Fast Company

Old Media Still Powerful: Blogs Follow News Outlets 2.5 Hours Later

Kit Eaton — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:30:53 EST

A new study by Cornell researchers shows that traditional (old-media) news outlets lead the blogosphere by 2.5 hours when it comes to breaking news. It's a sign that the old guard should chill out about blogs and how they're destroying the news world.

The Cornell research took an innovative new approach to studying the news cycle. Instead of examining a few case-study pieces of news and extrapolating the behavior of the different media outlets from these limited cases, it used a powerful algorithmic search. 1.6 million mainstream media and blog websites were analyzed in real-time, and to see how news propagated through them all specific phrases were sampled from each site and compared to see how they appeared elsewhere--kind of a text-based fingerprint.

By comparing where these fingerprint phrases, or memes, first surfaced, and then watching for them to pop up elsewhere online, the Cornell team has uncovered how news propagates online. To see how this works, check out Barack Obama's "lipstick on a pig" soundbite's rise to newsworthiness in the graph above--it was the most prominent fingerprint phrase, or meme, found during the study. The main result of all this is the it's still the traditional news portals who tend to break the news. Blogs followed up the stories an average of 2.5 hours later.

That's actually no surprise--blogs don't have hundreds of journalists embedded in hotspots around the globe, and don't get special invites to government press interviews. That's just the professional blogs--the millions of amateur blogs tend to be just run by a single person, and these blogs often follow the major ones in a kind of "me too!" information propagation wave.

And this is where the study gets interesting, as I suspect that these hoards of secondary blogs are diluting the average speed of the blogosphere's response to news. Big blogs, with professional bloggers who keep their fingers on the pulse of news tend to react pretty swiftly in my experience...but you don't have to trust my word--you can simply keep Googling to see how this particular piece of info spreads across the net. The study is also one in the eye for old-guard media moguls like Rupert Murdoch, who keep complaining about the blog's erosion of the old media's powerbase and how it'll have to react by charging for online content. It's a chant that's recently been taken up by European news publishers, who are making noises about laws against news aggregator sites which are supposedly stealing their business. This study instead suggests that tough news is now often broken online rather than in print or on TV, it's still in the hands of the same people. And the two-hour delay between the source and the following blogs is actually a lifetime in a news room.

But there's another interesting statistic revealed by the study: In 3.5% of the cases news broke on blogs first, before later being picked up by the news sites. Thanks to innovations like Twitter, and an increasingly professional blogosphere, it's this stat that CNN, the BBC and their ilk need to keep an eye on. As time passes it's only going to rise.

[Memetracker via NYTimes]

TwitVid Brings Video Tweets to iPhone

Chris Dannen — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:00:10 EST

An app called TwitVid launched on the iTunes App Store today, enabling iPhone 3G S owners to record "video tweets" and post them to Twitter just as they would with photos, links, and text. The app is one of the first to make use of the new iPhone's video capabilities, and is made by a pair of Canadian college students and their venture-backed startup EatLime. The app is tied to a companion site, TwitVid.com.

While EatLime and its video-tweet competitors can't be faulted for taking advantage of Apple's newly unlocked iPhone features, there's something to be said about the regressive nature of "video tweets." What was once hailed as rapidly consumable, quickly-written and unobtrusive, the text-based tweet is evolving into something entirely different: A multimedia note trailing a ten-second time-waster that has to launch a video site just to present itself. Keeping up with Twitter just became a lot less fluid.

As Digital Beat notes, the TwitVid news comes on the heels of a sizable $5.5 million fundraising round by mobile video site Qik.com.

Patagonia’s Founder on Why There’s “No Such Thing as Sustainability”

Tom Foster — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 08:30:00 EST

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard may be pessimistic about the earth's future, but he's determined to keep fighting. An exclusive interview.

"I'm kind of like a samurai," says Yvon Chouinard, founder of outdoor-apparel maker Patagonia. "They say if you want to be a samurai, you can't be afraid of dying, and as soon as you flinch, you get your head cut off. I'm not afraid of losing this business."

He may actually mean that. Ever since Chouinard began forging mountain-climbing pitons in 1957 and selling them out of his car, he has defined his business's bottom line as something other than pure profit. At first, it was a way to fund his "dirtbag" climbing lifestyle and equip himself and his friends with gear. As Patagonia grew, so did a realization that everything his business did had an effect -- mostly negative -- on the environment. Today, Chouinard, 70, defines the company's mission in purely eco-driven terms: "to use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis."

