netzkobol.de blog

Film shoot with the support of mayor @yiawayyeh for an upcoming event, stay tuned [Flickr]

2012-02-25T15:08:45-08:00

netzkobold posted a photo:

Phil up here #phil #philz #coffee [Flickr]

2012-02-23T09:29:30-08:00

netzkobold posted a photo:

Just getting started at the most delicious @statebirdprovisions / @statebirdsf with my parents [Flickr]

2012-02-22T18:14:55-08:00

netzkobold posted a photo:

Thanks to @nest I can now control the temperature of my home via an iPhone app remotely #thermostat #nest [Flickr]

2012-02-16T09:57:37-08:00

netzkobold posted a photo:

Proper piece of chocolate #chocolate #fraiche [Flickr]

2012-02-03T09:25:10-08:00

netzkobold posted a photo:

At the launch event of @GSVAccelerator with @PeterThiel Thx to @OHanisch, congratulations! [Flickr]

2012-02-02T12:20:57-08:00

netzkobold posted a photo:

Meeting [Flickr]

2012-02-01T12:02:58-08:00

netzkobold posted a photo:

This is how a high speed Internet line looks like #att #sonic [Flickr]

2012-01-31T10:17:50-08:00

netzkobold posted a photo:

The pleasure of having kids and cleaning car seats on a Sunday afternoon ;-) At least they look like brand new again, for a little while ... #car #seat #nofilter #kids #children #dirt #dirty [Flickr]

2012-01-29T18:05:06-08:00

netzkobold posted a photo:

Watched 'SENNA' tonight, what an amazing man and race driver, so sad, may he rest in peace #ayrton #senna #ayrtonsenna #documentary #f1 #formula1 #rip #brasil #brazil #race #driver #world #champion cc: @guedessf @lagarcia15 [Flickr]

2012-01-25T23:43:58-08:00

netzkobold posted a photo:

google+ more than i expected

2011-08-12T01:16:50-07:00

today google+ made further headlines introducing “games” to their latest inception of their next attempt to conquer the social web.

at first i thought “whatever, i have never played a single game on facebook, so why should i care about introducing games to google+?”

but there is a bigger picture here, google has tried numerous times with orkut, buzz, buying and killing jaiku and many others to establish a serious footprint in the social networking space. but finally in hiring some of the brightest minds in this space, people like joseph smarr and chris messina, they have something going here.

with friends working at google i got in early (thanks christoph), i was able to check out google+, shared some posts, added friends to circles and see what is happening. and now that i installed the recent desktop app i have google+ running on my secondary screen more prominently than facebook or twitter, i am able to see the potential.

the team behind google+ did a lot of things right this time around. first and foremost a good branding: no new name/logo but a solid stand: “this is google”, the way every resident of the interwebs knows it. and an easy to adapt way/widget to “1+” something without trying to introduce new verbiage like “like” or “tweet”.

the functionality is all there, sharing what you care about with certain groups or “circles” much easier, the essence of what it means to be a “social network” nailed.

coming back to the point that introducing “games” is less significant to me than knowing that they have a lot more up their sleeves that will make this the most serious contender in winning the social networking game in the next century.

many sites are implementing google+ quickly as it grows and i am certain there is a lot more to come in regards to integration, sharing, apps, games and functionality to make you have to join (if you haven’t already) and to use on an everyday basis.

so better late than never: welcome google+ as the next best thing in social networking!

if you’d like a google+ invite, just let me know.

kenny powers as new k-swiss ceo

2011-07-13T11:39:12-07:00

k-swiss wrote danny mcbride a blank check and said, “have at it” … here is the result:

hilarious – brave and well done.

the real cost of social media

2011-05-20T11:25:12-07:00

(via the womma word / view/download high-res version)

alex trochut – change for the letter

2011-05-10T12:14:12-07:00

illustrator and typographer alex trochut synthesizes illustration and lettering like no other. the expressive, richly ornamented typography he creates ooze fluidity in which movement is practically palpable. one of the most sought after talents, he has created knockout work for the likes of wired and the new york times as well as clients including adidas and coca-cola. gestalten.tv met the 29-year-old, barcelona-based whiz kid at his studio to talk about visuals, identities, and the legitimacy of legibility.

(via leonard souza / source gestalten.tv)

attracting interest via word-of-mouth

2010-11-11T14:57:23-08:00

merle schmalenbach from the financial times germany just published an article about the basics of viral marketing and ways how to attract consumers via word-of-mouth. it’s a short wrap up but doesn’t go to deep even though she got in touch with some of the leading voices in this field in germany like thomas zorbach from vm-people, martin oetting from trnd as well as sascha langner. most of the examples mentioned are pretty dated but what it comes down to is that we trust the recommendation of a friend or co-worker much more than any company and that creative and original ideas are the key to viral spread and driving word-of-mouth.

friend and former colleague thomas zorbach also talks about one of their most recent projects, an ‘alternate reality game‘ (arg) surrounding the launch of zoë beck’s new thriller “das alte kind“. read the whole article here (in german).

antennagate: if you can’t fix it, feature it!

2010-07-18T12:53:10-07:00

…and don’t diss your customer, or the media!

insight and advice by former apple exec and now vc jean-louis gassée

(via monday note)

twidroid and news aggregator popurls acquired

2010-07-06T16:02:50-07:00

congratulations to thomas marban and his business partner ralph zimmerman who’s widely popular android twitter client twidroyd (formerly twidroid) and news aggregator popurls have just been acquired by tweetup.

read the whole story at techcrunch, gigaom or the official press release.

apple iphone 4 hysteria / vs htc evo

2010-07-02T12:14:34-07:00

this video pretty much hits the nail on the head about the current iphone 4 hysteria.

link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg

update: best buy trying to fire employee over evo versus iphone video

(via techcrunch)

hackfwd – lars hinrichs launches new investment company

2010-06-08T10:54:48-07:00

last night i received an email from lars hinrichs announcing his new venture hackfwd – a pre-seed investment company designed to enable great people to launch great ideas.

hackfwd is led by the european technology entrepreneur lars hinrichs. the board includes other proven technology and investment entrepreneurs. hackfwd employs and involves top grade professionals in talent management, finance and marketing to serve as guides and support excellence for the individual business ideas.

find out more about their tools and how it works at hackfwd.com

wishing you and your team all the best for your new endeavor!

iphone 4 – this changes everything. again

2010-06-07T11:31:13-07:00

steve jobs just announced the brand new iphone 4, available on june 24, 2010.

find all the details at gizmodo, or the official apple page. pre-order starts june 15, 2010.

new honda ‘impossible dream’ advert by wieden + kennedy

2010-04-26T11:27:15-07:00

(via agencyspy and triad auto specialty)

the living poster for fisch franke

2009-07-23T17:54:14-07:00

what would you do to attract new business to your restaurant? kudos to another clever idea by publicis (for fisch franke restaurant). to create visibility and awareness of their use of fresh fish, the creative team decided to bring the fresh fish tank (usually inside the restaurant) out on the street. this bus shelter poster ad caused quite a stir on the streets of frankfurt, germany, exactly what they had hoped for. the talk of the town – at least for a few days.

(via bitrebels – andrea la valleur)

wavevertising – ambient media

2009-07-21T20:20:51-07:00

i have always been a fan of smart ambient media advertising, creative more unconventional ways of advertising or marketing rolled out in our direct living environment. in this regard i blogged about dogvertising, sandvertising and other ambient media initiatives before.

now i came across a new way of sharing your message with the world based on a new technology developed by japanese scientists – wavevertising.

“scientists at japan’s akishima laboratories have developed a technology that allows programmers to literally ‘write’ messages on the surface of water. its an experimental device, which appeared stateside at the museum of modern art last year, is called amoeba (advanced multiple organized experimental basin) [...] not only is amoeba capable of producing the entire roman alphabet on the water’s surface, it can conjure a number of symbols, too. akishima’s directors hope to sell the device for use in amusement parks and hotels to enhance existing decorative fountain technology.”

when are we going to project messages on the moon’s surface?

(via werbeblogger and brandfreak)

david wilson – moray mclaren – we got time

2009-04-22T15:58:05-07:00

amazing creative talent, low tech animations with praxinoscope and record player, great hand drawn illustrations. the idea, concept and everything has been put together by david wilson for moray mclaren’s music video “we got time”.

here is the making of and more on david wilson’s blog.

overworked and pasty? try computertan.com

2009-02-04T11:35:00-08:00

do you feel tired, overworked and pasty? then you should try this revolutionary new way to keep you looking healthy, young and attractive in the office. computertan provides a free application that converts the electrical impulse of your computer into radiated factor-free uvc rays emitted through your monitor.

log on to computertan.com for your free online tanning session.

you wouldn’t buy our shitty cars

2008-12-10T16:39:27-08:00

“so we’ll be taking your money anyway”

“you probably thought it was smart to buy a foreign import of superior quality, with better mileage and resale value. maybe you even thought that years of market share loss might prod us into rethinking our process and redesigning our products with better quality in mind. but you forgot one thing: we spend a shitload of money on lobbyists. so now you’re out $25 billion, plus the cost of your subaru. maybe next time you’ll buy american like a real man. either way, we’re cool. we’re the big three. we don’t need to compete.”

(via adfreak and you might want to check out lawrence lessig’s rant on bailouts)

where creatives grow best

2008-12-09T11:42:58-08:00

the south west regional development agency (swrda) has launched a viral campaign “the harvest” aimed at attracting new work and staff to the region by raising awareness of the south west’s creative industry credentials. the overall creative concept of the campaign is aimed at highlighting the strength of the creative industries in the south west of england.

“the harvest” has been planned, produced and seeded by bristol-based viral agency rubber republic www.rubberrepublic.com and you can find some more information about the campaign at www.creativejuices.org.uk

nokia n97 launched at nokia world 2008

2008-12-02T11:52:00-08:00

i have been a nokia fan since i got my first mobile phone, the nokia 8110 which became popular as the matrix phone. since then i went through probably 10 other nokia phones until i switched to the iphone, then iphone 3g and android g1 and nokia wasn’t catching up, until last night. nokia just launched the n97 at nokia world 2008 in barcelona.

a very slick and beautiful full touchscreen plus slide-out qwerty keyboard ‘internet phone’.

