I have blogged a few times lately about attempts publishers are making the price of content on the internet (here and here, if you’re interested). Traditional media sources and content producers have always struggled with creating a profitable online model, and the rise of the smartphone and the tablet both highlights the issues they are facing, and presents new opportunities for a solution.  Two more attempts at this solution have been getting publicity recently. First, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has announced it’s plans for a new, national US publication designed specifically for the iPad. The publication is will feature short, snappy news stories (take this to mean lots of pictures, little in the way of analysis) and has been created with the goal of “having young people read newspapers”.   The second thing which got me thinking about it was a story about a series of new magazines created specifically for tablets, called Nomad Editions. Basically, the idea behind is that they’ll produce 5 “editions” around specific topics (food, movies, surfing, viral video, etc), published weekly, which users will be able to subscribe to. It will be built using an interesting technology called Treesaver , which allows users to view ther same content, using the same addresses, on their desktop or mobile device.

These are both nice ideas, but they both seem inspired by a premise I’m not sure I agree with. Mark Edmiston, CEO of Nomad, claimed that Nomad was borne of that fact that “…people reading on their iPads, they’re reading a different way”. Rupert Murdoch made similar claims about his national newspaper concept. The implication in both cases is that the new technology necessitates new content, as well as new content delivery. (more…)

I hate to harp on about Apple but it’s hard to avoid at the moment. Steve Jobs’ essay “Thoughts on Flash” this week lit a firecracker underneath the already over-effusive internet flame war that is Flash vs Silverlight vs HTML5. It’s nothing new from Apple, but it’s a real line in the sand and clearly not up for debate.

What Steve had to say about Flash:

First, there’s “Open”….
Second, there’s the “full web”….
Third, there’s reliability, security and performance…
Fourth, there’s battery life….
Fifth, there’s Touch…
Sixth, the most important reason… We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

Conclusions.
(more…)

The Wave of the Future?

As you’ve no doubt heard, Google Wave was put into limited release to 100,000 key users this week. To quote it’s promotional press, it is “is a web based service, computing platform and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging and wiki and social networking. It has a strong collaborative and real time focus supported by extensions that can provide, for example, robust spelling/grammar automated translation between 40 languages, and numerous other extensions”.

Google are billing it as the next generation of internet communication. Without testing it – or more accurately, without testing it at the same time as several of my friends and colleagues, it’s hard to qualify whether that claim is feasible. There’s some interesting support material on Google’s blog, though, with various professionals talking about how they will use the technology – a journalist discussing how he’d use it when submitting an article;  a film maker on how it could help his process (which is slightly more about potentials than copy writers) and a quite perceptive piece about enterprise uses .

Because it’s so new and hasn’t been tested in a live environment, the general online attitude to Wave has been pretty positive. Perhaps the main reason for apprehension shouldn’t be about the Wave itself, which has obivous and tangible benefits, but about whether it will achieve what, at the end of the day, is it’s goal – replacing email. To do this (the problem’s explained in detail here) it will have to generate a huge, organic shift in the behaviour of everyone who uses email. No easy task.

(If you’re interested in any of the other potential pratfalls, check out this list by Fast Company).

Driving with your Head

A few weeks ago I blogged about the new on windshield display which feature from the new Lexus. It seems the trend is spreading, with Toyota Prius’s new European model also including the feature. And they’re showcasing it in these fantastic banner ads produced by Glue UK, in which you can steer the car using your head, via your webcam. Clever stuff.

They Don’t Make ‘em Like They Used To

We’ve featured a few automotive campaigns on the Dump lately, particularly those which are interesting or innovative, and some of the more out there campaigns got me thinking about one of the most most out there, and effective, campaigns of all time – Dunlop Tyre’s 1993 TV ads, produced by Tony Kaye. The campaign was called “Tested for the Unexpected”, not exactly a groundbreaking tagline for a tyre company, but the response to the brief – featuring heavily made-up naked men, explosions, and spiked gimp masks, soundtracked by the Velvet Underground’s 1967 paean to sado-masochism Venus In Furs, was anything but. The result is brilliant, though, not because it is shocking or unexpected, but because it manages to to remain obviously an ad for tyres despite these qualities. It’s a great reminder of how a response to a brief doesn’t have to be limited by your preconceptions of the product or of the client’s expectations.