Since 1985, Patagonia has given at least 1% of its sales to environmental charities, and in 2001, Chouinard cofounded One Percent for the Planet, an alliance of mostly small companies that pledge to do the same. One Percent recently notched its 1,000th member; in total, its members have given $42 million to more than 1,700 groups.

Built like a fireplug but quiet in demeanor, Chouinard recently talked to Fast Company about his life, his work, and corporate responsibility.

FC: How has traveling influenced the way you run Patagonia?

Traveling is my form of self-education. Every stream I fish now is not as good as it used to be. If you keep your eyes open as you travel around, you realize we are destroying this planet. I'm very pessimistic about it. I've created this business that I don't really need. I never wanted to be a businessman; I was a craftsman and good at working with my hands. At some point, I decided that this company is my best resource. Patagonia now exists to put into practice all the things that smart people are saying we have to do not only to save the planet but to save the economy.

Such as?

In the broadest sense, working on causes rather than symptoms. If you get down to the real causes, a lot of our society's biggest problems are happening because we're destroying the planet. As we cut down the forests in the Congo, diseases start jumping over to humans. The Pentagon says new wars are going to be resource wars. We're a long way from having a sustain-able society. That's why One Percent for the Planet gives strictly to environmental causes. You can give money all day long to symptomatic things and you're not going to solve the problems.

How do you convince companies that eco-philanthropy is worthwhile?

You have to get away from the idea that it's philanthropy. I look at it as a cost of doing business. Every business should say, We're polluters, we're using our nonrenewable resources, and therefore we should tax ourselves. Being part of One Percent is also good for business. The six largest companies in One Percent, including Patagonia, are all reporting that we're now having our best years ever. Think of it as a marketing cost. We'll tell a winery, "Okay, your wines are selling for $10. Charge $10.10. Nobody is not going to buy your wine because it's 10 cents more a bottle. In fact, you can add only 6 cents, because you can write off 40% of your donation on taxes." If you're a gas station and your receipt says, thank you for your purchase; 6 cents will go to the environment, I'll bet a lot of people would go out of their way to buy that gas.

Only three members of One Percent are parts of major public corporations (Sony, Diageo, and Volcom). Is that because of quarterly pressure?

I believe the accepted model of capitalism that demands endless growth deserves the blame for the destruction of nature, and it should be displaced. Failing that, I try to work with those companies and help them change the way they think about our resources.

You've been helping Wal-Mart.

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We're working very closely with it on establishing criteria for sustainable clothing. Wal-Mart is dead serious about this. It asked me what's the single most important thing that it could do, and I said, "Take responsibility for your product from birth till birth." It's trying to do organic-cotton clothing, and there's not enough organic cotton in the world to ever supply Wal-Mart. There never will be. So it's going to have to get into making, say, work clothes out of 100% recyclable polyester and then when customers are done with it, recycling it back into its original polymer, and making more work clothes. We have to stop the idea of consuming-discarding.

Are you doing all that at Patagonia?

We're switching all our nylon to something called Nylon 6, which can be recycled infinitely. We're recycling cotton; we're recycling wool. We send polyester back to Japan, where it gets melted down into its original polymer. Of course, the best thing to do is make clothing so it never wears out, right?

You've also talked to car companies.

Ford came to us once and wanted to use the Patagonia brand on a hybrid SUV. Well, the last thing we want is a Ford SUV with Patagonia on it. But we said, What the hell? If Ford Motor Co. joins One Percent, we'll do it. Everybody's got a price, you know? [A Ford spokesman denies the company approached Patagonia but confirms there were internal discussions about doing so.] I think there are no absolutes. There's no such thing as sustainability. It's just kind of a path you get on and try -- each day try to make it better.

LG BL40 Chocolate Phone Video Gives Us Widescreen Envy

Kit Eaton — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 08:00:00 EST

Last week some bloggers dug out the secret of LG's upcoming Chocolate smartphone--a cinema-aspect widescreen. It sounds amazing, but little else was known about it. Until this video leaked. And boy it's impressive.

