someday we'll land on the moon...

Watch this video. My favorite quote:

“This is only the first step in newspapers by computers. Engineers now predict the day will come when we get all our newspapers and magazines by home computer, but that’s a few years off.”

We’ve come a long way, eh?

This video reminds me of the science books we had back in Seymour where I grew up. My Jr. High School had so little money, we were forced to use books that said things like (I shit you not). “Scientists believe that someday man will walk on the moon…” I remember one class in particular, our science teacher got so upset she made us all “turn to page X and rip out pages x through x.”

That was a fun day. :)

social media the Obama way

Psst.

Hey. You. Yeah, You. The one who’s still trying to be a lil’ more social with your branding efforts…

(Hi!) I have a secret for you. Steal from Mr. Obama.

(“The Social Pulpit” is a very interesting analysis of how the Barack Obama campaign used social media. The folks at Edelman compiled this report, and there are many lessons that businesses can also apply, so check it out.)

Oh and while you’re at it, read this too.

webmynd?

Neato. Just discovered Webmynd and I really like it. From the site:

Personalize your search — Visualize your browsing. WebMynd helps you find and keep track of information from the sources that you most value. Personalize the right-hand side of Google with sources such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Amazon, and your WebMynd visual browsing history. Record your browsing like a DVR for the web with easy privacy configuration.

See images, reviews and download for Firefox here.

"ladies and gentlemen: we need to circle the airport for a moment"

Press 1 on your seatback console to accept or 2 to decline…”  :)

Wow. Really? An African Airline (launching this month) called Airtimes Airlines is planning on offering flights where you… waiiit for it….

Pay by the minute.

Hipster targeted travel pricing? Recession planning? I have not clue, but in an industry notorious for delays would you be willing to pay per minute?  Maybe if you get some minute by minute credit. Maybe I’d pay per mile, or even destination, but hmm.  

Read the article that Wired wrote.  Whatcha think?

get rich quick with the new platform fund. ok, not really. but kinda...

It is getting mixed reviews, but I think this is fantastic. Want to make something geeky but need an extra 3k to do it? Ask these guys.

Consulting firm Herman Blackbook launched a new micro-fund for application developers who want to build stuff on top of “Twitter, Boxee, AppNexus, Trulia, iPhone, etc” called the New Platforms Fund.

You give up a little bit of IP…and they are only investing in “up to 10 cutting edge ideas.”

Whatcha think? Get on it!

(even more) awesome uses of Twitter

With all the political uptake of Twitter in recent months, it was only a matter of time before these kinds of services popped up. As you know, I am a pretty big fan of Twitter, and these properties clearly shows why Twitter’s simplicity and versatility makes it the swiss knife of communication platforms. Not into Politics? (you fucking should be) but if you’re not - you’ll still be able to appreciate the idea and the implementation.

Tweetminster, simply put, follows the UK political scene through Twitter. It helps you find all the UK politicians that are active on Twitter, but it also organizes these tweets in a wonderfully useful way. You can check out which political party is the most active on Twitter, you can sort tweeters by constituency, and - if a politician is not active on Twitter - you can contact them directly from the site and try to convince them they should join the fun.

There is a huge opportunity here that is starting to be exposed. The same principle could be used on almost any subject matter. Imagine a service for organizing celebrity to celebrity gossip, or sports commentary, different types of musicians, scientists, the list goes on!

The service is inspired by a similar US-based service called Tweet Congress, and it’s perhaps even better, with a map of United States, fancy graphs and statistics for Twitter using US politicians. Hopefully, we’ll see more and more similar services based on Twitter as it permeates the social landscape.

quick gimme headlines!!

Hey there. I’m in the process of making this year’s Holiday Card. Going to go with something funny this year like, you know reality. I’ve been thinking about headlines for this one, whaddaya think?

“Peace. Love. Joy. (Well, Love and Joy anyway…)”

“From our chaos to yours. Happy Holidays.”

“Wishing you Peace and Quiet this holiday season.”

C’mon! Any favorites? Other ideas? :)

when good technology gets into bad hands (muahhahah)

Have you seen Flightography? It is the work of James Mann from Elk Grove, CA. He uses his twenty years of R/C Piloting skills to shoot awesome aerial photographs of towns, landscape, farms, etc. Oh, and also to bomb the shit out of his neighborhood.

I just added this video of an R/C airplane pilot bombing his neighborhood to UPL8.tv

Apparently the Flightography crew have developed something that has all sorts of deliciously malicious applications, a radio controlled plane water bomb rig. Imagine the possibilities, while not endless, there are plenty of cool things that could be done with one of these.

[via UberReview]

creative inspiration: Oktapodi

If you aren’t one of the ones lucky enough to have seen Oktapodi, here’s a little glipmpse. Oktapodi is a simply wonderful animated short. Video below, and official site here.

Although it was created in 2007, parts of the student short film from Gobelins, “Oktapodi,” seem to have finally been released into the wild.

