Afternoon all,

It’s almost arrived and I have #OlympicFever.

You can’t experience the Olympics (am I even allowed to mention them) without visiting the Heineken Y! Fanhub. There is loads of info being constantly uploaded to give you a fan’s eye view of the games.

And if you are on Android then download and compete yourself with this mobile game.

Apparently BA no longer sponsor the London eye:

EDF Energy, the wheel’s new sponsor, have created a Twitter sentiment tool lighting up pods to show how we are feeling about the games. Use #Energy2012 and see the wheel light up depending on the portion of positive comments. For example, if 75% of the tweets are positive, 75% of the wheel will be lit. The more positivity, the more lights.

Or as Gavin points out it could just look like a constant partial power cut brought to you by a power company.

Really should have gone to Spec Savers: And in case you missed it in the papers today, a brilliant reaction from Specsavers on the football flag mishap of the other night.

For the lighter side of the Olympics check out London Underdogs. Remember Eric the Eel? Well this year there are plenty of lesser athletes to get behind. For example Hamadou Djibo Issaka the rower from the landlocked desert nation Niger. Or Japan’s Hiroshi Hoketsu the equestrian who is competing in his 2nd Olympics – his first was the 1964 Tokyo games!!! He turned 70 in March.

In other news:

IKEA-AR: The new 2013 catalogue for IKEA is a joy behold. Proving how a company can cross over from traditional to digital in a non-gimmicky way they have really thought about the value a mobile will bring to the experience. And once again proving the critical role of the mobile phone in our day to lives as the digital enabler:

How do you go about painting a 150 foot Batman?:

Giant Batman mural A ‘big’ thank you to Charlie Newbury for pointing me in the direction of that one. If you haven’t seen the film yet, go. It is awesome.

And finally... Totally unrelated to anything Olympics or even work. Love Indiana Jones? Then hear the theme tune sung A Capella, amazing.

Everyone loves a good bit of retro gaming. Here is a short Mario homage made in 7,000 post it notes

Have an Olympian w/e.

Oli.

Afternoon all,

Olympic fever is almost upon us. No doubt Chariots of fire will be on at some stage in the week. Probably not Sunday though – doesn’t run. So until then and sate the fever like a chilled flannel upon ones fevered brow this was a nice spot from Robin Clarke on the BBC, a 100 years of Olympic sponsorship, not as cynical as you think .

Whilst not the true games, this is a good game from the Blackberry team across the Glam network.

Boris and Emirates Airline: After the uber launch of the Emirates Cable Car it is brilliant to see how it is starting to become even bigger, so much so that it has become the focus of a fun video “Boris’s Cable car vs. Vince Cable’s car” worth watching if only for the painful fall by Boris.

Search lately: If you missed it yesterday a good chance to catch up on the latest of what’s happening in the world of search from Kevin Ting. This week it covers how Us paid search is slowing in growth whilst the tablet market shoots up and how Bing is incorporating Foursquare results.

Tech consumption habits: A good find from Steve Smith this week, the latest ISPOS MORI numbers on how people are consuming technology. Good for presentation fodder.

Instagram is mainstream: The hubbub around the $1bn purchase of Instagram has settled down but the strength of the site seems to have leapt on. This week the US Sports Illustrated (and swimsuit) magazine is running a feature with just Instagram pictures taken from a mobile.

To see the full gallery click here.

TIME magazine are also in the process of gathering pictures for an article about the role of mobile in everyday life. So if you want to get involved, make sure you tag your pics with #TIMEwireless for a chance to get into the article.

It isn’t just the big corps using it, here is a nice example of how using Instagram is helping dog shelters to find adopters by using the filters to create cuter pictures of the dog orphans http://bit.ly/Photos4Fido

The new Mayer of Y!: With the mega news that Y! hired Google’s 20th hire Marissa Mayer here is a nice visualisation of how franetic the top job seat shuffle can be. Thanks to Tom O’Donnell for the link

Have a great w/e.

Oli.

Afternoon all,

It’s the 2nd week of Wimbledon a nation’s hopes rest on the slender shoulders of Murray. Can he do it? Can he end the 76 years of torment? We wait and see.

More importantly though two mega campaigns kicking off this week. Blackberry Summer Daze follow the intrepid youth in their coming of age journey via the muddy festival fields and then once you’ve tweeted and posted about the unconventional friendship between Dexter and Will or the mischievous antics of Flora turn on the Xbox and get involved with Honda Civic.

A very cool campaign this one and is our first to utilise the motion control capabilities of the Xbox Kinect. You can see a quick run through of how it works on the link.

One of the biggest challenges that Honda have is getting people to form a connection with the car unless they have been able to drive it and the only way can get them to drive it is to get them to the car showroom. Using the Kinect we are able to give them a virtual connection to the car and get them reach out and “touch” parts of it by bringing the showroom to their living room.

