Thursday 31 May 2007

Jobs vs Gates


When asked what was the greatest misunderstanding about their relationship in yesterdays interview at The Wall Street Journal's D Conference. Jobs replied 'we've kept our marriage secret for over a decade now'. (8th minute)

Wednesday 30 May 2007

Listen Discover Share

ScottMacleodLiddle

Hot off the press! CBS have purchased Last.fm. The makers of CSI and David Letterman have shelled out 280 million dollars for the London based music social networking site. I'm a big fan of Last.fm right back from when they were audioscrobbler which was a software addition that listened to what music I played on my computer and then made recommendations. Its become a lot more sophisticated since those days and the website has a bunch of features that are addictive.

My musical holy grail is to construct a radio station that plays random music that jumps from Classical to Intelligent Dance Music (IDM) a bit of Drum and Bass and some Jazz thrown in. I'm constantly feeding Last.fm music to get the balance right which keeps me occupied but there's some other stuff that I really like about this software and website that I want to share.

The killer app is thaty just listening to Last.fm allows me to listen to music that I like. The tastes I have described above are not an easy brief to meet and only Last.fm comes close to giving me that. I think its cool that I can give it a macro taste brief jumping from genre to genre or if I'm in the mood I can listen to early electronic pioneers or some other micro tagging channel. If I have to really concentrate and work hard only intelligent drum & bass works for me but there are a number of moods that Last.fm meets splendidly. The more I know it, the more demanding I get. Its nowhere near listening to a terrestrial frequency radio station where laissez faire listening slips in.

I have friends on Last.fm and I love to be able to find out a little more about them or discover new music if I'm in the mood. I also meet people who come and check me out, are connected to me or I discover completely new folk. Music is a really good indicator and while I can get on with all sorts, the 'taste-o-meter really lets me know if I connect on a deeper bobbing heads level. I have three DJ friends who keep me topped up on the freshest stuff possible. Each of them is a little different and its amazing how their personal radio stations have their own flavour despite us all having highly similar tastes. I have to point towards my chum DJ Stewart from Bangkok who plays electrofrequencies on Monday night at Bed Supperclub along with Saint Vincent. Both are the nicest of people and totally dedicated to their craft. It's not like they are on the other side of the world while I'm in London listening on Last.fm and sometimes I can tell if Stewart's going in a different musical direction like the retro action that seems to be going on recently. The other star is Audiossey from Germany who has a distinctive style that is beginning to approach my top 3 or 4 music DJ's and producers in the world. I met him through Last.fm. There's a few others too that I love including Sushigroove, Russell Davies, Zero Influencer and my latest classical music discovery Chalcemon.

Theres a bunch more too and I listen to them all when I feel that I need to get out of a rut and check out what other friends are into. I also think the recommendation radio station is great although I''m not sure if its based on what Last.fm recommends or if it factors in friends individual recommendations sent to me, which is another feature that I get lots of suggestions from. Either way theres also the 'loved' track function and the 'ban' track button too plus skip if a track seems to be going nowhere.

On top of all that there's a full array of social networking tools like music blogging, shoutouts, tagging, neighbourhood radio, loved tracks radio, history radio and more and this all applies also to other members of Last.fm on the network. I can even listen to friends specialist radio stations that they create. Then there's the widgets, the free downloads, the charts and music events based on my location. I could go on because the site in itself could probably keep me occupied a few hours a day just exploring, but I also like to keep an eye on a few of its competitors to see what's new but the thing I really like most about Last.fm is that it raises a philosphical question which is at the heart of marketing. It makes me ask myself when I know that I don't want to listen to stuff I know, and thus forces me to choose between if I want to listen to what I know I don't know, or if I prefer to listen to stuff I don't know I don't know. If this sounds familiar its another way of expressing Donald Rumsfeld's known unknowns and unknown unknowns which despite its obtuse Yogi Berra nature is in actual fact a stunning example of the business we're in. CBS have gotten this site for peanuts. Its easily worth more than myspace or Youtube in my opinion and I hope it stays that way. Thanks audioscrobbler/Last.fm for a few years of terrific music discovery and like all good radio for being a friend. And here's my latest playlist which is another function I've only just begun to play with.








And here's a hot presentation they did with more stats and facts.

Tuesday 29 May 2007

Joy Division



The Ian Curtis biopic won Best European Film at Cannes. The post-punk aesthetic of Anton Corbijn's stark black-and-white cinematography was winning over the critics on Friday night but I'm delighted that one of my early music heroes is beginning to earn the the full credit he deserves. I'm also a bit annoyed that I didn't reserve lovewilltearusapart.com when no one else had thought of it and it was going for... erm a song.



Update: Video not functioning. Will investigate.