Virtual Reality becomes, er, reality

The last few dumps have been pretty focussed largely on the day to day world of digital media, so this week, I thought I’d have a look at what’s happening at the outer frontiers.

Back in the mid-90′s, when the internet was first entering households on a mass scale and newspaper feature sections were still publishing lead articles about “cyberspace”, Virtual Reality was as hot a topic as Twitter is now.  While the talk of changing the way we live was very exciting, the reality in those days was largely dodgy flight simulators and dodgier science fiction plots.

But now, we have acrossair. Basically it’s a 3d augmented map of the New York and London Undergrounds, using the iphone’s video function. As they explain it:

“When you load the app, holding it flat, all 33 lines of the New York Subway are displayed in coloured arrows. By tilting the phone upwards, you will see the nearest stations: what direction they are in relation to your location, how many miles away they are and what lines they are on. If you continue to tilt the phone upwards, you will see stations further away, as stacked icons.”

While it’s really cool in and of itself, the remarkable thing is where it can lead. For business like restaurants and shops, the potential benefits are both obvious and enormous – imagine being able to view the menu, reviews and visitor’s comment on every restaurant on Brunswick street as you walked along it, for instance. But it can go even further.   This video from Japan is the best example I’ve seen of what the next level will look like. Called the Sekai Camera, it was developed by Japanese firm Tonchidot(their full YouTube channel is worth checking out, too). It’s basically a 3D, augmented reality social media device. It will allow users to leave comments in real spaces, making real environments live 3D social networks.

Dreaming Buildings

Urbanscreen, a collective of media artists and architects from Bremen in Germany, are behind this Bladerunner-esque ‘ buildings that dream’ concept. Basically, they project onto the facade of buildings, which gives the 2d surface depth, time and sound. The implications of technology like this for outdoor advertising are obviously huge, and Urbanscreen function as both an art collective and a media agency, so it can’t be far away from reaching the public sphere. How it’s used will be interesting-  it has the potential to be fantastic if used correctly, horribly oppressive if not.

Fine Fin Fun

Finally, Finland. Nissan Finland have produced a comp which stood out to me for a few reasons.  The concept is quite simple -upload a video or photo of your favourite bike route in Finland, for your chance to win. But the way the content is presented, embedded into a map, is quite cool. The map also features Nissan dealer sites, and locations of Nissan Sport adventure event locations.

The best thing about the com, though, is that it engages at a passion point. Fins love getting into the outdoors (on the four days a year there isn’t 50 feet of snow on the ground and 22 hours of dark, dark night) and cycling is huge over there. This means the content that is being generated for this comp has the potential to be interesting even to people who aren’t there for the prizes, or who aren’t ordinarily Nissan fans. Very well done.

A decidedly automotive theme this week – it’s going to drive you wild.

GM USES THE WEB TO REBUILD CONFIDENCE

General Motors have had an extremely challenging period, with sales dropping steadily to the point where it was forced to undergo a Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructure, and was essentially only saved from going under by the US Government.

This move was extremely controversial, as it was seen (quite correctly) as a “socialising” of the auto industry, and it presents GM with a whole raft of challenges. Along with with obvious challenge of selling enough cars to stay afloat and repositioning themselves as environmentally aware (the image above is their new hyper-efficient car) ,they have the incredibly difficult PR task of rebuilding confidence in their brand, and selling the idea that the government was correct in bailing them out, and that despite this bailout out they are operating as an independent entity.

They’re calling their campaign to do this GM Re-invention. The TVC is pretty much as you’d expect right down to the shots of stampeding horses, moon landings and touchdowns, but the website is far more forward looking.  The site really seeks to be a conversation between the company and it’s customers, shareholders, and a sceptical public.

The key features include “Ask Fritz”, which lets users put questions to GM’s CEO directly; live chats with the heads of various departments, of which transcripts are available, and well maintained Twitter , Facebook and Flickr pages.

It’s an ambitious approach, and one that would have to be well monitored, given the amount of negative sentiment surrounding the company at present. But it seems to be quite successful – Business Week’s assessment can be found here, showing that consumers have generally reacted positively.