Julien Bocabeille, Francois-Xavier Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier and Emud Mokhberi have upheld the French academy’s incredibly high standards of excellence with this charming story. Kudos team for all your creativity and dear reader, don’t miss the Gallery and Making Of video on the Oktapodi site.

Having had my own animation studio in a former life I can tell you that producing truly great animation with emotion, great acting, SISOMO, realistic weight, character design and beliveable backgrounds that captivate is nearly impossible. It is truly lightning in a bottle for most animation teams. But sometimes examples of creativity are so ahead of it’s class and so stand out, they transcend languages, culture and even beliefs. This animated movie is one of those inspirational examples.

Oktapodi
Uploaded by victorvharo

cute as fuck puppies take interwebs by storm

You’d have to have been either on vacation in a place only Jack Bauer goes or been living under a rock not to know about the interweb’s latest Meme, The Shiba Inu Puppy Cam.

Missed it? Oh, cool. Well here, watch:

Live video by Ustream

People have complained about losing all productivity after finding out about the puppies and some even stoped working almost entirely to watch the puppies sleep. It just goes to show, (yes that people are retards) but more importantly, sometimes when you want to get attention, a nice single-serving, simple zinger really does tend to pack a wallop.

(And it doesn’t hurt if that zinger is cute-as-fuck, too.)

Peece.

an amazing world, isn't it?

Hey Gang. Sorry I’ve been MIA for a few. I have been out celebrating the birth of my newborn son, Gino! Yay. Gino has been brought into a pretty amazing world, wouldn’t you agree? Nothing says that louder for me than this “Did You Know?” video. Enjoy. (Oh and I’ll be back in action in about a week. Hang tight!)

The future of social media —Part 2

Hey gang. Great comments yesterday. User participation is really picking up - glad to see it. Keep it up!

As you probably know by now, I try limit how much I focus on statistics on this site. I am a creative strategist by nature and there are always ways to get data to tell the story you want it to - and while I focus on strategy and technographics, this site in particular isn’t about “numbers.” But I think the future of social media will be dramatically affected by one more thing: age.

We at POKE are often asked about how demographics and particularly AGE affect campaign performace or internet usage. Clearly there has always been a drop off in age - but having focused recently on a project aimed at Baby Boomers, I can tell you the drop off point has moved signifigantly. People interested in social media marketing often ask me how age impacts Internet usage particuary when it comes to UGC type of web properties (as opposed to brand sites, etc). New data from Pew Internet & American Life Project and eMarketer shows this drop off clearly.

As you might have expected GX and GY top the charts. They are digital natives and use the web to find, connect, entertain, archive, the list goes on. But what is really fascinating is that the numbers stay strong through several generations until you get to age 71, when Internet usage starts to drop. (Sorry Mom and Dad, I guess you weren’t interviewed by fine folks at Pew.

All the other data I’ve seen shows that numbers across the board continue to climb, and even if you’re targeting older Americans, there are sites such as Eons and Third Age that do a great job targeting older people for social media marketing.

I happen to be in the middle of a few projects right now that aim to engage people beyond GX and GY. I am seeing more of those type of engagements showing up quite often actually.

I have a prediction:

The “Age” technographic/demographic is facing extiction. I read these numbers as the gap closing - fast. Competitve marketers will need to focus on more exact means of splicing customer data - personality, interests, time spent, the list goes on. But age? I think our parents (and their parents?) are trying to tell us someing: “We’re here too. How brand _ will you engage me?”

What is the future of Social Media?

The following is a response to a posting I found today:

my response:

2008 is the beginning of the “Curation” process. There is a quality revolution taking place in social media - video’s, blogs, photos, microblogs, etc will get more specific and more focused. Content will be much more focused on “how good it is” not on “how many people have seen it”.

excerpt from the posting:

Looking back at Social Media, we have had a significant advance (a ‘this year’s big thing’) every year since 2004.

In 2004 - blogs started to really take off
In 2005 - audio podcasts started to take off
In 2006 - video podcasts started to take off
In 2007 - microblogging (Twitter, etc) started to take off
In 2008 - ???

We are in November now of 2008 and I still don’t see any big transformative Social Media technology which has occurred this year.

Has it stalled? What am I missing?

What do you think?

an acid trip of an experiment

I stumbled upon this online today. It was titled “Drawings under the influence of LSD” and only carried this description:

The artist was given a dose of LSD and free access to an activity box full of crayons and pencils.

I’ll be honest, there’s a side to me that wonders if this is real and another that is inspired by it, so I thought I’d share. See the original post here. It’s long so give it a second to load…

fake robots take top honors!

Last week the Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization announced the winners of the 51st annual Good Design Awards. This show is always discovering some really cool stuff, and the judging committee, is typically made up of a couple dozen designers, journalists, architects, and marketers. This year they even showed off their nerdy side by awarding Zarigani Works’ Korejanai Robo a prize.


Korejanai Robo translates literally to “not this robot” and is created as an ode to all those kids who once really wanted something, like say a toy robot, and got something way less techie, like a light-brite or a GI-Joe.