Switched On Kid

Yuvi Panda just kicked ass on the internet. He's a 16 year prodigy techno guru geek from Chennai (formerly Madras) on the East coast of India who is wired to the nines and blogs about IT stuff on a wobbly bandwidth-restricted internet connection. Some time back he did a post about the former Microsoft supremo Robert Scoble's blog presenting a lot of statistics gleaned from Technorati. He's just done the same for the mother of all tech-gadget blogs called Engadget which has a huge readership. I came across Yuvi through Scoble's 'shared' items blog feed as we both use the same Google Reader for zapping through RSS feeds (although incredibly Scoble does up to 600 a day, down from 1400). Scoble shared this pretty exciting post from Jason Calacanis one of the founders of Weblogs Inc and former GM of Netscape which offers Yuvi a job for project X on the spot.

If you do a
google on this enterprising young man you can see there aren't many digital stones left unturned and his entrepreneurial side shows through wonderfully . He realises that by delighting the digital blogging A listers he may get just that little bit closer to achieving his dream of working at Microsoft. I like this story, it's representative of how democratic the internet is which is a post I've touched upon but have lined up for more in-depth examination in the future.

Monday 28 May 2007

Direct Versus Indirect Communications


Here's one of those questions usually asked by global or regional advertisers that applies anywhere communications are to be weighed up from a cultural or even category perspective between direct and indirect messaging. Its a presentation I wrote about the debate between blunt messaging and interesting complexity last year and that I want to go into a bit deeper at some point, as its an important (and possibly inconclusive) question that others have also tackled here, here and here. Do feel free kick it around a bit if the mood takes you and I should let Nigel know I used a couple of Millward Brown slides although I don't think it's anything kick-ass confidential. (Somewhat spookily I see that I've surfaced in Nigel's latest post since I've been offline a wee while)

Thursday 24 May 2007

Fight Club


Floating around London town recently, and talking to a lot of interesting, likable and smart advertising people, it’s plain to see that there’s a need for some input on the whole idea of social(ist) media. Most of the people I talk to simply don’t have the time or the inclination to log on and check out a smattering of the 200+ RSS feeds I have coming in each day. It is an addiction but its not quite the same dedication as working though 300 pages plus of Les Miserables before something cheerful happens.

Along with my daily RSS sprints, I’ve been casually jogging around the latest round of social networks since 2002 when the original
Friendster went big Stateside, spread out to Europe and is now a dominant force in Asia. They should realistically relocate their pampered U.S. asses out of San Francisco to Singapore. Its this hubris that led them to having their lead stolen by myspace. I’ve been watching straight faced as the plannersphere piles into Facebook of late but the interesting social sites are in Gaia and Habbo Hotel at one end of the spectrum and Secondlife at the other (Mekong Charlie if you must ask). Yes the first two are for kids but those kids are the first generation virtual world builders/social media networkers on the scene and they’re going to be quite demanding if myspace wants to win them over in just a few years. Anyway News International and Roop Murdoch will probably just buy them when as he knows all too well what the conditioning element(s) of using a media format can be in selecting the next one.

My blogging chum in Singapore, Marina raves on about ecircles which closed down in 1997 and was a little too early for it’s time, but for the real deal on sharing conversation, pictures, mp3’s as well as changing status, quasi tweets and building community with likeminded people it was/is and always will be IRC for Internet Relay Chat or mIRC as it’s better known. Cheap as chips and basic ‘code-monkey’ software mIRC is very usable and easy on the processing power resources.

Want to leap into a conversation with Baghdad and/or Boston? It’s IRC that has the full spectrum of seasoned veterans from the 80’s as well as newbies up for a bit of digital conversation and of course there’s a twitter channel on there too for those who wander why the list of people who follow my twitter twaddle is up in the 90’s.

I do concede that the original BBS people are the Daddy when it comes to practically all shades of early internet life but why would you want to know something about a format that is still only huge in China? OK, I’ll do a post on that another time, what with China having the largest internet and mobile phone market in the world right now and they aren’t even in second gear.

So what’s my point? Well I’d be the first to advocate for social(ist) media, as indeed Fightclub did that there are no rules. Main stream media (MSM) is so obsessed with imposing old revenue models on new media that its in danger of getting out the invoices for the telegraph-wire which kicked off this whole media-at-the-speed-of-light-gig.

Or maybe its just sheer fear that makes MSM want to impose the old rules of interruption in the new environment, which in a way is fine (and part of the ‘no rules’ dictum), because after all it is in precisely this manner that we rather patronisingly conditioned the post war (ahem) ‘consumer’. Rather disconcertingly, there’s a sizable segment that actually like it that way and which Faris did a post on cheekily calling them the passive massive? But anyway it’s looking like not for much longer. We’re on the edge of something new and to bring an old mindset to a new media really is indicative of how uncreative, stuffy (or scared) we have become. After all, if the discovery of the Americas has resulted in a new Europe being built, I doubt if the internet would even exist. Its time to take the gloves off and get stuck into socialist media your own way; make friends, be authentic, honest and useful but ‘monetizing’ socialist media is precisely why nobody has really done it yet. Groundwork needs to be laid, and fortune favours the brave.