“the world’s most advanced mobile computer, which will transform the way people connect to the internet and to each other. the nokia n97 introduces the concept of ‘social location’. with integrated a-gps sensors and an electronic compass, the nokia n97 mobile computer intuitively understands where it is. the nokia n97 makes it easy to update social networks automatically with real-time information, giving approved friends the ability to update their ‘status’ and share their ‘social location’ as well as related pictures or videos.”

the symbian s60 os based n97 will be released next year with 32GB of memory at an estimated €550. i like the phone but won’t buy it at this price and i hope that ‘social location’ equals recently acquired location based service plazes.

under the radar – my6sense and soocial

2008-11-14T15:51:00-08:00

i attended the under the radar conference on wednesday, met a lot of friends and made great new connections. i was impressed again by all the innovative ideas and startups presenting their services and products for the first time. i don’t want to go into detail about all of them, you can find some more info at www.undertheradar.com but two of them really stood out for me.

my6sense – bringing sense to your digital life

my6sense ranks content from your different information streams based on what matters to you the most and allows you to interact in one click, it is focused on solving the ‘firehose effect’ of information deluge on mobile handsets.

“the amount of information that flows into our lives daily is growing rapidly. not only that, each information stream includes many pieces of content. the volume of information leads to lack of attention. the situation is getting worse with mobile. with our first consumer product, my6sense, we are aiming to solve a very big problem in a unique way — by presenting consumers information they need most”

“starting with cutting-edge machine learning technology, my6sense found an ingenious way to elicit the relevant variables needed for effective personalization. what is remarkable is that my6sense avoids added burden to the users and dramatically enhances the quality of their experience. the result is a groundbreaking solution for the mobile user.”

you can sign up to become an alpha user at www.my6sense.com / twitter.

soocial – online address book done right

soocial provides a one address book solution to contact management. no matter where you add or change a contact, it will be changed in your other connected devices or web applications. a problem that most of us are facing everyday and soocial is providing a solution for it, hassle-free contacts across different platforms, computers, mobile devices and online address books.

“our philosophy is that there is no good hassle-free solution yet to the contact management problem. we aim to link all currently disconnected address books to each other. a change in one of these address books will result in a change in all your connected devices.”

read more about their approach here, soocial is available at www.soocial.com / twitter.

dialplus won most of the jury and audience votings – “dialplus enriches the standard phone call experience by automatically and simultaneously providing dynamic, contextually relevant visual information about the called or calling party before the call is answered, during the call and after the call is over”. two friends and jajah partner companies announced their new services, iotum with calliflower going mobile and mobivox.

keep it going kristie, avinoam, barak, daniel, stefan and alec, it was great to see you!

mashable’s 2nd annual open web awards

2008-11-06T11:57:00-08:00

mashable just kicked off the 2nd annual open web awards, an international online voting competition that covers major innovations in web technology. through an online nominating and voting process, the open web awards recognizes and honors the top achievements in 26 categories. this year, mashable is partnering with over 100 blog partners and i am one of them. the first open web awards achieved over 250,000 votes combined between mashable and 50 international blog partners.

now it is time for your nomination, the open web awards are now accepting nominations in 26 categories via the widget below. you may nominate a site/company in as many categories as you see fit. however, there is only one nomination per category per e-mail address, so choose wisely.

nominations will be held from november 5th till sunday, november 16th 2008. the voting round will be held from november 19th till december 15th and winners will be announced on december 16th.

if you want to support your favorite service/company, here is how to grab the widget and preset the category and company name.

please find all the info at 2nd annual open web awards

seven days out – please vote on november 4th

2008-10-29T16:59:00-07:00

the upcoming election won’t be decided by tv ads, news cycles, or the polls – it will be decided by you! voting is absolutely crucial, important and every single vote counts! 537 people decided the 2000 election so yes, every vote counts! here is a great customizable viral video that you can send to your friends to make sure they’ll go and vote.

and if you still have the feeling you don’t know enough about barack obama, here is a great 3 dimensional timeline about his life provided by kronomy, with news clips, pictures and a lot of background information. you can share this timeline via www.fight4obama.com

“we’re coming around the turn. america recognizes that at this time in history, with so much at stake, with the economy nose-diving, with two wars and the threat of terrorism, the threat of climate change, we need to do something fundamentally different. and all of you are the shock troops.” – barack obama

only seven days out – so please vote on november 4th!

(via guy kawasaki)

more material: 5 friends, matt damon about palin and the official www.barackobama.com

twidroid – twitter for android mobiles / t-mobile g1

2008-10-27T09:12:00-07:00

good friend and jajah iphone interface designer thomas marban just launched the first twitter client for the t-mobile g1 google android mobile phone called twidroid.

it’s the first twitter app for android mobiles. some of the highlights of twidroid‘s feature set are: fully featured twitter client (postings, replies and direct messages), user detail information, follow/unfollow a user, auto-completion of your contact names, secured operation via ssl, directly integrated photo-posting from cam or disk via phodroid.com, directly integrated search through all public tweets, background notifications for replies and direct messages, auto layout for landscape and portrait mode.

i just installed it on my t-mobile g1 and it works like a charm. i always admired thomas’ taste for great ui design, creative skills and eye for details and this is a great piece of work. so if you twitter and have a g1, go to ‘android market – applications – communication – twidroid’ and get the app, you’ll love it.

(via thomas marban at tombot)

product placement and brand dropping

2008-10-15T17:47:00-07:00

product placement is not a new way in advertising products and services, it has been around for centuries and is known from many movies. we got used to it, just spend enough dollars and james bond will drive a bmw or will smith an audi – cell phones, laptops, furniture, tobacco, deodorant, food, all sorts of consumer electronics, you name it.

now the industry seems to have taken this approach a step further and professionalized ‘brand dropping’ in songs of popular music artists, simply selling elements of their songs to the highest bidder.

“that’s the news from wired who shows how artists are approached by agencies to include brand placements in their songs. and if you check out the opening flash sequence for the kluger agency there’s a couple of product placement jingles that will sound mighty familiar.”

“things have gotten so weird in the music business that high-profile acts are inserting ads into their song lyrics. the next time you hear a brand mentioned in a song, it could be due to a paid product placement. and unlike magazines, songs are not required to point out which words are part of an advertisement.”

i appreciate that artists need to embrace a variety of revenue opportunities to make it today, but selling song lyrics seems to go over the line.

a further spin to the story is how a sales rep of adam kluger of the kluger agency tried to pitch jeff crouse of the anti-advertising agency and double happiness jeans, probably the last people on earth who kluger would want to receive the pitch e-mail, now threatening him with lawyers because he published the story on his blog – the whole story at wired.

(via mandy de waal, jeff crouse and wired)

der spiegel – the price of arrogance

2008-10-02T11:33:00-07:00

two days ago i blogged about the eloquently captured two word cover of the economist describing how we are all feeling about the current state of the financial markets. today i read thomas‘ comment over at basic thinking pointing to the german answer – der spiegel‘s (the mirror) most recent cover – the price of arrogance (der preis der ueberheblichkeit) and i think that this is how many people outside of the united states feel about what the us has gotten themselves into – affecting many others.

(‘ueberheblichkeit’ could also be translated as ‘presumptuousness’)

(via der spiegel)

budurl – shrink your url and get detailed analytics

2008-10-01T12:01:00-07:00

thanks to anya i recently discovered budurl, a great service to measure the power or reach of social networks, email campaigns, blog posts or simply giving you a short url and providing some great detailed metrics about when and from where people clicked on your url (referrer), budurl makes link tracking amazingly simple.

“what kind of power would you have if you could not only shrink a long url, but also add notes and tags along with detailed analytics like you have on your website? detailed statistics is marketing nirvana, but your website statistics only cover your website. what about social networks, emails, print marketing materials, presentations, etc. the list goes on and on! budurl gives you the power to quantify this traffic and make decisions that were once a shot in the dark.”

especially in combination with a service like ping.fm you can measure which of your social networks have any reach and which ones don’t. shorten the link, put it somewhere, watch it grow and measure the results. check it out at budurl.com

the economist – oh fuck!

2008-09-30T18:09:00-07:00

hats off to the uber-intelligent folks at ‘the economist‘ who have, in just two words, so eloquently captured how we are all feeling about the current state of the financial markets.

(via the economist)

thievery corporation – radio retaliation

2008-09-26T18:20:00-07:00

i just downloaded the most recent album of my favorite dj duo – thievery corporation – called radio retaliation via amazon music. i have been to their ‘richest man in babylon‘ tour concert in berlin, germany and was blown away – it’s electronic music, downbeat with elements of dub, reggae, rap, triphop, brazilian, house, indian sounds, lounge-jazz, bossa, global beats and a bit of percussion boldly yet smoothly combined. but simply check it out yourself, this is my 8th thievery album and i’m sure you’ll enjoy it too.

get the new ‘radio retaliation’ album via amazon music or via itunes.

more about thievery corporation and on wikipedia.

(via jeremiah owyang)

google android phone launched – t-mobile htc g1

2008-09-23T13:23:00-07:00

this morning google and t-mobile launched the first android-powered handset manufactured by htc. this largely anticipated device comes with a big touchscreen and a slide-open full keyboard. it’s a 3g phone, wifi enabled, built-in gps, drm-free amazon mp3 music store, android market app store, 1gb storage, copy and paste and a chrome-lite browser. it will be available october 22, 2008 at $179.

i had the chance to play around with it for a while and i have to say it is better than i expected. the touchscreen functionality competes with the apple iphone, design and look and feel are pretty good (despite what i expected from google), the htc device itself is bulkier, thicker and heavier than the iphone but still competes in a market where blackberry’s and sidekicks are popular devices. there are already tons of fun and helpful applications available and based on it’s open google android platform i’m sure there is way more to come. congrats to t-mobile and google, great move.

for more information check out walt mossberg’s first impressions or simply techmeme.

cern powers up its large hadron collider

2008-09-12T19:25:00-07:00

for the weekend, cern’s 27 km large hadron collider explained in a rap.

experiments at cern help us understand the world we live in by the telegraph

(via tom foremski / silicon valley watcher)

ping.fm – update all your life streams from one site

2008-06-26T13:54:00-07:00

a little while back i received an invite for ping.fm from ryan merket, who i worked with before. in short ping.fm is a status update tool that sends your updates to a bunch of your favorite microblogging services like bebo, blogger, facebook, hi5, jaiku, linkedin, livejournal, myspace, pownce, tumblr and twitter and there are more to follow. you publish your update at ping.fm and within seconds all services are updated with your message.

