that. I need to figure out what class I’m going to go teach. Any suggestions? :)

you owe me a beer or six

Hey peeps. You owe me a friggin’ beer. Pay up.

So I found this pretty neat little web toy called Foamee a while back. It is a free service that helps track who you owe beers to (and vice-versa) using Twitter.  And Yay! Foamee now has support for coffee! Just follow @ioucoffee or @ioubeer on Twitter (you are Twittering by now, right?) and follow these steps:

 Send someone an I.O.U. for coffee or a beer likey here:

@ioucoffee @meat99 for being like, totally awesome.

Then keep track of those I.O.U.s (for beer and coffee!) on your people page (here’s mine). Kinda a fun Twitterati way to send a thanks and a smile while using twitter the way you always do. Interneato!

cool geek note:

You automatically get a profile on Foamee once you actually “Tweet” a beef, coffee, etc. What’s more, it has a little script that instructs Foamee to follow you once you decide to follow it.<p>

cheap hackery makes pretty

I love this thing: Its the new Asus Eee PC 4G. Small, capable, very cheaply made and get this:

* Weighs about 2 pounds
* Has WiFi
* Runs Xandros Linux - no frills and totally hackable
* Has an integrated webcam, microphone and speaker jacks
* Gets the job done

UM. Yeah - it costs $399. (Your iPhone was 400.00).

My favorite part (and why this is relevant)? This thing is small, light, and cheap. The perfect hackable toy for use in interactive installations in or out of the home or office. I predidct this little guy is going to change everything.

Oh and one more thing. Seeing a trend people? More value, less money. We’re all in love with the latest gadget - true, but not everyone is prepared to spend 800.00 hundred dollars to own a new Kindle, when for the same money, you could have a computer that does it all.

Non profit agencies have been fighting for the low cost computing market for years. The truth is, it all should be low cost and with a price tage (and functionality) like this, this thing will get hacked, designed, re-designed, mounted to someone’s refridgerator, slapped on a remote control car, mounted to the back of an SUV on Pimp my Ride and could quite possibly run be the engine that put digital pants on your ass and this table in your living room.

2008 will bring more product designers to the realization that hacking and adapting technology is an important component in development of new ideas.

Related post: interactive snow projection

what were we thinking?

So, advertising has become a battle field between valuable, interactive brand experiences and broad-based one way messages. Yes?

Gotcha.

And “interactive advertising” (what some people call that stuff we do)* is blowing the doors off traditional brand messages for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which being that interactive measurement systems are laser focused, sharp and malleable. Read: NOT simple and empty like those in TV, print and radio world. Yes?

Hmm. Ok.

Then you really need to meet this guy. Because:  a. He doesn’t get it. b. Sadly, he’s not alone. And c. This thinking is part of “the problem.”

Silly me. And I was here building a company around usesless things like “interaction rate,” “time spent,” “cookies,” “clicks,” “google page rank,” and imagine this, “BUZZ.” What was I thinking?

*POKE doesn’t. :)

update!

I’m now blogging on the POKE blog too! Thanks Charles

Yay!

hulu verdict: old media stuck in a digital world.

Hulu is has no respect for the viewer.  It’s NBC’s last-ditch effort to hold on to their old business model.  It is a big, “old media” idea stuck in a digital world. It’s not a RICH concept and ultimately, it will fail.  I can hear the manical boardroom laughter now:  “Give away the content for free (just like your boob-tube); force viewers to watch commercials; maintain our existing advertising revenue channels; keep paying our jack ass old timer VP’s salaries; screw Apple and retain control.”

Bwahhahahahhahahhahah! 

No.

So NBC told Apple to f- off.  Fair enough.  Where were they when the last round of over-priced, content controlled BS burnt up entering the atmosphere? If I remember correctly even Sony had a plan were you were basically “renting” the download for $3.50. At a certain point the audio stopped working unless you paid more.  Yeesh. Hulu doesn’t feel much better. NOTHING is distributable. It’s a flash movie with no embed tags and no real sharing mechanism. Remember the DRM issues of music/video past? This feels like the same mistake all over again!  Why, why, why?!

This all probably sounded super duper while everyone pontificated safely from NBC’s leather couches (I’ve seen em, they’re nice!) when they sat around and plotted the sans-Apple way forward. But you know what? It won’t work. There’s no room for a rogue game in town. We’ve got shit to watch - and no time to worry about where we now can or can’t watch it. Is NBC going to come out with their own hand held video player too!?  Hey, perhaps they can get into telephony! Yay! Ok, I’ll stop. But you get my point.