Tuesday 22 May 2007

Socialist Media


Tony Benn, Durham 2004, originally uploaded by barney britton.

I only really discovered Tony Benn when I found all my understanding of power and production was completely discredited. I never expected losing my politics to ever bother me but in many ways, it cost me more both financially and emotionally than losing my religion ever could have. Tony Benn was my succour during the tail end of this period.

So, earlier today I took a look at some stats for socialist media in the United States and I was surprised to see that imeem, a small media-sharing social-networking site that I stumbled across last week to use for posting the Danwei podcast was beginning to take root. They're at number four in the table below, and means I can now share a brilliant Tony Benn Podcast, plug a new socialist media and lay the groundwork for my Marxist media post which is designed to irritate the living hell out of people who drive gas guzzling Jags like the wonderfully erudite Rory Sutherland who writes beautifully on his blog.


Update: The embedded audio no longers exists. - cfx2020

Monday 21 May 2007

Hey there Mr Beaver...

Fed up with always on continuous partial attention low signal to noise ratio information overload?



Take it easy with Dawdlr. You can find out all about it here.

Fin de siècle



Cheesy and horrifying isn't it? 'Let it be cool' they tell us, just like the following brand spanking new ad from DDB which asks with a firm handshake and no hint of irony, 'When was the last time you smelt something real?'



So now I'm left with the question. Why do people flee from the cities to the coastline to get some clean air in the first place?

Sound Planning Advice


"Its only when you get the whole picture you can fully understand whats going on."

Saturday 19 May 2007

George Parker



George Parker is the dog's bollocks. If you aren't reading him as he chronicles the feral decline of the fat cats of old school advertising you're missing out on the funniest and bloodiest, bare-knuckle-writer on the net. I would not like to be on the receiving end of his penmanship but we're having a pint next month when he comes over to London for the PSFK thing so I'm looking forward to that. Take time to cut and paste his RSS feed into your reader and make sure you buy his excellent book.

Royksopp - Remind Me/Lipps Inc - Funky Town

I'm a news addict and a political junkie. For years now I haven't really watched television, although to be accurate, I've generally had BBC World on the television in the background while surfing the net or pottering around. Once in a while, I'd turn around and watch a program that caught my attention like Hard Talk or the excellent Dateline London. Generally I like television in the same way other people enjoy pet hamsters; in the background and occasionally wheeled out for distraction. This is mainly because of the rising quality of internet TV like the excellent Smashing Telly and you'd be hard pressed to find any of Chomsky's speeches/interviews and debates on Google Video that I haven't watched.

The point of all this is to share a little of my media consumption because over the years my taste for news (and a little American Chopper & MTV) has dominated the type of advertising I'm exposed to either at home or in hotel rooms around Asia and Europe. It's generally big dull global campaigns. Advertising that tries so hard to please everyone that it stands for nothing. Advertising that is largely homogeneous and forgettable. Advertising that could easily swap the logos for Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank and I'd never notice despite repeated viewing. So today I was reminded of a commercial that I'll never forget and will always feel good about, because somewhere along the line the agency managed to persuade the client not to advertise as if they were a big energy company. Here is the video by Royksopp that sparked off the memories.



And the commercial for what is essentially a nuclear energy company.


Nice clean vector graphics and a tune from 1980 that is close to my heart. Check the lyrics out too for depth.

Shared Browser Surfing


People like me often have internet messenger conversations where we're frequently sharing links with our friends from around the world in real time. If you're a social surfer too then get yourself on the beta testing list for Me.dium It's a social web experience that allows people to share a browser. There are a hundred different uses for a tool like this and reminds me of a post that Faris mentioned he intends to write about 'guided web browsing'. I guess I should remind him now as that is where I heard it first. Or shall I just steal it? :)

Keep an eye open for this one. It's a big idea on a very wide stage.

Swishing - Even sexier than swinging


The Guardian points us to the latest source of fashion inspiration It brings together ethical shopping, bargain hunting and social networking - and is the liveliest fashion trend embracing the 'I'm more than just a consumer' backlash that is rapidly emerging. It's called Swishing by those in the know.


Move Over Paris

Intellectual debate was so infamous at English coffee shops of the 18th century that they were referred to as “penny universities”. It's arguable that this reputation for coffee, debate and artistic non conformity was inherited by the intellectuals of the Sixth Arrondissement on the Left Bank in Paris. Well not any longer it isn't.


Video: The Breakfast Club

Credit to Russell Davies who just likes a good cuppa.

Renaming The Internet


While walking through my favourite street market in the world, on Berwick Street in Soho recently I've noticed a small sign with a big claim that was mentioned again at yesterday's planning get together coffee morning

. dot TK - renaming the internet.