“ping.fm is a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap.”

“ping.fm was created for the sole purpose of making it as easy as possible to share your posts with the world. now you don’t have to fumble around the web in order to post anymore, you can just post once, and be done with it. the idea came about when making some posts to twitter and tumblr. the idea of posting the exact same information in two places seemed a bit tedious, so ping.fm was born.

you can update your status through the ping.fm website or a number of other tools like instant messengers or mobile email/sms, i usually use the iphone interface at ping.fm/iphone/.

this is an extremely handy tool and i love it. if you wanna check it out, just use the invite code “dreamofping” while signing up.

update : ping.fm just redesigned their ui (courtesy of jyoseph and it looks great) and added more services like plaxo pulse, plurk, brightkite, mashable and xanga.

firefox 3 download day – guinness world record

2008-06-17T19:34:00-07:00

a couple of weeks ago rainer invited me to the firefox 3 download day – guinness world record which is taking place today until tomorrow 17:00 utc, june 18, 2008.

“join us in our mission to set a guinness world record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours! set a guinness world record, enjoy a better web. sounds like a good deal, right? all you have to do to help us set the record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours is get firefox 3 now – it’s that easy. we’re not asking you to swallow a sword or to balance 30 spoons on your face, although that would be kind of awesome. please download firefox 3 by 17:00 utc on june 18, 2008. that’s 10:00 a.m. in mountain view, 1:00 p.m. in toronto, 2:00 p.m. in rio de janeiro, 7:00 p.m. in paris, madrid, berlin, rome and warsaw, 9:00 p.m. in moscow, and June 19, 2008 at 1:00 a.m. in beijing and 2:00 a.m. in tokyo.”

i wrote about the incredible customer evangelism around firefox earlier and the spread firefox initiative when it was launched in 2004. firefox 3 download day – guinness world record is part of spreadfirefox.com, an amazing community driven word-of-mouth marketing force spreading the word about the world’s best web-browser.

“welcome to spread firefox. you are our marketing department, a diverse community of people tired of swatting popups, chasing spyware, combatting identity theft and installing security updates you could set your watch to. You have a vision of the 21st century web and are ready to push it to the world, wresting control from a monopoly that has let it stagnate [...] as a small, non-profit organization, the mozilla foundation has very limited resources at its disposal to market firefox to the world. spreadfirefox was created to fill this void, and was founded on the same principles of community involvement that drive the development and testing of firefox. we believe there is nothing that a large community of enthusiastic volunteers can’t accomplish, and this site exists to unite the community into one cohesive marketing force that even competitors with unlimited resources can’t compete with.”

i’m one of these enthusiastic firefox fans and happy to spread the word about the world’s best web-browser, the tool i use the most everyday. so far and within just a couple of hours firefox 3 has already surpassed 2,3 million downloads …

join the firefox 3 download day – guinness world record and enjoy the best firefox yet.

new apple iphone 3g and mobileme

2008-06-09T19:38:00-07:00

this morning steve jobs held his keynote address at the worldwide developers conference in san francisco’s moscone west unveiling the new apple iphone 3g to be available on july 11th 2008 at $199 (with a two-year at&t contract of course).

“apple iphone 3g – twice as fast. half the price.”

some of the new features are: 3g broadband wireless connectivity, built-in gps and a couple of great location-based services like loopt, contact search, full iwork document support, microsoft powerpoint support, bulk delete and move, saving email image attachments, scientific calculator, parental controls (mainly for youtube/itunes), many more languages supported (on the fly switching), plastic back and thinner edges, the new apple appstore and many more. the new iphone 3g is now also more enterprise-ready by supporting microsoft exchange activesync – push email, calendar and contacts – “the power of a laptop into the size of a smartphone” – more … but i’m actually most excited about mobileme, which is “exchange for the rest of us”.

i’m already a sync fanatic, all my phones (including my iphone), my two laptops (mac and pc) and my desktop at home are synced with each other and with multiple online address books through plaxo, but so far it only syncs my contacts, calendar and notes. mobileme takes this two steps further.

“access and manage your email, contacts, calendar, photos, and files at me.com. All with amazing applications that are so feature-rich and easy to use, you may end up preferring them to your regular desktop applications.”

this is not only an even nicer, more structured and more instant contacts, calendar and notes sync, i can even access my picture gallery and idisk from wherever i am, either through my iphone, my macbook pro (pc’s are supported too) and any web-browser through a feature-rich desktop-application-like web interface at me.com. changes on your iphone for instance will will take immediate effect on your computer, you can access the same files, folders, pictures wherever you are.

i love it, i’ll get the new iphone 3g on july 11th and you can watch the whole keynote here.

apple wwdc 2008 steve jobs keynote live

2008-06-09T14:08:00-07:00

i’m following the live wwdc 2008 steve jobs keynote updates via macworld right now and reading

“iphone 2.0 software has three parts to it: enterprise support, the sdk, and some new end-user features. ‘let me start with the enterprise. customers have demanded microsoft exchange, so they’ve built it in out of the box for 2.0 software: push email, push contacts, push calendar, auto-discovery of exchange severes, global address lookup, and remote wipe security feature. all built in to iphone 2.0 software. they’ve added secure vpn services from cisco and other network service demanded by the enterprise market. everything that apple was told enterprise users want, they’ve built in.”

reminded me of a conversation which i had with my brother in law regarding the enterprise capabilities of the iphone and that at that point it wasn’t quite ready for enterprises’ security and exchange requirements. in a later interview with business week’s olga kharif i have been quoted

“if things like this are available, companies will give employees a choice of an iphone vs. the blackberry,” says frederik hermann, director of global marketing at jajah.

so i guess now enterprises will seriously consider to replace the old rubbish blackberries against apple iphones

read on the live notes at macworld.com

there’s a new conversation – the cluetrain manifesto

2008-05-28T18:40:00-07:00

this is just a quick post but maybe you’ll decide to join us tomorrow at there’s a new conversation in palo alto, may 29, 2008 at the sap labs.

“ten years ago, four authors came together to start a new conversation about marketing. the result was a book called the cluetrain manifesto and with it, chris locke, rick levine, doc searls (with whom i coincidentally shared a cab with on our way to the hotel during leweb3 in paris including a great conversation), and david weinberger nailed 95 theses on the door of the internet and challenged us all to wake up to a transformation underway in how companies and people engage in markets. looking back over the past ten years we have learned a lot about what happens when mass markets adopt collaborative online communities and it is time to revisit this vital document that played an important role in starting a new conversation about what it means to be a marketer. what have we learned? what was right and wrong? what was left out that we should have been thinking about? what should we be thinking about for the next ten years?”

here is the schedule for tomorrow 8 am to 8 pm:

8.00 am — registration set-up (dc / vc)
8:30 – 9:30 — continental breakfast
9:30 – 9:45 — intro, ted shelton
9:45 – 10:30 — intro, doc searls
10:30 – 11:00 — find your teams + morning break (same room)
11:00 – 12.00 — deb schultz + breakout
12:00 – 1.00 — lunch & networking (upstairs balcony)
1:00 – 1:45 — thor muller – customer service from the outside-in
1:45 – 2:30– giovanni rodriguez – positioning today
2:30 – 3:00 — breakout + mini-break (same room)
3:00 – 3:45 — andreas weigand – conversational data
3:45 – 4:30 — jeremiah owyang – getting your company conversation-ready
4:30 – 4:50 — breakout
4:50 – 5.30 — peter hirshberg – wrap up / future
5.30 – 5.45 — ted shelton – closing remarks / conversations / open discussion
5:45 – 8.00 pm — reception (upstairs balcony)

here you can find more information about the event, sign up, and the conversation group.

i’m really looking forward to this, meeting friends and joining the conversation.

justice – stress – video clip

2008-05-12T18:30:32-07:00

the french electronic music duo ‘justice‘ just released their music video for their new track ‘stress’. the violent clip is directed by romain gavras and obviously wants to provoke and causes controversy. it reminded me of a movie i saw in montpellier in 1995 called ‘la haine‘ taking place in the banlieue (suburbs) of paris.

(via libération)

goodbye to the normals

2008-04-21T18:01:00-07:00

brilliant! more info at www.goodbyetothenormals.com

sony foam city – miami drenched in foam

2008-03-28T15:37:00-07:00

sony does it again, they are shooting another spectacular advert by drenching downtown miami in millions of litres of foam – sony foam city. sony is well known for it’s massive productions starting with a true masterpiece and my all time favorite the sony bravia bouncy balls ad filmed in san francisco by director nicolai fuglsig and the song ‘heartbeats’ by josé gonzález.

this spot was followed by the sony bravia paint spot in glasgow and the stop-motion play-doh bunnies in new york.

now director simon ratigan of hla has worked with a crew of 150 to demonstrate the capacity of sony hd handycam and cybershot cameras to capture the beauty of bubbles.

200 locals were provided with the cameras and asked to record their foamy frolicking. their footage, along with professional shots, is being combined for a campaign that will be introduced to the public in stages, finally reaching televisions in the uk and europe on 1st may, 2008.

find some more pictures and info at behind the buzz and adland.

(via yasir from immediate future and duncan’s tv ad land)

ziphone – unlock and activate your apple iphone

2008-03-19T12:04:42-07:00

i actually bought the apple iphone the day it came out and signed up regularly for the two year contract during the activation through itunes. but now i had a couple of friends from europe visiting who bought an iphone over here (in the us) and of course wanted to use it with their sim cards from germany, austria or uk. i still thought it’s quite a hassle to unlock, jailbreak and activate your apple iphone, but no! that’s the reason why i quickly wanted to share ziphone with you. a super slick and simple tool you download and install on your mac or windows computer, you press one button and three minutes later you can enjoy your fully functional, activated and free apple iphone – no contract, you can use any sim card anywhere in the world and everything including updates and syncing via itunes works perfectly.