Well done to Adelia Harris and Jen Shuker for bringing a tricky idea to life. Kinect is going to become even more important as we develop more involved experiences for our clients.

Build once play everywhere: That is the promise of HTML5 on mobile. At the moment HTML5 is still in the growing and development phase but like a precocious child it is growing fast and is set to become the standard quickly. Here is a nice video from Google that shows some of the latest advancements of it and how it is starting to incorporate multiple gestures, greater flexibility and general awesomeness

Mobile not for calls: Our good friends at O2 have recently conducted a great report on how people are using their mobile phones.

As ever, it is interesting to see how actually calling and receiving calls is dominated by other uses.

Tech unicorn spotted... YouView has finally announced it will launch for the end for the end of the month and will cost £299. Yes, that’s right £299. To put that in perspective that is 3 Apple TV devices and 2 Google TV boxes, an Xbox with Kinect sensor, 2 games and a years online subscription. In other words it is stupidly expensive.

Some people may laud the arrival of YouView but I am not one of them. I appreciate that for many people the concept of getting iPlayer on your main television is head scratching exercise in thinking you need to connect your laptop to it, but that group of people is rapidly shrinking every day. Consoles (xbox and Playstation), connected TVs, new blu-ray players, Sky, Virgin TiVo, BT all offer pretty much everything that YouView offers.

Tech Radar have a great intro which I recreate below:

Three years is a long time to wait for anything, but in the world of technology it's an eternity .In this time Google has managed to release eight different updates to its Android platform, Apple has created a new computing sub genre with the iPad, Sky has launched a 3D channel, Virgin has teamed up with TiVo, TV manufacturers have launched and then gone quiet over 3D-capable sets, then revealed Smart TV is the real future of television… it's fair to say the tech climate has changed dramatically since 2009.

From a look at the early reviews it seems as if this was planned and designed in 2009. No adaptive bit-rate (the clever technology that optimises the picture depending on the speed of your internet), no wifi (admittedly always best to plug in via the Ethernet cable for streaming tv, but adds more hassle for many and one that many TV companies are learning - auto detect the wifi source and guide people through set-up). On the plus side it comes with very good storage capabilities and the marriage of catch-up with live tv is well done through the scroll-back feature.

Will it take off? Depressingly too many people will feel bullied into buying it and thinking this is as good as it gets. It isn’t. Hopefully the price will be slashed for Christmas and when it enters the £100-£150 price mark then it becomes to sound sensible. In reality it needs to be under £100 though. Hopefully in existence it will be far more successful than it was in inception. I have my doubts though.

Perceptive media test: A few months ago I wrote about how the BBC were looking at the area of perceptive media. Where the program you are watching or listening to is influenced by you and your online presence. For example if you are watching Eastenders online then they use your last played songs on Spotify (assuming you are still logged in) as the background music in the cafe or take some of your pictures from Facebook and embed them on the posters on the wall. They are looking at creating subtle ways to make you connect deeper with the program on a subconscious level rather than overtly change the story or anything like that. It is quite an interesting space and one that we will be hearing a lot more about in the near future.

At the moment the BBC have released a short (10 mins) radio play that uses your location to feed places into the audio that are around you, to reflect the current weather that you have at the time of listening, referencing the social networks you are logged in to at the time and a few others. None of them immediately amazing but a good precursor as to how our role as the passive viewer / listener is changing.

And finally... With Olympic fever building and the country on the cusp of the games here are a couple of ways you can live out your gold medal fantasies For the more serious button bashing athlete But my current favourite This one is so random it is worth giving it a go just to see how weird some people are. You control a runner's thighs and calves and have to move him. My record is 1.9 metres.

Have a great w/e.

Oli.

Afternoon all,

It’s Ascot week, and taking a break from the horses, her is what is happening around the web...

Ruth Arber has put a delectable selection of links together so we can all appreciate the delights of what Twitter and Facebook are offering with their latest update...

Following on from last week’s video, we have a new one. A few tech problems, but this should work, just not allowing us to save it in YT until Scott comes back from paternity leave – hooray for Polly. But myself, Scott and Tom are discussing the new Microsoft Surface tablet

Note: it may take a while to load, but give it time

Twitter: - Expandable Tweets

Facebook: - We can now target Sponsored Stories & Page Post Stories in the Newsfeed; by desktop & mobile. First unique mobile product for Facebook - some extremely promising results so far with CTRs of over 2%. - We will soon be able to buy Premium Ads via the self-serve - The Facebook exchange

Think you should be the boss of an ad agency? Think you can make a mega campaign? Well now you can. A, presumably, fun new game for the iPhone pits you as the boss of an 80’s heyday creative agency needing to drive it it to mega success through the next decades. Mingle with pop stars, win awards and plan your way to the top

Bieber does Blippar: Augmented Reality is getting a lot of coverage at the moment, it won a Cannes Lion earlier in the week and now Justin “I’ve got Bieber fever” has made his latest album AR ready. So no doubt it will become mainstream. And if you happen to support Spurs and have a replica shirt at home (even if you know they will never call you up to the 1st team) then download the Aurasma app and point your camera at the badge on the shirt and you will see the last game highlights and goals of the season

Ever wondered why Nigerian scammers choose Nigeria?: Wonder no more. Microsoft has analysed it and created some fancy graphs. It’s all about the false positives and weeding out the truly gullible apparently

And finally... Blade Runner was an absolutely seminal film and well worth a watch or even a re-watch if you haven’t seen it for a while. To whet your appetite here is the opening sequence recreated via the medium of water colour painting

Have a great w/e.