Haven’t we learned anything?  Just like the iTunes Store, the only way online video distribution is going to succeed is if you can get every TV show / Movie from one source, that has no DRM platform (or at least a common one) and not have to worry if it’ll play on your computer, ipod, tv, whateverthefuck.  People want to watch their media on the device they choose and aren’t going to be “beholden” to one network just for a certain kind of content.  They’re not going to pay for the same content multiple times to have the ability to use it in multiple devices. They’re just not. They’ve been teased by the spoils of iTunes, limewire, the WEB in general and they’re not turning back just because NBC says so.  Fuck, haven’t they heard of Bit Torrent?

The best part, gang? Their tagline. “Watch your favorites. Anytime. Anywhere.” Seriously? Do they even know what that means? Jaysus, my Panasonic DVD player works better on my commute than Hulu. Sigh.

Fakesteve takes this one home for me:

So, fair enough. Bring on the big media cluster fuck. Roll out all the different systems that don’t work together. Bring on all the different kinds of software, none of which will work as well as iTunes. Bring on a zillion different user interfaces, a zillion accounts you need to set up, a zillion new usernames and passwords and a list of which services can work on which devices in which format. Right. When you’re good and tired of that, we’ll be here waiting for you.

Well said. 

Verdict on Hulu:  I give it 6 months before they realize no one is coming back for repeat visits and 12 months before they announce it as a failed experiment.  Will Apple take ‘em back?  I wouldn’t.  But then again, I’m a just terrible person.  :)

fun lil' christmas present idea and some other random thoughts

Sitting here waiting for MK Simon Aaron to pick me for day two of POKE Summit 1.0 and I realized I hadn’t updated in a bit.

Been thinking a lot about unique Christmas presents for this year and something dawned on me. The wave of print self-publishing tools that has been crashing over us recently is a great personal way to tell someone how totally awesome you think they are.

Better yet, the formats are kinda interesting too. Take Lulu for example. Lulu enables would-be printed content moguls to break into “publishing.” Books, videos, CDs, DVDs, calendars, reports can be then distributed around the world at 2x’s the author royalty as other traditional methods. Yay!

So why  not use their paperback format and write a loved one a story to put in their stocking?  Or, how about you choose the catalog format and pick all the priceless things you think are great (or not?!) about them? Cheesy? No - personal. My favoirite idea - and remember where you heard this one - is to take the travel guide format and reverse it to plan a trip for someone. Give them the guide as a day by day plan of your awesome vacation you bought em? Not enough money for a vacation? Make one up for a trip to the Zoo, whatevs.  It’s the thought that count’s, geez.  :)

Hokay soh, all this desktop pubishing gifting reminds me How. Not. New. all of this really is.  Remeber Aldus?  Pagemaker?  PRINT SHOP? Oh boy did I make some weird shit on my C64 back in the day. Sorry Mom.  Lol.

K, peeps.  Out.  Happy Xmas hunting.

we didn't start the fire. but boy do we put gas on it!

Generally speaking, I don’t like when advertisers try to exploit tragedies or borrow too much interest from current events. It always seems to me like those tactics are executed in the same way a company would use a super-model to advertise a computer rather than just let the consumer experience the product for all its beauty the way the designers meant them to.

This traditional and old school thinking still plagues the advertising industry and the brands they represent.

Below is an ad from a recent campaign using Harry Connick Jr. to promote a new Lincoln while attempting to be part of the discussion of the New Orleans rebuilding effort. What seems interesting about this whole thing to me is not the advertising pundit politics but rather how the actual consumer speaks about it when they are given the opportunity.

If you read the comments from here and here, you’ll see that there’s quite a range of opinion on the attempt - from negative to flat or positive feedback. Kind of interesting considering the headline of the Autoblog entry was “Outrage expressed over Harry Connick Jr.’s Lincoln ad.” What I think they meant was that “The advertising industry is a bunch of babies yelling at each other for no real reason and Ad Age started the fire.” :)

The caption from Ad Age:

In this Young & Rubicam spot, Ford exploits the victims of Hurricane Katrina to advertise luxury SUVs.

Biased much? Geez.

One blog is an industry blog, (Autoblog) riffing off of the second (Ad Age posting) that was flaming the attempt at this type of advertising. But the comments and response on both blogs tend have a life of their own. The Ad Age blog’s comments tend to be a little inflammatory (like the article itself) at times but still range from flat to positive and back again. The comments on Auto blog are quite different.

This one sums if up for me:

When is enough enough? Why is everyone so easily offended. I wish the whiny babies of the world would just please shut up already.

The advertising pundits are freaking out. The automotive blog reader (consumer?!) doesn’t care. PEOPLE SEE WHAT THEY WANT TO SEE. They are the consumer, they’re smart and they’re what…? That’s right. IN CHARGE. So get used to it.

As one commenter asked: Where is your focus?

Mine was on Mr. Connick Jr., and his stories. Think about this and how you see the world. Half full/empty?

sound identities. consumer friend or foe?

