Wednesday 26th May:
Me, myself and I comes to Twitter
Twitter meets Nintendo’s Miis to satisfy your most intimate narcissistic and megalomaniacal desires: it’s your own Twitter Parade!
Hailing from Japan, IS Parade, is a generated visualisation that creates a marching order of Tweets. Simply type in your Twitter handle and provide a keyword, and the digitised following begins, complete with icon heads and speech bubbles displaying recent Tweets.
Ref. http://www.psfk.com/2010/05/twitter-visualization-lets-you-create-parade-of-followers.html
http://gizmodo.com/5541484/the-hypnotizing-twitter-parade
Tagged with: Personalisation, Social networking
Friday 9th April:
Virtual goes tangible
In a DIY twist on augmented reality technology, StickyBits gives people the power to transform their surrounding environment into their own multimedia markup playground.
Think of it as virtual graffiti for the digital age. StickyBits uses vinyl barcode stickers and a mobile scanning app to tag social media content on top of real-world objects. StickyBits compatible smartphones simply scan the barcode to get the digital skinny on all of its appended content (or add their own). The StickyBits mobile scanning app is free and compatible with Android and iPhones, but techie taggers have to shell out $10 for a 20-pack of the vinyl barcodes.
Tagged with: Mobile, Social networking
Thursday 11th February:
Put your best Facebook forward
With so many online photo opportunities these days, you’ve got to put your best face forward. Which is why Estée Lauder is offering customers a free makeover and online photo of the result.
Late last month, Estée Lauder offered shoppers at a store in Orland Park, Illinois, a chance to get a free professional make-over and photo for use on a social networking page, website or blog – complete with the Estée Lauder logo in the background. Consumers had only to book an appointment and come into Estée Lauder on Jan. 30 – no purchase was necessary.
Participating customers also received a complimentary 10-day supply of foundation. Similar events were held last fall in other Estée Lauder spots around the US, beginning with New York’s Bloomingdale’s in October, StyleList reported. More are planned over the next few weeks at locations in Canada.
Ref. http://springwise.com/weekly/2010-02-03.htm#esteelauder
Tagged with: . Beauty, Social networking
Friday 22nd January:
Let your fans decide
Vitamin Water’s latest flavour, launching in March this year, was developed and named by the brand’s Facebook fans. The black cherry and lime flavoured drink will be called ‘Connect’. One Facebook fan, Sarah from Illinois, won $5,000 for her role in developing this new product.
The competition was interesting and unique in that it used Facebook fans to develop all aspects of the product and is a great example of co-creation.
Choosing the flavour – over the summer Facebook fans were able to monitor and add to buzz about different flavours. The more chatter about a flavour online, the higher it was rated on the Facebook page. And by mid-September the most ten talked-about flavours were put to Facebook fans for them to vote for their favourite. This is a good example of using a community to help sort and rank ideas in a co-creation process. Fans couldn’t create their own flavours from scratch, but could influence the top 10 flavours and then vote for the best.
Designing the packaging – when the flavour had been selected (in October last year), the Facebook fans were able to use the app to design the packaging – the look and feel, the blurb and colours used on the label. Fans could collaborate with up to two more Facebook friends to develop the packaging and the final winners were chosen by a panel of experts.
Naming the product - alongside the packaging and look-and-feel, Facebook Fans were asked to name the product. The team who created the winning name were given a prize of $5,000.
Tagged with: Co-creation, Food and drink, Health, Social networking, Water
Wednesday 6th January:
Multi-media talent transactions
Australia has launched its first online multi-media platform aimed at matching creative professionals with potential employers. With over 80,000 Australians already signed up, recruitment agencies and over 30 Australian-based companies such as The HyperFactory, MTV Networks, Discovery Networks, Billy Blue College of Design, the white agency and Sixty40 have all discovered a new hub for finding talent.
Conceived by media professionals, Matt Fayle and Pip Jamieson, the idea was born in early 2009 recognising a much-needed resource for the media professional environment. They explain, ‘We started with the notion of blending the biggest job search engine with the multi-media capabilities of social networking. What we’ve ended up with is the best parts of Seek, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube all in one.’
Currently only in beta form, creative professionals across the spectrum are offered a unique template in which to showcase their experience, achievements and current projects. Features include the option to upload show reels, an unlimited number of multi-media files and specialised alerts to link with peers and potential employers. Employers can become introduced to their future employees via a virtual handshake targeting both passive and active job seekers.