Now we know the phone is the fourth in the black label series, which earns it the name BL40. We also know it's got Wi-fi, 7.2mbps 3G, GPS, full browser, and a 5-megapixel cam. That camera appears also to have a touch-to-focus UI similar to that of the new iPhone 3G S. LG's proprietary Active-Flash UI is shown to good effect here, and it looks pretty amazing--a real graphical treat that should make the most of multitouch for intuitive phone interactions.

But of course its that whacky 4-inch, 800 by 344-pixel, 21:9 touchscreen that steals the show. Compare it to the Pre's 3.1-inch 320 x 480 one, the iPhone's 3.5-inch 480 x 320 pixel display, and the Nokia N97's 3.5-inch 640 x 360 pixel screen to see exactly how massive the LG's is. I briefly worried it was going to be a shamelessly excessive addition, without much practical appeal. But this video's allayed those fears somewhat, since the UI seems to make maximal use of the available screen real estate. Check out that slick scheduler app, and look how handy the full-widescreen emailing seems to be. It also allows for greater spacing between the keys of the on-screen soft keyboard compared to other touchscreen phones, which is almost certainly a good thing for improved typing accuracy.

So it's innovative, and sharp-looking, but I suspect it won't be leading the charge with other smartphone makers following the odd aspect-ratio screen. And, scratch-resistant tempered glass notwithstanding, let's not forget the classic smartphone error: Placing it in the rear jeans pocket, and sitting down. The BL40's form factor is just asking for a screen-snapping accident in this situation.

[via Engadget]

WorldComp '09

Fast Company Calendar — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 07:30:15 EST

Warning: computer overload. The 2009 World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Applied Computing is actually 22 different conferences, drawing 2,500 attendees, all held simultaneously at one location and sprawling across topics from bioinformatics to virtual reality to embedded systems. What struck us about the conference, though, wasn't the diversity but the lack of it: According to the premeeting agenda, not a single one of the 27 featured speakers and instructors is female. -- ZW

Mon, July 13 Compute WorldComp '09 Las Vegas

Have an event to share? Email calendar[at]fastcompany[dot]com Visit the FC Now Blog or Calendar App for more events.

Good to Know: Seven Useful Things Online This Week

Chris Dannen — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:30:16 EST

Print Is Dying Because... It's Printed

"The Printed Blog" was an experiment in publishing: a hybrid online publication with a printed counterpart that could be delivered to your house. The venture's founder, Josh Karp, believed that newspapers were simply doin' it wrong: with blog-like content, he believed, the printed paper could live on. He even went so far as to give each of his delivery people in San Francisco and Chicago, his two startup markets, their own print-on-demand machines to cut down on distribution time and make the whole thing uber-efficient.

Well, the problem with print turns out to be the print, not the articles. The Printed Blog is shutting down after just six months in the business, and while plenty of people criticized the idea when it came out, and continue to harangue Karp now, the experiment was important: by isolating the content from the printed form-factor, we've learned that journalism itself isn't the problem, just the medium it's delivered in. Now when the cocktail party discussions start, you'll be the one with the answer: newspapers can indeed live on, online.

iPhone Now Only $79

If you've been decrying the iPhone for its steep price, decry no more: you can now get a refurbished 8GB iPhone from the AT&T store for a mere $79, plus tax and whatever other nonsensical charges they hit new customers with.

As TUAW notes, you're still tethered to a two-year contract that will eventually bleed you of about $2400, depending on the plan you choose, so the rock-bottom price doesn't change much in the long-run. But if you view smartphone bills as a fact of life, this deal is as good as it gets. Check AT&T's inventory here.

Hold That Netbook

With all the buzz about Google's Chrome OS, TechCrunch's new CrunchPad tablet PC, and the generally break-neck speed of netbook improvements, you've been hanging back, waiting for netbook prices to drop. According to ArsTechnica, your patience might soon be punished by a recent rise in flash memory prices.

Like any commodity, NAND memory prices fluctuates in cycles--but those cycles have historically been tied to the holiday shopping season when sales of MP3 players, cameras and notebooks shoot up. But this a-seasonal price jump is a result of new factors like rising year-round demand and speculation. In other words: that netbook you want ain't getting any cheaper, at least for the foreseeable future.

That's Called ChalkBot

If you're one of the surprisingly large number of Americans like me who follow the Tour de France every summer, you may have noticed massive, gorgeous printed messages on the route roads in the second stage this week. Nope, they're not paint--they're made of chalk, and they're sprayed on the road surface by ChalkBot, a massive trailer-mounted inkjet printer sponsored by Nike and the Livestrong foundation. You can even have it print your own message by texting the number in the video below. Check out how ChalkBot works by watching.