Let’s debate!

Hey gang - quick one here I’d love to start a conversation on.

Sight sound and motion is the heart and soul of all push communication. It also makes all kinds of valuable interactions infintly more valuable, yes? So what about the science of getting you to remember things? Personally - I’d rather have the consumer remember my brand because it has meaning FIRST. I can’t help but wonder if this is just snake oil in disguise.

Ok. Sure. Knowing that -

What are your thoughts about Aural ID’s or (sound identities)? Here is an interesting example I discovered on SML, (thanks Ming!) where a Music and the Moving Image class at the Université de Montréal created an exploration of the dna of the Intel sound identity.

From the video info:

What does music communicate in this 1990s ad? What does the famous 4-note Intel Inside jingle mean and how does it work?

suggest a touchdown dance for chad!

Apparently the Bengals have had some success with last year’s Consumer Content campaign. They are at it again, asking fans to create fan content that expresses their Bengals passion. Nice. Chad Johnson impersonations, touchdown dances, keg stands, body painting, insane tailgating parties, its all there on the Bengals video page.

The site also serves as a Bengal’s fan community where fans around the world connect.I think this might be a first for a sports team, unless anyone knows of another experience like it? If you do, post em in the comments.

Rawk!

zappos gets it

I literally almost lost it when I heard about this story. I can’t do it justice, but I did have a great chat with Beyond Madison Avenue’s Danny Nathan the other day about this. Danny, thanks for the lead.

Danny’s entry says all that needs to be said - but let’s just say if all brands (and people) behaved like Zappos, the world would be a better place.

the book is dead. long live the book.

Whether you are a fanatic or just a digital explorer, you’ve probably begun to experience the fade of the written word in one form or another. As a small example, one thing I have noticed is that during my 2hr daily commute I am increasingly seeing less people reading off of paper in favor of consuming media in some sort of relevant/personal format (audio books, video podcasts, mobile RSS articles, mobile news feeds or just browsing the web on their laptop). As this shift continues more an more services like James Bridle’s surely will pop up.

It is a project he created to launch experiments off of that push the convergence of user experience, computer science and traditional publishing. From the site:

“…in what ways will the stories that we tell be affected by the ways in which we receive them, and what new forms will arise?”

“Booktwo.org will be running a series of projects…we don’t have the answer, but we’re looking forward to finding out.”

Swotter is one such project. It basically reads books to Twitter, and via Twitter to YOU. You can currently follow James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ right now if you just head over to BookTwo’s twitter page and click follow.

Interesting enough (and in true “rich idea” form), you read all about the project on the site, including instructions on how to run your own Swotter.

wher've you been anyway? find out.

Hey there. So first off, this posting assumes you know what the Global Positioning System is. If you don’t, go here.

Cool. Now that that’s out of the way, check this out: GPSies. It’s a little service based on an idea by Klaus Bechtold. Klaus (who is an enthusiastic runner and also happens to be a software developer) has created a place where you can view and download tracks recorded by GPS devices. So the next time you are headed out there looking for a great place to explore or a way to discover an unbeaten path, with GPSies you can see what Tracks others have recorded. GPSies sorts by things like difficulty, jogging routes or Mountain Bike Tracks, and once you’ve found one that might interest you, just download it to your GPS device and off you go. Oh yeah, and the usage of GPSies is free. Nice.

right, so. consumer friendly?

This is a great little utility just dying to be branded by a outdoor sporting company or mobile provider. Remember, building a community and offering valuble utility can be very powerful and have much more staying power than just a clever message. (Just ask Yahoo about a little thing called Flickr - or MASH which I’m experimenting with right now and you should be too.  Want an invite?

When is the last time your advertising was as useful as it was clever?

Over and out.

supervirals: consumer-friendly thinking or superspam?

First and foremost I owe you a full disclosure that my new Geek Tank POKE New York is working an idea very similar to this one. Nothing to show just yet, but check back as it promises to be consumer friendly.

Hokay Soh, I want to like these guys. I do. And believe you me blog slander is something I am not a fan of nor am I a stranger to.  And it can get really ugly. So in the interest of practicing a little Blogging Etiquette, I’m going to try to keep all of this above the belt.

first, what is it

Supervirals is a website that encourages people (CONSUMERS!) who like to make content to make it for a brand.

1. Creative people can win prizes by sharing original ideas for brands.
   
2. A brand posts a Creator Brief and puts up a prize for the winning idea..
   
3. There’s a competition’s countdown timer.
   
4. The more people that check out and comment on your idea, the higher its SuperVirals Score goes.
   
5. The creator LOSES all IP claims and there are RULES to follow if you intend on uploading content.

They then hand the creator of the top viral some kind of reward in the hopes that they’ve just produced the next BOX In a BOX.

from their site

“SuperVirals is a new creative platform where you can win big prizes by creating and uploading original ideas for sponsor brands. Which means it’s also the place to see the best new viral content on the web!”

