Not sure about Ask.com and their Algorithm campaign. Not sure if anyone cares. My search results are brought to me via a very complicated algorithm. OK. That's great. In fact, 80% of search results on the Internet are generated by one algorithm. Hmm. Not sure this piece of information is worth owning as part of a brand position. If I was more techy and I knew all about this stuff anyway, why is Ask.com reminding me? Here is Ask's VP of Marketing discussing the campaign. What's even more interesting, if that is the right word, is that the campaign has now moved outdoors with billboards invoking the name of the Unabomber. What? Yep, that's right. Check it out below. I'm not sure who thought this was a good idea. Seems the guys at Techcrunch are a bit bewildered about all this as well.
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Vandals, or "griefers" as they are known in world, last week hacked into the ABC Island on Second Life, and reduced it to rubble. Quickly after the event, Linden Labs executed a "rollback," which has restored most of what was there before the attack. These types of attacks are not uncommon in Second Life and virtual "atom bombs" have also been used by the self-proclaimed Second Life Liberation Army against in-world stores owned by Reebok and American Apparel. The group claims it is campaigning for more democracy in the virtual world. No escape from the "reality" of dissisdents, even in the virtual world.
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Facebook has recently announced that it is allowing anyone to develop features for its highly popular social-networking site. Clearly, social networking sites are all struggling with how to monetise their current success in revolutinising the way people interact online. Facebook is second only in traffic to MySpace with 23 million visitors last month -- MySpace had 67 million -- but even as both add hundreds of thousands members daily, there is no clear road to profit. I think this bold move by Facebook's 20-something CEO, Mark Zuckerberg shows some clever thinking.
The new developer platform debuted with 85 new features, the most popular to date being music service iLike, with around 40,000 Facebook users after being live for just one day, more than the rest of the top ten applications combined. The application was added by 10,000 users within the first ten hours of the service being live, and 10,000 more in the following three hours. It seems to be increasing by about 100/minute at this point. Once installed, users can search for and add their favorite music and concert information to their profile.
I first came across iLike last year when I was pointed towards it by a friend at Ticketmaster in LA when they took a 25% piece of it. Now it is integrated with Facebook, I think it's an even more fabulous tool.
While I am on a Facebook rant, let me point to Steve Rubel's recent piece on the new era of hyper-networked PR practitioners. Like Steve, I am also a firm believer that the successful pure-play PR hack of the future needs to be hypernetworked. So get yourself a blog, get Facebooked and LinkedIn and you'll be on your way.
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Architorture is a documentary that captures five diverse architecture students in a single studio at a university throughout the entirety of their final thesis. The footage illustrates the range of emotions of this extremely intense period at the conclusion of their academic career. It's done in a pretty interesting way and caught my attention. Check it out.
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This will no doubt spur some interesting discussion around the watercooler of multinational PR agencies, PRstore --"Your Marketing Superstore" -- offers ready-made PR and marketing communications services for small businesses. With myriad of press release and editorial solutions, copywriting, design, and other forms of PR and marketingware on offer, PRstore does a good job in providing a service that may otherwise be out of reach for those not quite ready for the bigger budget PR campaign. The question of course remains if a commoditised, cookie-cutter approach to PR is a good thing for the industry, but all credit to PRstore, I'm sure their services will garner plenty of interest -- if only from whingeing PR flacks.
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You've heard of pop-up retail stores, why not a pop-up nightclub? The SoCo Cargo Experiment, created for Southern Comfort, consists of four shipping containers that can be stacked side by side or on top of each other. They can be assembled within a day, and have an entirely adaptable interior, usually with a bar, stage for live bands or DJs, a lounge area and dancefloor. You can stick them up anywhere you get permission as part of another event or festival or as a stand-alone attarction. To date, they have already appeared on Cockatoo Island in Sydney, at Melbourne's St Kilda Festival and Adelaide's Garden of Earthly Delights.
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I recently bought a MoGo Mouse BT on a flight to Bangkok from Sydney. It looked like a pretty decent gadget in the in-flight shopping catalogue and a very effective mouse to travel with in terms of space and efficiency. Basically, it is a business-card sized, Bluetooth-enabled mouse that stores and recharges inside my laptop's PC Card slot. Looks very cool (with a patent-pending design) and fits perfectly into my lifestyle. Love my MoGo. From the MoGo website, they have a bunch of cool-looking gadgets worth getting your hands on, so I will definitely be exploring further. There's a MoGo blog, which is interesting if you want to follow the future of Bluetooth. Check out the MoGoMercial as well, it's one of the coolest ads I have seen in a long time. I love my MoGo even more now.
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The image below says it all. Rafael Nadal took on Roger Federer in front of 7000 people in Palma de Mallorca last night on a half-grass, half-clay tennis court. Having to change shoes at every change of ends was probably a bit tiresome, but the pair put on a great show, with Nadal winning in a blockbuster third set tiebreaker, 7-5, 4-6, 7-6(10). Maybe the home crowd support got him over the line. Seems like a fun concept, wish I'd been there!
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Wikipedia founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales pops up more and more in mainstream media, but perhaps his fame in Australia will reach unprecendented levels after The Chaser boys got him with ten of the best at a media Q&A following a keynote he gave in Sydney last week. Perhaps it was to do with Jimbo's widely publicised goal of giving "every single person on the planet free access to the sum of all human knowledge," but Andrew Hansen was selected to ask a question where he got away ten in a row without waiting for answers (as he is want to do during The Chaser's "Mr Ten Questions")
He posed to Jimmy the following:
First, how are you enjoying Australia?
Second, how do our computers compare to the ones in America?
Third, why does everyone in IT look so nerdy, yet you look like a daytime soap star?
Fourth, Mac or PC - do you really give a shit?
Fifth, there are 1.7 million articles on Wikipedia; how long did it take you to write them all?
Sixth, Craig Reucassel’s a bit unhappy with the photo on his page. Could you upload a better one maybe for him?
Seventh, my dog is getting some scabs under his chin. I don’t know if you can bring him in the number of a local vet?
Eighth, Jessica Rowe and Peter Overton - will it last?
Ninth, cracked pepper?
Tenth, how do you feel about the fact that when I looked you up on Wikipedia this morning I changed your page to say that you were a teenage drug lord from Malaysia?
Jimmy nervously got through four."Not such a nerd as I thought," said Andrew. "I'll add that to your wikipedia page."
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