About that iPhone 3G...

Remember that fantastic deal on iPhones we reported above? Well, you'll be buying the Genius phone in spite of some positively remedial service from AT&T. According to an interactive 3G speed test run by Wired magazine that included results from 12,000 participants nationwide, AT&T has by far the worst 3G service on the block, beaten by Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint, respectively.

As Wired duly notes, this isn't a scientific test, but simply a real-world "barometer" for service. AT&T's results might have been excessively low because of how many more AT&T users responded than other carriers', they explain, but hardware is also a factor; since many of those AT&T folks were probably on iPhones, which should have balanced things out. Read the results here.

Twitter and the Power of Popular Links

A new startup announced Friday called TuneIn uses the power of Twitter to catalog and index the links that people share every day. Because Twitter has the power to upstage social media sites like Digg in terms of the speed of link-sharing, someone needs to be organizing all that stuff; at least that's the impetus behind TuneIn.

It works basically like the normal Twitter interface, except it presents users with a sidebar that keeps track of all the links your friends tweet. The more re-tweets one gets, the higher on the list it goes. Sounds great for those of us that prefer to catch up on Twitter, not keep up; but what about all those people whose blogs push everything to Twitter and trail links to the original posts? If TuneIn can filter relevant links, it might just be a winner. Sign up for the beta at their site, and you could be the first Twitter user in your circle to make the onslaught work for you, not visa versa.

Learn How, Now

There's lots more everyday wisdom we can't encapsulate in this column, but luckily, there's a place you can find it. A newly-launched site called Howcast hopes that its bank of 100,000 professionally-made instructional videos can teach you a thing or two without all the pain and sacrifice of leaving your chair (or reading). The new site will go up against a legion of competitors--the biggest of which is probably YouTube--but according to a New York Times article, it might have enough personality to attract the Web's ever-growing pool of DIY'ers.

The real question, however, is whether Howcast can draw any significant cashflow, especially when they have cut so many revenue-sharing deals with big players like Playboy and the Home Depot to create top-of-the-line videos. Check out the article or visit Howcast for more info.

Browse the Seven Things archive to read more stories like this.

Fingerbeat: Turn your iPhone/iTouch Into a Beat Machine

Lynne d Johnson — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:00:24 EST

Fingerbeat, a new iPhone/iTouch app, puts the power of a recording studio in the palm of your hand.

Main Features & Technical Specifications:

Step Sequencer: Making beats is easy as drawing and tapping boxes to generate unique sequences. Each color is associated to each channel type of pad.

Pitch Keyboard + Editor: While recording, the notes you play will immediately appear in the editor. Its easy to make changes and draw free-form to create / delete notes using your finger.

Multi-Touch Mixer: FingerBeat is built for user experience & live performance. Create your very own mix.

Pocket Sampler + Kit Edit: Record any external sound using the built-in *microphone. Load any existing sounds in the library.

Perform & Sing: Once you have programmed some patterns, connect to headphones and hear yourself sing over your musical creation. Conveniently change patterns with your thumb for live performance.

Low latency pads x8 Pads/Channels with Volume, Balance Mixer + Mute functions x6 Pattern blocks per Kit x6 Themed Skins + User Photo option using iPhone camera or gallery x16 Kits "x8 User" Built in sounds + kit templates 16bit 44Khz Sampler using internal microphone Demo Patterns Ability to use microphone* with external speaker source

Though Fingerbeat isn't the only beatmaker available for the iPhone--there's also the free Melody Box Lite, iDrum, and Looptastic to name a few--it's probably the most comprehensive for making your own original beats with vocals.

Fingerbeat is available from the iTunes store for $3.99.

Ten Mac Apps That Make Windows Users Drool

Chris Dannen — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 16:30:39 EST

digg_url = 'http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/techwatch/10-mac-apps-make-windows-users-drool'; digg_skin = 'compact'; Used to be that Windows users could admit the Mac was easy to use--they just complained there wasn't any software for the platform. Apple knew their weakness, too, so they endeavored to turn their developer tools into the envy of the industry. What they've created in the latest versions of Xcode and Interface Builder, two of the anchor apps in the Mac developer's kit, are an engineer's dream team. Their thoughtful, intuitive design beget tools for the Macintosh that are just as much about visual design--gorgeous graphics and standardized controls--as they are about ingenious, robust interactivity.