To add to the irony, Korejanai Robo is not really a robot, but rather a wooden doll that looks like a Robot (you getting all this?). Last year the doll became popular on the interwebs and was even made into a USB drives and keychains, securing it’s place in cult item history.

just remember:

This is not what I wanted!!

Kids they might say that word with ugly screaming! Xmas is always great moment, this item is transformed into a battlefield, Guaranteed! Have you ever done this any situations before? Maybe not, people are not willing to have unhappy situation,but life is so long. kids learn about something important things from that. Especially, it is not possible to have whatever you want without any kind of risk or achievement. Let’s try Korejanai-Robo for cultivation of aesthetic sentiments!

garamond powerline

This was a labor of love. Daniel at 0c0m 0y0k made an entire Garamond typeface out of powerline parts. Shocking! Tee hee.

Click here for the full site letter forms.

new stuff and things

Hey gang. Today marks they day I’m kicking off three new flavors of MWC. I’ve added to the archive Stuff that made me go hmm, suff that made me smile, and stuff that made me go ZOMFG! Enjoi. :)

interactive snow projection

Awesome interactive “installation” of an animation projection interacting with snow sculptures. It’s just awesome to see beautiful mergers of physical and digital stuff like this.

Related post: cheap hackery makes pretty

questions about authenticity, honesty and technology

This post assumes you’ve either heard of or seen the presidential campaign phenomenon The McCain / Obama Dance Off”

Oh, you haven’t? Well take a moment now my freng:



I received this video from my pal Charles Gallant with the following note attached:

I’m sure you’ve seen this… but in case you haven’t…

*Link to above video omitted*

Imagine this technology 5-10 years down the road, where spoofing a person’s identity like this is as easy as making a blog. Imagine a much more subtle use of this, where one could simply make a video of someone saying something that they didn’t. In a few years, people won’t be able to tell the difference between raw footage and spoofs like this.

The content is changing, and the medium itself (video) is changing. At the end of the day, video is a really important truth for us. If something is captured on video tape (surveillance, news, etc.), it’s proof. It even holds up legally!

That truth is breaking down. How will information + credibility be evaluated in the future? The publishing site that hosts / displays the video?

Will people just stop believing the videos they see (like I do now with photos)?

Deep thoughts - and with good reason. Just where is technology and *everyone’s* ability to edit and manipulate video, images, etc. going to take us? Can you imagine a world where government legislation forces those who use content editing software such as After Effects or Photoshop to apply for a license? I can.

Here’s a list of World Economic Forum Blogger with similar concerns. What say you?

two (more) awesome uses of Twitter

I’ve been speaking a lot recently about the evolution of Twitter and all the amazing ways it is getting used across media, advertising, politics and family life. I’m going to try to create on an ongoing list building on this previous post. If you know of any I’m missing, please add ‘em in!

1. election.twitter.com
We all know Twitter as the place millions of people from around the world talk about what they are doing. But when you have that many people using a freeform communications tool they are going to bend it to their own voice: like mouthing off about this fatiguing 2008 Presidential Election process we’re in. This election has driven unprecedented content since it began (but that’s another post) and all of that chatter makes a great spectacle if you can get it all in one place. Enter election.twitter.com

First, and most importantly, it is open. Meaning, you don’t have to be a twitter member or user to use election.twitter.com. For many people, it has become a way to check in on (and do their own “chatter” reasearch on who is favoring who (and why). If you are a twitter user, you can join the conversation by posting directly from election.twitter.com and your update will go to everyone who follows you and into the election timeline.

My wife and I love to use it while we’re watching the debates…it has become our own Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) where we get to heckle and watch people heckle from the front of the room. Awesome.

2.Rick Sanchez

The stunt-blundering CNN correspondent cum anchor who did things like get himself tased, stand out in hurricanes, and simulate how to escape from a car underwater. Love him or hate him, Rick is once again shaking things up by trying to lead “the man’s” ongoing effort to pioneer in social media, Rick (and CNN) might be on to something with this one.

Rick Sanchez has been using Twitter on-the-air during his Saturday and Sunday evening shows on CNN and according to the above tweet, might be branching the show out futher. Similar to the way I use the election.twitter.com example, Ricks hows the Twitter on the screen and talks back to and about the tweets as they pass his screen. Talk about interactive mash-ups. This model isn’t going away folks and more people will experiment with it. We know many anchors try to comb through emails while on air - this is an evolution of that concoept (and probably a more valuable one). Sanchez has accumulated quite a few followers already. You can follow him on Twitter here.

Is it working? It’s probably too early to tell, but check this out: Steve Garfield (One of the Internet’s first video bloggers) has a flickr account that is getting hammered because he posted a shot of Rick Sanchez pointing at his tweet on air.

See the photo below.

_{There is some controversy on this photo as Rick removed a URL from the tweet (cleansing) for his use.}

At the time I posted this 25,456 people are following Rick on just less than 700 updates. Follow this one closely, folks. More discussion of CNN’s use of Twitter can be found here and here.