Over the many years I've lived in London I've rarely wondered walked around Leicester Square, finding it far too 'touristy'... I was really therefore quite lucky last Saturday when I saw a sign in from of the Odeon Leicester Square mentioning that Josh Harris would be here for a Q&A session for the 6:30pm screening of We Live in Public.
If you have never heard of this documentary (I hadn't to be fair), check out the video below before I tell you a bit more about who Josh Harris is, about the Q&A session and about the movie in general:
First of all, it's interesting to note that Ondi Timoner, the film director, introduces Josh Harris as "the greatest Internet pioneer you've never heard of" whereas Josh Harris refers to himself as "an artist" and makes a point of stating that all of his "Internet experiences" over the last decade were done because of "art".
During this documentary, we discover how in 1993 Harris, then a dot.com millionnaire, founded Pseudo.com, a live audio and video webcasting site and to be honest, in the same way I'm always amazed the Cluetrain manifesto was writen 10 years ago, I'm also amazed at Harris' capacities of foreseeing what the Internet would be like a few decades later. Webstreaming in 1993, that was pretty adventurous!
Anyhow, Harris then went on to sell Pseudo to set up Quiet, an Orwellian project: he had 100 people living in a bunker in NY, and filmed them 24/24 hours in the aim to prove how, in "the not-so-distant future of life online, we will willingly trade our privacy for the connection and recognition we all deeply desire" (Wikipedia). Not satisfied enough with this first Orwellian project, he then put himself and his girlfriend under the limelight by living under live surveillance camera 24 hours a day for six months, still to prove the price we will all pay for living in public in the near future... What happened? He had a breakdown, left NY for the middle of nowhere in the US where he took over an apple farm and lived there for a few years...
That was in the nineties...
2009 is already refered to as the year of the real time web and although we don't yet all have a webcam filming and broadcasting our every move 24/24, we all willingly update our real time statuses on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and give days in days out a little bit more information about our private life, about our whereabouts... Is that to say that we're all heading to a mental breakdown?
That's the question I asked Josh Harris during the Q&A session.
His answer? "Loss of self". Over the next few years, people will start to behave in such a way that they will lose their individuality. They will behave to please the masses. Harris actually illustrates this with the example of when he and his girlfriend argued while they were living together and filmed by cctv: when his girlfriend asked him to go and sleep on the sofa the night of the argument, it wasn't her idea. It was her audience's idea; the idea they gave her while chatting online and reacting to their argument as if they were part of the couple's life.
According to Harris, people will all become increasingly similar. And thinking about it, this is already happening. Think about what you tweet. Think about the way you behave on Facebook and more generally on the way you present yourself in the wider social media web... Loss of self, loss of individualy, call it what you want - this is a very interesting point I'll try and take more time to develop here in the near future.
As a concluding note - if you haven't seen We Live in Public, make sure you do!
Woke up yesterday morning with a smile [I'm a geek] when I discovered I was part of the 'few' people (well I'm sure there are tons of us but still) who were granted access to the cool beta "Twitter List" function:
Spent some time yesterday afternoon setting up a couple of lists including a We Are Social one, and joining the official LeWeb09 bloggers one. Was about to write a post about it last night when I came accross this message:
Pretty interesting how Twitter has deployed this new interesting feature considering that until now, as far as I'm concerned, most of the useful functionality around Twitter were developed by third parties rather than Twitter itself. I use Tweetdeck and of course you could already create lists there - however, not sure if I'm the only one but I usually missed out on 4 out of 5 tweets in my Tweetdeck lists...
My hope? That I'll be able to export my Twitter List to Tweetdeck easily (and that the tweets will appear).
If you're following Google on Twitter, you might have seen their last tweet "Tweets and updates and search, oh my!"?
Twitter Search obviously features the tweets as they appear in real time search whereas Google will list the sites with the most 'search equity' first, ie, sites who are the most popular for example - but these sites are probably popular because they've been here for a while (I'm simplifying here of course!).