So it's no surprise that in the nearly nine years that Mac OS X has been earning converts, -the Macintosh a decade after the first iMac has become a software honeypot luring Windows users from all walks of life. While some of the apps below have counterparts in the PC realm that aim to do a similar task, the apps on this list say as much about the Apple-inspired philosophy of interaction--elegant, efficient, easy, powerful--as they do about the ideas that drive Mac developers. Below, the apps that Windows users can only wish came in .exe.

Tangerine! by Potion Factory

Tangerine! is the long lost companion to iTunes: it lets you create playlists by the beat and intensity of your music, allowing you to create purpose built lists for relaxation, exercise, parties, and work without having to slog through the tens of thousands of songs in your library. Very much in Apple form, Tangerine! has a three-pane browser that automatically culls your iTunes music and analyzes it for its musical properties, then plugs your playlists back into iTunes once you've made them. $25.

Delicious Library 2 by Delicious Monster

If you're obsessive about your media collection, Delicious Library 2 is a must-have. Hold any book, CD, DVD or video game up to the iSight camera on your Mac, and DL2 reads the barcode, storing that piece of media in your library along with all the data that goes with it: reviews, summaries, links to buy and sell on Amazon, synopses, and suggestions for similar media. (You can put in anything without a barcode by hand.) Not only is this good for remembering who's borrowed what, or providing evidence in case of an insurance claim--it also makes building bibliographies, organizing your stuff, and doing research with your own library a lot easier. The best part: you can publish your library to MobileMe, allowing you and your friends to share libraries, so you can pool your resources. $40.

Acorn by FlyingMeat

Think of Acorn as everything you need from Photoshop, and nothing you don't. For essential, light image editing, Acorn is incredibly fast, versatile, customizable and cheap at just $50. Made with care by a well-respected Seattle developer, Acorn could teach the engineers at Adobe a thing or two about interface design.

Quicksilver by BlackTree

Talk to any hardcore Mac nerd, and there's no doubt he'll admit to living and dying by Quicksilver. It's a launcher, at heart--a few quick key taps and you can fire up any app on your machine. But it's also ingeniously customizable. Hit the hotkey and punch in anything else: Filenames, contacts, URLs, iTunes commands ("pause"), and complex daisy chains of actions, and Quicksilver fires them off with alacrity. And it's free. (Thanks to Quicksilver, this writer goes hours without touching a mouse.)

Spaces by Apple

Virtual screen space isn't an idea Apple knows, but it's certainly one they've perfected. Spaces allows you to create virtual desktops and assign which apps live in which space. While the idea sounds great in concept, it'd be easy to royally botch in practice--but because of Apple's superb graphical transitions, smart commands and hotkeys, and ingenious logic, Spaces gives you more real estate, and more control over it, than a whole desk full of monitors. (Comes with Mac OS X Leopard.)

Fluid App

Fluid is a free app that allows you to create freestanding applications from any of your favorite websites. It's essentially a single-purpose browser, but allows you to assign certain sites you use a lot (like say, a CMS) to certain Spaces in OS X, and even makes them run faster. It's also light, quick-building and super-stable. (Below, a Reddit app I created for that site's technology channel.)

Billings 3 by MarketCircle

If you've ever used an invoicing app for Mac or Windows, you know that they are largely nightmarishly complex. Billings has such an elegant workflow and a carefully-considered user interface that it snagged Apple's highest honor at WWDC: an Apple Design Award. And in true Mac tradition, it integrates fully with Address Book, iCal and Google Maps all within the app. A companion iPhone app is on the way. $40.

LiveView by Ideo

LiveView is actually two apps: One for iPhone and one for the Mac. Fire it up on the Mac, and you get a big, glossy iPhone bezel on your screen. Anything that's within the bezel gets beamed to any iPhones on your LAN that are running the companion app, allowing all your buddies to pipe in on your design or programming work whenever they like. Free.

