Articles from: Technology

Following on from the excellent Knife Crime (which pipped us in this month’s Creative Showcase) is Where’s Dexter - Prooving cheap interactive video is a reality and it might even be fun.

Provided as a teaser to the TV show, the audience is invited to find Dexter in a crowd of people. Success links you through to a new movie. Thankfully those smart enough to spot the elusive Dexter can share hints through the comments - although to the devious amongst us - is a great way to further frustrate others by seeding false information.

Marcelo Calbucci worked for Microsoft as a development manager for 7 years when he decided to leave to start up his own company. In March 2005 after securing $1.3M fundings from VCs he started Sampa.com a ‘personal homepage service’ which allowed you to upload photos, video etc with the idea of sharing it with your friends and family. Now, unfortunately for Marcelo there were a couple of other similar startups on the horison namely Facebook and MySpace and last month after battling for 4 years Sampa.com folded.

Now Marcelo has written a series of 8 short blogs about his experience at Sampa.com where he details his good and bad decisions (http://blog.calbucci.com/marcelo-calbucci/brave-tech-world/Anything-and-Everything-About-Sa.htm). It makes for interesting reading and alot of it is very relevent to us as we help our clients breathe life into new propositions.Here is a small sample of the type of insights he relays:

For about 6-9 months into Sampa I was very much in love with the code and the platform I’ve built. But after the first Alpha and getting users asking some basic “how do I do this?” kind of question I quickly learned that your consumers and your partners couldn’t care less about your code. They didn’t care if it had 10,000 or 300,000 lines of code, if it was open source, if it complied w/ XHTML standards, if it used Tables or not on the HTML. They didn’t give a shit. No one gives a shit about this except developers. But we pat ourselves on the back every time we write well-documented, well-architectured and standard-compliant code.

So after that 6-9 months I just abandon my code and focused on how can I do feature X in the most efficient manner and please users. That takes a 90-degree turn in your thinking. When you care about users, you stop thinking like a geek and you start thinking about short and long term value. Don’t take me the wrong way, I still wrote shared libraries and well-compartmentalized code when I felt we would reuse it in a short period of time, otherwise I would just make the thing work. Later I learned that a lot of those concepts are called “Agile Development”.

LBi was proud to host the UK Umbraco meetup on 6th August 2009, organised by consultant and Umbraco enthusiast, Darren Ferguson, and attracted a 55+ people crowd enough to fill the auditorium. With a guest appearance with the man himself and Umbraco’s founder, Niels Hartvig, this was surely to be a great day.

So exactly what is Umbraco? Simply put, Umbraco is an open source .Net Content Management System (CMS), dubbed “The Friendly CMS”, with an ever growing dedicated community that are always willing to help.

Darren opened up the event with the days proceedings, with yours truly giving a warm LBi welcome and introduction into the wonderful things we do. Not wanting to hold-up the proceedings, we swiftly moved on with Niels giving a recap on this year’s Codegarden ‘09 back in June (the annual Umbraco developer conference), reporting on latest developments and milestones on the Umbraco roadmap.

The morning session continued with a presentation from Douglas Robar on “What I Wish I’d Known in my First 30 Days with Umbraco” - an extremely insightful look at best practises, techniques and concepts for all levels of Umbraco developers.

After lunch, Paul Marden gave his lively account of developing a multilingual website, followed by Niels and Darren building a ‘mystery’ application in Umbraco - a great live demonstration on building a package to export and import members from the attendees list. By creating a simple app that randomly selected attendees, swag was handed out to those lucky enough to be selected, a “Everybody loves Umbraco - Except Chuck Norris” t-shirt. Unfortunately, the LBi crew did not get chosen.

The rest of the afternoon consisted of an open mic session with presentations from Adam Shallcross, Chris Houston and Gregory Roekens. We finished off the serious part of the day with an open Q&A session with Niels, Doug and Gregory on the panel.