“ziphone – iphone unlock tool by zibri. no computer knowledge required. enables you to activate your iphone on any network. you don’t need to provide any information to att. there is no need to soldering/opening your iphone. you can use it on as many iphones you want, it works with any iphone, any provider and any sim card in the whole world! actually you only need an iphone and a computer (windows/mac).”

you’ll find the tool and more information at download.ziphone.org / www.ziphone.org

word of mouth marketing forum london

2008-01-18T18:04:00-08:00

thanks to the excellent goviral newsletter i found out about the word of mouth marketing forum 2008 conference in london. the topics were how to develop effective and integrated word of mouth strategies, identifying influencers, creating trusted relationships with customers, engaging with communities across networks, word of mouth tools like seeding panels, social networks, blogs, buzz and viral campaigns, learning from contagious stories – why some campaigns get talked about more than others and how to calculate the value and effects of word of mouth marketing.

robin hilton wrote a report on yesterday’s word of mouth marketing forum at the warc wom forum blog. the conference provided a mix of case studies, theories and how to’s, starting with what word-of-mouth marketing is “giving people a reason to talk about your product/service and making it easier for that conversation to take place” (source womma) to wom as a discipline, read more.

a couple of my friends were there like paul marsden and martin oetting but i was hoping to find some more material from this conference online like blog posts, slideshows or video material. hopefully some of the speakers or participants will provide more information for the ones who couldn’t make it there.

(via goviral newsletter)

on another note, check out this article on “common word-of-mouth beats ‘highly-connected’ influencers” from the december 2007 issue of the journal of advertising research.

“we find that trying to track down key influencers, people who have extremely large social networks, is typically unnecessary and, more importantly, can actually limit a campaign or advertisement’s viral potential,” said james coyle. “instead, marketers need to realize that the majority of their audience, not just the well-connected few, is eager and willing to pass along well-designed and relevant messages.”

the study reinforced that consumers respond more to messages that are unique and trusted. in addition, consumers who believe they are capable of performing the advertised behavior are more willing to pass along information to friends and relatives within their social networks. coyle added that this isn’t new. “it’s always been this way. what’s changed is that digital media makes it so easy for everyone to forward messages to contacts within their social networks. for most everyone, digital media just extends a very human desire to help others.”

(via guy kawasaki)

watch for cars when wearing headphones

2008-01-09T11:52:00-08:00

the new south wales police force and ddb sydney have released a print campaign to raise awareness of the fact that teenagers get injured or die as a result of listening to music whilst they cross the road.

(via werbeblogger and advertising/design goodness)

le web 3 ’07 – fourth edition in paris

2007-12-09T00:07:00-08:00

i’m really looking forward to le web 3 ’07 – fourth edition in paris, packing my stuff right now and taking off tomorrow morning. leweb3 conference, talking about the web of the future and the people behind, it’s a great program and amazing audience.

if you are interested in meeting up during the conference, partnering with or integrating jajah, then please don’t hesitate to drop me a note at frederik [at] jajah.com or call me through www.jajah.com/netzkobold or my local number there +33-1-79976374 (courtesy of maxroam).

here comes another bubble

2007-12-04T17:34:20-08:00

and i’m right in the middle where it’s all happening …

(via techcrunch and richter scales)

turkey day – thanksgiving in america

2007-11-21T10:29:00-08:00

tomorrow is my second thanksgiving and i like eddie izzard’s point of view.

“the founding fathers landed in 16…, they set off from plymouth and landed in plymouth, how lucky is that … we can raise our families here, we can practice our religion here, there’s nobody here, a land empty of human existence … who the fuck are these guys [native americans] … no, we don’t want any of your food … meanwhile that winter … excuse me, do you have any food?”

in that manner, happy turkey day …

google. who’s looking at you?

2007-10-22T19:01:00-07:00

i referred to google’s influence on the information age landscape earlier and stumbled over john arlidge’s article in the times online this weekend in my feedreader – good writing and absolutely worth reading.

“in the blissed-out california sunshine, the glistening glass-and- steel curves of the googleplex seem to sweep you up off the pavement with the promise of a glimpse into the future

toom baumarkt commercial – selbstbauidee

2007-10-16T03:03:00-07:00

german toom hardware store just released a new commercial starring a suburb do-it-yourselfer promoting toom’s raffle about do-it-yourself ideas you can send in. the homeowner got annoyed by speeding cars in front of his driveway and built his very own speed bumps …

more information regarding this promotion and the spot here

(thanks to ingo for the hint)

[tags: toom, baumarkt, toom baumarkt, commercial, bumper, selbstbauidee]

sony bravia play-doh ad – rabbits in stop-motion

2007-10-10T16:05:00-07:00

following my most favorite ad – the sony bravia bouncy balls – and their paint ad, here comes the third sony bravia spot – rabbit stop-motion in play-doh.

“the third commercial for bravia is the most ambitious piece of stop-motion animation ever undertaken. devised by fallon and shot over three weeks in new york, the commercial employed over 40 animators from passion and used 2.5 tonnes of plasticine”

worth watching and a great piece of art but i’m still more into the bouncy balls.

(via frederik at advertising/design goodness)

[tags: sony, bravia, commercial, ad, fallon, play-doh, rabbits, stop-motion]

free burma!

2007-10-03T23:14:38-07:00

“international bloggers are preparing an action to support the peaceful revolution in burma. we want to set a sign for freedom and show our sympathy for these people who are fighting their cruel regime without weapons.”

find some more information on www.free-burma.org

(via philipp götzinger, initiated by robert basic and others)

[tags: free burma, burma, petition, peaceful revolution, robert basic]

jajah pushing the button

2007-09-28T07:05:00-07:00

i’ve been with jajah for quite a while now and very happy to be part of this amazing international team. i rarely blog about our own services but we are launching jajah buttons these days and i have to share this with you.

jajah buttons finally realize free and seamless voice communication in online communities and email, it is one-click calling out of e-mails, websites, blogs or any social network profile – the first personal, truly global toll-free click-to-call service.

my friends and family can now call me by simply typing in their phone number into my button at absolutely no cost, i can add the button to my blog or email signature making it easy to stay in touch.

initiating a call through a jajah button is as easy as entering your very own phone number and clicking ‘call’. the buttons are completely customizable (size, color, style) and you can you set the time when you are free to accept phone calls, they are available as a flash widget (see below), click-to-call buttons (see my sidebar) or a simple plain text link like http://www.jajah.com/netzkobold.

as a business it is the quickest, cheapest way to a very own toll-free number and the easiest way for their customers to call them at absolutely no cost to them. this is adding the voice layer on any existing web property out there while protecting your privacy, your phone number will not be revealed.

more information visit www.jajahbuttons.com

[tags: jajah, jajah buttons, flash, widget, web 2.0, voice 2.0, telephony]

cubic telecom eliminates roaming charges

2007-09-18T02:27:00-07:00

today my friends pat phelan and sean o’mahony presented their recent brainchild at the techcrunch40 conference – the maxroam sim card.

“we are an innovative global communications company focused on introducing simple, high quality and high value telecommunications services. our core target market is aggrieved customers across the globe who don’t understand why they can’t get value for money when making international calls and roaming.”

the maxroam sim card virtually eliminating outrageous roaming charges.

“maxroam is our brand new mobile roaming product. if you put a maxroam sim in any standard gsm mobile phone, it will allow you to reduce your mobile phone bill by as much as 80% when you are traveling. our customers can use their mobile phones exactly as they do now. nothing to download, nothing to install, no internet connection required. if you talk to anyone anywhere who has ever traveled with their mobile phone, every single one of them will tell you that the most frustrating thing is to get home and receive an outrageous bill from their mobile operator the next month. if you want to get cheaper rates from your mobile operator, you have to jump through all sorts of hoops. if you are from north america, some of you cannot roam with your mobile phone even if you want to. maxroam is the world’s first truly borderless sim.”

it’s late now and i will give you some more insights on this wicked cool product later on, for now please check out the cubic telecom and maxroam site for further details and pls take a second to vote for my friends.

i put up some pictures on flickr, if you want to meet me there, give me a call.

[tags: cubic telecom, maxroam, roaming, sim, pat phelan, sean o'mahony]

flash version 0.0.0 installed

2007-09-14T20:39:00-07:00

while checking my facebook messages on the apple iphone i clicked on this link from roland over at the werbeblogger.

“the current version of the flash plugin is too old. you currently have version 0.0.0 but you need at least 9.0.0 to view this plugin. we suggest that you upgrade flash to the latest version. to upgrade please click here“

ha, flash version 0.0.0 installed!? whatever … have a great weekend.

[tags: apple, iphone, adobe, flash, version, flash 0.0.0, plugin, werbeblogger]

apple iphone launch in germany november 12th

2007-09-09T17:53:00-07:00

don sent me the link to this article at electronista stating the apple iphone launch in germany for november 12th 2007 and revealing some more details.

“apple may launch its iphone campaign in europe with a 3g-capable iphone with enhanced storage, according to what appears to be a leaked ad from t-mobile germany. the ad promises a version of the handset with support for 3g-level cellular internet [...] it also suggests that the device will carry 16gb of memory, representing the first storage upgrade to the device since its us launch in june 2007. visual voicemail and the 2-megapixel camera would remain the same as for the us version [...] t-mobile itself hasn’t officially confirmed its selection as germany’s exclusive carrier but has already been caught preparing support materials for the iphone, in one case hosting images for the product on its own website.”

“t-mobile’s reported ad would also be the first to commit to a definitive release date for the iphone outside of the us, slating the handset for a release with the carrier on november 12th 2007. apple has already promised a fourth-quarter release for the iphone in europe but has yet to formally announce a timetable for the launch. the california firm is expected to accompany the german introduction with an o2 version in the uk and an orange version for france.

i still think this might be a hoax, but you never know …

(via macbidouille and electronista)

[tags: apple, iphone, t-mobile, germany, europe, launch, november 12th]

spotting key players in online communities

2007-09-09T17:28:00-07:00

the new scientist tech reports that researchers at cornell university, new york, and microsoft research in washington state have developed a software that identifies the most informative people in an online community, based on their posting patterns.