Awesome app that is actually useful

It’s pretty normal to come across an iPhone app that’s entertaining for 24 hours. It’s somewhat rarer to come across one so useful that it will be ubiquitous. But Mini USA’s new auto assistance app is just that. Basically, it allows one button connect to roadside assistance services, specifying the kind of trouble your in. As well, it uses the phone’s navigational devices to tell the assistance service your exact location.

It’s so useful that it could genuinely be described as having the potential to influence a purchaser’s decision when they’re buying a car.

Help Me, Rhonda

Rhonda is a cool new tool for designers and animators. It was developed about 5 years ago, but until now has only been used in museums and galleries. Basically, it allows you to flip images onto different planes, using 2d line drawings to make 3D shapes. It’s in beta testing now, but will be in the market soon. I’m not sure why they chose Neil Young’s mournful 1972 classic “Out on the Weekend” to soundtrack the demo, though?

Now That’s What I Call Digital Advertising

I thought I’d start this week with a few examples where companies got their digital advertising right. When you’re exposed, like I am, to a lot of web campaigns, it’s easy to become a bit blase and not see the forest for the trees.  But these, for differing reasons, stood out.

First up, Toyota have partnered with EA and produced a virtual version of the Prius for Sims 3.  While this kind of integration has been happening in the movies for time immemorial, it’s less common in the world of video games. The Sims is the perfect starting point as, as well as being the most successful PC game ever, 50% of its audience is female, very unusual in a market dominated by young males. A simple, clever idea, hitting the Prius’s demographic right on the head.

Another thing we often work on are online competitions, and the mantra we repeat  when doing so is keep it simple, make it interesting, make it easy and make the prize memorable. The World’s Cutest Dog Competition ticks every box – simple, easy mechanic, everyone dog owner thinks theirs is the cutest, a million dollars worth of prizes. Tick, tick, tick – and the result is a huge number of entries and unbelievable exposure for the sponsor. And on a completely different tip, but great for the same reason, is  Canadian beer Okanagan Spring’s Sponsor Me Spring. Visitors to sponsormespring.ca could appeal, through video, to Okanagan Spring to sponsor their small-scale or backyard social gatherings. This saw the sponsor of events as salubrious as Hanging Around After Ed’s Soccer Game. It generated some some really funny content – definitely a site worth browsing for a while. The promotion obviously really speaks to the beer’s target market.

But if you’re not going to go with simple, make it memorable. Wrigley’s France have launched this fantastic augmented reality competition to promote 5gum, where you mix a track and create a visual, upload it. A few similar things have popped up lately, including one to promote Eminem’s “The Release”‘s UK launch, but I haven’t seen it done this well. The site around it is nicely done as well.

Four clever ideas, well executed – great stuff.

Privacy in the Public Space

A couple of privacy-related stories popped up this week. Firstly, once again, a lawsuit against Facebook for privacy breaches was dismissed as being groundless, and a report was released in the US that found 45% of employers screen potential employees via social media.  It still amazes me how people still have the “Invisible in my car” mentality when using social media. Even though cars you’re perfectly visible to the outside world  in their car, they behave as if they are in public – picking noses, singing, putting on make up. And it’s the same on with social media – as private as it feels, it’s not. Sites’ number one concern is UBs, not making sure no one sees that photo of you drunk at Schoolie’s Week in 2001.

Interestingly, the reality of lives being increasingly led in public are the subject of a new documentary We Live In Public, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this year. The film, directed by Ondi Timoner (who also directed the cult classic Dig!) looks at the life and work of Josh Harris. Harris was a pioneer in the first dot com boom, launching pseudo.com, the first internet television network. He used his fortune on an event he called Quiet!We Live In Public. Part art installation and part social experiment, he gathered 100 artists in a Japanese pod hotel style building for 100 days, all of it on web cam.  Basically, he was commenting on how, as the internet made greater levels of connection possible, people would be increasingly willing to sacrifice, or rather redefine, their notions of privacy. It’s an observation which has proved to be very prescient.

What this probably all means is that we’re at the end of the anything goes era of social media. As a social media presence becomes an accepted part of everyone’s life, we’ll be forced to meet the same standards there as in the “real world”. Which also means there is potentially a commercial opportunity for someone who works out a way of keeping social media private, whether through paid subscriptions or comprehensive history kills.

