hobart65

Billions: Information can be beautiful

2009-08-15T17:10:00.001+01:00

Billion
Originally uploaded by ubermore.

Came across this great graphic which tries to visualize and put into context the US debt mountain. Giving printing money the fancy name of 'quantitative easing' undoubtedly means that future generations will dispair at our stupidity.

Anyway, the graphic is from a great site you should visit if info pron lights your boat. www.informationisbeautiful.net/

I can't vouch for the accuracy of the data, and neither can the maker:
"I hoping this will be a “living image” that I’ll keep updating all the time. So if you find any interesting, juicy or eye-popping billions, please comment below (with a source). Let’s see how high we can make this image!"

EMAIL: InformationIsBeautiful AT Gmail

Mr & Mrs Lunsons's Anniversary Luncheon

2009-07-20T00:26:00.001+01:00

Mr & Mrs Lunsons's Anniversary Luncheon
Originally uploaded by ubermore.

"Lunch was originally intended as a vehicle in which working classes could escape their job and purchase alcoholic beverages."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luncheon

Seen here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pembroke_Lodge

Pitch Criteria

2009-07-09T00:06:00.001+01:00

"One critical area is your pitch criteria. Retained business is every agencies goal, but recession makes it tougher. It's wise to reserve special effort for projects more likely to lead to retained business. That's often an intuitive leadership choice, but equally you can have criteria. That might be around the sectors, incumbent agencies, marketing culture, top-level connections, etc. The most successful agencies seek a non-level playing field....they pick their battles and play to win."

Advice given to an agency last year, don't play fair.

Eyebrows of a thousand faces

2009-07-03T09:52:00.002+01:00

Eyebrows of a thousand faces
Originally uploaded by ubermore.

Lovely project from the an RCA degree show animation student. It featured stereo eyebrow controls. The fader did the height of the eyebrows and the volume know did the angle. Had great fun making different emotional expressions.

RCA Show 2009

Creativesocial Antwerp @ Villa Tinto

2009-05-18T20:26:00.002+01:00

Creativesocial Antwerp @ Villa Tinto
Originally uploaded by ubermore.

Penthouse suite above the high tech legal brothel Villa Tinto in Anstwerp's red light district. Photo taken by Björn Höglund, Creative Director &founder of Daddy using his iphone & panorama iphone app

Panorama is easily the best Panorama iphone app according to Björn. He also highly rated PT GUI Pro for desktop stitching. Terrible name and awful interface, but he said the software rocked - just chuck a folder full of images at it and they get pieced together with great blends and color correction etc.

The Art Of Amazon User Reviews

2009-03-30T14:33:00.005+01:00

Amazon reviews have been raised to an artform by the Sandman. Can the hivemind find the funniest?

"I bought this ironing board hoping it would bring back some exitement into my life. It is designer after all! I placed it up against the lounge wall at a recent party in my house, and NOBODY commented on it! I was so distraught that I kicked everyone out and drunkenly set about the ironing board with a fire axe whilst crying hysterically. Apart from that its ok."

"As a very heavy drinker, I find this ideal as it slips into my suit pocket perfectly. I can sneak a slug of absinthe anywhere! At work, on the tube, at family gatherings, and they're none the wiser. Well, I think one person suspects at work, but im going to make sure they get the sack so its ok."

Update! Thanks to Rob Bevan for the bucket that changed my life

'Although I have used the Dover Parkerburg less since installing our new fangled "Water Closet", I display it with pride, knowing that I own the best 2 gallon galvanized bucket in town. '

SXSWi 2009: Sketchnotes: First Spread

2009-03-23T21:51:00.002Z

SXSWi 2009: Sketchnotes: First Spread
Originally uploaded by Mike Rohde.

Twitter has been on fire with SXSW. So much so, that someone created a tool to filter the conference tweets out. Others started a global "I'm not at SXSW" party, http://www.notatsxsw.com. I didn't use the tool or make the party, but I did come across this great notebook on the interactive channel talks. Give yourself a headache and flip though it with cool iris, preferable on a very large monitor.

If you want more, read the excellent full blog post:
http://www.rohdesign.com/weblog/archives/003039.html

Kutiman - Mother of Mashup

2009-03-09T21:05:00.002Z

Just when mashups were been written off as so last year, along comes a project of napalm creativity. This track, 'Mother of All Funk Chords' had me smiling all the way. A lovable project made from youtube samples by Kutiman.

Pick up by Iain Tait at Crackunit, can't wait to get this into my itunes.

2009: The year to remix paper

2009-02-06T16:47:00.002Z

Over at crackunit Iain Tait thinks 2009 might be the year of the PDF. I'm going more controversial and say the trend is....paper. Early indicators were the gorgeous Moo cards, now a staple in the digital party circuit, and Manolis Kelaidis’ amazing RCA project with conductive inks - blueBook project.