Aperture by Apple

For photographers, there simply isn't anything remotely as robust for photo management. What about Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, you say? Well, that's a great combo for heavy editing--but when you have a library of 50,000 RAW-format photos to manage and circulate, Aperture is the clear winner. Its dead-simple organizational system makes it easy to sort and stack, and because of its robust backend, it can handle and back up photo collections that number in the hundreds of gigabytes. Got MobileMe? It can auto-publish certain albums to the Web, too. Bonus feature: you can order professional quality prints up to 20 inches by 30 inches for a fraction of what a print shop would charge. $200.

MarsEdit 2 by Red Sweater

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Blogging used to be a light, simple endeavor, but with the advent of Tumblr, embedded media, and reblogging, these days it takes a desktop app to do it right. MarsEdit 2 lets you build posts, preview, publish and edit without touching a browser, speeding up what can otherwise be a painful Web-based chore. It feels a lot like Apple Mail, to its credit, and lets you set up custom macros so you're not constantly re-typing the same stuff. $30.

Infectious Disease Cruise Conference

Fast Company Calendar — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 07:30:58 EST

One tip to avoid the spread of infectious diseases: Don't gather in confined spaces. Like, you know, a ship at sea. (We haven't forgotten all those news stories about the stomach-churning, disinfectant-resisting norovirus.) This conference-on-a-cruise about contagion and bugs is aimed at the continuing education of physicians and nurses. The unintentional takeaway? Do as your docs say, not as they do. -- Kate Rockwood

Sun, July 12 Cover Your Mouth Infectious Disease Cruise Conference 7 days/6 nights, from Seattle

Have an event to share? Email calendar[at]fastcompany[dot]com Visit the FC Now Blog or Calendar App for more events.

Let, First Service

Rick Murray — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 13:12:27 EST

I tuned into NBC's Breakfast at Wimbledon last Sunday morning to catch Roger Federer outduel--and outlast--a re-energized Andy Roddick to win the men's championship at Wimbledon, his 15th major.

Breaking sports news video. MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL highlights and more.

Thirty games after the fifth and deciding set began (a record), it was over; the champion crowned. Roddick's ball was still rolling on the grass and--as if his victory were pre-ordained--Nike and NetJets congratulatory ads popped up on the telly. Timely? Perhaps. But in light of the unparalleled demonstration of power, fitness and finesse we'd just witnessed from both men, it was--at least to me--an altogether unwelcome intrusion. Fast forward to Monday, and these brands were joined by Roger's other sponsors including Gillette and Rolex in running their congratulatory salutations in The New York Times and USA Today, among others.

A rough guess is that collectively, these ads represent some $2M in spending over a 24-hour period. As ads, they delivered pretty decent copy. But this spending is also an opportunity lost. Today's opportunity is to live in the moment, engaging people at their precise points of passion.

One could argue a pre-planned and perfectly executed ad meets that standard, but I think it falls, well, short. In tennis, the players serve and volley; an ad without engagement is serve and nothing. If you don't fire an ace, you're going to lose the point.

Consider this: as of this writing, Roger Federer has 2.4M fans on Facebook. If the "average" person has 150 friends on Facebook, the extended social graph of this total network is over 300M people. Yes, there are duplicates, but you get my drift. Roger spoke to his fans via video Monday morning at 9:18 ET. It's a short 20-second clip, but it does the trick. In the four days, 68,000 people have engaged with that video: 55,000 have "liked" it, and another 13,000 or so have taken the time to post a comment...a direct message to Roger. And 90% of these engagements came within 24 hours of the video going live.

Facebook is a point of passion. A hero's victory is a point of passion. A crowd forming to share in that victory and congratulate their hero is a point of passion. And all three were missed on Sunday. There were no comments from the sponsors on Roger's page. None took out an engagement ad on Facebook directed specifically to his fans; created a special "gift" for the occasion, exclusively for his fans; nor used Facebook's survey tool to ask his fan base if their sponsored one was the best ever. All of these would have shown the fans that as sponsors, they're not only paying the freight in a traditional way, they're actually human, caught up in the excitement and genuinely interested in the outcome.

Real-time engagement is hard work. You can't script it, and you can't plan it out to the nth degree. It demands a City Desk mindset: you can't predict what's going to happen next, but because you're keenly attuned to what's going on around you, you're absolutely prepared to jump all over it when something relevant pops up. The vast majority of brands and agencies aren't set up to think and work this way...yet. Some, including Comcast, Southwest Airlines and eBay (a client) are moving in that direction by engaging consumers and other stakeholders "live" on Twitter, company blogs and beyond. But there's a big difference between resolving issues and engaging in an ongoing dialogue without a net.