Twitter in Pictures

Finally, a nice little infographic showing what the Twitter community would look like if it was 100 people – although I wonder what criteria they were using when they categorized other people’s tweets as “inane”, and how big the sample group was.

Social Media fuel’s Audi’s pro-Diesel campaign

One of the ways the automotive industry has been combat the global downturn and concerns about climate change is with clean diesel. Diesel produced to new standards has a reduced sulfur output to, and still provides the greater miles per litre than petrol which it always has.

Now diesel is something of a hard sell. The market, especially in the USA, associates it with tractors, smelly fumes and soot. To combat these preconceptions, Audi USA have launched a campaign selling the message that “Diesel is no longer a dirty word” . As well as traditional advertising, they’ve launched this viral video on YouTube, and started a Facebook Cause, which sees them donate a dollar to carbon offsetting every time someone joins ($25,000 had been donated at time of writing). More innovative is the “conversation” about diesel they’ve  included on their site. Basically, this is an aggregator of diesel related activity on Twitter, YouTube, Flickr.

It’s a bold idea, but in practice the result is slightly odd, for the simple reason that so much content is being pulled in, with so little filtering, that the final offering is a bit hit and miss. The Twitter links, in particular, seem to be largely spam, and most of the “news” content is just links back to the same stories on the Audi site. As for the functionality, here’s a quick word of advice to every flash developer  – Having the sound of empty diesel barrels falling on top of each other from a great height come up unprompted on loading a page will never, ever be a good idea. Still, the concept is good and with a slightly more rigorous filtering process, a lot of the issues could have been fixed.

Side note: Before the “Diesel is not a dirty word” campaign,  Audi’s first move into establishing credibility for their diesel range was winning Le Mans with a diesel car.  That’s what you call having all your bases covered.

Colorsuckr doesn’t, err, suck

Colorsuckr is a great new tool we came across this week. It’s pretty simple – you just enter an image URL, and it gives you the color palette. All good. I just wish the URL didn’t sound like something I should be wiping from my browser history.

Your workspace as a blog

Finally, a web app which I’m completely torn about.  Even after thinking about it for a couple of days, I can’t decide whether Harvest Co-Op would a great new tool, an insidious tool of Big Brother or a waste of time. Basically, it’s an app in which you let your co-workers know what you’re working on, where you are, and so on – aggregrating the information we usually put into calenders, discuss at WIP meetings, and so on. On paper, great.  But for it to be effective, how much time would we have to spend updating it? Who would check if it was accurate.

Regardless of these questions, I am sure it would be really useful in some workplaces, and we will probably all be using tools like it in the not too distant future.

Facebook Flourishes, Twitter Towers, MySpace melts

Some interesting trends are emerging in the world of social media. News Corp released it’s full year operation income this week, and particularly notable was that the “Other” segment, which accounts for  Fox Interactive Media, reported an operating loss of $363 million. This loss was largely driven by a drop of advertising revenue at MySpace, which FIM owns.

MySpace’s traffic numbers were overtaken by Facebook’s last May and Facebook has gone from strength to strength ever since – it’s now the world’s fourth most popular website, behind only the Google, Microsoft and Yahoo behemoths.  And it looks like even MySpace itself thinks the trend will continue, having recently cut two-thirds of their international staff and replaced their CEO.

But what does this mean? Well, as simply as possible, Facebook is getting it’s audience boost from MySpace refugees, who seem largely to be over 18s who prefer the functionality (particularly the privacy) of the Facebook experience. As well, Facebook is tapping into sections of the market, particularly 35-54 year olds who MySpace weren’t ever able to gain great traction with. MySpace continues to grow in popularity with teens and niche audiences, so it’s not in any danger of going under, but moving forward it won’t be able to compete with Facebook for a mass audience.

Over at Twitter, meanwhile, things continue to go from strength to strength – as this link shows the upward trend is spiking sharply (check international stats here).  But some interesting stats released by Nielsen show that this growth has been driven largely not by the traditional early up-takers, but the over 24s – in fact, remarkably. more people over 55 use Twitter than under 24.