“the researchers worked out how to spot key players within discussions by analysing the connections between thousands of messages on several topics. the work could help website designers automatically reward, or highlight, the most valuable members of a community, or improve methods for searching through a conversation for the most relevant information [...] “you have a socially recognised role of some people as experts in some way in a community,” says howard welser, a sociologist at cornell university, who led the work. “that role was what we were trying to measure. the indicators we found had to do with the structure of their interaction with others.” [...] scott golder, at the information dynamics lab at hp labs in palo alto, california, says the work shows how people take on roles in an online environment, and how those roles influence the nature of the community they take part in.”

journal reference: journal of social structure

(via kurt kleiner at new scientist tech)

[tags: social networks, social network analysis, social software, key players]

plaxo launching online identity consolidator

2007-08-30T01:22:06-07:00

plaxo, known for keeping all your address books in sync and up-to-date, recently relaunching their whole service and adding plaxo pulse now releases an online identity consolidator based on microformats, aggregating all your social network info in one place.

robert scoble interviewed chief platform architect joseph smarr yesterday.

find all the details on opensocialgraph.plaxo.com

(via scobleizer and joseph smarr)

[tags: plaxo, online identity consolidator, open social graph, scoble, smarr]

smirnoff tea partay – west coast sequel

2007-08-29T18:18:00-07:00

a year ago i blogged about the first smirnoff tea partay clip, some dorky east coast guys doing a skit on rap videos. now smirnoff launched the official sequel from the west coast.

doubting the success of such clips last year here are the stats from 8/29/2007:

smirnoff tea partay east coast – published august 02, 2006 – 3,504,506 views

smirnoff tea partay west coast – published august 02, 2007 – 3,214,484 views

impressive numbers, especially as the second clip is online for 27 days only and has already surpassed the 3,2 million mark. both clips are promoting the smirnoff raw tea line and i gotta say that i liked watching both of them.

(via buzz-people)

[tags: smirnoff, tea partay, west coast, raw tea, viral marketing, word-of-mouth]

facebook’s ceo mark zuckerberg

2007-08-21T12:27:00-07:00

after opening up facebook for third party applications, facebook is riding the next hype wave. here is the onion’s point of view:

the smug little shit behind the latest internet phenomenon.

check out facebook for the apple iphone too, nicely done.

(via the onion magazine)

[tags: facebook, mark zuckerberg, onion, the onion, weekender, satire]

may the virus be with you

2007-08-21T12:00:18-07:00

really funny star wars / viral marketing spoof (in german dialect – swabian).

just hilarious, thanks patrick!

(via jvm > off the record > werbeblogger)

[tags: star wars, viral marketing, swabian, death star, darth vader, schwäbisch]

apple iphone activation without contract

2007-07-26T01:31:00-07:00

the apple iphone is a beautiful device, revolutionizing the space of mobile phones but there is one major downside, apple/at&t is forcing you into a pretty expensive two year contract to even activate the iphone. when bought you can not use the iphone until you activate it via itunes by choosing one of there three two year contract plans ($60, $80 or $100 per month plus tax).

this is how to activate/unlock the apple iphone using a gophone® pay as you go (prepaid) plan without being stuck in a two year contract. the simple trick is failing the credit check, only when you fail the credit check at&t offers you the pay as you go plans. anybody can do this in some easy steps and it doesn’t require any hacking/command line skills.

the difference: $51 pay as you go instead of $2400 in a two year contract.

1. connect the iphone via the data cable to your computer (pc or mac).

2. click on “activate one iphone now.” in your recent version of itunes.

3. click ‘continue’ if you don’t want to transfer an existing number.

4. select any plan (it doesn’t have any effect).

5. create an apple id.

6. the most important step: fill in the form with some fake data, it really doesn’t matter what you fill in here, when enrolling the pay as you go plan you will be asked for your real data again. use 141-11-1111 or 999-99-9999 as your social security number. use any existing address. you have to use a valid credit card otherwise you don’t get further but based on the data and wrong ssn you will fail the credit check anyways. no worries.

7. accept apple’s terms and conditions.

8. accept at&t’s service agreement. you will not be charged and you won’t be stuck in a two year contract but you have to accept the terms on this screen (you can cancel the agreement within 30 days but that won’t be necessary).

9. review your information and submit it.

10. yeah, you failed the credit check, on the next screen at&t will provide you the ability to choose a gophone® pay as you go (prepaid) plan.

11. after choosing a pay as you go (prepaid) plan you will be redirected to the at&t webpage and asked to type in your real data and address. you have to make an initial fund into your prepaid account. after going through this process you will be redirected back to itunes where it shows your new number and pin.

12. enjoy your apple iphone with a prepay plan without being stuck in a contract.

(call at&t at 611 to make sure that there are no automated monthly payments set)

these activation steps are necessary to even make any use of the apple iphone, but this is probably the easiest and cheapest way to do it right now. in the us you can use it like any other phone and just fund your account whenever needed. travellers can take the iphone anywhere they want and use it as a wifi internet device and ipod anywhere in the world until it is hacked for using any sim card. i did this with three iphones taking them to europe and it worked fine every time.

view the whole flow as a slideshow on flickr.

(inspired by eric sadun)

update – march 19. 2008: forget about all of this and check out ziphone, a simple tool to unlock and activate your iphone in 3 minutes.

[tags: apple, iphone, att, activation, gophone, pay as you go, prepaid, plan]

the internet crash of 2007

2007-07-24T05:47:00-07:00

as you may know, the entire internet has crashed …

all data has been lost, no backup of the internet, blogosphere desperate.

(thanks markus, via lifehacker)

[tags: internet, crash, 2007, fatal error, blogosphere, onion, lifehacker]

carlsberg and mentos

2007-07-22T18:58:00-07:00

i guess everybody knows by now what happens when putting together mentos and diet coke/pepsi. this is a new carlsberg viral ad adaption of it …

“you don’t put sweets in carlsberg”

and the duracell bunny is having more fun now.

(via buzz-people)

wwf charity event by lydia holdsworth and lucy keller

2007-07-13T11:47:32-07:00

i had a great evening yesterday. i was in half moon bay to join a charity event, hosted by lydia holdsworth and her daughter lucy keller, for the world wildlife fund. it was a huge get-together for people from the valley and I met some folks I haven’t seen for a long time (yes, jerry, you’re one of them although i forgot to give you my new mobile number).

the event was part of the larger “safe the whales” campaign of the wwf and the setting really couldn’t have been better: a wonderful beach villa owned by mrs. holdsworth, former-wife of a us ambassador. the picture shows jerry and lucy keller, who was responsible for the event-management. thanks lucy, it was an awesome night and it was nice talking to you.

let’s come together

2007-07-03T10:22:00-07:00

i don’t find the time these days to keep up to speed with what’s going in the viral, buzz and word of mouth marketing sphere. i discovered some nice blogable content during my recent trip to latvia and germany but that’s gotta follow post by post. talking about the european union – i recently found out about the eu youtube profile.

“welcome to the youtube space of the european commission. find out more about a europe of action and results.

the profile contains all sorts of educational clips in and around the european commission/union. a couple of them deal with european films and one of the category “sex sells” is recently creating some buzz and traffic.

“millions of cinema lovers enjoy european films … every year“

fortunately the werbeblogger (now in a new layout) always keeps me up-to-date writing about the amnesty international spots with the message “your petitions are more powerful than you think” and the award winner “your signature is more powerful than you think“.

the wieden & kennedy making of clip of the coke happiness factory spot and an egyptian mcdonalds commercial copying an earlier dr pepper commercial. and i found a report on a rather innovative approach to avoid speeding – the speed control bikini bandits in denmark.

there are also two new entries in my blogroll, buzz-people and frau b. surft.

shave everywhere – philips bodygroom

2007-05-31T19:18:03-07:00

bernd just pointed me to a viral microsite philips recently launched, it’s called www.shaveeverywhere.com encouraging men that it is ok “to shave everywhere”.

“the philips norelco bodygroom is the all-in-one grooming solution, exclusively for men, that safely trims and shaves all body zones. with the bodygroom, men can trim and shave hair from their chest & abs, underarms, groin area, legs, back and shoulders.”

i guess this is usually some kind of hushed up topic now brought to the table in a more funny viral microsite, a guy describing the enormous benefits of the philips bodygroom. don’t miss to click on the main menu in the lower left corner, to watch the “optical inch”, the “testimonials” and the “test drive”.

go to www.shaveeverywhere.com or www.rasierdichwoduwillst.de (in german).

update – june 1. 2007: the campaign even comes with a bodygroom music video.

in 2005 philips also launched quintippio – the new 15 blade mega shave.

plus a quick round-up of stuff i would otherwise miss out to mention, absolut protest – in an absolut world, elave – nothing to hide, burger king ad in new zealand, nike momentum, axe essence beach showercam, axe bom chicka wah wah and even more axe ads and microsites at the axe ads blog.

(round-up via werbeblogger)

[tags: philips, norelco, bodygroom, shave, quintippio, viral marketing]

sputtr – my new home page

2007-05-26T17:36:00-07:00

i recently came across sputtr and just made it my new home page in all my browsers – the page i start all my searches from now on. sputtr is a neat new universal search engine, a collection of all your favorite search engines and social sites that are out there, just type in what you are searching for and then click the icon where to look.

