Categories
humour likeability surprise talkability

1UP for Google

Surely the most talkable Google Doodle for a while? A fully playable pacman, even with “Insert coin” button for two player mode!

I wrote last year about how staying likeable would help lessen worries about Google’s size and influence. After a year of fairly flat launches (Wave, Buzz), it’s good to see they’ve got their playfulness back (and some cool products too).

Meanwhile, facebook is the new 200lb gorilla that could do with a refresher in the importance of likeability. The current concerns about privacy seems to be getting real traction.

Categories
mobile staying relevant

talkablelikeable for the iPhone

If each year of the noughties were never quite the year of mobile, it’s surely a safe bet that the tens/teens will be the decade of mobile.

Serious analysts like Mary Meeker are forecasting that the mobile internet will overtake the fixed by 2013*

To this end, I wanted to share an excellent plugin called WPtouch I’ve found for WordPress that optimises any blog for iPhone viewing. The difference is remarkable:

Before

After

* that’s fully two years before Back to the Future forecasts flying cars and hoverboards 😉

Categories
disruption productivity

Should you buy an iPad? My experience so far…

I’ve been lucky enough to have an iPad for about three weeks (a rarity in the UK), and if you’re thinking about getting one, here are my thoughts so far.

Woo!

  1. It’s a great sofa computer. It looks fabulous of course, and it storms for browsing, looking stuff up and casual email.
  2. It’s also a great work netbook. It’s small and light enough to have in every meeting, and fits in smaller rucksacks. No more ugly corporate laptop bags. It’s excellent for presentations (and not just as a novelty)
  3. It’s a terrific media player. Both for wandering around the house playing WiFi radio (5 Live Sports Extra and Indie 103.1), and also as a temporary kitchen TV (for iTunes purchases)
  4. Apps are the key. The early ones aren’t perfect – developers are feeling around for what works – but it’s surely where this machine will fly. And not just games – I can’t wait for Remember the Milk HD.
  5. Great for reading. MyTimes is an elegant feed reader and InstapaperPro looks fantastic.I’ve used the iPad to read some lengthy PDFs (thanks to Goodreader) and it’s preferable to having 50 sheets of A4 to carry around

Hmmm…

  1. It’s not so much a mobile device as a portable device. it is the wrong shape to use whilst actually moving. To type on it, you need to get yourself comfortable. The biggest accessory sale is going to be something that lets you prop it up at a nice angle to type on. Meanwhile, I hear rubber doorstops work well(!)
  2. Correcting typos feels more awkward than on an iPhone and often knocks me off my train of thought. It is possible to type up notes and actions during a meeting, but it’s certainly slower than a keyboard. In fact, I think I can type faster on an iPhone as its narrower screen allows double thumbs action!
  3. It’s not a primary workhorse. Numbers has poor Excel compatibility, Google Docs editing seems limited and of course Photoshop and the like aren’t (yet) available.

Overall

I love it, but it’s not essential in the way my iPhone is. And I can’t see it replacing my laptop anytime soon (indeed, it’s telling that it didn’t even occur to me to type this post on it).

But if you like shiny new mac stuff, and you can afford it, you know you’ll get one anyway.

And btw – it’s not going to save the newspaper/magazine industry. But that’s for another post…

Categories
disruption get famous invention likeability product staying relevant strategy viral

The social web just got go-faster stripes

When it’s easy even for non-techies like me to add social plug-ins to websites, we better get ready for an explosion of ‘Like’ buttons, activity streams and friend recommendations all over the web.

Google must be thinking very hard tonight.

Categories
advertising disruption e-commerce

Did Apple just landgrab the mobile ad market?

When I heard that Apple had bought a mobile ad company, I was quite surprised – it seemed a bit run of the mill for a ‘magical’ brand like theirs.

So watching Steve Jobs introduce the iAd platform at yesterday’s iPhone 4.0 preview yesterday, I wasn’t expecting much.

But it’s just possible, as Del Trotter might have said, that “they’ve only gone and bloody done it”.

