Technology – Page 21 – crackunit.com

ConQwest

I’m doing a talk at the Mobile Marketing conference next week. And in my researching of interesting mobile marketing ideas came across this amazing promotion for Qwest in the US.

It’s a city-wide treasure hunt using semacodes
– nothing particularly innovative there – we’ve pitched mobile treasure hunts lots of times (and quite honestly never been 100% sure of the idea).

But…

Make it a big contest between ‘schools’, and throw in some huge big inflatable creatures and hey presto! You’ve got a winner.

Even if the participation rates are tiny. Who could fail to notice groups of people running round a city with 20 foot high animals, and subsequently have conversations about it. Nice!

Picture Alarm Clock

From we make money not art: Wake up with a picture. A lovely re-working of a vintage alarm clock. Not the most user friendly thing in the world, but nice.

Google Analytics – Google offers free web stats through its new service. Based on the popular Urchin software this is a great way for site owners to get detailed site analytics (for free!). I still like my simple to read Mint stats too though.

Who knows? Get Google Analytics installed and you might meet someone like Kief.

BlockJam

I was checking out a BoingBoing post on LED puzzle blocks which look pretty awesome in themselves. But there’s a footnote that links to a Sony project called BlockJam which just blew me away. (Check the video of the prototype).

It’s a musical hardware interface made up of LED blocks that can be joined together to create musical structures.
Continue reading BlockJam

Hulger and Skype

Nik, one of my co-partners at Poke has, in my opinion, finally nailed a proper useful-use for his Hulger Phones. Although an interesting design statement and a humerous novelty when attached to a mobile, I don’t think anyone would really use them in the longer term. But, they sure beat a crappy headset for VOIP. So a partnership with Skype seems like a winner to me!

Technorati Tags Plugin

I’ve finally got around to getting my head around just how good Technorati is. I knew it was powerful. But not that powerful. So I’ve installed BunnysTechnoratiTags on my blog. Meaning that I can make sure I’m properly hooked up with the ‘rati. (Once you realise you’re becoming a geek is there any way to reverse the process…?).

Presentation Zen

Bill has bullets, Steve has space. Presentation Zen: Gates, Jobs, & the Zen aesthetic – a blog posting about presentation styles that made me laugh out loud. Incredibly insightful and worth a read. Via the ever visitworthy Seth Godin.

Talking Point for Orange

Here’s a little something I’ve been working on for a good while now TalkingPoint for Orange. It’s a hybrid between a poll and a discussion forum. The objective being to give people a chance to leave their opinions on issues in an interesting and textured fashion. Allowing people to either just register their agreement with a simple, single-click interaction. Or, if they wish, to go further and leave comments.

So far the results are really promising and we’re seeing high levels of interaction and relatively low levels of abuse (which is nice). The team that worked on it have done a great job – and as usual encountered all kinds of interesting ‘features’ in Flash ;-)

iPod Nanos on Tokyo Metro

From Cult Of Mac Blog – iPod Nanos on Tokyo Metro – This is a great (if a little expensive) promotion. Having said that, this is one of those ads that creates so much residual ‘buzz’ around it that the initial investment is totally worth it. I’ve just finished the excellent book Buzzmarketing: Getting People to Talk About Your Stuff. Hence I’m temporarily obsessed with ‘buzz’. I’ll write a review of the book soon. In the meantime, have a look at the Buzzmarketing.com site.

I’m especially loving the use of photo message QR codes on the back of the dummy Nanos (in case you don’t know these are like barcodes that you photograph with your mobile – all the rage in Japan apparantly).