Then the fun began. We headed to the Vibe Bar just across the road at Brick Lane and, despite the rain, we discussed the joys of open source, XSLT, projects that we all deliver on time and on budget and much much more…

A big thank you to Marcus McDonnell, LBi Office Services Manager, for ensuring that everything went smooth; to Darren Fergusson, for his enthusiasm and hard work promoting the event; and to the speakers and participants.

So not content with being in this week’s OK Magazine (yes, really), the CRM team have been busy sharing their thoughts on segmentation and the like with NMA in last week’s Customer Relationship Management special.

It’s an interesting article that looks at the (relatively) long established discipline of CRM with a fresh pair of eyes and asks “what’s more important to customer relationships: triggers or Twitter?” It discusses a view shared by the CRM team here - that ‘traditional’ CRM needs to evolve and make use of new, social communication methods, media and technologies.

“CRM 2.0″ or “social CRM”, as some are calling it, is about engaging with consumers on their own terms - joining their conversation. It means talking and listening to your customers at times and in places and in a way that they are comfortable with. From this perspective, the underlying principles of CRM remain true; ensuring relevant and meaningful conversations and interactions (”the right ‘message’ at the right time in the right place”). The proliferation of channels and media just make this a tad more complex!

This new approach to CRM is not just about ‘adding in a few more channels’ - its fundamentally challenging traditional CRM practices (i.e. segmentation and communication strategy) and technologies (i.e. multi-channel campaign management and marketing automation) - requiring them to evolve to accommodate the need to respond to real-time experiences and conversation that consumers expect through interactive channels.

There’s no doubt social media and technologies present real opportunities to better connect and build relationships with customers. Whilst a lot of attention is being paid to the marketing part of CRM, perhaps the greatest potential for improving and advancing relationships is through the service channel. For example, sites like getsatisfaction.com are turning customer service on its head: with customer support evolving into a community conversation between users and the brand.

Read more “Expert Views” on innovations shaping CRM, including my two-penneth! Enjoy!

Pipa

Looking back through a few articles from our old Stream blog I found one from my old creative colleague, the talented Mr Jeremy Garner, who asked the question about the first digital pieces to win a coveted D&AD Black Pencil.

Looking at Leo Burnett’s Black Pencil site (2006) and Nike+ (2007) he asked the simply question “which will be remembered in 10 years time?” surmising the one we remember will determine which principles in digital we see as most important.

“I chew the question again - which will be remembered after the years have passed by? Which will become the Benson & Hedges, the Saatchi’s Pregnant Man, the Guardian Skinhead? Which will be the true pick of the crop from 2007? Is a brilliant tech idea enough, or will a pithy creative idea with beautiful craft and a bit of wit stand the test of time?”

It’s interesting to reflect on this, just 2 years later, as it might provide an answer without the long wait. I’m pretty certain Nike+ has won many more awards than Leo Burnett’s ‘Big ideas need big pencils’ site, with Nike+ generating a lot more discussion online. Nike+ would also seem to be a key piece of work many digital agencies refer too ¹. A quick search on the leading industry publications reveals people often asking just how much Nike+ has influenced the way we think about marketing and advertising.

In my immediate digital world people still talk about Nike+ and it’s a long time since anyone has mentioned Leo Burnett’s site as an fluencer. This could be explained by of our particular focus of blending marketing and technology, or reflective of wider opinion. What is certain is that our understanding of the digital has developed in this short time and the greater transparency afforded by the connected world means brands really need to be believable with their brand promise and their service being the same. In this sense Nike+ is clearly an important example of how digital thinking can deliver on the promise ‘just do it’ and develop a new service to boot.

Looking back at the original question, it’s could be seen we could face a decision between a brilliant technical ideas or pithy creative ideas with craft and wit. Does it mean we are going down a road where technical capability overshadows pithy ideas full of craft, wit. I hope not. I fact a quick look at subsequent D&AD Black Pencil winners reveal high levels of craft (Got The Glass, 2008) and wit (The Great Schlepp, 2009) have succeeded over pure technical excellence. Interestingly enough at Cannes Lions this year, it was a technically led application, Eco:Drive (often described as Nike+ for cars) that won a Grand Prix.

