A Wider Net

Having just written about the gas price visualization, I thought I should get this one in front of you, too: An Australian advertisement that helps you visualize CO2 emissions from every day tasks and devices by portraying the emissions as filling up black balloons and releasing them skyward. Very good storytelling.

The advertisement is part of a “black balloon” campaign which states that each balloon can hold 50 grams of greenhouse gas. You can even download a desktop widget so you can tally up the emission equivalents of leaving your computer running. It’s not a true “widget” because you have to install it as an applications, but it’s a great idea nonetheless.

Loved finding this at Infosthetics.

Gas prices. The most common answer to “what’s up?”

Take a look at this map from gasbuddy.com, a cool zoomable mashup of gas prices across the continental USA. As a “temperature map”, the hotter the color, the higher the price. So you can look at this and divine two painful facts instantly: Gas is expensive as hell, and you’re probably in a rougher hell then most of the country. Visualizations like this are designed to tell a story, and I’m not sure what story this one is best designed for. It’s not like you can afford to drive from a red area to a green area in search of lower gas prices.

Colorful heat maps like this help support the irrational backlash against the oil companies for their “record profits”. I’m not a big fan of oil companies by any means, but their margins aren’t very big when you compare them to other massive corporations like Coca-Cola, who sells us flavored water that dissolves our teeth and makes us obese. If the oil companies gave all their profits back to the consumers, it would amount to a relatively small adjustment at the pump. Then, because the oil companies would have no profit to reinvest, it would ultimately lead to higher prices as their fields ran dry and their equipment failed. We don’t want another Valdez so let’s make sure they have enough money to build safe tankers.

I don’t know, maybe I’m extra sensitive to misleading information as a result of all my years in marketing and communications. But consider this: If you were to plot this same heat chart on a global scale, and include areas like Europe where gas costs $9-10/gallon, and the Arabian peninsula where gas prices sit below $.50/gallon, then it would plunge the entire USA into a uniform shade of pale green. That would tell another story entirely.

Wednesday night, the American Idol winner was announced. But the show ran long causing what had to be hundreds of thousands if not millions of people to miss the winner announcement due to their PVR failing to record past the scheduled time. My PVR, for example, recorded up to “The winner is… David….. Coo-”

I got the winner’s name, which was a delightful surprise by the way, but I missed the big emotional payoff immediately following. What did I miss? Tears? Freakouts? Screaming? Did little David get all Grand Theft Idol postal and take bigger, badder David out with a shiv? What? What did I miss?!?!?!?!

So I ran to the computer and went to the only place one can go at a time like this: YouTube. Already, dozens of clips had been uploaded from fans across America, bringing that exciting ending to me in crappy YouTube-shot-with-my-phonecorder quality. Despite the fact that the video quality was poor enough to make it difficult to tell David Cook from Randy Jackson, I got a sense of how it played out and was somewhat satisfied. (The video quality improved over time as people took more time to transfer the video from their Slingboxes and stuff)

So where was Fox? Asleep at the wheel again. I thought the wrist-slapping that the networks received at NAB this year was enough to teach them that timing is everything. Get your video up immediately after the event is over. If you’re a major TV network, your stuff should hit the online channels about fifteen seconds after the start of your on-air broadcast. If you have a live show that would be tricky, since the show hasn’t happened yet, so you have until about a minute after the show ends. Less if it’s a clip from earlier in the show.

Millions of people watched YouTube clips through the night and into the next day. Fox and Apple were nowhere. If kids can shoot, encode, and upload this stuff why can’t you?

Event Marketers - as you look to deliver your onsite event content online, which I hope you’re all doing now, consider the timing relevance of your content. Three or four weeks after the event is too long to be bringing archives online. The event has lost it’s mojo by then.

Perhaps you have heard of the OLPC campaign - Nicholas Negroponte’s vision of outfitting the children of the world with tools that allow them to access a larger world and experiment with creative expression. It is a noble idea, funded through a buy two, give one program at a very low price point. His initial program has run into fatal competitive pressure due to ultra cheap options from mainstream manufacturers. But now, apparently, a new vision has risen from the OLPC ashes that has many of us standing up saying “wait a minute - that’s not half bad, and I want one now!”