“sputtr is a refreshingly clean way to search the things that matter the most. now you can save valuable time by having all the right searches on just one page! it’s simple – real simple. it’s fast – faster than most others out there. it’s a collection of all your favorite search engines – all on just one page! it’s pretty.”

the different language versions even contain different search engines, the german sputtr page for instance includes the master of all bookmarks mister wong and you can always suggest more.

make it your home page – www.sputtr.com

(via orli yakuel at go2web2)

[tags: sputtr, sputtr.com, homepage, home page, search engine, go2web2]

call gilles – brandbase brand activation

2007-05-23T20:01:00-07:00

etienne from brandbase netherlands recently dropped me a note pointing me to www.bellenmetgilles.nl which more or less means “call the guy called gilles”. you don’t have to speak dutch to get this fun viral microsite where gilles is pretty bored waiting for you to call – just dial the number shown on the website and wait what happens (if you are calling internationally just dial +31-208-801026).

brandbase also features a website collecting viral marketing cases, articles, links and explaining their approach of brand activation at www.brandactivation.nl

thanks etienne for the email and link tip.

[tags: brandbase, brand activation, bellen met gilles, viral, viral marketing]

jpg magazine – made by you

2007-05-17T20:07:00-07:00

in april this year i met heather powazek champ at web2open, she mainly takes care of the flickr user community and while visiting her website i found out about the jpg magazine.

“jpg magazine is made by you! jpg magazine is for people who love imagemaking without attitude. it’s about the kind of photography you get when you love the moment more than the camera. it’s for photographers who, like us, have found themselves online, sharing their work, and would like to see that work in print.

jpg is a magazine. it’s published 6 times a year and distributed nationally. everything in the magazine comes from you!

jpg is a website. here any photographer can join and upload photos and stories to their member page. you can also submit your work for consideration in the magazine.

jpg is a community. jpg exists because of, and exclusively for, photographers like you. without you, we’re nothing.”

this is how it works – you submit your photos at www.jpgmag.com, the community votes on each photo and story, editors create the issue with the best of the best and the final result is the bi-monthly beautiful print jpg magazine packed with consumer generated amazing photography and stories.

i just love the idea, it’s a great concept with a beautiful result every two months with contributions from all over the world.

find out more and how it works, join the community and i happily subscribed for the jpg print magazine. i received my first issue yesterday and it’s amazing! i’m a fan now and wanted to tell you about it.

[tags: jpg, jpgmag, jpg magazine, phography, photos, art, heather champ]

joost beta – invites available

2007-05-03T12:27:00-07:00

with big thanks to kosmar i’m part of the joost beta testing phase right now.

“joost is a new way of watching tv on the internet. with joost, you get all the things you love about tv, including a high-quality full-screen picture, hundreds of full-length shows and easy channel-flipping. you get great internet features too, such as search, chat and instant messaging, built right into the program – so you find shows quickly and talk to your friends while you watch. and with no schedules to worry about, you can watch whatever you want, whenever you like – as often as you want. joost is completely free, and works with most modern pcs and intel mac-based computers with a broadband connection. get joost today!”

i was playing around with it for a little while and i have to say that i am impressed, it’s fullscreen free television on your computer, great quality and a wide range of channels and programs to choose from (screenshots on flickr).

joost is in beta right now and you need an invitation to try it out. i still have a couple of invites left, so if you want to participate, just drop me an email at ‘netzkobold [at] gmail [dot] com’ with the subject ‘joost invite’.

more information at www.joost.com, wikipedia, commercial, screenshots.

update – may 23. 2007: dear readers, the feedback to this post/joost is overwhelming, i sent out 243 invites based on your requests. yesterday i found a maybe more immediate source to get a joost beta invitation, gigaom provides joost invites via a simple web form, thanks om! if this doesn’t work out you can of course still drop me note via comment or email.

[tags: joost, tv, television, peer-to-peer, p2p, joost beta, invite, zennström]

maxthon – the browser that rocks

2007-05-01T18:36:00-07:00

i spend more than 90% of my time at work using a web browser, means that i really care about what browser fulfills all my needs of tabbed browsing, restoring sessions, mouse gestures, saving data, blocking ads, bookmarking, providing certain information on websites and so on. i switched between netscape, internet explorer, firefox, flock, opera, mozilla and recently came across a nice article about maxthon on techcrunch by ouriel ohayon.

“the big difference with other browsers is that maxthon is based on internet explorer code which makes the software very familiar from the beginning but with a few twists. unlike ie, it is very fast, safe and very stable and brings a unique browsing experience as it enables you to customize nearly any part of the software. like firefox, maxthon brings tabbed browsing, embedded RSS and podcast reader, search bar … but without necessity to add any extension. the key strength of maxthon is that it enables you to totally customize your browsing experience with extreme simplicity.”

after stumbling over maxthon on linkedin i met maxthon partner and svp netanel jacobsson in palo alto last week. net is a great guy with passion, a vision and an amazing team of engineers to make a meaning in the world of web browsers. thanks net, it was great meeting you!

so start your new browsing experience and give maxthon a try, you’ll love it!

[tags: maxthon, browser, tabbed browser, internet explorer, ie, firefox, flock]

bmw p.a.c.e – pursuit across europe

2007-05-01T16:38:00-07:00

bbdo germany and bmw recently launched an online game called “bmw p.a.c.e“.

“bmw starts a race. p.a.c.e, the ‘pursuit across europe’ is an exciting mixture of action and adventure, where users can explore new bmw technology like brake energy regeneration or electric power steering. the race takes place between lisbon and prague. highlights are the hightech flash engine and the fascinating look, realized in cooperation with interone worldwide hamburg.”

the viral microsite has a beautiful look and feel and is supposed to support some of bmw new technologies in a fun environment to create brand awareness and image building among a younger crowd.

congratulations to the team, especially the illustration by dirk hoffmann and the 3d realisation by electric umbrella. you’ll find the game at www.bmw-pace.com.

[tags: bmw, bbdo, p.a.c.e, pursuit across europe, game, viral marketing]

wir sind kurz ausgeflogen!

2007-04-26T13:17:00-07:00

guerilla marketing campaign for charter flight airline condor, it’s german and it’s a play on words so it doesn’t translate very well, something like “we love flies”.

flickr pics and more at www.wirliebenfliegen.com

(thanks for the hint philipp)

[tags: condor, wirliebenfliegen.com, fliegenpreise, ad, guerilla marketing]

plazes – adding physical presence to the web

2007-04-25T17:33:00-07:00

i joined plazes exactly 679 days ago and recently met plazes co-founder felix petersen and new managing director stephanie staar in mountain view, california. a great team and they have big plans for the future.

“plazes adds physical presence to the web. the plazes website automatically detects your location and connects you to people and places nearby. see people in your area, discover other locations and follow the whereabouts of your friends. locations within plazes are not just global coordinates they carry significance to you and your friends. you can name locations like “home” or “my office”. represent your locations by how you relate to them and discover other significant locations. relate to other locations by adding pictures, comments, and reviews. plazes can also be told to remember the locations you visit so you can review your travels.”

the team recently launched plazes sms which let’s you sign-up, invite friends, check-in at a plaze or find plazes and friends nearby via your cell phone – it’s a no-frills full-blown mobile access channel to plazes.

to sign up via your cell phone simply send “join” followed by your desired “username” and “password” as a text message to +17184079566 (in the united states) or +4917688811133 (in germany), more countries are going to follow.

know where your friends are, discover new wifi hotspots or just cool plazes nearby and make new friends, add your physical presence to the web and join plazes. find out more in the faq section, watch the screencast, visit the flickr profile or stay tuned at the plazes blog.

[tags: plazes, plazes sms, felix petersen, stephanie staar, physical presence]

mabber wanted

2007-04-23T18:36:00-07:00

nico lumma from mabber lost 15 mabber in the blogosphere, help him find the little guys and win a sony ericsson k310i cell phone.

mabber is a web and mobile based all-in-one instant messaging system. the little 5×5 pixel characters with its orange antennas are hiding in 15 different blogs, find and report them here. clicking the “wanted” poster above might be a good start and maybe you can find one over here as well …

(via mabber blog)

[tags: mabber, nico lumma, instant messaging, sony ericsson, meebo, trillian]

web2open, web2expo and webmonday

2007-04-17T13:01:00-07:00

i’m attending some neat web 2.0 events in the city these days (that’s how they call san francisco in the bay area). first and foremost the web2open.

“the web 2.open was conceived with foocamp/barcamp in mind. this open event blends some pre-scheduled content with an open grid where the attendees fill in the sessions they either want to discuss or present themselves. it is the perfect space to provide the community at large with a place to connect with other attendees, learn more about elements of web 2.0, and share one’s knowledge and experiences.”

i uploaded some photos from yesterdays web2open community roundtable, met great people and i’m really looking forward to the next couple of days. i don’t find the time to write much more right now but there is definitely more to come.

join us at web2open and check out web 2.0 expo and web monday.

[tags: web2open, web2expo, web 2.0, webmontag, community roundtable]

candy – the girl power shopping issue

2007-04-13T17:02:34-07:00

if you are interested in culture, design, arts, photography, lifestyle, artists and their works then check out the recent issue of candy* – a bi-monthly, independently produced digital magazine made in ireland.

the most arty and beautiful digital magazine out there. you can subscribe for it at www.candyculture.net and check out the past issues, it’s worth the download.

(via werbewunderland)

[tags: candy, candyculture, digital magazine, culture, photography, art, design]

brother – colours that stay longer

2007-04-11T19:54:00-07:00

duval guillaume antwerp have created another nice piece of creative for brother’s inobella printing technology – colors that stay longer.

(via adarena)

[tags: brother, inobella, colours that stay longer, clip, commercial, adarena]

rent a wife

2007-04-09T16:59:00-07:00

still not sure about getting serious and making this “forever” decision? just rent a wife! here is how it works: create your wishlist, choose from different plans and receive her within 24h by mail, keep her as long as you want and exchange her when you are up for a new one – that’s rent a wife.

does this sound familiar? maybe that’s why, viral marketing campaign for belgian dvdpost.be. btw, rent a wife is available in french and dutch only.

don’t miss out on the corresponding clip on youtube.