On the 17th of Jan, a glittering array of creative digirati assembled to hack with...paper at Papercamp. The experiments and talks in this unconference reveal a tangible excitement in mixing interaction and print . It's all part of the movement to connect more tangibly the real and the virtual. Making things 'real', whether in terms of presence or physicality makes things more memorable. It's like the shift in attention from recorded music to live performance. More and more of advertising seems to focus on the 'nowness' of performance. Think of Axe 100 Girls, W+K air drop, T-mobile mobbing, AKA xmas card....it's all part of this incessant demand for hyper-authenticity.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

UPDATE: Found some more great paper projects over at infosthetics, "Paper-Based Visualization Competition: The Winner and More"

"Don't let blogging get you down"

2009-01-31T14:23:00.005Z

Confidence In Blog Postings Over Time

View more presentations from iaintait. (tags: digital online

Many bloggers are finding it much harder to post. Twitters immediacy and presence gives a better hit. Meet-ups, coffee and un-conferences feel more real than online fake friends. Iain Tait adds to the dilemma with a window on the personal hell of posting.
Wonder if this was prompted by the feedback on his post on the recent T-mobile mobbing Waterloo ad. What remains refreshing about his blog, is his ability and willingness to publicly wrestle with the issues.

Routes: Discover the Secrets in Your Genes

2009-01-22T14:32:00.002Z

Routes game.com, broadcasting 2.0

Looks like a really interesting transmedia story / game. Seem to pushing all the write social media / game / story angles, plus a compelling cause related backstory. Love the courageous 'self-buzz'feature of putting live-blog entries on the homepage.

Griddle your creative brain at 'The 'PSFK Good Idea Salon'

2009-01-19T18:01:00.006Z

Would love to go to this ubercool psfk event 'Good Ideas Salon' in London. A rhumba of innovators, thinkers and raconteurs in the a fields of mobile, design, publishing, music, collaboration, experiential design, digital experiences, and more

PSFK’s Good Ideas Salon London is a day of presentations and panels around key areas steering innovation and opportunity. For the event, PSFK has curated a collection of the most forward-thinking tastemakers, innovators, and experts from around the world.

The 'Good Ideas & Youth' panel will include W+K digital youth guru Ruby Pseudo. Other speakers of note : Dan Hon, Jeremy Ettinghausen, Mark Earls, Amanda Gore, Matt Jones, Matt Hardisty, Colin Nagy, Simon Waldman, etc. etc. etc. If you're not wowed by the speakers then just check out the attendee list.

Sign up before they sell out at visit http://www.psfk.com/good-ideas-salon-london.

Video archive of previous talks.

Dopplr 2008 Annual Report

2009-01-15T20:32:00.003Z

Dopplr 2008 Annual Report for Barack Obama
Originally uploaded by moleitau.

Looking forward to my Dopplr annual account, although I didn't really travel that much in 2008. Here is one for Barack Obama sent out as a promo. Fantastic bit of bit of information design, can't wait for Virgin to do that on my media bill.

Innocent Marketing platform ideas

2009-01-08T16:18:00.005Z

Brief: Innocent are the gurus of brand engagement, but it’s the less engaged who are their mass consumer. How can Innocent drive loyalty with consumers who just like their brand rather than love it? Here are some marketing platform ideas for broadening the church of Innocent to the less engaged.

Inspired by the essay where I lifted the checklist: “I Believe in a Brand New Religion” by Graeme Douglas. I need to add some slides explaining the '4 Commandments of social media'. If only I could work out how to add notes in slideshare.

Innocent Church

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: innocent brand)

Facebook: Whopper Sacrifice

2009-01-08T15:53:00.001Z

Facebook: Whopper Sacrifice
Originally uploaded by ubermore.

Spotted this via Flo Heiss on Twitter: "finally someone found a use for facebook:"

My next steps:

Step 1: OK, loosing 10 facebook friends should be easy, I want that whopper
Step 2: 10 lost, was actually quite fun, now to claim my whopper
Step 3: Oh crap, I don't live in America...I didn't want it anyway, I was just doing research.

Always amazed how unglobal these global brands really are.

Vonage - up and running in about 3 minutes

2009-01-08T12:34:00.005Z

Vonage - up and running in about 3 minutes
Originally uploaded by ubermore.

Just posted a Vonage Unpacking flickr set today. I'm using Vonage with my Virgin broadband for unlimited UK & international calls. Call quality is great, much better than skype...portable too, local calls from where ever you can find an Ethernet connection.

It doesn't seem too revolutionary, but have to say I'm really impressed with the call quality and mature feature set. For example, I get emailed a voice file and a txt when someone leaves a message. Makes a lot of sense for Virgin users who want a second line outside their bundle.