Ok, let me give you an example, that'll be easier. Let's search for Obama:
The integration of Twitter updates in Google' search results is definitely an interesting move!* It'll be interesting to see the impact in a few weeks/months.
* on a personal level though, I might be more careful about I write on Twitter from now on ;-)
Not sure if you've noticed but it seems that Skype is one of the latest entrants to the "live feed update" scene. You could obviously already follow the whereabouts of your friends (real or virtual ones) via Facebook, Twitter or Friendfeed - now can you do the same with your Skype contact!
As you can see in the image below, a "Mood Messages" window now appears on my Skype interface, letting me see the latest status updates of my Skype contact.
On a slightly different note, whilst we're talking about "live feed update" and therefore "real time web", if you haven't read Robin Grant's article [ie my boss] about the real time web in the latest edition of Contagious, make sure you check it out: "People now live in a world where constant interaction is the norm" and the "real time web" is now having an impact on people's online behaviour...
You might remember a post I wrote back in June this year about the Vodafone #ukhols Twitter Mashup? As part of their summer campaign where they abolished roaming charges in over 35 countries, from June to the 31st of August, Vodafone came up with this idea of a map which would show where UK Twitter users are spending time throughout the summer.
If you read my post, you'd know that I thought the idea was very clever and very interesting because for once a brand wasn't going into social media just for the sake of it but had actually found an idea that was intrinsically linked to its campaign.
But now what? Ok, we now where the majority of UK Tweeter users holidayed throughout the summer (Tokyo & New York apparently) and we also know (well, I know for a fact anyway) that Vodafone users travelling to one of the 35 roaming-free countries throughout the summer were delighted at the idea of not having to pay any roaming charges...
I personally got used to going back and forth between Paris & London via the Eurostar & not caring the slightest about the roaming charges for 3 months!
And as a marketer (or ex-marketer should I say now) I simply assumed that for Vodafone it'd be an easy sell up to offer to their customers in September: "you've enjoyed not paying roaming charges throughout the summer?", how about you pay an extra £20 per month to benefit from free roaming charges in the country of your choice?! I would have signed up for this!
So I guess I was kind of disappointed when Vodafone called me this week to find out if I was happy about my contract. When I ask about potential "roaming packages" I was told me they couldn't upgrade my contract to a package which would allow me free unlimited phone calls to/from France :(
Their answer? With Vodafone Passport, you only pay 75p per minute... Yeah right... That's £20 for 26 minutes... So I guess I'll just have to be patient and wait until July 2010 for the new European rule on roaming & decreased costs...
In the same way you've been able to receive Twitter notifications on your desktop (Tweetdeck notifier for example - see grey box in the image below), you can now receive Facebook notifications on your desktop via the brand new Facebook app:
Throughout the summer, Vodafone is abolishing roaming charges in Europe as well as Australia and New Zealand: customers -like me- can talk, text and send picture messages back home or within the country they're’re visiting, and only pay standard UK rates.
To support the campaign, they've come up with a very interesting Twitter Mashup #ukhols which maps out the most popular UK's holiday destinations. Nice to see something so intrinsically linked to a campaign.
All you have to do is to use the hashtag #ukhols, your age, sex, the first half of your postcode and where you are going this year.
Great idea!
Like most social media folks, I tend to sign up to most of the new networks, so I can try them out. I've been on FriendFeed for over a year now and although I like the fact that the service aggregates most of your lifestream (Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, Seesmic, YouTube and many more - see below -), my issue with FriendFeed is that it's yet another service and that realistically I can't use of all them...
Let's say I was to follow 1,000 people on FriendFeed, like I do on Twitter. Not only will I see the Twitter feeds of those 1,000 people but also potentially their pictures on Flickr, the videos they've uploaded on Dailymotion, YouTube or Vimeo, their latest blogposts, the events they're attending to via Upcoming, and potentially the presentation they've uploaded onto Slideshare. All sounds great: a service aggregating your lifestream in one place. But potentially the content of each of my follower will be enough to fill in my whole screen, which makes it impossible to follow everyone...