(via loic le meur or actually twitter)

[tags: rent a wife, dvdpost, netflix, blockbuster, loic le meur, viral marketing]

my first viral clip – birdie nam nam

2007-04-06T20:40:00-07:00

i recently thought about my first “viral clip”, made a quick google search and actually found it – very exciting! it was back in 1988 or so when a clip called “birdie nam nam” spread through our little amiga community, nothing special actually, three chicks rapping, not longer than 30 seconds, but at that time it was cool, sticky, funny and we loved it. does anybody remember this one?

and speaking of nostalgia, i told my new friends in the states about my favorite television series when i was a kid/teenager, unfortunately they didn’t know that many of them, maybe because they just made it a little later to germany or i’m just too old, stuff like riptide (ein trio mit vier fäusten), simon & simon, remington steele, the bill cosby show, the fall guy (ein colt für alle fälle), knight rider, airwolf, hulk, the gummi bears, the a-team, alf, 21 jump street, the tijuana toads (sancho & pancho), the wonder years (wunderbare jahre) and my all time favorite lucky luke (but i’m more into the comics, got all of them), plus a couple of german ones.

anyhow, good times … have a great easter weekend and tell me what did you watch when you were young?

[tags: birdie nam nam, budbrain, birdie, amiga, television series, 70s, 80s]

calvin klein goes bullshit marketing

2007-04-06T17:17:00-07:00

german pr agency dkd goes bullshit marketing for calvin klein and pisses off the german blogosphere – client coty prestige lancaster group.

five fake bloggers tried to infiltrate the german blogosphere with comments in popular weblogs, linking to their fake blogs and myspace profiles. the intention was to promote a new perfume by calvin klein. it fired back and the blogosphere is pissed, feels misused for dishonest marketing purposes. and to say it in the words of thomas zorbach, vm-people – this is bullshit marketing:

“the term bullshit marketing summarizes methods where customers are not treated as empowered, smart and connected individuals, but as a dumb mass of idiots.”

sorry dkd/coty, what were you thinking? here comes the bill.

(via spiegel online, netzwelt, basic thinking and all the details at wortfeld)

[tags: dkd, calvin klein, coty, technosexual, in2u, bullshit marketing]

google voice local search

2007-04-06T15:03:16-07:00

speaking of which google launches another free service called “google voice local search“. to try this service, just dial 1-800-goog-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone (in the us).

“it is an experiment on google labs that offers free 411-like service. with google voice local search, you get fully-automated, fast access to same local-business information you would find on google.com. but you can access it from any phone, anywhere, at anytime.”

by calling the above number you can search for a local business by name or category (you can say “giovanni’s pizzeria” or just “pizza”), get connected to the business, free of charge or get the details by sms if you’re using a mobile phone (just say “text message”).

google voice local search / faq

(via twitter/steve rubel, mashable and gigaom)

[tags: google, google voice local search, google voice, local search, 411]

who’s afraid of google?

2007-04-06T12:40:00-07:00

i wrote about epic and the autocrat google before and it’s businessweek’s cover story this week asking “is google too powerful?“.

“here it is only 2007, and already epic 2014′s picture of an online landscape dominated by one ravenous, all-knowing corporation looks to many people like — well, a lot like google. all by itself. that simple little search box we all use every day? as the place nearly 400 million people each month start on the internet, it’s the no. 1 gateway to the net’s vast commercial potential. with more data on what people are searching for, google can serve up the most targeted and relevant advertisements alongside the results, drawing more clicks, more cash, more users — you get the idea.”

“let’s face it, there’s a certain hysteria about google, a presumption of unlimited power.”

rob’s story examines the deeper meaning behind complaints about google’s power and influence online. worth reading.

businessweek cover story “is google too powerful?” by robert d. hof

watch the slideshow “the many faces of google” illustrated by sam weber / flickr

(via tomatic and rob hof)

[tags: google, epic, artificial intelligence, businessweek, rob hof, sam weber]

adidas loves competition

2007-03-20T16:29:00-07:00

a great print campaign by adidas – straight forward, authentic, simple and self-confident. it clearly draws attention to the fact that consumers are a lot smarter than when it comes to decide a company.

credits: adidas love competition, school – willem de kooning academie, art director – yona h

youtube 2006 video awards

2007-03-20T15:03:00-07:00

youtube launched the “youtube 2006 video awards” yesterday – a late attempt to honor the best-user generated videos of 2006.

“2006 was a pioneering year for online video, user-created content and the youtube community. you let us into your bedrooms, created new forms of entertainment, and radicalized popular culture. now it’s time to reflect on what a tremendous year it was and recognize the best of the best during the first youtube video awards.

you are able to vote in seven different categories: most creative, most inspirational, best series, best comedy video, best music video, best commentary and most adorable video. voting will take place from monday to friday. the winners will be announced on march 25th 2007, and trophies will be awarded.

maybe i’m not enough youtube addicted but i found only one of my favorites in there yet, it’s “where the hell is matt?“, have a look and give your votes …

(via the hubbub* and mashable)

[tags: youtube, video, awards, youtube video awards, clips, hubbub, mashable]

superman’s elevator pitch

2007-03-14T17:55:00-07:00

jwt brazil recently launched a new ambient media/guerrilla marketing campaign for superman returns in são paulo – i would call it an “elevator pitch“.

credits: agency – jwt brazil, creative director – ricardo chester and roberto fernandes, art director – silvio medeiros, copywriter – thiago carvalho

[tags: superman, elevator pitch, ambient media, jwt brazil, silvio medeiros]

wtm – world trend monitor

2007-03-13T11:46:00-07:00

webguerillas recently launched a new service called “world trend monitor“. the wtm is supposed to filter relevant trends for you – a radar for current trends all over the world if you don’t find the time to dig through numerous resources by yourself.

“the world trend monitor (wtm) is a information service that bundles the worldwide most important trends in the categories marketing, fashion and shopping in a monthly trend monitor. trend scouts are spread all over the world to feed the wtm by screening thousands of exclusive sources – offline and online. the trends are found where they first appear at the very front of the news chain. a subscription model of the world trend monitor varies in the categories fashion, marketing and shopping and is available as print versions, pdf documents or as online trend-archive.”

an english version of the site isn’t available yet, but will be available soon. i tried the free marketing trend monitor (see pdf download in the abo section) and i like this news source for new trends, visit www.worldtrendmonitor.com for more information.

more trend sources: trnd, springwise, trendhunter and trendwatching.

(via brainwash)

[tags: worldtrendmonitor, world trend monitor, wtm, trend, trends, webguerillas]

how to sell soap

2007-03-13T03:12:00-07:00

a couple of weeks ago i posted the clip about the viral learning center on how to create viral videos. here is an entertaining and simple way how to explain viral and word of mouth marketing – or better “how to sell soap”.

great work amos, love it!

(via vm-people)

[tags: viral marketing, vm-people, thomas zorbach, wom, word-of-mouth]

praschls geheimblog

2007-03-09T13:22:57-08:00

bloggers like to play games and the blogosphere is a perfect playground including a worldwide audience. there are blog memes and alternate reality games for instance. a couple of minutes ago i stumbled over “praschls geheimblog” at treehuggin’ pussy and don’t even know what this is and if it’s just a single joke or something bigger taking off … the openebiz blog is the only other hit at google’s blogsearch.

a google search for “praschls geheimblog” is also not that successful – we will see where it goes, i’ll keep an eye on it within the next couple of days …

(via malte at treehuggin’ pussy)

update: felix schwenzel von wirres.net kicks in (thanks robert)

[tags: praschl, geheimblog, praschls geheimblog, alternate reality game]

blush dessous – light my fire

2007-03-01T18:48:17-08:00

bbdo keeps on releasing nice campaigns for blush dessous berlin.

“the latest thing from bbdo berlin for blush: matches with a striking strip right on the panty. it just feels great to light your fire.”

see also the getting undressed and blechschaden ads for blush.

(via adverbox)

[tags: blush, dessous, berlin, advertising, bbdo, streichholz, matches]

hello – first apple iphone commercial

2007-03-01T15:11:57-08:00

the first apple iphone commercial aired on the oscars last week.

a sweet ad showing 28 scenes from cult movie actors saying “hello” on the phone followed by the image of the device, finishing with the text “coming in june”. they don’t even have to name the product because everybody just knows, apple-like, simple, ingenious.

watch the first apple iphone commercial “hello” on youtube or the apple website.

(via the r.c. shortcast)

[tags: apple, iphone, phone, commercial, ipod, itunes, mac, telephony]

web 2.0 explained by michael wesch

2007-02-19T15:59:58-08:00

björn thought he might be the last one blogging about this, but obviously he is not. this nice video explaining the web 2.0 slipped under my radar too.

this clip is actually michael wesch’s video response to this web 2.0 video. michael wesch is an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at kansas state university and recently gave an interview at john battelle’s searchblog.

michael wesch “web 2.0 … the machine is us/ing us”

also worth watching: epic, identity 2.0 and dance, monkeys, dance.

(via björn’s all new alles gut? blog and robert scoble)

[tags: web 2.0, michael wesch, cultural anthropology, digital ethnography]

google adsense – isn’t it ironic

2007-02-14T02:38:37-08:00

today i found this google adsense ad on my own blog (see on the right) … isn’t it ironic, don’t you think.

pretty much one and a half years ago i decided to add some google adsense ads to my blog to test if this is generating any money. result: it doesn’t – see my january earnings below.

i took part in robert basic’s survey and it seems that some bloggers are actually making money with their blog, but most of them, especially when the ads aren’t placed all around every blogpost, they do not. i don’t really care, i was just testing it, but the above ad in my own blog was just – ironic.

[tags: google, adsense, adwords, google adsense, advertising, targeted, ads]

cws commercial – say no to dirt

2007-02-08T07:30:00-08:00

at vm-people we were discussing if you can do viral marketing for nearly every product, even for more “boring” products or services which don’t come with a sticky viral message or adjective by itself – being extremely innovative, exciting, enormous, beautiful or extraordinary like the apple iphone for instance.

the bottom line – yes you can, given the fact that it is still a “good” product or service, bringing a benefit/making a meaning to the world and not something completely wasting your time. it’s surely harder though compared to an exciting product by itself but truly possible.

vm-people did a great job setting up the fischer fixing blog providing background information and insights working with professional bonded anchors like the fhb II and connecting opinion leaders in this area of expertise.

another great example of creating buzz about a rather white-bread product like a self-cleaning toilet is the new cws commercial “say no to dirt“.

complete washroom solutions launched a nice viral spot starring milla jovovich, giving cws a fresher and younger image and definitely rising awareness.