Should be part of any road warriors travel set. Imagine you're traveling to Singapore. If your room has an Ethernet connection, then just plug this in, use the hotel phone and you have unlimited calls to the UK for free, local rates for mobiles and the countries you've subscribed too. Would save a bundle without the need for a laptop. With Skype, there's the hassle of firing up the computer, poor line quality and shouting into your laptop.

I'd be interested in any feedback from vonage using bloggers / travellers.

Who is tictac Micha?

2009-01-07T11:47:00.001Z

Is that really possible? Took me about half the video to spot the tictacs, groan.

The Ubermore 2008 Agency Xmas Carol Battle

2008-12-15T21:00:00.004Z

Which agency can sing the best carol? Watch London's top digital agencies battle it out. Select your winner at the end of the clip on youtube and see them celebrate. The celebration video with most views at 8pm on Xmas eve wins. Written and directed by Ubermore: Kathrin Burckhardt & Mike Williams.

Watch the youtube clip to vote:
Enter the 2009 Xmas Carol battle:

This years finalists:

Agency Republic - Marketing digital agency of the year
Lean Mean Fighting Machine - Cannes International Agency of the year
Profero
Tonic.

Voting ends 8pm 24/12/2008.

30 Social Networking Terms Forbes thinks You Should Know

2008-12-01T09:31:00.009Z

Micro Mashup: Forbes 30 Terms, Keywordfinder and wordle

The Obama campaign finance victory has pushed Social networking up the business agenda. Forbes just published a buzz word bingo primer. I thought I'd try and create a map to see which common phrases were more significant in the internet zeitgeist.

In terms of words, I find it more interesting that twitter seems to have spawned such a large 'in-the-know' lexicon: twitter, twitterer, tweet, twuffer, twitterzine, reportwitters, twoosh, stream, dweet, mistweet, tweeple, tweetin, twitterati, twitosphere, twitterness

Aggregator : RSS, feed, search, atom, news, subscriptions, download, podcasts, web feed
Atom feed : RSS, atom, attribute, xml, syndication, feed reader, specification, element, feeds, URI
Atom Publication Protocol: Atom Syndication Format, element, atom, xml, protocol, feed, URI, attribute, application, IRI, workspace
Blog blogging search, election, country, video, obama, photos, president, google, interent, bbc news
Blogsphere blogging, search, bloggers, internet, technorati, declan lynch, languages, drops, lotus domino, country
Blogroll sidebar, bloggers, blogging, wordpress, howto, technorati, search, bookmarklet, money, blogroll
Buddy list screen name, my buddy, buddies, computer, buddy, AOL, AIM, download, instant message, dim
Drupal modules, CMS, content management, system, download, user login, developers, packt, open source, search
Flickr photos, photography, camera, search, picture, photo sharing, api, download, application, service
Instant Messaging Download, AIM, internet, Windows XP, MSN, computer, software, ICQ, employees, application
Jabber server, instant messaging, AIM, ICQ, jabber clients, MSN, Jabber ID, protocol, presence, xml
Linkedin business, search, facebook, networking, job, social networking, howto, company, candidates, twitter
Long tail business, amazon, chris anderson, birds, search, google, consumers, products, traffic,niche
Microblogging twitter, blogging, service, Jaiku, social media, characters, video, platform, tweet, SMS
Microformats hcard, hcalendar, xhtml, span, xml, semantic web, abbr, web 2.0, humans, classes
News Feed rss, feeds, news feeds, syndication, headlines, search, business, sports, rss feed, weather
OpenID identity, authentication, foundation, server, user, janrain, google, aol, logins, adoption
OPML outline, language, rss, xml, application, rss, outliner, attribute, xml, feeds, search
Peer-to-Peer p2p, network, server, internet, software, protocol, gnutella, nodes, download, napster
Podcast downloading, audio, podcast, download, itunes, directory, episode, video, software
RSS feeds, reader, news, syndication, xml, video, attribution, syndication, orange, business
Second Life linden lab, virtual world, avatar, SL, game, virtual, residents, dollars, real, grid
SEO google, engine, services, optimisation, search, marketing, business, company, howto, traffic
SMS text, message, bulk, gateway, mobile, ringtones, free, send, messaging, texts
Social Graph facebook, graph, relationships, google, networking, service, twitter, livejournal, developers, zukerberg
Social Networking facebook, networking, network, networks, london, business, bebo, job, web2.0, twitter,
Syndication newspapaers, syndicate, rss, magazines, news, content, free, dictionary, business, search, newsfeed
Tagging products, security, EAS, merchandise, RFID, RRP, stock, price, shoplifting, folksonomy
Twitter service, tweets, facebook, followers, blogging, networking, howto, api, tweet, mobile
XMMP jabber, instant, download, extensible, presence, protocol, ICQ, libpurple, noarch, pidgin

Brand U from Critical Mass

2008-10-14T11:26:00.006+01:00

Thought piece on self branding from logic + emotion. The case studies are A-list bloggers Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble, Seth Godin and Russel Davies. The 'be' rules at the end (be ubiquitous, social, interesting, remarkable and yourself) seem attibutes that some of us may have problems executing.

