Saw this ad for BP on the stairs down to liverpool st station. Ironically the sign talking about clean energy is the dirtiest poster I’ve seen in ages. Oh the sweet irony.
Honestly though. When you see the state of it you really can’t take the message seriously in the slightest. Shows that it’s not just placement that needs to be considered… [close up here]
Yesterday I spoke at the Mobile Marketing 2005 conference. I actually quite enjoyed it which surprised me.
It was a tricky old thing. From speaking to lots of people later it’s obvious that there’s a lot of different levels of knowledge and experience within the sector. And there’s still a lot to play for. Which is inspiring.
What’s less inspiring is quite how ‘old media’ a lot of the thinking in the industry seems to be. Especially from the network operator side. It’s almost as if the web and open source hasn’t even registered. The networks (and a load of ‘feeder’ companies around them) seem to want to control and own everything. Their value chain seems to rely on them owning and delivering content. Much like a properly old-school ISP.
Is it really economically impossible for a network to detach itself from all their ‘value added services’? I hate using that term (especially when the services in question add no discernible value in my world). If I was offered a network that just charged a data rate but let me go where I wanted, using whatever device I wanted, I’d be in like a shot. And hoovering up mobile bandwidth. They may not get me paying 50p to watch a movie trailer from them (I would absolutly never do such a thing by the way). But they would get the data charges.
Or am I just being naive?
Until they sort themselves out I’m hoping for a massive wi-fi cloud and using VOIP on mobile wi-fi devices. Fuck the mobile networks. (Note to mobile networks (especially any of our clients): I didn’t really mean that completely).
Blimey. I managed to run a full 10km yesterday. I’m quietly proud of the fact that I did it. Having not really excercised properly for a good few years I was really worried about getting into shape for this. I’m still far from in shape, but I made it. And I raised some cash to help my good friend Oliver Padfield – if you still want to donate money it’d be appraciated.
Something that makes Google so cool is the fact they recognise that their competitors (or deadly rivals), have an important part to play in peoples’ lives. See how they’ve listed Ask Yahoo! in fun. Most other sites would rather kill themselves than link to a competitor.
Asian Backstreet Boys – the full story. They’ve got a deal to do Motorola ads now. Yoiks!
I didn’t ever want to start making this a what-i-had-for-breakfast-blog, but a combination of a few things have driven me to this post.
1. A new camera – finally I’ve got one that I can carry around without needing a rucksack, hooray!
2. I’m liking bright cold mornings right now. This felt like a nice expression of that.
3. Setting up my blog to integrate with Flickr.
So, this is what I saw out of the office window when I arrived at work early the other day, shot on my new digital camera, posted on Flickr. (And I had peanut butter on toast for breakfast).
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!
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.
Please take a moment to consider sponsoring me. Next Sunday I’m running 10km to raise money for a charity that’s helping a very good friend of mine who’s very sick with cancer.
10km might not be a big deal for some people, but for a very unfit man like myself it’s a long way (and it’s very cold going for early morning runs at the moment!).
Please visit my Justgiving .com moneyraising page for more info and to sponsor me. And please tell anyone else you can think of. Many many thanks!
All usability reviews should be carried out by talking frogs. And no, I’ve not spent the weekend licking toxic toads! Check this site if you don’t believe that frogs are the future of usability: Frog Review: Ticketmaster. I can see these guys being bigger than Jakob.
(via lots of blogs)