The U.S. Open is just around the corner. I'll gladly give public props to any brand that dares to engage.

Coming Soon: Waste-Free Breweries

Ariel Schwartz — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:00:09 EST

Beer production is an energy-intensive process--it requires hot water, steam, and electric energy to cool everything down. At the same time, spent grains from breweries have been piling up as farmers who traditionally used the grains for animal feed produce less beef and contend with waste restrictions on their land. The solution? Using spent grains and wastewater to generate energy for brewing.

German biomass company BMP Biomass Projekt has teamed up with German firms INNOVAS, BISANZ, and Adato, a Slovakian company, to produce energy from spent wet grain in a process that could save breweries money and reduce the need to transport grain to farms. The process reportedly meets European environmental standards, producing less than 2,000 tons of wet ashes from 100,000 tons of spent grain.

Recycling grains into energy isn't a new idea. Anheuser-Busch has been doing it for years in nine of its 12 U.S. plants (and one in China) with its Bio-Energy Recovery Systems, which turns nutrients from wastewater into biogas. But while Anheuser-Busch has only used the technology internally, BMP and co. want to commercialize their process. The team has already set up a test plant, and is now searching for business from environmentally savvy breweries. No word yet on the potential costs of the system or the percentage of energy it could provide to a brewery.

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[Via Greenbiz]

GM Emerges from the Rubble of Bankruptcy. Now What?

Ariel Schwartz — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:00:25 EST

GM returned from the black hole of bankruptcy today with promises of impending change in its corporate structure and products. The company's press release is, as expected, filled with nonspecific ideas like "a fresh lineup of Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC cars, trucks and crossovers, each with leading-edge designs and technologies that matter to both consumers and the environment" and a new focus on "customers, cars and culture." In other words, GM will actually pay attention to the fact that it needs to deal with changing technologies and trends in the car world.

But that's not all. GM is also apparently moving ahead with a range of energy-saving technologies such as biofuels, fuel cells, and hybrids. It is also, as we know, focusing much of its energy on the plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt, expected to retail for $40,000 (not including tax incentives). There are ambitious ideas, but the Volt isn't expected to be profitable until the second generation, and the company is already lagging far behind Honda and Toyota in the hybrid technology arena. Whether GM can catch up in time to grab a piece of the hybrid and PHEV market remains to be seen.

One short-term, practical idea on the agenda: GM may initiate a partnership with eBay to allow customers to bid for vehicles online at pre-determined prices. At the same time, GM will cut its dealer network from 6,000 locations to 3,600. The move will let the company keep prices on its cars low, as dealers usually take a cut of profits.

And perhaps as a result of the media outcry, GM has denied any plans to change its iconic blue logo to green. This in itself is a good start; after decades of ignorance, GM might finally be listening to what people are saying.

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[Via Autobloggreen]

For Effective Advocacy, Select "E" for "All of the Above"

Michael Krempasky — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:30:30 EST

My colleague Steve Rubel neatly lays out the challenge facing communicators today: with today's fractured and diffuse media, "life is nothing but a stream, and ad pages and feature placements become scarcer (and arguably captivate less attention)." And if this challenge frustrates communicators, how much more difficult is it for public affairs or advocacy professionals working to not only enlist supports but mobilize advocates?

As there is no shortage of news and information channels, there's no shortage of opportunities (or asks) to take civic or political action on behalf of a good cause. From the deluge of email fundraising emails to friends recruiting friends with Facebook applications, it's easy to see how your appeal can get lost in the crowd.

So how do you break through? By taking a careful look at your audience and understanding which channels and which networks they prefer to use--and be prepared to play on any field at any time.

But let's be clear: the need to be ubiquitous is most certainly not a "spaghetti-on-the-wall" strategy in which you throw everything out there and see what sticks. In fact, that's rightly identified as the exact opposite of strategy.

The key is to not necessarily be everywhere all the time, but to evaluate every platform. And then make choices that connect with your advocacy goals, not what's cool or top-of-mind for the moment.