Brand "U.0"

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: internet brand)

12 presentation tips / winning a pitch

2008-10-08T22:31:00.027+01:00

Advice for delivering the best you can considering everyone else can be better.

1 Develop your own style
Who are you? Why do I want to work with this guy? Don't be an actor, because then the client buys the role you play. Don't copy the 'best' presenter. Bring out who you are. Clients want variety.

2 Content is more important
What you say is more important than slickness. What do you really want to say?

3 Identify your key content points
People remember slogans. Don't be frightened by repetition. Tell them what you're going to say, tell them, and then tell them what you told them. Output the distillation of everything you know. Clients are looking for a point of view.

4 Get on with it
Night before? Hour before? The earlier you start the better you'll be. Give yourself time.

5 Prepare
Nearly everything is in the writing of the script. Get to the point where you don't need the script. Preparing helps you learn. Write the script and then edit. Editing makes you learn.

6 Practise
Say it out loud. The best way to practice is to rehearse with people. It helps you listen and adapt. Clients hate the feeling that you're reading off a script. Use this to prepare for what they might say so you can react.

7 Don't worry
Don't be thrown by mistakes. Everyone should be nervous at a presentation. If you loose your train of thought just say it. Very few people are not sympathetic. What you don't know is not an acid.

8 Practise handovers
All people are buying a team. The team should be interesting, different, complementary, and appear to be able to work together. Team working is demonstrated by seamless handovers. Don't be a talking head. Each team member should feel able to say something naturally. They should be relaxed enough to do it when it's not planned. Teams help each other. The goal is to know and own the whole story, not just your bit.

9 Don't look at the screen
It's been said a million times, but present to people. Don't talk to the wall. Do what you want. It's much better if you present differently.

10 Edit you charts
Bullet points are a reminder not a narrative. Read Edward R. Tufte article "The cognitive style of PowerPoint" to understand this.

11 Don't rush
Don't try and get it over with. Make it last as long as possible. Pace gives people the chance to hear you. The clear space for pace is only possible through rehearsing. (Points 6 & 10)

12 Always have a backup
Assume everything will go wrong and have the physical materials to still make your presentation work. Hard copy, flip charts, pen & paper - whatever works.

Follow these tips and your pitch will make your team appear relaxed, modern and friendly. That is what clients buy.

dare - who is jonnyx

2008-09-09T17:39:00.004+01:00

I had a 'whogothemilk' moment watching this new campaign from dare for Sony Ericsson xperia. Look at the production values on that! I watched for a second time and saw something even more surprising for a web film: emotion, a real car crash, maybe a story and, incredibly, some good acting. Awesome. Let's hope the interaction lives up to the spectacular promise of the trailer.

Cliche: You only get one chance for a first impression

2008-08-29T14:03:00.008+01:00

This is the sort of creative desk I wish I had. The desk is in MassiveMusic, an Amsterdam based Music Consultancy for the Ad Industry. The still is from "This Ain't No Disco", a fascinating blog that features the interiors of agencies [discovered via Cool Hunting].

The aesthetic of the working environment is really important. Great agencies seem to look after themselves and make their ecosystem a manifestation philosophy:

"I don’t think you manage creative people. I think you create an environment for them, and cast the right sensibilities for the right projects. And you avoid getting too impressed with yourself or thinking you have all the answers."
Andy Berndt, Managing Director, Google Creative Labs

Slides from a talk entitled 'Obvious'

2008-08-20T15:41:00.001+01:00

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Paul Feldwick on planning and poetry

2008-07-10T13:28:00.013+01:00

Had a great meal at The Union in soho this week. Everyone I spoke to during the evening seems to have been a member at some point. The Creative Social s were lucky enough to hear advertising guru Paul Feldwick talk about planning and poetry. I normally put poetry into the same bucket as musicals, but my attitude was transformed by his wonderful delivery and great choice of material. He is deep thinker about the mechanics of advertising. His attack on the perils of the 'big idea' seemed particularly pertinent. Not much of his thinking is online, but I did find these articles:

Interview with Paul Fenwick
Brands and Branding
He's the man

Thanks to Mark from The Garden Party who sponsored the evening.

[NOTE] Paul kindly emailed me a list of the poems, my favorite being the sock:

The Shield of Achilles WHAuden
Seasonal Fanfare Adrian Mitchell
O Strange Animals David Hart
Bean Soup John Hartley Williams
New Numbers Christopher Logue
Ode to my Socks Pablo Neruda (trans)