Here we have the OLPC 2.0, or, XOXO concept- a hybrid dual touchscreen, laptop, ebook thingy. It looks amazingly flexible and futuristic, but it doesn’t seem remotely possible to produce these cheap enough to sell at $75 as reported. I’m also not sure if this type of thing will inspire a child, especially one that is worried about his next meal or how to find clean water, but I can tell you - the conceptual design has inspired me.

Note to Steve Jobs: get your touch OS on this thing and sell it for $500 as an internet/media browser and e-book reader and I’m sold.

Seen also on Gizmodo.

Disney has apparently created a testing lab to determine how advertisements affect viewers physiologically. By tracking biometric measurements they can optimize content to produce the most positive physical (and presumable psychological) response. I guess I have a hard time believing this hasn’t been going on for decades already, especially since the concept was so optimistically laid out in “Max Headroom.” In this futureshock comedy, an evil network had developed a sinister brainwashing technique using rapid firing subliminal video suggestions called “blipverts” that resulted, occasionally, in the viewer exploding.

Looks like we will have to add this to our web design usability studies. Next we need to figure out how to measure the physiological response to any kind of customer experience. Can you imagine if they could measure this sort of biometric activity at, say, the Registry of Motor Vehicles? How about on a typical United Airlines flight or, more likely, a typical United Airlines DELAY?

Disney creates laboratory for biometric testing of advertisements - Engadget HD

Flogos are helium-filled foam shapes made of a soapy material that is bio-degradable and safe for aircraft (says the manufacturer). The machines, rentable for about $2,500 a day, create 24″ or 36″ wide logos at a rate of one every 15 seconds, which sounds great if you have a simple logo and need to catch attention at an outdoor event. They are apparently working on a 48″ version. Despite the manufacturer’s claim, I question how happy a traffic copter pilot will be to fly into a four-foot-wide logo made of anything, but having not tried it - I can’t knock it.

I’m a little late to the party on this one, but eagle-eyed Sue Pelletier apparently picked it up, as did OhGizmo! (where I found it initially) and several others. You can read the original source at Live Science and a great post on BLDG BLOG that contains some other sky advertising images and a very interesting article about sky writing from, believe it or not, 1892.

Pistachio, a.k.a. Laura Fitton, wrote about a very interesting project underway right now on Twitter. In fact, blink and you may miss this one - things happen FAST in the Twitter world.

Roll back to yesterday, when a Twitter member sent an invitation to all of his followers saying “BBQ at our company - tomorrow - all are invited”. 24 hrs later, I was eating a burger with some cool social media experts in the parking lot of his company, Mzinga, and meeting some of his other Twitter peers. One of them, a presentation expert and speaking consultant, whipped out her Nokia phone, started a live broadcast using mobile streaming site Qik, and those of us around her became cast members in a video appeal to someone they were trying to convince to make a trip to Boston. The owner of the phone turned out to be Pistachio. Hours later, we’re now connected through Twitter and LinkedIn and I’m picking up a post from her blog and sharing it with you.

To the social media mavericks at Mzinga, the concept of a “Flash Twitter-croudsourced BBQ webcast” may be old hat. At the rate we’re going, the rest of us have about a week to catch up.

But back to our headline - check out how an article about Twitter is being sourced through the Twitter community. Books have been written this way. None as crazier as this one.

Nintendo’s creative master wizard, Shigeru Miyamoto, has blessed the gaming and pop culture world with Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Nintendogs, and that is only the tip of the iceberg. He is often called the “father of modern gaming” and is largely responsible for the runaway success of the Wii console. It is safe to say that when Shiggy talks, people listen. And that point has been clarified, solidified, and immortalized by a recent Time readers poll that places Miyamoto clearly at the top of the list of “most influential people in the world”.