Perhaps the question posed at the beginning of this post is in fact a misnomer - with both pieces of work continuing to exert influence and it is in fact either too early to judge or simply misguided to do so.

What I do know is that our own understanding and appreciation of digital work is changing on a yearly basis as we push our creativity and technical abilities. Hopefully the real winner in all this, is our audience, the ones brands reach out to impress, engage, entertain and serve. The ones that scrutinize and demand brands be loyal to them.

Now that’s a thought.

1. A few crude Google searches fail to confirm or dispute this. So I could be widely wrong.

It’s stunning the pace at which high end technology stampedes towards the home computer. Microsoft are working on video editing software that brings special effects within reach of amateurs. The fun we’ll be having with appications like this in digital creative work is clear to see. just can’t think of a client for Pimp My Grandma….

Last week I was lucky enough to give a talk at the IAB about blending creativity and technology. [Presentation deck is available here 7.7MB PDF].

Now that’s something we know a thing or two about here at LBi. We’ve a talented team of technologists who work closely with our creative and experience architect teams. It’s not always been easy or smooth but it’s something we’re committed to getting right - as the new digital world - really needs joined up creative and tech to deliver the fantastic ideas we have.

Here are a few simple tips for better blending:

- Make both sides aware of what’s important
- Don’t throw tasks over the wall
- Let your technologists suggest ideas
- Give everyone the chance to be a hero
- Challenge your technologists with the impossible

Keep up to date with our Technical Architects team right here on LBiQ. Jim and Mark-A are already posting, with Nick, Jon, Riaz and Mark-D preparing their own brain splittingly clever bits for your delectation.

Clever technology & creative blending means we can do things like this, that and the other.

This week I was excited. In fact, the last time I was this excited furniture got broken! The cause of all this elation was the arrival of a Microsoft Surface table at our London LBi office.

 Having now had some hands on experience with the device I can tell you that it does not disappoint and easily falls into the ‘really cool’ category.

The table comes with lots of small demo applications which allow you to experience the multi-touch interface and it’s amazing just how intuitive the whole environment is. There is definitely no time required to adjust to the experience (unlike the very first time you ever used a mouse for those of you who can remember a pre-mouse era). The bundled applications include a multiplayer pong game, photo sorting, finger painting, piano playing applications, in-fact a whole host of widgets that encourage you to put both your hands on the table and start pushing, pulling, pinching and prodding.

Each application is very slick and looks like the type of application interfaces you see in sci-fi movies. By the time you’ve finished playing with the demos you really feel like the future has arrived.
Whilst still awash with euphoria I started to wonder how Surface works and how you can program it. Fabrizio who is our lucky software engineer with the task of getting under the hood kindly showed me some code he was working on and yes it was the all too familiar .Net programming framework. Unlike Apple who has created ‘Objective C’ for their iPhone, Microsoft have stuck with a language that millions of developers know and love; 1 nil to Microsoft I think.

After I had finished messing with the Surface I went home. Time passed as did the warm happy feeling of my ‘new gadget’ fix. Questions then started coming into my head:

Why is it a table? Like most Microsoft hardware it is bulky and ugly and they can’t get it any smaller so they stick it in a big box and make a ‘feature’ out of it by calling it a table.

Can we wall mount it? Apparently no, the bulbs will break.

What are its practical applications? Well, restaurants and education of course! Hmmm it is now beginning to sound contrived. It reminds me of a number of failed gadgets which have no real world use or not enough originality to set them apart; Segway, Nokia NGage, Sony Mini Discs, soda-streams etc

I am now left with the feeling that the multitouch experience is a beautiful thing but the Microsoft Surface Table is not. I can’t help but think that if Apple had created ‘Surface’ it would 5mm thick and flexible so you could roll it up and stick it in a tube, the device itself would be highly desirable in the same way as the user experience it provides.

Anyway, can’t wait to see what cool gadget we get next ; please let it be a Lockheed Martin wearable display.

Last week Apple released the much anticipated update to it’s iPhone operating system. Finally bringing many of the features most phone providers would have thought completely necessary in a modern smart phone: MMS, Video capture, Cut, copy, paste, Memo recorder, Background IM applications.