Tom!  That sounds great!  RIGHT??  Rich ideation for consumers by consumers!  Yeah!!!

not really

Here’s why. This site is concept first - not brand evangelist first. The format is for the idea junkie - NOT - the product or category enthusiast. Hmm. Wouldn’t a better format be one where the consumer chooses to promote the products they already love? Perhaps a epinions-meets-vimeo kinda place?

think about it this way

You bought the iPhone. Then you went out with it. You got on the train. You stood in line at the movies. Finally some sap said “HEY IS THAT THE NEW iPhone??” And you saiiidddd? “Oh, dude it’s awesome, here try it.” “Now do this, and that, and, and pinch your fingers, and, and, and…” Why?

1. You were psyched about your purchase.
   
2. You love to evangelize apple.
   
3. You felt damn cool.
   
4. You were in love (at least for a week) till you realized the gPhone was coming ;).
   
5. All of the above.

‘sactly. You were smitten. A consumer in lust and you were ready to sing. So what if Supervirals had a position like this (they don’t, but c’mon for the ride):

“SuperVirals is a new creative platform where you can win big prizes by creating and uploading original ideas for THE BRANDS YOU LOVE. Which means it’s also the place to get creative and recommend in any way you’d like, the products and services you can’t live without!”

But it doesn’t. “Sickening.” “Incredible.” “Brilliant!” “Oh for f$*s sake!” Are just some of the comments floating about the web on this one. All in all, it IS a step in the direction of consumer-friendly thinking to have big companies rewarding creative ideas developed on their behalf. But will this one fly? Is it just super-powered spam? Will it really be a consumer friend? Foe?

I guess it remains to be seen what kind of content gets created. For their sake, I hope THIS isn’t any of it.

facebook practices consumer friendly thinking. whoa.

So yeah. I’ve become a facebook junkie. (And a twitter and flickr junkie) to boot. Linked-in is still there - making a bit of a vie for my attention recently with all its new members, but nowhere quite as much as the others. And twittering - it takes dedication! Its all a man can stand but I’ve gotta say, so far it has been rewarding. I’ve hired on to POKE 2 great people through facebook in the past month. All in all it has been a lot of fun and honestly its a daily learning experience.

But none of us are social networkie smart enough yet. None of us. (Yes, even you Zeldman, Creamer and Jaffe). I mean, you are damn smart about Socialopolis but we all have a lot more to learn.

I think Facebook learned something important this week.

Quick, check your Facebook profile. Notice something different? You should see something up top that looks like the picture to the left. Facebook has made some updates that include enhancements to the way your profile is handled and casted into the web. These changes will up both Facebooks SEO optimization as well as your personal name bouncing around google the next time someone is searching for you. I’d like to take a moment to celebrate the fact that Facebook told you about all of this and they didn’t have to (Ahem, Twiter) - with ample time to respond. Nice.

make internet TV

I’m not sure where your politics stand on the case of whether or not video should be free online but one thing’s for sure: if the folks at Miro get their way video will become even more democratic than it is now.

and why shouldn’t it?

you downloaded joost. it was fun - for a whopping 10 min. now it just sits on your hard drive with all the other stuff you tried for a a millisecond. why? i think its because (as cool as joost is) it still FEELS like your old TV. And TV, for the most part, just isn’t (as intriguing) as the stuff the citizen videographer puts forward.

And Miro is betting the farm on it.

Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from vimeo widget on Vimeo.

If you hit the link above my new favorite music video you saw that it lands on a back-door Miro site that teaches you how to create and post your own content. Still not sure? Head to the “I’m Overwhelmed?” section for an even more pedantic (but helpful!) approach to getting started.

i see it this way

There’s lots of places to consume video content - but there is still no channel-minded platform that relates this new world of video consumption to the model we are all used to. (An important and missing link in my mind.) Joost has made the attempt - but where’s the fabric? Where’s the citizen videographer? There’s an opportunity to build a new, open mass medium of online television. Unlike traditional TV, everyone in this new medium will have a voice. And this new world of agnostic content needs an infrastructure. Miro is aiming to make creating and watching video online “as easy as watching TV”. Cheers to that.

Miro is a cross compatible, open-source Internet TV application that combines a media player and library, content guide, video search engine, as well as podcast and BitTorrent clients. Described by some as the “firefox of content applications”, it is specifically designed to give video creators and viewers more freedom. And it is built to work with “as many video hosting sites and video search engines as possible.” Miro allows the user to choose the end-publishing scenario that is best for them but also allows the browser access to every and all video search engines, even organizing content between the different networks.