(via werbeblogger, song: benny benassi “satisfaction”)

[tags: cws, complete washroom solutions, say no to dirt, viral marketing]

eddie izzard – just hilarious

2007-01-18T15:25:40-08:00

i’m sorry and this may offend some fans but i never heard of this guy before my fiancée told me about him some days ago. i’m talking about eddie izzard a british cross-dressing stand-up comedian and actor who describes himself as an “executive transvestite” (see wikipedia entry).

i love his kind of humor, he is just f… hilarious, gotta watch him!

you’ll find some of his skits on youtube and google video.

more info: wikipedia entry, official website, a fan site

[tags: eddie izzard, eddie, izzard, british, cross-dressing, stand-up, comedian]

1&1 email server down

2007-01-17T07:43:00-08:00

after gmail has lost tons of user emails german service provider 1&1 seems to have serious problems now.

i was quite a fan of 1&1, having 23 domains and tons of emails hosted there, but since noon (january 17. 2007, pst) my imap account started to make problems and went completely down afterwards – my main imap inbox (more than 8000 emails) is gone now and their webmail is down as well.

while searching for help i found out that they shut down the email support completely and when calling their helpline (fortunately 24 hour support) a women’s voice said that they are aware of a problem regarding emails and they are working on it.

hope it will be fixed soon, i’m/they are screwed when all these mails are lost. seems that we all have to go back to pop3 to keep several local backups.

update – january 17. 2007, 19:07: email is back up again and i’m very happy about it!
and obviously i missed to read the werbeblogger within the last two days …

update – january 18. 2007, 14:03: i can access my mails via imap again but the server times out all the time, so it’s still pretty crappy and isn’t fun to work with. they gotta improve that or i have to switch to a new provider.

[tags: 1&1, 1und1, 1and1, bug, email, webmail, downtime, server down]

snap preview anywhere

2007-01-12T15:16:48-08:00

you might have noticed that many blogs, including mine, got these nice mouse-over previews when hovering your mouse over any link – it’s a service called snap.

“snap preview anywhere enables anyone visiting your site or blog to get a glimpse of what other sites you’re linking to, without having to leave your site. by rolling over any link, the user gets a visual preview of the site without having to go there, thus eliminating wasted “trips” to linked sites.”

the california based snap started about two months ago launching snap preview anywhere. in just 8 weeks, over 30,000 sites worldwide have already integrated snap into their sites and over 70,000,000 previews have been generated. they also just nailed a deal with wordpress literally putting their preview tool to 600,000 blogs and surely more to follow.

the integration is a no-brainer, generate a tiny code snippet, put it on your blog or website and enjoy the little website previews, it is very helpful in deciding if you want to click through or not. it takes no longer than three minutes to set up and you can even customize it later on if you want to – turning on previews on internal links, turning off previews on specific links or setting the hover delay time for showing the preview.

> get the snippet and link previews for your site here

also check out: visual snap web search and the snap image search

[tags: snap, snap preview, snap preview anywhere, spa, preview, wordpress]

revver pays off

2007-01-10T12:09:08-08:00

some time ago i wrote about the video sharing portal revver. revver tracks and monetizes videos as they spread across the web. it connects video makers and sharers with sponsors in a free and open marketplace. at the end of each video there is an ad displayed, revver splits the ad revenue with you 50/50.

“if you like to create or share video, revver was made for you. every time someone watches a video that you’ve uploaded or shared, you could earn money.”

in the meanwhile they changed the logo, made great improvements on the user interface, look&feel and added more functionalities.

but the best thing is, the concept pays off for the user/artist/uploader, directly transferred to your paypal account.

so, start uploading your videos on revver and make some money out of it.

[tags: revver, revverizing, video, sharing, video sharing, portal, viral, youtube]

gmail bug – user emails lost

2006-12-28T08:38:00-08:00

first i have to say that i’m a fan of google and their services. due to my google account profile i’m currently using 21 different google services. one of them is of course google’s popular webmail service gmail – fortunately not as my primary mail service.

om malik reported today that due to a bug some gmail users lost all their emails and found a blank gmail account when logging in.

furthermore sahim pointed out in one of the comments that google’s social networking platform orkut is completely down today as well, saying “orkut is under construction, please check back soon”.

at google groups there is a discussion about this topic including an answer from the gmail support team:

“our engineering team has been working to resolve the issue with your account that we detected in our system. we appreciate your patience with us. everyone at google realizes how important email communications can be so it is with a heavy heart and tremendous disappointment that we must let you know that an isolated problem caused the loss of all the data in your account before december 18th. our engineers worked long nights to try to locate any recoverable information, but after doing everything they could think of, asking the help of other engineers at google and spending nights pounding their keyboards, they have finally had to accept that for your account we could not recover the data.”

in times where we handle so much conversation via email this is a disaster for every affected gmail user. but no system is perfect and we have to deal with tons of beta’s in web 2.0 times.

common tipp: still backup your email locally via pop3 and an email client like mozilla thunderbird or outlook.

(via gigaom and techcrunch)

update – december 28. 2006 at 19:07: a google spokeswoman sent om malik an email explaining the situation – doing the pr limitation of damage:

“regretfully, a small number of our users

adults being a role model for the children

2006-12-19T15:50:00-08:00

i recently found this thought provoking spot at the bold blog.

released by child friendly australia. and yes, we all should be aware of being a role model for the children – our future – and making our influence positive.

(via the great bold blog from chile)

[tags: child friendly australia, childfriendly.org.au, role model, influence]

dove spoof and eva delivers otto catalog

2006-12-19T14:21:19-08:00

we all know about retouching of pictures nowadays or the “photoshop diet” how andreas used to call it. in october reginald pike launched a spot showing the behind-the-scenes make-up and retouche job for a spot called dove evolution by yael staav promoting the dove self-esteem fund against our distorted perception of beauty. now there is a spoof of this spot out there.

watch dove evolution on youtube / high-res and the spoof on youtube / high-res

would you open the door for eva padberg delivering the new otto catalog …

(via datenvandalismus, werbeblogger and frederik)

[tags: dove, evolution, photoshop, retouche, spoof, otto, eva padberg]

def mini records

2006-12-18T02:04:00-08:00

ingeborg trampe, director corporate communications from bbdo düsseldorf, is sending out emails promoting the new def mini records “viral” microsite with the words:

“Liebe Kolleginnen und Kollegen,

heute Nacht ist eine fantastische Kampagne gestartet, die jeden Musik-Liebhaber begeistern wird.

Die Kollegen von Interone und .start haben gemeinsam für den Kunden MINI ein eigenes Plattenlabel gegründet: Def MINI Records.
Künstler aus den unterschiedlichsten Musikrichtungen performen Songs über die Zuverlässigkeit des neuen MINI Cooper. MC Massive rappt ‘Solid as a rock’, R’n'B kommt von ASC&T mit ‘Stop driftin around’ und ‘The Brakes’ rocken ihren neuen Hit ‘Save me’. Beworben wird die Kampagne in verschiedenen Kanälen wie Online, Print, Outdoor und am PoS. Ein tolles Projekt, das zeigt, dass BBDO Germany mit TotalWork ganz neue Wege der Vermarktung geht.

Da virale Kampagnen wie diese von der Partizipation der User leben: Unterstützt die Kollegen der Interone, hört euch die tollen Songs an und schickt den Link an Freunde und Bekannte!

http://www.defmini.com/

Beste Grüße,

Ingeborg Trampe”

i’m sorry, i’ve seen funny, sexy and smart viral campaigns and microsites but i’m not getting this one. looks more like – client (in this case bmw mini) to the agency (interone and .start) “could you do something viral for us … for the youth?” and the agency later on just put together what they may have heard of viral marketing “let’s do a microsite, something with music, and videos and … yeah, let’s just put this together, they’ll like it”. – maybe i was judging to early, read on.

the new bmw mini is such a great product, they totally got how to move their brand from a boring little car to a cool brand and remodeled car. they had great viral campaigns like the “humanlike robots” which spread like a wildfire (unfortunately the microsite is not active anymore). the microsite provided videos, stories and instructions where colin mayhew from oxford was building robots with parts of the mini.

but back to def mini records, the site welcomes you with screaming teenagers pushing you to watch the n’cap video which is so bad that it reminds me to “wo bist du mein sonnenlicht“, but not as funny. i just clicked a little further and found the “about” videos like runflat, n’cap or the disc brakes, which are quit ironic.

i have to give em that, they were putting a lot of effort and money into this project and i wish it all the best, but i’m not sure if this is going to spread virally. who is the target group? teenagers around 14 which might buy a car in about 4 years? it’s definitely not me.

but take a look by yourself – www.defminirecords.com

[tags: def mini records, defmini, bmw, mini, viral marketing, interone, .start]

vlc – the viral learning center

2006-12-07T18:51:54-08:00

finally we can get all the answers we were searching for …

watch the viral learning center promo video on youtube.

(via bj

joinr – a myspace killer?

2006-11-28T13:43:00-08:00

robert was writing about joinr today, which could be the new and better myspace made in germany. the project shall be launched in about two weeks in alpha mode, but their blog is up describing the progress of getting ready.

even if there are a bunch of social networking platforms already out there, i’m still missing the one. i really like xing (formerly known as openbc) as business platform, youtube as a video and flickr as a photo sharing service. myspace is trying to throw together all sorts of media content and might be big in the us, but their look and feel and programming is totally out-dated and not going to be successful in europe, it just looks awful and cheesy. studivz is out anyways. so there is still a chance for joinr making it right, bringing the best together from existing standalone services, adding some smart features and wrapping it up in a sweet looking up-to-date technology social networking platform.

i hope they bring up something smart which attracts lots of people everywhere in the world. sign up for the alpha, check out their blog and they are open to all kinds of ideas and feedback (support [at] joinr.de) to make the best out of it. i’ll keep my fingers crossed and they have my support.

(via basicthinking and ny times)

[tags: joinr, joinr.de, myspace, xing, youtube, flickr, studivz, social network]