The Apple website lauded these new features as exciting developments, yet they can be found on most current Nokia, Sony Ericson, Samsung, LG and HTC handsets.

It’s taken two years to get these features on the iPhone - with many saying 3.0 is what it should have had when it launched. Yet everywhere I look i see iPhones, it’s easily the favoured handset amongst my friends - with the previously unconvinced now benefiting from their purchase of the new iPhone 3G S.

So did this lack of key features make a difference in the beginning, did it limit the success - no. The iPhone was so far ahead of the competition in other areas that people felt happy to live without these must-have features. This approach to not including everything people expect underlines a key principle for the internet age

Prioritise your killer features to bring instant success and don’t be afraid to add the perceived must-have basics later.

Avoiding the mythical phase 2 or phase 3

How many times have you heard - “That’s a cool idea, but lets put into phase 2″ - it’s an admission, a lack of confidence or ambition - and a fast track to mediocrity.

It happens like this, new service developments, shops & services start with hygiene factors. The team worry about doing the basics well and spend most of the budget doing these. Invariably things don’t go to plan and the pot for all the innovative extras gets smaller and smaller. The site or service launches, and it immediately fails to get traction, the audience figures grow much slower than expected, feedback isn’t a positive as expected which further pressures their development budget. This leads to a review of the project, a postponement of phase 2 - and a belief the service idea doesn’t work or the core idea was failed.

The next time your team think about delaying an exciting and innovative idea to phase 2 - ask yourself this - which of our supposed must-have features can we delay instead?

Delivering on your ambition

If your ambition is to build a better X - and let’s face it just about every project starts that way -  don’t start by copying the competition and talking about  doing the hygiene first. If you’re not innovating or doing something noticeable, why should people change their existing behaviour. Playing catch up with your competition is hard. Start from a positive position and force them to try and catch you. And remember if hygiene is easy it will be easy to add later.

If you take a look back over the myriad of web 2.0-like developments we’ve seen over the last few years. The ones that succeed are the ones that get their new ideas out there quickly, claiming their space with a bright new idea and then adding new features as their audience grows and helps them understand what makes sense.

So be brave, implement the things that differentiate first, then add the basics over time. If you talk about doing a phase 2 - make sure you’re audience is so excited they want a phase 2 and you then deliver on it.

So my slightly battered iPhone 3G can now be a tethered modem for my laptop. That’s something I actually find quite appealing for the occasions I’m out and about with no wireless access. What I don’t find appealing is the price of £15 per month. That’s an amount I’d rather not spend - especially given the few times I’d need it. ¹

There’s no doubt the iPhone has been a success for O2 - it’s the phone of choice amongst my peer group - a quite astonishing fact. With so many things I love about my iphone I’m already lusting after a new 3GS for the better camera, faster processor and video capability. Having it supply on-the-go access for my laptop would be brilliant.

Looking at O2’s decision it seems wierd that they would charge a customer the same as a mobile broadband user - especially when you already have the hardware. Moreover isn’t the iPhone supposed to come with unlimited data traffic? ²

So doesn’t this decision mean O2 are effectively charging users that tether for something they already own are entitled for? I can’t see how this thinking is living up to ‘We’re better, connected‘.

You’re back to the old tricks of charging me twice, how is this better?

Ok, so there are several arguments for charging (see footnote), but using this heavy handed monthly contract is going to drive users to crack their phones and use them anyway. For those wanting to crack it - a simple search on Google will tell you the details.

Come on O2 don’t be stupid. Let iPhone customers get a comparable access when they need it - how about you text when you need to activate for a day - then pay £1 for that day’s usage. This is capped to match the the monthly mobile broadband rate.

Fair and easy. And better, connected.