And it is pure testament to unconstrained thinking. Audaciously, they’ve not only decided to get in the mobile ad game, but redefine it. And do better-than-TV along the way. AND suggest that search driven ads (hello Google) don’t work for mobile.

Check out the video. What do you think?

Full video here

Categories
advertising low cost marketing surprise talkability

Damn fine media buying

Spoofing ‘missing’ posters might be a touch questionable, but this ad for Twin Peaks certainly made me look twice

Categories
get famous humour likeability surprise talkability

A logo that stands up

Way to get noticed

Via Boing Boing

Categories
advertising get famous surprise talkability

To be classified as dead good

Categories
humour likeability product surprise talkability

Marmite shower gel

Fabulous.

Categories
get famous humour surprise talkability

Print out this idea and claim it back

What a brilliantly risque way to promote a restaurant specialising in business lunches – a tongue-in-cheek microsite that creates credible fake receipts to the value of the extravagant meal you’re trying to get away with expensing.

Now you can eat at Maloney & Porcelli as often as you like and never worry about your expense report raising any eyebrows

Thanks to b3ta for the link

Categories
customer service product

Customer Unservice

This funny-but-sadly-true image has been widely shared this week.

Unskippable segments on DVD are the ugliest form of interruption advertising.

It’s never OK to deliberately give your customers a bad experience. DVD manufacturers are there to entertain, not to lecture.

Categories
advertising humour likeability

New Spice

LOLs all round for the Old Spice 2010 Super Bowl ad. Much kudos for the knowing, witty and likeable execution

And you gotta love that payoff.

Categories
crowdsourcing likeability product talkability

(The IT) Crowdsourcing

Graham Linehan, writer of Father Ted, Black Books and Father Ted is not only a funny fella, but also a seasoned whizz at social media.

Ahead of the filming of the fourth series of the IT Crowd, he’s asked fans to help dress the set

…send us your poor huddled zines, your artwork, your comics, your T-shirts, your memes. Anything you think should be in there that we might have missed

Not only is this financially sensible, but it’s also a great way of engaging fans, giving them a deeper sense of ownership and a real reason to spread the word about the new series.

Categories
product

But this has got a bigger hard drive. And bluetooth. And…

The biggest mistake a technology company can make is to think that they’re a technology company. It leads to the mistaken belief that better tech spec means better product means market success.

Nope.

David Hepworth is an unmissable writer on entertainment and culture, and also occasionally strays into marketing. This piece on the the difficulty of competing with Apple on rational grounds struck a chord:

Playing with it [a Sony Walkman] just now it struck me how difficult it must be in the personal electronics space these days, having to compete with Apple. It doesn’t matter how many qualities your product might have, Apple is the one that holds the high ground where dwells desire. A year ago a young friend demonstrated all the features of his iPod competitor, many of which were superior to Apple, but he did it more in sorrow than conviction, as if he knew that the playground prestige battle had already been lost

It reminded me of this similar article in Penny Arcade, which nailed it so brutally and beautifully that every tech CEO should staple it to his desk.

It’s got to be so annoying to compete with Apple… when you come out with what is (on paper) a better version of the same thing, maybe even multiple times over, it’s too late.  You made a “product” to compete with their “product,”… only to discover that they hadn’t made a product at all – they made a narrative.  A statement about how technology should interface with a life.

Categories
branding product strategy

I don’t want Starbucks to sort my car rental

I don’t want Coke to sell me a toaster. And I don’t want Google to be my social platform.

Just because you’re big doesn’t mean you can win at anything

Google is about making digital information accessible, facebook is my social network

Categories
disruption staying relevant

Microsoft’s creative destruction

This is a great insider’s-view article on how Microsoft lost its creative and innovative spark.

Internal competition is common at great companies. It can be wisely encouraged to force ideas to compete. The problem comes when the competition becomes uncontrolled and destructive. At Microsoft, it has created a dysfunctional corporate culture in which the big established groups are allowed to prey upon emerging teams, belittle their efforts, compete unfairly against them for resources, and over time hector them out of existence. It’s not an accident that almost all the executives in charge of Microsoft’s music, e-books, phone, online, search and tablet efforts over the past decade have left.