And again, why? Well, it’s just a theory, but I would posit that it’s because Twitter is becoming more than more than just a social media site, in the traditional sense. MySpace and Facebook are about friends. Facebook is about maintaining existing relationships, which is why it is popular all age groups. MySpace focuses as much on meeting new friends as maintaining old relationships, which is why teens and young adults love it so much. But Twitter is more like a virtual town square, where people go to hear the latest news, get advice, find out what has been happening that day, and so on. Which is why it could end up the biggest of them all.

Finding Flickr Fotos Faster, Funner

Everyone’s favourite photo finding resource got a better this week, with a great new search functionality. It’s all explained in this post. No doubt this group of extremely keen University of Washington researchers, who used Flickr images to build Rome in a day would have found it handy.

Don’t Hit Refresh

The whole world is going digital. Later this year work will begin on Mahanakhon, which at 310 metres will be Bangkok’s tallest. But what makes it really noteworthy is that it will be pixelated. German architect Ole Scheeren of OMA, has designed it with indentations in its facade which will give it the appearance of having, or rather missing “pixels”. If all goes according to plan it will be finished in 2012. Incredible.

The New Twitter?

We’re going to start this week’s dump by jumping in a time machine and heading back, way back….. to 2007. At the indie rock festival SXSW in Austin, Texas, the phenomenon that is Twitter took its first steps towards internet domination. Through some cleverly placed TVs monitors placed at various venues, Twitter was able to engage the performers, speakers, bloggers and audience at the event. By the end of the event, Twitter’s audience had tripled, and the world begun to”get” micro-blogging.

Jump forward to this year’s SXSW, and once again, an at-first simple app captured the attention of the assembled hipsters – Foursquare. Foursquare is a location based service which allows users in certain towns (none in Australia yet) to recommend fun things to do, or discuss things they’d like to do, in effect providing users with a real time city guide, or an “urban mix tape” as they would have it, with lots of great tips and to-dos. Of course, it syncs with Facebook and Twitter, and makes most sense as an phone app. So far, so good, I hear you saying.

But what has made Foursquare really sticky is the game. By visiting different locations, reviewing them, and even just logging on, you are awarded points and badges. Get enough, and you become “mayor”. It’s simple, it seems to be great fun, and it’s driving traffic up fast. Watch this space, cause another huge trend could be coming from Texas.

Is this the end of photography?

At first glance, there’s nothing particularly amazing about the above McDonald’s ad. But, as the clip shows, this paean to two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickle on a sesame seed is completely CGI. The decision was made to film it like this cause it was quicker and easier – just amazing.

Crazy wedding dance shows YouTube’s money making capacity

By now you will all have seen the “JK Wedding Entrance Dance”, where an American Bridal Party get crazy to Chris Brown’s “Forever”. What sets this one apart is, as this fascinating post on Google’s blog shows, that it was a huge money spinner. As well as the posters benefitting from using YouTube’s new click to buy download tool, the clip saw “Forever”, released a year ago, get back to number 4 on the iTunes chart.

Michael’s funeral hits the chart at number 3
All the indicators pointed to it being the biggest web event of all time, but it turns out that Michael Jackson’s funeral isn’t even the biggest web even of the year, with Obama’s inauguration still coming in at number 1. What’s interesting is following the death of Princess Diana, the media interest grew and peaked at her funeral – it shows how much the news cycle is speeding up, and how quickly the web audience moves to the next thing..

Not for all the chicken in the world…..
KFC, trying to change the perception of it’s chicken as obesity in a bucket, has launched a new grilled chicken range in the USA. Great idea. The only problem is, the social media campaign they’ve launched to go with it, called “Unthink”, has been a massive flop (try four video entries on their YouTube channel). Why? Well, despite being on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, despite having a great prize, the core of the campaign still misses the point of social media campaigns. Users are asked to tell KFC why it is great, and a successful social media campaign needs to be about THE USER being great. Check it out here:

Www.unthinkkfc.com

http://www.youtube.com/groups_layout?name=unthinkdance

Car buying gets easier

Already praised by Time magazine, MotorMouths is a new car review aggregation site that basically takes the Rotten Tomatoes approach to online car reviews, ranking both the cars themselves and the credibility of the reviewers. Not complex, but a huge time saver if you’re looking for a new car.