1. Using a tethered laptop would push up data use. Although 3G web speeds are a bit lame on the phone, research shows this perceived browsing speed is actually a function of the browser render speed and less about connection speed. Previous tethering speed tests show decent browsing speeds when using the phone.
2. Although the iPhone has unlimited data on it’s handset - this was a climbdown from the first releases. Originally marketed as unlimited the small print said provided a fairly measly data cap made it far from unlimited. Public pressure brought a clarification where unlimited started to mean unlimited. Any unlimited tariff is of course subject to a fair use policy. With it’s wi-fi support it’s easy to see how the iPhone actually uses less 3G than you might expect. Many of us have wi-fi at home, work, on the train and in urban areas, reducing the demand on O2’s 3G data network. Having a tethered phone changes our usage model and thus is likely to push up data usage.

In our homes we don’t collect rain water and use it as our main source of water; instead we utilise the services of a water provider e.g. Thames Water. Similarly, we don’t have electrical generators in our gardens we simply link in to the national grid and purchase our power from one of the power companies. If we become unhappy with our power company of choice, we can easily change to another without the need to rewire our houses.

This utilisation philosophy is now rapidly gaining popularity within the internet space and has produced its own term; ‘Cloud Computing’. The cloud computing rational is about providing services that companies and individuals can use within their own websites (normally for a monthly fee). By the way, do not confuse cloud computing with ‘distributed computing’ which is where large computational tasks are split up and undertaken by a number of networked computers in parallel.

Currently there are a number of companies offering cloud solutions; everything from full e-commerce systems to ‘modules’ which will provide functionality that to either buy-in or develop would be prohibitively expensive.

For example, Bazaarvoice offer components which allow users to rate and review products as well as ask and answer questions on them:
 

For the above service Bazaarvoice will charge around £1000 per month which includes analytic reports on the data. This may sound expensive but when taken in context where e-commerce licenses can easily cost £100,000, requires an IT department to maintain and offers less developed reviewing capabilities then the Bazaarvoice module begins to look attractive.

To integrate with cloud services a number of paths are normally available. From iFrames and javascript blocks to server side web services the one ethos which is maintained is ‘simplicity’. Ease of integration is certainly one of the top reasons for opting to use a cloud service over a traditional self hosted solution.

The other main reason for choosing the cloud services or Software as a Service (SaaS) route is cost. The pricing model is that of subscription and therefore very low upfront costs. Of course, over time the cost of ownership can be high but arguably the pain of ownership should be lower (software upgrades will be transparent, no hardware issues, no staff required to maintain it etc).

Currently cloud services offerings are very popular within the CRM, E-commerce and social network sectors. Within ‘Search engines’ and CMS SaaS is less developed. However, this is likely to change; this week Microsoft came to talk to us about their Azure project (http://www.microsoft.com/azure/default.mspx ) . Microsoft view cloud computing as the future and have created Azure to allow companies to easily develop and deploy SaaS services.

Azure is only available for developers at the moment but when it goes on general release you can expect an explosion of new cloud services as the path to make money by selling your cloud services has just been widened.

At the Electronic Entertainment Expo this year, E3, much of the hype was around new controller systems from the usual suspects. Two of the manufactures, Sony and Nintendo, presented impressive, but ultimately incremental wand based methods with which to control your home console. Microsoft however took a different route, and one that demonstrates when they put their minds to it they can come up with innovation to match anyone.

Microsoft presented ‘Controller-less Gaming’ – a motion tracking system which accurately maps the gamer’s motions into the game itself. ‘Project Natal’…

These give you the idea:

What is impressive, and the reason why initial reaction of everybody who watches this is that it is staged or just plain sci-fi, is the sensitivity to which they can achieve this – not only can it detect a body moving in the distance but it can detect tiny movements and even recognise facial features and gestures.

Project Natal also explores a solution for allowing ‘objects’ to move in and out of the virtual world, rather clumsy in comparison to some of the other subtleties, but a scanner is included to pass drawings from the real world to the virtual one. So ironically I guess a good old fashioned paper and pencil is required to get the most of out of it then…

Peter Molineaux, of Populous and Fable fame, has applied this technology beautifully to demonstrate just how this might play out and why it is indeed revolutionary rather than evolutionary. Meet Milo…

Time will tell just how effective this particular device is – however they are now on the way to game developers and are been demonstrated to a sceptical public and press with impressive responses.