I don’t have a big idea around this announcement other than to offer some digital applause to an industry maverick and creative genius. But since we’re talking about him as a top “influencer”, we should really pay attention to his latest prophecy.

Wii Fit, Nintendo’s latest phenomenon, hits the United States this month after a rather stunning bit of success in Japan. I would have thought that a fitness game would have about as much chance of succeeding in the gaming world as George Bush does of properly pronouncing “Nuclear”. Apparently the “new” gaming world whole-heartedly disagrees. Wii Fit, which comes with a unique accessory called the Balance Board, compels gamers to get off the beanbags and participate in body-rocking aerobics, yoga, and sports games. It’s well-designed, fun, and addictive. It is also selling like crazy - there have been about 2 million copies of Wii Fit sold in Japan - nearly matching the sales of the Sony Playstation 3 - a console that is supposed to compete with the Wii itself, not one of it’s game/accessories. In the UK, stores have reported selling Wii Fit at a rate of one every 4 seconds. Will it catch fire in the US, especially so shortly after the release of the highest-rated, fastest-selling, highest-grossing media title of all time, the ultra-ridiculously-violent Grand Theft Auto IV? Almost certainly, since the Wii audience, which is the largest segment if the US gamer population, can’t buy GTA for their console.

But other than giving you a shopping tip (pre-order it), and wondering why it didn’t come out in time for Mothers Day or the critical New Year’s Resolution day, I mention Wii Fit so you can start planning it as an incentive gift, as an interactive audience attraction at trade shows and mobile exhibits, and as an investment in your employees work/life “balance”. “Wii Fit won’t make you fit”, says the most influential person in the world, but it will make you aware of your body. Let’s see how we can use it to make people aware of you.

This USA Today article predicts a tough year for air travel as astronomical oil prices drive up the cost of jet fuel and, of course, ticket prices. With higher tickets, fewer flights, and a total lack of reasonable customer service from most domestic airlines, we can expect a flood of requests for alternatives and augmentations to face-to-face meetings for a while.

We looked at this sort of thing 7 years ago after 9/11. We were able to quickly offer satellite, webcast, webconference, and distributed media solutions (among others) to those companies unable or unwilling to travel. The principal driver this time isn’t a terrorist event but oil prices. Considering how rare and limited a resource oil is, I’m shocked this hasn’t happened sooner. The good news is that we’re all better equipped to augment or replace face to face meetings than ever before. I will be writing about available solutions and techniques in the weeks to come. I welcome your input. Please send your ideas to awidernet at crameronline.com or comment here.

So far my favorite idea for ways to reduce travel is: Everyone walks or bikes to Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts, jacks into the web via wifi using their iPhone 3G (the one that doesn’t exist yet but supposedly has a second camera facing forward for video conferencing), and conducts a face-to-face meeting over Grande Iced Mochas. Whipped cream mustaches will be required for admission.

Background: We used to own very high power lasers for entertainment use. All lasers like these needed to be operated by companies registered with an obscure yet draconian branch of the FDA called the CDRH. This was mostly because the “R” in LASER stands for “Radiation” and even though light is technically radiation, the word “radiation” scares people and someone somewhere thought it would be a good idea to keep track of things that emit the stuff. Why flashlights don’t have registration numbers and “cooling off periods” is beyond me. So… all our stuff was registered, and we had special federal permission to use it for our corporate events. Some states, namely Arizona, had their own, even more ridiculous, regulations that we had to follow closely.

We sold that equipment shortly after 9/11 temporarily knocked the wind out of corporate events.

Today I received a letter from the Arizona Radiation Regulatory Agency. It says “Notice is given that Arizona Nonionizing Radiation Registration No. xx-xx-xxxx has expired on September 30, 2005. A renewal application is required to update your registration.

Can you imagine if magazine subscriptions worked this way? “Gee, we noticed that you haven’t been paying for your magazines for the past three years - here’s a renewal form.” I’m just hoping that the government agencies keep better track of the really scary sources of radiation than they do these laser light show devices. And this certainly reminds us to stay timely with our customer communications.