Partner with a company like Rapleaf to analyze your organization's membership roster. Which networks are they most active on? Who in your database has the largest and most influential social footprint? Conduct online conversation research across different communities and networks. Where are your potential advocates engaged in conversations about your issues? When you identify your audiences, be as flexible as possible. You can start with simple tools such as the SocialCapital widgetthat helps supporters communicate with members of Congress about the issues that they care about through the channels *they* choose. Understand that in almost every case, what's good for your cause and audience won't be ideal for another group's campaign. While of course Facebook is a necessary component of almost every effort--is it sufficient? Don't hesitate to pursue niche audiences and groups on the much smaller and focused sites.

It might sound overly simplified, but don't be everywhere--just be everywhere your audience needs you to be - and don't spread yourself too thin. Instead, invest the effort to make sure that where you engage, you do so with sufficient attention to that community. For instance, among hundreds of possible social networks, the Obama campaign established a presence on fifteen of them, including being the first presidential candidate on BlackPlanet AsianAve.com; and MiGente.com.

In digital advocacy, the answer is not to chase every channel, but to focus on the platforms where your potential supporters already are. Call it "impulse advocacy." Be nimble and agile while making it easy for them to mobilize and they will reward you by advocating for your cause time and time again.

Mike Krempasky, Executive Vice President, leads Edelman's Digital Public Affairs practice. Based in Washington, DC he specializes in crisis communications and issues management. He is the co-founder of RedState.com, one of the most-read and influential Republican community blogs. He has been a blogger since 2001, and in that capacity testified before the FEC in 2005 on the regulation of political speech on the Internet and became one of the first bloggers called to offer expert testimony before a Committee in the House of Representatives.

Housing Complex Doubles as a Social Experiment

Cliff Kuang — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:00:29 EST

A student housing complex in France has one wing that shelters battered women--an effort to create "social co-education."

Every architect, no matter how humble they may be, is a would-be social engineer at heart. The Greeks and Romans alike believed that the very values of their society were embedded in their buildings; more recently, Communists, Fascists, and Utopians have all sought to create new paradigms for architecture that would change the way people lived--and thus, how they thought.

A French firm, ecdm is continuing in that tradition, this time with a small-scale social experiment embedded in their new student housing block. The building, which contains 240 units, mostly houses students. But it also has apartments for researchers and professors--and also one wing which functions as a battered women's shelter. The idea is to create social interaction of a type you'd rarely see in the wild. When's the last time you saw students breaking bread on a regular basis with the less advantaged, much less sharing gardens and the laundry facility?

The various wings are color coded, to aid in wayfinding, and to lessen the monotony of an overall plan that otherwise might be overwhelming institutional. (We presume that the cladding, which makes the entire thing look like a Hershey's bar, is as mostly about looks.)

It's hard to say how an experience like this will work out; often, these kinds of programs can be patronizing and paternalistic in the extreme. (It's probably no accident, after all, that this building is French.) But it's probably not a stretch to think that some people--both the women and the students who pass through--will come away from the experience having learned something.

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[Via Design Boom]

Naked Juice Brings PET Bottles to the Mainstream

Ariel Schwartz — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:30:14 EST

Mainstream beverage distributors haven't managed to muster up the energy to produce 100% post-consumer recycled plastic bottles--until now. Naked Juice became the first nationally distributed brand to use PET (polyethylene terepthalate) bottles this week with its 32 ounce reNEWabottle. Drinks available in the new bottle, scheduled to hit shelves this month, include Green Machine, Blue Machine, Mighty Mango, Chai Spiced Cider, and Pomegranate Blueberry.

The switch to PET bottles will save over 1 million pounds of virgin plastic each year and cut oil use by 8,192 barrels. That's the equivalent of taking 497 cars off the road. Once Naked Juice transitions completely to PET bottles in 2010, the company will slash plastic use by 8.1 million pounds per year.

PepsiCo-owned Naked Juice is light years ahead of other drink manufacturers, which have stalled on the issue of PET bottles. Coca-Cola uses less than 4% recycled materials in its PET bottles and has the fairly unambitious goal of increasing the number to 10% by 2010. Cost could be a part of the problem--Naked refuses to disclose how much the move to 100% PET bottles cost, and the company insists it didn't make the switch for monetary reasons. The new bottles could, however, boost Naked Juice's environmental credibility and lead to a bump in sales. And now that Naked has figured out the technical aspects of designing and manufacturing its recycled bottles, perhaps its parent company will take note and adopt the process for other brands.

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[Via SGV Tribune]