A Wider Net

Moss Inc, the world’s largest tensioned fabric display maker, recently joined forces with Nichols Inc, to form what they call “the most comprehensive manufacturer of tensioned fabric structures, display hardware, and printed graphics in the world.”

To put it in visual terms:

The folks who make this stuff:

have merged with the folks who print on that stuff and also make this stuff:

What does this mean to us? Lower prices, for one. Also, we get greater variety from a single source and better worldwide support.

And in case you have put it completely out of your tensioned fabric memory, we have come very far since they days when every single event was using these things below as cheap scenery; what I call the “egg splatter” look, and others called the “I’ve run out of good ideas” look:

At some point I would think you would damage a brand that appeals to “big kids” if you allow product manufacturers to license the brand and apply it to products designed for “little kids”. This clearly isn’t my thing, because these two examples mystify me:

First they roasted us with Darth Tater, the spud spawn of what used to be a dark evil villain. Now he doesn’t look powerful enough to fry a potato chip on the dark side.

And now they have unearthed Optimash Prime… The Transformer elite warrior who seems to have been suffered a brutal brand baking.

In our not-too-distant future, I fear the following brand pollution:

Harry Potater (pronounced po-tah-ter, of course)
Dakota Famine
Skin City
Pot-A-Rod (potayrod)
Idaho Jones
Fries-a Minelli
Don Imash

Wiffiti, the offspring of Somerville, MA based LocaModa creates digital signs and website objects to which anyone can send text messages for public viewing. It’s a way of creating a comment stream, a shout out board, or a stream of requests for a band or DJ to play. Seems like events can use this as a way to capture the pulse of the show, as a stream-of-consciousness brainstorming exercise, or countless other fun activities.

LocaModa has a powerful offering for mobile-phone-controlled digital signs. Rather than deploy a touch screen, which is fragile, not-very-hygienic, and typically limited to one user, signs that use mobile phones as their control mechanism open up all sorts of interesting possibilities, including two-way communications, group activities, after-hours secure applications through windows, and so on.

I love a great billboard. If you’re going to have to smear ads on the world, at least make ‘em good.

This one, found on Billboardom, points to this site for a few more cool photos.

The challenge for us: find ways to execute ideas like this at conferences, exhibitions, and meetings.

Be sure to read on - beyond my snarky remarks are some cool stuff (really).

Remember that telepresence event I mentioned a little while ago? It’s happening now. And it’s being covered with… a blog. Actually, two blogs. Yep - the world leaders in telepresence, the technology and techniques of allowing people to have face to face meetings without traveling, have actually travelled to an event to talk about it, and to my knowledge, there isn’t even a scrap of video on the web about it. There are photos of people… at a meeting… talking about how they have the technology to deliver great video experiences over the web, and avoid traveling to meetings.

I need to pick on a one more thing, then I’ll get back to some serious comments.

Here’s a photo from their blog, featuring the CEO of Polycom:

This is nit-picky, but note how the A/V company used an old round-corner rear-projection screen, which has three noticeable effects:

1. It crops the logo in the top left.
2. It makes the set look dated
3. It makes the show, which is a supposed to be about bleeding-edge technology, seem not-so-bleeding-edge.

Here’s a photo that seems to indicate they are demonstrating a remote video connection, since there’s no one on stage:

Reading through their coverage reminds me that this is seriously cool stuff and it’s ready for prime time. If the jarringly blatant Cisco Telepresence product placement in the recent season of 24 didn’t already convince you, then perhaps this event will. Telepresence corrects a lot of video conferencing sins (eye contact being the most obvious), and it opens up all sorts of opportunities for events and meetings.

The most impressive so far:

The DVE Tele-Immersion room, which superimposes a floating image on the video screen, creating the illusion of a floating hologram over the table. Look closely - that room only has four people in it - the other two are in another room somewhere else. Slick.

Images are from the event site and their coverage partner, Technology Evangelist.

Eee, a brand name intentionally meant to sound like Wii, represents the first ultra micro PC at the affordable level. In fact, if this lightweight wonder offers internet browsing, WiFi, and a webcam for $200, then sign me up - it’s a perfect TV-chair-side companion to check sports scores, TV listings, email, weather, and shop for anniversary gift that you just remembered when one of those annoying “spoil her” diamond commercials flashed on your “spoil him” plasma screen.

It’s also the same price as a Sony PSP, making it the biggest tech-gadget incentive gift bang-for-the-buck I’ve seen lately.

If anyone sights one in the wild, please report in immediately.

Found on Engadget.

A coworker sent me this Ad Age article about blogger and blog reader demographics. While it’s not loaded with scientific data, it does have some interesting reference points in it. For example:

“In a February poll from We Media and Zogby Interactive, 72% of adults said they were dissatisfied with the quality of American journalism today. Another 55% said bloggers are important to the future of American journalism, and 74% said citizen journalism will play a vital role, according to the poll.”

Some of the data was a little mixed - 15 million blogs read by 57 million readers certainly speaks to a shortage of readers relative to writers, but RSS feed readers make it easy for readers to digest many blogs at a time. For example, I track around 100 blogs, off and on, using Google Reader.  Also, the reach of the internet and makes blogging to small audiences of highly targetted individuals a reasonable and desirable practice.
Also, in data from the PDF attached to the article, they indicate that 57% of teens have created content for the internet - further testimony that companies increasingly need to consider how to allow their site users to participate.

I’ll leave you with one of the strangest factoids from the PDF: