blending the mix

Looks like Twitter users are at the very least one-steo agead of Twitter (again) with the launch of Twe2 a free service which does what Twitter no longer does (but may do again soon!)

Ok, so I am a little nervous about giving an app I don’t know yet my mobile phone details and there are some settings to configure which need a bit of thinking about (like how many Dm’s or replies you want to receive per hour - I don;t know!) but it does for those of us in the UK what Twitter does for the rest of the world - and that has to be worth a shout out.

Thanks to @jonpauldavies for the heads up!

I caught wind of this the tonight and think it is an interesting addition to the ongoing debates of both real time news as well as Twitter.

As Friendfeed is managing to do, Facebook is attempting to do and numerous other sites fail to do, the real-time web (largely driven by Twitter) is moving closer and closer, but the very nature of it - news created by amateurs experiencing the news themselves is somewhat sketchy at best, blatantly false at worst.

At the other end of the scale we have the aggregators who collate news based on the number of links a particulr piece of news has. The more popular it is, the higher it will appear in the aggregator (Yahoo/Google News for example).

But, does the most popular news have the same value to users as breaking news? I would argue not. The problem is, breaking news takes a while to attract links and build up a head of steam to become massively mainstream breaking news, yet Twitter lacks the depth of detail to add detail to the story.

Along comes Vik’s Tweet News - a Yahoo BOSS/Twitter mash-up which compares the emerging news stories on Twitter and compares the to the stories in Yahoo News. If there is something in both Yahoo News and Twitter, chances are its breaking news but with some meat to it - rather than a collection of brief, 140 character messages.

The end result is a tool that tracks breaking news stories ranked by the hyper-time-sensitive results on Twitter, arguably offering faster updates, better relevance and more in-depth coverage than either source by itself.

Related articles:

• FriendDeck: A FriendFeed Search Tool

I got wind of this from Crunchgear. It follows on from my post some time ago about Microsoft Surface. PQ Labs have launched a competitor to Microsoft Surface by putting the touch technology into standard TV’s. The result? Touchscreen World of Warcraft (at 3:00 minutes in). Simply brilliant and (apparently) much cheaper than MS.

What’s interesting is how Microsoft want to get a Surface in every home (as they did with PC’s all those years ago), yet the early models seem to be pool-table sized affairs. Where would YOU put one?

PQ Labs have shown (as have Apple with so many different products), that to get innovative, new technology accepted into people’s homes has to be done in a way in which it is acceptable to a) my wife and b) fits into the look and feel of the home. Does the Surface table do this? No. Does putting this technology into an existing HD TV? Yes. Does providing a touch-sensitive overlay to existing HD TV’s (early part of the video with the map)? Yes.

This is what makes this technology so exciting - it is within reach in a way which it acceptable to us. The only thing that would usurp this is if we had a “laptop” style touch-screen control for WoW. I just couldn’t see myself sitting so close to the TV to interact as frequently as WoW would require, but boy…why couldn’t it happen?

I’ll never forget the time I saw the image below posted on Hugh’s blog well over a year ago.

For those that don’t know, Hugh is a cartoonist whose main gig is drawing cartoons on the back on business cards. His office (at the time) consisted of some business cards, a pen and his portfolio (contained on the sexy black ipod).

Now that looks pretty neat, but only really lends itself to the kind of work that fits on the screen or through the earbuds…until yesterday.

Note how the iPhone now has iWork compatibility? Why need a laptop, why (even) need a netbook…has your office suddenly become your mobile phone?

UPDATE: As Gez points out, you would still need to create the presentation ON a computer, but as we have subsequently discussed, the point here is that you are now able to more effectively carry your portfolio and credentials on a phone, thereby making your office much more mobile.

Related articles:

• Keynote Remote for iPhone, iPod Touch Released for iWork 09

I’d like your help. Well, I actually think you need my help. What the hell, we need each other’s help.

My last big post prompted a previously unseen numbers of comments, all pretty much saying the same thing:

“uk business doesn’t get social media, but what can we do to help it get social media”

The one overriding problem was, and will remain for some time, the difficulty in measuring the effectiveness of a social media campaign. Metrics aside, I don’t think that you can in fact standardise social media measurement, but that is another post

So, whilst the issue over metrics remains unanswered (at the moment anyway), the only solution is to prove that other brands are doing what our clients SHOULD be doing and that social media is here and now in the uk and that there is significant value in embracing a social media strategy.

As there are plenty of social media bods, online buddies, friends and other interested people in the same boat, I decided that it might be a good idea to create an online resource where we could all add our own war stories, case studies, relevant ebooks etc. to enable us to quickly and easily pull together some convincing ammunition to persuade our lovely clients that social media works (when done properly, which of course, is what we all do anyway….isn’t it?!)

So, do please visit the wiki, contribute, send me an email paul (dot) fabretti at gmail (dot) com and let’s see of we can’t make something of value from which we can all benefit. Put whatever you like up, within reason, as long as you think that it helps us promote social media.

Link Love to the following people who I think could/should/might like to help:

Jas
Vero
Becky
Chris (aka The Don)
Stephen
Chris
Will
James
Steve
David
David H
Lloyd
Amanda
David K
Simon
Stuart
Steve D
Helen
Andrew
Sandrine
Robin
Stewart
Jemima
Paul
Damien
Tom
Lexia
Simon

I look forward to hearing from you!

Check out these folk - I am sure you will recognise one or two of them! Taken on my flip video and (slightly reduced quality by vimeo!)

Some peeps from Fuel Conference from paul Fabretti on Vimeo.

Steve dug this one out the other day and I was so impressed with the execution of the site, I just had to say something about it - especially as video seems to be the flavour “du jour”.

The Ferrari GT is the next new kid on the block and rather than do the usual visual preview, Ferrari have launched an audio-only website with a countdown timer on it, and the only thing that gives you any kind of teaser is a series of 4 incredibly emotive audio clips.

Congruity is what I am talking abut here and audio clips can achieve this much more than any visual stimulai because they set the imagination racing without visual restrictions and few people can argue how powerful that can be.

Congruity is the ability for people to mentally bridge gaps between words/sounds and images in order to understand a concept. Take, for example a Powerpoint presentation. A good presentation has a limited number of images that don’t on their own, make sense. The congruity comes when people listen to your words and see the images, put the two together and GET the concept you are talking about.

I’m not going to spoil the excitement so go here, click on the audio clips and close your eyes….listen to rumble of the starter motor as you start her up, the screaming V8 as she flies past you…

Steve picks out a great piece of work from Microsoft Live Search (MS are on a roll at the moment what with 5Gb SkyDrive and Surface!) which I feel compelled to share. Not because it is Steve or Microsoft, but because I think it looks at promoting search (and browser plugins which is something close to our heart at the moment!) in an entirely new way - and how timely.

(the introduction to the game)

Big Snap Search encourages you to install the Windows Live Search as your default browser search engine:

(adding Live Search to the browser toolbar enhances your chance of winning)

Quite simply, you stand a better chance of winning (i.e. matching a pair of cards) if you install Windows Live Search in your browser.

As we saw a couple of weeks ago, Firefox 3 will be focused on search - so if you aren’t part of a browser already, you stand little chance of being used. We already have dozens of search plugins for FF, Flock can detect a search engine on any page and asks you to add it, so how can MS claw back some of the lost ground if it can’t match Google on quality of search results? Be on more machines.

I can’t help thinking that I am being manipulated here, but have to give Microsoft 10 out of 10 for innovation. From all accounts, their ad team are developing some truly exciting ideas.