The reason I'm bringing the subject is that as I'm sure you know, FriendFeed latest improvements make it easy to import all of your contacts from Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail into FriendFeed, which means that as I'm sure you've noticed as well, there is a growing number of people subscribing to one's FriendFeed's.
Don't get me wrong, this is a very clever thing FriendFeed is doing to relaunch the usage of their service. I'm not sure how I should use it yet / whether I should use it but I will try and get back to it, check out the functions and see it this works for me, and who knows, I come back to you in a month and say this is the best thing ever... (so don't be surprised if I subscribe to your FriendFeed in the next few days!)
How about you? How do you use FriendFeed? Have you created groups/friend lists? See what would make it really appealing to me would be to have a Tweetdeck equivalent for FriendFeed. That would ease things for me!
About a month ago, Oprah Winfrey posted her first Tweet during her show and straight away, people starting talking about the "Oprah effect" ie the impact Oprah had on the number of people signing up to Twitter. Very quickly the "Here beefore Oprah" website was launched so you could Tweet about the fact you were cool ie that you were on Twitter before the Oprah show, as opposed to being there after as Twitter going mainstream was highlighted to many as the end of Twitter being "cool"...
So, now Twitter is being featured in Desperate Housewives with Tom whining to Lynette that he failed his interview because he had not idea was Twitter was all about ;-) Let's wait and see the effect this will have over the next few months as this episode is aired throughout the world... In the meantime, check out the Tom/Lynetter Twitter conversation below - very very funny to watch!
And judging by the level of Tweets, the story is clearly amusing a lot of Twitter users... To be honest, the great news is that my friends might finally understand what is Twitter when I talk about it!
I love Apple.
I used to love my G4.
I still love my MacBook.
And I love my new MacBook Air even more...
So why I am not so fussed about the iPhone? I'm still not sure. Could be because I've been using an N95 8GB for a year now and I think it's perfect (plus and maybe, thinking of it, the camera is way better than the iPhone one!).
Still, there is something I can't get for my N95 and which I'm very jealous of: all those great (sometimes useless but still great...) iPhones applications which all my colleagues & friends boast about everyday. It seems that whatever your problem is, there is an iPhone app that has been developped somewhere, by someone, to resolve it. Even bored parents seem to revert to iPhones apps when they can't get their kids to be quiet in planes or trains! According to Apple, over a billion iPhone apps have been downloaded in just 9 months...
The great news then is that, according to a press release dating from this morning, Vodafone is about to "stimulate a new generation of mobile internet applications by providing internet service developers with a single point of access to Vodafone’s global customer base.". Which means that finally I might be able to get some pretty decent/funky apps for my N95.
About time as this is the only thing that was missing on this brilliant device... Brilliant news and I'm looking forward to see all those great apps appearing on lots of devices! Vodafone will see an uplift in its revenue whils myself, as a customer will be happy to see interesting app appearing on my phone.
After almost a week offline, relaxing/detoxing in the Canaries, it was time for me to get back to reality and to the social media scene... So when Robert McIntosh (@thirstforwine) invited me to a Twitter Taste Live event, it came just at the right time!
This wasn't Robert's first #TTL event. In fact, Robert had organised the first UK Twitter Taste Live event, back in August 2008. 10 of us had been invited to an amazing evening of wine tasting and gourmet food at his place.
This latest event was organised by @thirstforwine and sponsored by @bibendumwine who brought along some wines from the French Côtes du Rhône region, which @jlcoassin and I very much enjoyed (especially the Châteauneuf du Pape!). The most intriguing thing for me was to discover that there was a white variety of wine in the Côtes du Rhône region! Really nice one as well..
Back to the Twitter Taste Live events. It's very interesting to see how such an old industry as the wine one was able to adapt itself to the social media scene and the new technologies available, with people from wineries using Twitter accounts to talk about their wines or with the setting up of innovative and exciting events such as #TTL. Check out Sprinwise report on Twitter Taste Live for more details. I also very much like Lea's comment: "This people, is wine 2.0. And it rocks."
