A Wider Net

As you may recall, I am a BIG fan of 3D video. After seeing the U23D concert movie, I felt I had seen a significant glimpse of the future of virtual events. And several industries are moving quickly behind the scenes to get professional and consumer 3D products on the market.

One major milestone is about to happen - an NFL game broadcast live in 3D to theaters in LA, New York, and Boston for a lucky closed audience on December 4th. The last event of this type was a Mavericks basketball game back in March. The NFL - always a leader in broadcast technology - should make this a very interesting test.

I expect it won’t be long before this solution is available to corporate clients to extend the reach of their events worldwide while improving the immersive sense of being there. It sure beats watching a webex from your desk!

A local “Green” event sent me a postcard offering me a discount on registration. The event was the day before. Great….

Also - the postcard was made out of virgin plastic, with a recycle count of ‘1′. There’s a URL pointing me to a website where I can learn more about how it was made but I don’t plan to take the bait. If this was really a sustainable material they should have said so right on the card. Maybe I’m old school but sending a big plastic postcard, even if it can be recycled, to a corporate prospect who probably doesn’t have plastic recycling set up near their office seems completely wrong - especially in the context of an environmental-themed event.

I also won’t share the links to the event or the company making the card. As marketers, we can do better.

Update - Webcast went swimmingly. I will update this when the archive is posted. Thanks to all that participated!

Our latest webcast:

Crunching the Numbers: Maximizing Marketing Value During a Downturn

From the registration page:

At the beginning of 2008, it became apparent that a recession was coming our way. In the face of financially troubling times, companies tend to scale back on major marketing efforts to try to save some money. The net result is that these companies usually end up in worse financial shape.

During times of economic stress is the worst time to scale back on your marketing efforts. In fact, a downturn gives companies a golden opportunity to develop deeper relationships with their customers and partners through relationship marketing.

Tune in on September 30, 2008 to hear this exciting panel discussion featuring industry experts.

You will learn:

How to build communities and reach people through activities like webcasts and social media.
How B2B marketers can do more with less and be more efficient at turning marketing investments into revenue.
How to plan, implement and measure word of mouth campaigns.
How face-to-face events are more important than ever.

Link: http://www.cramereventmedia.com/webcastseries/

By now you may know I’m a big fan of surface computing, multi-touch interfaces, and specifically, Microsoft Surface. Below is a video of Surface being used on MSNBC to map out election coverage.

As much as I love Surface, this doesn’t look like a good use of the technology. CNN has a multi-touch wall that is better suited for live television than the coffee-table format of Surface. With Surface, the camera has to constantly switch from a front to an overhead shot, which seems awkward. They use Surface’s unique object recognition to change the content on the display to correspond with labeled tiles placed on the surface by the host. This is cool and interesting, but seeing that interaction doesn’t help us as viewers.

See for yourself. I still believe Surface is an outstanding product for retail, exhibits, and corporate demo environments. But this seems a little bit of a force-feed by Microsoft.

Found on Engadget.

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.