A Wider Net

Samsung wanted to make a splash among the hardcore enthusiasts for their new Omnia mobile phone. They realized that the most rabid freaks who follow the phone industry love to produce and watch videos of hot, new, impossible to find products being “unboxed”. It’s a geek ritual that dates back to the days of the stone abacus, when new models were opened in a public square by the winner of a lottery, who had to be a virgin, and who was later fed to a large snake feet first. Clever Samsung saw an opportunity to create the best fake product unboxing video ever. They hoped it would go viral among those hardcore box-watching enthusiasts, who would put it on their blog, Digg it, Tag it, and Tweet it. Ideally it would also spread virally among the second-tier of enthusiasts who actually have to buy the products before opening them. It apparently worked, and I’m obviously one of those geeks. Extra bonus: Now you don’t have to wait for technology to catch up in order to realize your brilliant packaging ideas - just fake it with computer graphics and clever video production.

Found on Engadget.

We’re proud to be joined by some of the greatest minds in Social Media for a live video webcast this Thursday. The details can be found here but the basic gist is: A power discussion about how corporations can face some of social media’s greatest issues: Control, Security, Measurement, and Integration. If you have any interest in social media marketing, this is a must-see.

To learn more about our presenters, check out:
Aaron Strout, VP of New Media, Mzinga (Twitter: astrout)
Rachael Happe, Sr. Director of Social Media Products, Mzinga (Twitter: rhappe)
Laura Fitton, Founder & CEO, Pistachio Consulting (Twitter: pistachio)
Scott Kiekbusch, Director of Digital Marketing Solutions, Cramer (Twitter: adjustafresh)

If you’re looking for me on Twitter, I’m still at foolthrottle.

I originally had two different titles for this post. The first was “Columbarium 2.0″ but given how long it took me to find the word for “a room full of urns full of cremains” I figured I stood a good chance of overtaxing everyone’s patience for obscure references.

The story is, indeed, related to cremated remains. But it’s also about personalized content. Yup - it’s about bringing your RFID card to a columbarium (or whatever they call it in Japan), swiping it in a private viewing area, and having a computer locate the cremains of your dearly departed from within it’s underground dead-abase and bring them up through a little viewport for you. It’s wildly high-tech and probably works better than those crazy RFID-based luggage handlers in airports. If the Japanese can use an RFID badge to bring you personalized contents doesn’t it seem more within your reach to use RFID badges at trade shows to deliver personalized content?

Video:

Oh, and my other title for this post? “RFID Technology Pulls Your Grandma out of it’s Ash Hole”

From CSCOUT

TechCrunch posted some fascinating Comscore stats that show Facebook in the lead as the world’s largest AND fastest growing social network.

In fact, if you look at the stats they published below, they grew by about the same number of visitors as the entire Internet. Does that mean that 80 million new people flocked to the internet in the last year and they were all coming to use Facebook? Well, no, of course not, that would be statistically daft. But since the major news outlets routinely twist and contort stats like that all the time….why the heck not? Ladies and Gentleman: the stats below clearly demonstrate that nearly every new internet user in the last 12 months possibly connected to the internet simply in order to get their own Facebook page. It’s also possible they were connecting simply in order to check on their kids’ Facebook pages.

Recently Microsoft demonstrated a multi-touch spherical display. The marriage of two of my favorite technologies, Microsoft Surface, and Global Imagination’s spherical projectors, this is an interactive gem for any global company’s lobby or trade show exhibit.

Source

A USB gadget that bangs his head whenever you have incoming mail, instant messages, and/or Skype calls. It can even play different MP3 sound files depending on the emoticon contained within your instant message! Great for getting the heebie-jeebies from an angry coworker or spouse while you’re in the middle of a meeting. The i-Knock, from Stysen.

I’ve meaning to refer you to this post about the pitfalls associated with conference presenters who pay a little too much attention to an online audience to the detriment of their live presentation.

Now that we’ve entered an age where everyone is connected through mobile devices that have immediate access to other people through text messaging, mobile applications, and mobile internet browsing, it was only a matter of time before we started to see a lot of background communications infiltrating face-to-face events. Consider, for example, that instant messaging was invented by a bunch of guys who wanted to communicate “under the table” when they were bored at meetings!

I recently wrote about another case where a general session was hijacked by twitter users. Since then I have been to many sessions where the presenter invited questions through twitter and other online methods. There is no question that your audience is no longer limited to the people in the room. The question is: what do you to with the people you can’t see?

“Hybrid Events”, which combine online and onsite audiences into one collaborative shared experience, will have to solve this question for sure, and it will require a sea change in attitude about what an “attendee” is. But until we have cemented “Hybrid Events” into the mainstream event vocabulary, we simply need to be considerate to both sides. In the case of the conference mention on Sue’s post, the folks in the onsite audience paid to be there, and clearly deserve to be given their presenter’s attention. That being said, the comments coming from online sources have to be monitored because they may contain questions from the onsite audience, who are reaching out through their mobile devices. They may also contain comments from online audiences who are following along thanks to the flow of information from the onsite audience, and these comments may be of value to those in the room. It is another example of the wisdom of crowds - the larger the crowd, the smarter we are.

So, rather than isolate the room, it probably makes more sense to have someone monitor the internet conversation for the presenter, off to the side. They can bring anything of value to the room at the request of the presenter, and when it seems fair to the audience at hand. I’ve seen this in action, it works, and it adds value to everyone involved.

Aaron Strout, VP of Social Media at Mzinga, wrote a great guest post on ZDNet which resulted in some rather silly drama.

The original post is about whether it makes sense for companies to build their own branded communities or to build a presence on existing public social networks, or, as he recommends, to do both. Apparently the post flushed out some kind of troll who claimed the rights to the term “branded community”. Good luck with that one.

I look forward to the day when a computer will sense what’s wrong with me and prescribe a solution, whether it be a prescription, a trip to the ER, a good night’s sleep, or a lengthy discussion about my childhood.

As we head there in baby steps, there’s this. A device of such obviously clinical design that it almost can’t live in plain sight in any household. It screams “I need constant medical attention” but it also represents one more step towards effective remote diagnosis.

I believe iRobot is working on a robot for health care purposes and I bet this is the sort of application for which it is being designed. My other guess is that it is designed to pump epinephrine into the hearts of overdose victims ala Pulp Fiction, but while that vision is the stuff of future-shock sci-fi horror magic, I somehow doubt that’s the case.

In the meantime, as we struggle to help companies establish connections with their customers, it looks like Pharma (doctors, actually) may establish the most wired remote connection of them all. Wouldn’t everyone like a feedback mechanism that tells them how their product is working? Frankly, I’d probably let them plant a tiny sensor in my noggin if it meant I never saw another popup “how do you like our website” survey ever again.

Apple is looking at this and thinking they can do it all with an iPhone

Found on Twitter and about Twitter - a fabulous index of brands currently active on Twitter.

I can’t remember how many times I’ve been asked “ok, so what companies are using Twitter/Facebook/YouTube/Second Life/etc”. This is a fantastic answer to one permutation of that question.

I’d thank the author by name but I couldn’t find it on his blog. Thanks, though!

And thanks again, Pistachio, for another great link.