Undoubtedly the first time most people will knowingly experience this technology is gaming, however Project Natal is most interesting when you take it away from this context. I don’t believe gaming interfaces are what Microsoft’s ambitions are here – I believe they are making a play for the interface and the method with which we interact with it more generally. ‘Touch’ already seems confined and limiting, it feels niche and more akin to mobile than it does to revolutionary interfaces. Disappointingly I say that after only just getting an iPhone…

Elements of Project Natal have immediate application in a variety of real-life scenarios. The motion tracking could watch you around store and differentiate genuine interest in a product from presence at a display stand. It could watch crowds and identify groups or individuals who act suspiciously, or watch a bus-stop to identify the ‘undesirables’ hanging around. The voice tracking and facial recognition could replace swipe cards at security doors or replace tickets for a play that you’ve bought on-line…

Ultimately this type of development moves us significantly closer to being able to link the online identity to the real-life identity and so share information and experience…

So, next time you pass a security camera ask yourself whether it knows your name and address, your online activity, which play you watched last night, your latest tweets and what you favourite Rock Band track is… Because it just might…

MIX09, Microsoft’s ideas forum for website designers and developers, really caught my interest because it featured Bill Buxton. Microsoft hired Bill in 2005 as Principal Researcher to focus on
the emerging world of ubiquitous computing. This year is proof that Microsoft are taking design seriously. Bill kicked off the whole shindig with his presentation entitled The Return on Experience. This is territory normally reserved for product and technology announcements.

He enthusiastically talked about design and the design process. As part of the converted, it was impossible to stop nodding as he explained that the user experience is not the object or the user interface but that true experience is the result of the interaction with the thing. Experience is holistic. For those of us who do design interfaces, a good bit of advice is to make sure our “state transition diagrams” actually describe the transitions. The baseline is to create something that is functional - it works logically and technically. However, the experience is characterised by how you get from state A to state B. Experience is about designing for flow.

Day 2 of MIX reinforced the design theme with Deborah Adler’s keynote presentation of the Target ClearRx system, a reinvention of the prescription bottle and label. This was launched back in 2005 but is still a great case study of how design can make a real difference. In this instance, it saves lives. Her parting bit of advice beautifully encapsulates the user-centred design ethos: “a successful design experience begins by, one, having a love affair with your customer and really digging into your customer’s needs, and two, bringing your design skills to bear in solving those needs both humanly and humanely”.

There were numerous technology announcements and I won’t list them here. Here’s a good recap. There was one feature that I liked. It had Bill Buxton written all over it. It’s called SketchFlow and is part of Expression Blend 3. SketchFlow allows interactions to be prototyped with sketches or something more evolved. Remember, experience is about the transitions and the flow. I haven’t tried Expression Blend since it was in beta. This makes me want to give it another go.

Bill B is the best thing to happen to Microsoft since, well, Bill G. He points out that the challenge is how to deliver the experience and get the return no matter what the platform is. True brand experience transcends platforms and channels. Does all this point to a new Microsoft - one that is less about engineering and more design-led?

According to this article, Warner Bros. have financially backed a realtime streaming video console called OnLive.  Which is quite an interesting development.  I for one wasn’t expecting anything like this until we all moved on to super-broadband.  It seems they can avoid b-b-b-buffing by leveraging clouds.  Insert your own joke.

Its Ada Lovelace Day today - a global celebration of women in technology and science. For those of you who don’t know about Ada Lovelace and what an incredibly rockin’ lady she was, check her out on Wikipedia here, or check out the twitter action today at #adalovelace.

On top of Ada, I have a few female tech (s)heroes that have been my inspiration over the years and thought I’d take the chance to say “big up!” to the coolest of the cool - the amazing Grace Hopper. Not only did she write the first compiler for a programming language, but was the first to develop the idea that a computer language could be written in natural language (like most of the languages we take for granded these days), rather than in machine code or assembly language. From her groundwork and philosophy, COBOL was born - and she also developed its first validator and compiler.