Yesterday I was mentioning that a French Twitterer @ronlinfirmier made a joke about Gmail being unavailable because "When Chuck Norris uses Gmail, the whole world waits until he's done"... Well this morning his quote was mentioned (the translated version of course) in the London Metro... William... Fame is also waiting for you on the other side of the Channel Tunnel ;-)
By the way, in my note yesterday, I was mentioning my doubts about cloud computing... well, let me tell you that tonight, after my 3-year-old Macbook died twice but later on 'resusitated' twice that I'm now not only backing up my whole hard drive but also very much looking forward to the cloud computing age ;-)
One of my favorite book is Ravage, a book I read whilst at school and that was written in 1943, by René Barjavel, a French science-fiction author. Ravage is a story of a much more advanced civilisation that falls to its knees when electricity suddenly disappears...
Now you're probably wondering why I'm quoting Barjavel in a blog post titled with Chuck Norris' name?! Well, as Gmail failed us worlwide this morning for a few hours at least, I came accross a brilliant joke on Twitter explaining the Gmail fail (from another French writter actually: @ronlinfirmer): "Quand Chuck Norris utilise Gmail, tout le monde attend qu'il aie fini" or in English (I hope the translation makes sense!): "When Chuck Norris uses Gmail, everyone wait until he's finished!". The joke seems to be amusing more people than just myself as it got RT'd quite a lot today including by famous French Twitter user/blogger @ChauffeurDeBuzz.
So back to Ravage and Chuck Norris using Gmail whilst us lot wait until he's finished to be able to use our email account again... This latest Google failure (remember the huge Google Fail on 31/01/09 which put the whole www searches on hold for hours?) is yet another scary moment when you suddenly think... Crap... What would we do if the whole Internet went down? What would happen of our economies, which are currently so reliant on communication and especially online communication?! If you've never read Ravage from Barjavel, now is a good time to go back to your "classics". As I can't remember the ending, I might do the same actually!
Now, back to good news... I was one of the first this morning to raise my concerns about "Cloud Computing" when I was unable to use my emails for a few hours. But apparently, cloud computing is safe, as proved by the issue this morning whereby most of us (not me!) were apparently still able to get their emails on Gmail via their iphones for example. Which means that data wasn't lost and therefore, in short, cloud computing (apparently) wins... And for those of you who've never heard about cloud computing, in a nutshell it's like this: in the past you were storing all your photos on your computer and using tons of memory - right now you can store all your photos on Flickr. Cloud computing will let you access your information from any computer in the world as the data will be stored, not on your computer but in some servers... Reassured now? lol Well, personnaly, I'll wait a few years before totally switching to cloud computing and I might carry on saving my data onto a hard drive for years as I do nowadays for my photos, saved both on my laptop drive and on Flickr...
This is it, the Xmas holidays are over (pictures here) and as I was waiting to board for London at Brest Guipavas airport yesterday afternoon, I used the WiFi to Twit about it and received a Twit back from @boarding_ telling me to Twit with #boarding with the airport code to find out if any other Twitter followers were around... Well, strangely enough (or not to be honest!), "there was only one stranded Twitter traveler at Brest, Guipavas" and it was me :-D
Still, a very interesting concept to potentially network with other Twitter travelers boarding from the same airport - check out the website boarding.fr for full details and don't forget to Twit using #boarding next time you're flying from somewhere! Apparently in the future Boarding will propose you vouchers and tips to help you have a much nicer stay in your airport.
Well done @damdam for developping this nice idea!
Talking about using WiFi at airports and other travel places, can I just say that I find it amazing that an airport like Brest is offering free WiFi to everyone when the Eurostar "Carte Blanche" lounge in Paris is not even wireless (even if you wanted to pay you couldn't use the WiFi as it's non-existent there!). On the basis the Eurostar Carte Blanche lounge is supposed to be for business people, it just doesn't make sense - am I the only one to be amazed by this?
I found out about Magpie a couple of days ago. Although I'm not really sure about the idea, I won't be negative straight away - I will wait and see before I make my final judgment so here is what it's all about...
