Lastminute viral
May 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment
OK so this isn’t the funniest viral in the world but it still made me smile. Set in Stansted Airport, characters such as airport staff, cleaners and policemen perform a song and dance to unsuspecting passengers. The viral is to promote their half-price theatre ticket deal currently running on their website.
Innovation Edge 2008
May 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Last week I headed over to NESTA’s Innovation Edge conference at the Royal Festival Hall. I didn’t actually know too much about NESTA before I signed up to the event however they invest in early stage companies who put innovation at the forefront of their offering. The day was made up of talks in the morning and then breaking out into smaller seminars during the afternoon. The morning talks were actually very inspirational with some great speakers including Tim Berners-Lee. Tim discussed his reasoning’s behind making the World Wide Web open source by giving it all away for free and managed to say the best quote of the day when he described the frustrations he experienced of sharing information when new colleagues were brought on board “that’s why I invented the Web”….golden!
After Tim, Sir Bob Geldof came on stage and gave a very heartfelt and honest account of what inspired him to make it when he was living in poverty in Ireland. The main take out of the day that stuck in my mind came from Sir Bob who pointed out that as a nation we have become so engrossed in watching people fail that we have forgotten what we are trying to achieve. We should celebrate trying and not be afraid to fail.
After Sir Bob, The PM Gordon Brown came on stage to give a 15 min talk on the need to develop and support creative talents within the UK and how the government will support innovation within the UK which was pretty good. The afternoon seminars however, were a bit of a let down. I think there was a general feeling that innovation was not at the heart of most of the seminars which I found to be particularly true to one that I attended solely to hear Giles Andrews (founder of Zopa) talk about the company and what they are doing to develop their offering. Unfortunately the panel seldom let him actually speak and after loosing interest I returned to the main hall to speak with Six to Start.
All in all Innovation Edge was great and for those who couldn’t attend, NESTA have put all the talks on the site which you can view here.
Rickroll flash mob
April 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment
So I am a little late writing this post but on Friday evening I headed over to Liverpool Street Station to take part in the Rick Astely flashmob. If you don’t know what a flashmob is then you can look here. If you don’t know what all the fuss is about with Rick Astley then you can find out here.
As flashmobs go, it wasn’t one of the greatest but it was still really fun nevertheless. 5:59pm people were loitering around the departure boards and as the final ten seconds took us to 6pm the excitement began. It is unfortunate that more people watched rather than participate as it’s not really in the spirit of flashmobs however, you can see what you think courtesy of my Qik video
Cadbury follow Gorilla with vanilla
March 30, 2008 | 1 Comment
It was never going to be easy was it? Everyone has been waiting for Cadbury to launch their follow up to their drumming Gorilla but after seeing it I can’t help but think….Vanilla.
The ad features a great song (Queen), but the ad left me feeling a little flat and I can’t help but think the song is the hero rather than the creative thinking or even the product. Fallon were always going to have a difficult time following up the Gorilla ad which was a brilliant execution but Trucks didn’t make me smile and I didn’t feel rewarded but maybe I wouldn’t have felt like this if my expectations hadn’t been so high?
Sensitive floor
February 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment
This is by no means a new technology however, I haven’t covered it here before so wanted to include it.
Qik live streaming
January 17, 2008 | 1 Comment
I have been watching Charles Frith’s antics in Beijing through his Qik streams, and have been yearning to test this technology myself, and now I can. Qik allows you to stream videos live from your mobile browser directly to web. It is really simple to use and the quality is surprisingly good. One of the best examples of this technology being used so far is to report on current events a la MacWorld where Qikkers streamed the latest product demos from Apple at the event. SMS Text news have also demonstrated it’s great capabilities as a shopping assistant in this post. It’s still in Alpha phase, but i’m really looking forward to seeing this grow over the next few months and for those who are interested, you can follow my streams here.
You are my Sunshine
December 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Escape Partners and production
The Key to Reserva
December 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment
This is fantastic. JWT teamed up with RSA films and hired the talents of Martin Scorsese to create a brilliant homage to Alfred Hitchcock for Spanish Cava brand Freixenet. The ad is shot in mockumentary style with Scorsese showing off his lighter side through great acting along with his brilliant direction. At over 9 minutes this requires a little patience but it is well worth the wait.
Musical roads
November 29, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Developers from the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute in
Google launches My Location
November 29, 2007 | 1 Comment
Google have today released the details of a new product on their mobile blog called My Location. My Location uses beta technology (as with a lot of Google’s products) that uses cell tower identification to provide you with approximate location information, so it will work on phones without GPS. Start Google Maps for mobile, press [0], and the map will indicate your approximate location by centering on a blue circle. This is a great piece of technology when visiting other cities when the lure of sushi is just too much to take.