I finally checked it out and it seems to be an interesting idea. A free domain name that redirects to a website of your choice. I've reserved www.accountplanner.tk to point to this blog. Unfortunately www.justdoit.tk is taken so I can't cause a kerfuffle and get sued, thus pointing the worlds traffic to this site by being a punk planner. Check it out, its an interesting idea.

Thursday 17 May 2007

PSFK & London

Hughes Leglise-Bataille


It only seems like yesterday that a young planner asked me to take a look over her presentation for trends in South Korea, a country which has a large influence over many countries in S.E. Asia. While digging around on the net for more resources, deep diving down in Google's listing I came across the still relatively unknown PSFK for the first time. What a find, it's saved my 'I-need-to-be-interesting-today-ass" more than once, and in part its responsible for me blogging today. From those early links to PSFK I discovered Russell Davies and suddenly all those years of doing often isolated Bedouin planning around the world melted away and I was straight back in the thick of easily the best conversation about the business I've ever come across. I'm now digesting 200 plus RSS feeds at a rate that is a daily gallop, and I've never felt more on top of my game. But yes an an addiction too. Some of those feeds post up to 50 times a day (my politics obsession) and I'm slowly but surely mastering the art of blur reading. Its not for everyone and there's an awful lot of skimming but PSFK holds the attention for quality with only one minor regret. The sheer volume of good stuff they pump out means there is little time to wade in and get some conversation going as much as I'd like to.

Not so long back PSFK had a conference in New York and the guest list was frankly turkey-free which is not an easy achievement if you take a look at the other events tired old approach to these get togethers on offer. I'd have paid good money just to see the one and only George Parker speak on that occasion. But getting back onto why it's important, there probably are, two broad currents that confront all planners in this business on a potentially apocalyptic scale, and the first is the ability to adapt, shape, invent and swim with the soon to be 'revolution' in marketing. Gill Scott Heron was right when he said the revolution will not be televised, it's going to be on the net and more likely twittered. The other landslide about to take place is putting the heart of planet friendly marketing, right in the nucleus of the wealth creation business model. It's probably the single most exciting time to be in advertising ever and there are days when I sense the tipping point looming, all wide eyed and eager anticipation of a frothy mouthed Christian fundementalist tipped off about the second coming. The action is going to be sweet.... If you like a rough ride.

Well, the PSFK gang are holding their London conference on June 1st next month, and it's more than a pleasure to remind people of a gathering of the hippest and intellectually most coherent thinkers in the business getting together to share ideas and trends around those two crucial broad currents, of new and ethical marketing. John Grant, Russell Davies, Faris Yacob, Hugh MacLeod, Johnnie Vulcan, the fearless George Parker, and a day-long list of others will be there. If you can't go then I'd urge you to make sure you know someone who is going, and if you can't arrange that, then there's a strong possibility I'll be blogging the day. For you, for me, for us.




Advertiser Vs Consumer


Our motto is: We trawl the net to keep you guys fresh. From the brilliant Bring the love back.

Wednesday 16 May 2007

Re: C'mon back and check out the new face to bud.TV!

Logon or lose out is not the sort of language I'd expect from an internet channel that has bombed. It's the same feeling If I said that you could talk to people like me, who charge people like you to explain how to not lose your customers in the first place, and if you do, how to get them back.

Anyway, I'm washing my hair tonight. I can't watch your channel.

----- Original Message -----

From: bud.TV

To: cefrith@hotmail.com

Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2007 4:52 AM

Subject: C'mon back and check out the new face to bud.TV!

This message contains graphics. If you do not see the graphics, click here to view.


C'mon back and check out the new face to bud.TV!
The enhanced site is now faster and easier to maneuver. You can rate videos, create a favorites list and share & download videos...more changes to come!
bud.TV logon or lose out.


The Joe Buck Show
The Joe Buck Show -
Paul Rudd & Preston Clarke
Description:
Joe, Paul and Preston try to come up with a new theme song for the show,
including the unflappable Abebe in the mix...

To view this video:

    Click here to tell a friend about bud.TV

    Responsibility Matters: Don't share our products or content with friends who are under 21.


    © 2007 Anheuser-Busch, Inc.
    You are receiving this email because you are signed up to receive advertising email messages from Anheuser-Busch, Inc. at
    cefrith@hotmail.com, and stated that you were at least 21 years of age. If you are not at least 21 years of age and/or do
    not wish to receive emails from Anheuser-Busch, Inc., please click here.
    Anheuser-Busch, Inc., One Busch Place, St. Louis, MO 63118

    PRIVACY POLICY

    Wock & Woll


    The lost tapes. Interviews of Bruce Lee are just hitting the net. This is possibly the only reason to justify having a couple of hundred RSS feeds plus.