Magpie is basically a way of converting your tweets into "bling-bling" as they say. What does that mean ? You register with them and they will ask you to advertise some products, brands via your tweets, against remuneration. Now, that can be tempting: I've checked out how much my Twitter account was worth and apparently I could earn up to 77 euros per month (£65).
However, the issue I have is that surely my Twitter Followers will get annoyed if I start posting some regular "Magpie-Tweet" to advertise products or brands. Ok, surely I do it from time to time. Yes, sometimes I genuinely like a product and I'll Tweet it. Sometimes also when I'm being outreached for a marketing campaign and I like the idea, I also Tweet about it.
But, still I'm not sure that I want to start losing my followers (especially now that Qwitter is here to remind you that some people stop following you !).
So, as I said, I'm not totally convinced about the business model. I won't use it. But at the same time I don't want to be negative straight away. After all, some bloggers are now paid to publish information about brands and/or products. Although I don't like the idea either, it's happening and it's apparently effective...
So, let's wait and see !
In case you hadn't noticed, Google was there to remind us that it's Halloween today, with a very cool logo apparently designed by Horror movie Director Wes Craven (thanks Eric for the info).
And in case you missed out completely on the Google logo, you may have spotted some Halloween emoticons appearing on Twitter ? The whole list of Halloween emoticons was available here. Is anyone aware of some other Twitter emoticons ?
So anyway, Halloween it was... So, Friday night I joined Niamh from Trusted Places and 40 other invitees, for the Day of the Dead Party at brand new Mexican restaurant Chilango. Check out the pictures from Tiki Chris and Mex on Flickr. What better place to celebrate Halloween than a Mexican restaurant ?! We even got a speech from the Mexican representative in London on how Mexican celebrates their dead over 2 days during Halloween. Tequila cocktails were flowing (courtesy of cocktail makers Wallid and Socrates lol), whilst we were nicely fed with some Burritos and Tacos in a very nice and colourful environment that is the restaurant...
I got to speak to Dan, one of the two founders of the restaurant and just loved the story of how him and his business partner Eric decided to create this restaurant. Both of them met whilst working at Skype a few years ago and realised they both loved Mexican food but couldn't find any good one in London. So they both gave up their job and embarked on a journey to finding out about Mexican food in Mexico city, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. And here they are now, with a couple of restaurants, one in Islington and this brand new one Chilango, on Fleet Street. Check it out, it's well worth it !!!
Am I the only one to have noticed a huge increase in terms of the number of Twitter followers over the last few days ? And, not sure if you have noticed either but some of those new followers have had their account suspended by Twitter on account of some strange activity ie most likely spam. And here is what you get when you click on the account of those "spammers":
So, anyhow, a few days ago, Utku came up with the terms SpamOwl which I really like. FailWhale and SpamOwl... What do you think ? ;-)
Well the job could be yours very soon !!! Here is the image you would have seen today if you had visited Apple.fr : a picture of the new MacBook with a French subtitle which could be translated as "fucking stupid". Ah Ah Ah.... A very good joke, especially that today was Apple Keynote day !
So if you speak French and love Apple, here could be the best day of your live - get your CV ready ;-)
Mail Goggles is a cool new app from the Gmail lab guys: once you have enabled it, Goggles "will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email". By asking you a few math questions, Goggles will ensure you're sober enough before enabling you to send an email you might regret later ;-)
That's it, enabled on my Gmail ! Question now is: when is Nokia launching a similar app to prevent me from sending text messages I'm bound to regret ? ;-)))
Last night Girl Geek Dinner was certainly exciting : not only they were celebrating their 3rd year anniversary but they were celebrating it a Google ! Well, in reality the only part of the Google Tower I saw was the Google Restaurant, but still, pretty exciting !!!
Unfortunately for me (I blame TFL), I arrived so late I missed out on all the networking part. Nevermind... I arrived just in time for a really good presentation on User Centric Design at Google and a panel on work-life balance, from a woman's perspective.