Not only that, but she was also responsible for developing easy-to-follow teaching texts and methodologies that are still used to this day.

Cheers Grace! Thanks for making it all so much easier!

Indeed, following on from Riaz’s post I too attended the Microsoft Truman Session. Their take on the world come 2019 caught my eye.

I must say, their vision piece was extremely well thought out and crafted. There were of course some usual suspects: digital newspapers, an evolution of Surface and interactive mirrors (hey, we’ve already done that for Macy’s). I guess when imagining the future these technologies are de riguer.  I would have liked to see the vision piece driven by narrative however. Perhaps a storyline. How’s this: A story about a strange man that builds a world using holographic tools for the woman he loves?  Oh, wait.

Yesterday evening at the Truman, we had the wonderful pleasure of Microsoft giving us the lowdown on the latest and greatest in the world of creative products and services coming out of Redmond. The audience, mostly from user experience, creative and client services, were treated to demo’s of Silverlight, WPF, DeepZoom, Surface, Live Mesh, Azure, Secondlight, Windows 7 and so much more. With so many creative technology engagements at LBi, the fit of these technologies alongside some of our .NET, SharePoint, Endeca and EPiServer builds makes a lot of sense for our customers.

It was a great insight into the ‘New’ Microsoft and where it’s heading, I’m very excited that LBi are part of this venture and look forward to seeing our UX/Creative teams blend with Microsoft to develop some very cool, exciting and cutting edge creative digital solutions.

A big thanks to the Microsoft folks who spent the evening with us. James, you blew us away with Azure, ‘gen 4’ data centers and Windows 7. Michael, thanks for showcasing the likes of Surface, DeepZoom and Secondlight – very cool stuff indeed! And off course Matt, our account manager, for organising things on the Microsoft end.

Right, where did I put that copy of Expression Blend…

There’s no escaping it, times are rough and tough.  We’ve been bracing ourselves and tightening our belts to the point where we’re running out of notches. Green shoots of recovery? Yeah, right.

Clients are shaking their heads as they ponder budgets for 2009. The IPA and other industry gurus will no doubt be knocking on their doors with some solid scientific evidence that cutting ad spend has a long-term detrimental effect. Will it be convincing enough? Partly. But accountability will be more important than ever.

We creatives can expect a rather large magnifying glass to hover above our heads, scrutinizing our work and looking to extract every last drop of value from it. Clients will be looking us straight in the eye and demanding, “hey smart Alec, stimulate me some green shoots,” as though it’s all our fault.

You can imagine agency presentations across town this year. They’ll be rather like the old Fairy Liquid TV ads. “Your previous strategy only washed this many dishes. Our fresh, new, lemon scented strategy will stretch your budget to this many dishes.”

We’re already seeing conventional reactions to the crunch; big football sponsorship deals being pulled, four figure global lay-offs, corporate art projects canned.

Spectacular big budget broadcast will be seen as spectacular, big budget wastage. “Open on a tropical beach? You’re having a laugh, mate. What’s wrong with Skegness?!” And that’s just in the tissue meeting. Increasingly throughout 2009 you will hear themes of empowerment, sustainability, innovation and inclusion surfacing in articles.

Industry old boys will continue distancing themselves from broadcast, “Did we say tropical beach? Noooo! Of course we meant Skeggie.” New kids will be hyping the relevance of ’social’ and ’service’ design. Digital agencies can go even further: “We open on user generated shots of Skeggie.”

Yet do we need to get all doomy and gloomy about this? Well, it’s not ideal. I’ve seen tropical beaches and I’ve seen Skegness and, with all respect to the Lincolnshire Tourist Board, I know which I prefer. Yet, the new economic climate does open up a very real creative opportunity.

The good news is that clients are on our side. They know that, as the crunch bites down hard, creativity needs to flourish.  Not just in the way it connects them with their consumers, but the way it helps run their business.  Working smarter, innovatively distributing content and creating cost-effective dialogues is now higher up the agenda than ever. CMO’s will be empowered to make the big balls decisions using “the current climate” to reinvent their approach to their budgets.