Ref. http://www.psfk.com/2009/12/staying-in-the-loop-networking-down-under.html
Tuesday 5th January:
Keep your loved ones close
Memolio™ is the brainchild of a small, diverse group of people with loads of creative, business and technical experience. The original goal was to find an easy way to take the uncountable numbers of images at large on the web and in people’s computers, and put them into a simple, versatile album. (Thanks, Wadey.)
The easy-to-use memoliator™ application lets you create these sweet little print and online albums with minimum effort. Practical, virtually indestructible and fun to make, the compact and durable memolio™ albums are easy to share too.
Tagged with: photography, Social networking
Monday 14th December:
Track Santa with Google Earth and Twitter
It’s that time of year again when hundreds of thousands of children will be tracking Santa’s progress across the world, courtesy of NORAD (North American Air Defence Command). The tradition began in 1955 when calls to a misprinted telephone number in an advertisement for a Colorado store, from children invited to call Santa’s hotline, came through to Col. Harry Shoup, NORAD’s Director of Operations. (Thanks, Head Elf Claire)
Wednesday 11th November:
Mid-flight tweet
Lufthansa has found an innovative way to get its name pinged around the web. Through its free MySkyStatus service, fliers can sign up for flight status updates to be posted automatically to their Facebook or Twitter profiles. Available for flights on any airline, passengers enter their flight details and Facebook or Twitter login details beforehand, and MySkyStatus will post regular updates about their departure, altitude, location and arrival as they travel. Besides providing social media addicts with a cool new trick, MySkyStatus reminds us of FlightCaster for the helping hand it gives anyone expecting the arrival of a friend or co-worker.
MySkyStatus taps into two growing consumer trends: the whole world is engaged in ongoing conversations that smart brands can be part of, and ‘real-time’ is becoming an integral element of many products and services we use. In using this as a marketing tool (a short ‘powered by Lufthansa’ is tacked on to every update), the airline smartly chose to open MySkyStatus to people flying with any airline, thereby initiating conversations that its competitors might not be part of.
Ref. http://www.trendbird.co.kr/3062
Tagged with: Social networking, Transport
Wednesday 21st October:
‘Make a’ celebration
…and think like The Poetry Society who knitted a giant poem to celebrate its centenary. Revealed in its full glory at the British Library, the eye-popping 13x9m, hand-knitted version of Dylan Thomas’s ‘In my Craft or Sullen Art’ quickly drew an admiring crowd. (Thanks to our resident poet, Laura, for this one.)
The poem is the work of more than 1000 knitters and crocheters worldwide, who furiously clicked needles and hooks throughout September to turn the poem’s individual letters into colourful 12-inch squares.
Judith Palmer, Director of the Poetry Society, said, “We wanted to celebrate the Society’s centenary with a fun, grand-scale project in which many people could participate, that was about ‘poetry’ but also summoned up the idea of ‘society’, to reflect all the thousands of people who’ve kept the Society going since 1909. The time, commitment and creative skills that people have given to this enterprise has been overwhelming.”
Ref. http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/knit/
Tagged with: Events, Poetry, Social networking
Thursday 15th October:
Spontaneous people power
Ever wanted to review restaurants and shops right there and then? Well, there’s an app for that. Users can now enter 140-character reviews or ‘quick tips’ which are then published to the mobile site. They can also begin a draft of a review on their phone, save it, and publish it from a computer later.
Yelp finds itself attempting to balance immediacy with relevance. Which does present potential problems, e.g. while instantaneous reviews better capture a reviewer’s feelings, this ‘heat of the moment’ reaction may be inaccurate or even misleading. Professional restaurant critics, on the other hand, visit a restaurant several times over many weeks to really understand the restaurant’s capabilities and consistency. Review sites must also consider how to encourage user posts, as the more time passes between the meal or event, the less likely it will be reviewed.
This all creates added pressure for restaurant and business owners to provide high quality customer service, as a poor online review might be just a few key strokes away. So while this may cause standards to rise, customers’ patience may well decrease as their expectations for immediate redress increase.
Ref. http://www.cscout.com/blog/2009/10/01/yelps-mobile-app-changes-reviewing-dynamics.html
Tagged with: Restaurants, Retail, Social networking, Technology