The presentation on User Centric Design was very interesting : the Google speaker explained how they used "persona" to design products (it reminded me of my "past" life in marketing). A "persona" is a character they create, they name and put a face on, to illustrate the potential user of a say product. The objective being in the end to deliver a product which does what the persona need. Interestingly enough, what that persona need is not for example to save a document, but rather to write a cv/a love letter. It's the end goal that matters, not the task to achieve it. Interesting.
The panel on work-life balance from a woman's perspective was equally interesting. Found out (scary) that the UK and Ireland have the longest hours worked each week in Europe... The example of work-life balance from a Google's perspective was amazing. We've all heard about the Google "way of life" but still... lots of company should use it as a benchmark to get the most productivity out of their staff. For them, work and their own life is mixed. They can turn up whenever in the office, and leave whenever, as long as the work is done, that's what matter. The Google employee mentioned she was planning a 10 days trip in NY, not as a holiday, but just so she could work from her parents' place and see them. Again, as long as the job is done, that's cool for Google. I'm pretty sure not all is perfect, as with any other companies there must be some drawbacks but still, a pretty inspiring way of managing its staff...
More reading about the Girl Geek Diner:
I could be nicknamed the "bookmark lady": I bookmark everything all the time. I read something I like, I bookmark it. I start reading something that looks like it's interesting, I bookmark it. Not sure how many bookmarks I have but loads... Which means it's tricky to find out THE article I'm looking for within all my bookmarks...
But now with Evernote, it's all getting back into control. Basically, Evernote allows you to capture information and to tag it so its easier for you to find it later on. I am using the online version which means I can access the information from any computers as well. Have a try ! I have 20 invites left, so if you're interested, email me.
Whilst researching about Search Twitter, I came accross a new Twitter application called TweetDeck. For those of you who know Twhirl, well, it's "kind of" the same idea but MUCH better !
We all know that having 100+ "Twittter friends" is impossible to manage - all you can do is follow a few of them live via mobile phone updates and read some the remaining once or twice a day via the web. But still, not easy to read all the updates...
"TweetDeck is an Adobe Air desktop application. It aims to evolve the existing functionality of Twitter by taking an abundance of information i.e twitter feeds, and breaking it down into more manageable bite sized pieces. TweetDeck enables users to split their main feed (All Tweets) into topic or group specific columns allowing a broader overview of tweets."
As an example to illustrate that definition, above is a print screen of my TweetDeck: the left column has all my Twitter feeds, from all my contacts. In the middle are the Replies I have received. The third column features ALL the live conversation (ie not only from my friends but from all over Twitter) about "Social Media" whereas the far right column features ALL the live conversation about the iPhone. Those searches about all the Twitter conversations are obviously enabled by the Search Twitter tool / ex-Summize... And here again, a great tool for all marketers to find out what people are saying about their products/brand.
In one word ? Perfect !
Yes, in case you're not aware yet, the big "geeky" news yesterday was the acquisition of Summize by Twitter, and the "birth" of Search Twitter :
To be honest, Summasize was already tracking Twitter but not exclusively as they were also tracking blogs, and other online conversations. From now on, Summize will exclusively track Twitter so you can have an idea of what people are talking about... Kind of an ideal tool for PR execs, isn't it ! No more excuses for not knowing what people are saying about your brand/products ;-)
Twitter Search will even allow you to search conversations around your geographical area, or will let you know if the conversation was positive (or negative)... Here is a guide to your searches.
And finally... Twitter acquisition of Summize - here is what the folks at Twitter say and what those Summize folks have to say.
On the same subject: Twitter Tracking
Contagious Magazine is this week reporting on the new Nike+ avatar-based widget so I was keen to try it out...
The latest move by Orange UK and Vodafone clearly indicate a change in consumers' usage of their mobile phone... And I'm the first one to be thrilled by the mobile operators' announcement to offer free or unlimited social networking on some of their plans, as I'm sure other operators will follow...
It had been a while since the last time I wrote a post about Twitter... However, Twitter is not dead, and even better, it looks like Twitter is about to become mainstream...