So let’s not disappoint them. We too need the balls to grasp the challenge.  Let’s reinvent the industry; move from Broadcast to Narrowcast. Embrace Branded Generosity. Be being bold enough to zig while everyone else zags. Connect with consumers by building believable brands; ones that stand up to the scrutiny of the empowered consumer.

A few of us have been playing with a Microsoft Surface today. It’s a much-hyped device, famous for it’s multi-touch interface and rather high price tag. Multi-touch is clearly becoming the brave new world for User Interface design but the revolution will probably come as an indirect consequence of it, not because of it.

You see we’ve already got multi-touch on a number of popular devices today; mobiles like the iPhone, HTC Touch, Palm and the forthcoming desktop OS’s; Windows 7 and MacOS X Snow Leopard. For these devices multi-touch simply means an interaction with more than one pointing device, usually fingers instead of a mouse or stylus. Users can pinch, scroll, flick, point and drag; which you can also do on a Surface table.

The thing you immediately notice about your interaction with Surface is that the interaction becomes social and collaborative. Using a PC or a mobile is a solitary situation - one person has the pointing device and usually the keyboard. Opportunities to use both at the same time are few and far between (why were we never allowed two mice?). Now you might see two people working together on a PC; as in the short lived eXtreme Programming methodology, or in a Kindergarten class, but one person usually makes the decisions, one at a time. With Microsoft Surface this changes - the environment becomes much more collaborative and everybody has the ability to lean in and interact.

This is certainly going to challenge User Interfaces and how we design them, but more importantly create exciting new opportunities for computing. Just think how we could work in groups all looking and interacting at the same time. Now that’s a paradigm shift, and probably a cause for a computing revolution.

Peter Joseph’s Zeitgeist the Movie has got plenty of us talking in the LBi creative studio. Is it an Anti Capitalist conspiracy theory, or a glimpse of what comes after the collapse of the monetary system in the Crunch… a geothermally powered Resourced Based Economy courtesy of the Venus Project?

A wiser film maker may have steered clear of some of the ham-fisted emotive narrative techniques (the final ‘Times Square Revelation’ scene is worst of all). It’s true Zeitgeist isn’t perfect - there are some holes, it doesn’t have all the answers. But it does do a good job of raising serious questions and prompting debate. For this alone I recommend it highly… clear an evening and go work it out for yourself. 

Part 1: Zeitgeist the Movie (2007)

Part 2: Zeitgeist Addendum (2008)

(Qudos to JMT for getting there first and sharing).

A dramatic picture of the US Airways aircraft that crashed in the Hudson River appeared around the world within minutes after a bystander uploaded a photograph taken with his mobile telephone on to the website Twitter.

The Times claim each google search contributes 7 grams of CO2 to the atmosphere, google responds almost immediately, some else exposes The Times’ shoddy journalism (probably using google). I’d like to see them do an analysis of the total CO2 emissions generated during the production of a single issue of The Times.

If there was one overarching theme from the Consumer Electronics Show last week, it was that absolutely every device in our lives is becoming a computer connected to the Internet. Well about bloody time.

I remember back in the 90’s being promised I could order my milk directly from the fridge, control the temperature of my house from work and set my favourite TV show to record whilst riding on the bus to work. All this by 2001.  Ok, so if I buy Rupert Murdoch’s satellite box i can probably do the latter, and I’m sure some smart Alec will tell me that so-and-so fridge, or with thingy house you can do the other stuff.

I’m not looking for elite products i’d have to pay through the nose for though, or some kind of footballer’s fancy mock-tudor gadget home. I’m talking about a bog standard. Give me a wi-fi enabled IP fruitbowl and give it to me now.  I’ve had broadband for years - it’s about time it could talk to more than my laptop and ipod touch.

Thanks to Russell Davies for posting on Tikitag’s RFID solution and reminding me that - following a great presentation by Rafi Haladjian from Violet at PICNIC last week - I’d meant to look a little more into the Internet of Things. (If only for an upcoming client presentation on new opportunities for connected retail experiences…)

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