Not sure this is all done to James Karl Buck's story of how he escaped prison in Egypt by simply alerting his Twitter followers with a simple word "Arrested" but surely, CNN reporting that story must have done great deal in terms of publicity for Twitter !
Twitter going mainstream is also resulting in even more Twitter applications and usage by news organisation, politicians and advertisers alike. Have a read of Nick Butcher's article on that subject.
I particularly like the Toyota Japan example : Toyota created a Twitter homepage to share information and news about the company and its products...
Over the last few days I have been following a virtual character on Twitter. Her name is Slicequeen. But Slicequeen isn't a real person ; she's from a digital fiction... However I also read her blog and her parents' blog... Are you still following me ?
Those 6 stories are digital fictions and Pinguin worked with Six to Start, an agency specialised in Alternate Reality Games, to create those digital fictions. So what exactly are Alternate Reality Games ?
Well, as far as I'm concerned, I had never heard of the term ARGs until last week and the We Tell Story website. However ARGs are not new but as I'm sure they're pretty new to those of you who aren't passionate gamers, here are some information...
According to CNET, Alternate Reality Game is a new genre of games : "an obsession-inspiring genre that blends real-life treasure hunting, interactive storytelling, video games and online community". CNET concludes that ARGs "may, incidentally, be one of the most powerful guerrilla marketing mechanisms ever invented". And you see now where I'm going ? Marketing of course ! ;-)
In my opinion, ARGs represent a brilliant opportunity for brands to communicate with their audience using all the new media and technology. If your idea for an ARG idea is good enough then it could be a brilliant way to entertain your audience and create a proper 360 communication campaign, using not only Guerilla Marketing but also for example Blogs, Twitter, Google Maps, Facebook, Direct Marketing or even Bluetooth !
Until earlier this week, whenever I thought one of my Typepad posts was potentially interesting to my Facebook friends, I would simply click on the button "Share on Facebook"...
However a few days ago I was quite surprised to find out the title of my post previous post on my Facebook profile ! Turns out that Typepad signed up for the Facebook Beacon functionality back in November last year. Which means that from now on, if you're a Typepad and Facebook user, your latest posts will automatically be updated on your Facebook profile (although, you do get the choice to opt-out once and for all).
Anyway, this is all very good BUT the Facebook Beacon thingy only worked once for me... No further Typepad updates on my Facebook profile since Monday so if you work for Typepad / FB / simply know what's wrong, let me know ;-)
Oh and by the way... some of you might be annoyed with Facebook zombies by now ? If so this will be your kind of video....
ps: on that subject, I still find FB very valuable from a social communities point of view. Yes I do get really annoyed by zombies and vampires and other applications but I appreciate FB is improving all this so as long as I don't get my private pictures stolen by some guy cracking FB to access Paris Hilton's pictures, then that's fine by me ;-)
I know, lots of smileys today !!!
As I first came across this project from Penguin, I thought, what a good idea : a website to promote 6 stories from 6 different authors over 6 weeks, that's a very good way to get people back into reading. I say "back into reading" because although I cannot find any figures, I'm convinced that less and less people read books nowadays with the Internet...
Anyhow, at the beginning I thought this was a perfect way for me to discover new writers through shorts stories and decide whether to later on buy one of their books....
But as I was reading their first short story : The 21st Steps from Charles Cumming, I realised this was much much more than just short stories online... This was properly a brand new experience in terms of reading, a digital experience where your book is no longer just a mix of words... You visualize on Google Map your story as it develops, you get the chance to see where it all happens and clearly althought I'm not a "gamer" I thought this was the kind of story that could attract kids (and older gamers lol) into reading !
Little was I surprised then when at the end of the story, you get the Credits and realise that the digital fiction was designed by Six to Start. Who are they ? Well, that's when it gets interesting - here is what Six to Start say on their website : "We create Alternate Reality Games (ARGs). ARGs use multiple media — the web, email, IM, mobile phones, radio, newspapers, TV and live events — to tell a story to hundreds of thousands of people, who can follow and influence the game in real time. People are dividing their attention across more media than ever before. ARGs are the best way to tell a story that spans them all, and that’s what we’re experts at."
Have a look at the Six to Start website, but before you do this, have a try at one of the digital fiction from Penguin on the site We Tell Stories - it's worth the detour as it's clearly a revolution in the way we read stories !
Virtual Clone or Digital Shadow... I am sure you've already Googled yourself one day, just to try ?! There are no less than 14 Google pages worth of information on myself and although until now I have been lucky enough not to find anything I wouldn't want to find on myself... Who knows what will happen in the future ?
Uploading videos on YouTube or photos on Facebook, making VoIP phone calls with Skype for example, digitally recording a TV program on TiVo, taking pictures with your digital camera or simply being "spied" by one of the many surveillance camera, not taking into account all the information related to your personal life stored by banks, doctors and insurance company or all your searches saved by Google by example... All this apparently added up to the equivalent of 45 gigabites per person in 2007... but each person though is only responsible for half of this content, the reminder is passive information stored without the user's agreement i.e. it comes from cookies online or surveillance cameras for example !
The report goes on with an example of the 5 million surveillance cameras in London and how each Londoner is likely to have his / her image captured 300 times a day...
I'd always said that I had no issue with my information being freely available online as I have nothing to hide. And the same applied to security camera as again I don't feel like I need to hide things. However the more I think about it and the potential of identity thief.... the more I get scared about it ! For example, on that subject, I love Google and its many services but I hate the fact Google store my searches (see picture below...).
What happen if all this information about you in the cyberworld get misused ? Let's hope that the governments and corporations accross the world have started working on this issue !
If you want to find out about your usage of digital information, there is also a Digital Footprint Calculator available.
Merci Gregoire pour l'info ;)
Ever heard of Pillow Fight ? The first one I went to, in Paris, back in May 2006, was great fun... Now it looks like things are turning global with a World Pillow Fight Day taking place next Saturday, the 22nd of March, in London, but also Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Paris and many more including Beijing (!).
Fancy taking part in the event ? All you need to do is register on the mailing list here.
Anyway, my Netvibes Ginger public page is available here - let me know what you think !
In case you haven't followed the story of my life recently, well I have moved into a nice new little flat in Hampstead. I love it except that (I didn't even know it was possible !)... there is no landline, therefore, no Internet connection, therefore it's kind of HELL for me !!! Well there was my neighbour's WiFi... but he secured it a few days ago so now I'm stuck !
What do you think about the new Ready, Steady, Play offer from Three ? 7GB of mobile broadband for £25 per month. Is that good or not ????
It's Sunday and you're probably just recovering from last night's partying but what best than planning next week's party ;)
Not sure about you but I tend to record playlists on iTunes and play them when friends are at my place for a party. However this means you can only listen to music you've already purchased (or I suppose downloaded illegally). Then some of my friends switch on their computer on their TV and we watch video clips on YouTube. But I had never heard of Deezer.com yet (Thanks Ana !) and this is probably the next best thing I've heard of for a long time.
Basically, all you need is to log on to Deezer.com to listen to any music you want for free and the best is that you can create playlists and again, play them for free whenever you feel like it.
There is also a widget for blogs :
What do you think ???
A friend sent me a link today to this very interesting website where you can find loads of world statistics in real time (like the ones below), so I thought I would share !
Worldometers is available here.
You too might have wondered why on earth today's Google logo was made of Lego bricks ? Well, apparently Google is celebrating Lego's 50th anniversary... Happy Birthday !
Have you ever been in a situation where you needed an answer to a question, right here, right now? I discovered the service AQA back in December and I love it. You're out and about, you want to know something? Just text your question to AKA on 63336 and within a minute or two, you'll get a text back with THE answer. Ok, it cost £1 but sometimes when you're stuck for 4 hours in a traffic jam, it's usuful to find out why !
I just came accross a brilliant website offering hundreds of desktop wallpapers for your Mac. So much choice I wasn't sure which one to pick so I had to try a few before I made up my mind.... And here is what my desktop now looks like.
Have a look at Wallpamac to find your own desktop.
Source: inono
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