Oli.

A delayed upload from Friday

Going to be a fairly short one this week as we have the super bonus new video approach of a tech chat. Myself and Scott Thompson will be looking at tackling a topic every week (where possible) and creating a series of short clips. Here is our first effort, hopefully you like (feedback is appreciated so we can make it better and hopefully valuable).

This week we have a look at the Apple announcements for their new mobile operating system iOS6 and the implications of shutting Google out

In other things, one of the key trends mentioned 2 weeks ago, I spoke about the rise of the maker. This very firmly slots in to that approach to life. Already we have had ITTT.com (If This Then That) where you can program simple actions to happen based on particular triggers. Here is another one that builds upon the sensors in your phone

Facebook Launches Simple Mobile Payments: The mobile payment world is really hotting up. Apple and their 400 million bank detailed users now have PayPass, Google Wallet is still to fully launch here in the UK but the banks and mobile operating systems are going for the early land grab. Paypal have had a solution in market for a year or so and now FB are getting involved

In the coming weeks we will have a proper look at this, one of the most exciting areas and one which promises radical change.

Piracy, a different approach: The traditional response when your work has been pirated is to launch in to full on meltdown and try and to destroy the people who have downloaded your content. Or at least that is how the film industry has traditionally approached it. Here is a nice approach from an independent filmmaker who on finding his new film on Pirate Bay decided to reach out and appeal to their better side

And finally... Because we love the internet, here is a nice homage to see you out for the w/e

Have a great w/e.

Oli.

Afternoon all,

We are living in time of phenomenal accelerated change. Some of the really big shifts that excite me the most that are happening at the moment are:
1. Crowd funding – finally making it mainstream for smaller projects to get 100% customer commitment before investing in stock – Kickstarter leading the charge
2. The rise of the maker – programming is becoming simplified so everyone can get involved. We see programming courses available to all and even the traditional press using the headline “coding is the new latin”. Google have just announced a 3 year partnership with Teach First in the UK to provide training and equipment to teachers to get them more technically focused and using entry level systems like Rasberry Pi (the £15 computer) and Arduino circuitry in their classrooms.
3. The interconnectivity of devices. Devices talking to each other and interacting think your phone and everything...

The second screen: Here is an interesting take on the whole second screen idea – is the second screen actually the TV and the primary screen the phone, tablet or laptop in your hands? Yes the TV has the bigger “experience” but the more intimate experience is the in the smaller device and for the majority of the time you are using it has the primary focus of your attention. The TV merges into the background and becomes a distracted source of attention or maybe the trigger for your intimate experiences via email, FB or chat etc.

With that thought I would like to do a little plug for some very cool work that Samsung are doing with Zeebox and Suzanne Perry’s favourite tv show The Eurovision Song Contest to be aired tomorrow night on BBC.

We will be sponsoring the Zeebox activity and creating more interactive moment during the show for those watching at home:

Vote along with the acts to show your support

As well our own voting system to reflect some of the more questionable acts

Remembering that this is on the BBC with no way to get our TV ad shown, well we will be pushing this through Zeebox too via the Zeetags

Throughout the show we will be pushing other Zeetags with Interactive polls Tweet to win a SMART camera And much more

We have also been able to create for the time on the platform branded Shoutouts to your friends, sponsorship presence in the live chat area and automatically branded hashtags which should all help to further promote the activity and the cameras.

Next week we will have a more focused look at some of the other players in the space such as Y! IntoNow, Orange TV check and Shazam.

The rise of the Maker: Combining two of my loves Kickstarter and tinkering I give the ability to turn anything into a keypad

It is amazing how access to technology is starting to make what only a year or so ago was the preserve of the seriously geeky and technically advanced open to the have a go hero. Yes companies like Apple are pushing us into more closed systems with computers and devices where we are never expected to be able to open them up and play around the hood but a huge swathe of more accessible and cheap tech is focusing on dispelling the myths of tech and bringing in the next generation of developer. Remember, Instagram was created by someone who learnt to code at night school, the Google homepage’s simplicity was not the result of creative though but simply the limitations of Larry and Sergei’s coding ability.

New control methods: This is very cool looking, at first I thought it was a fake but turns out it is real and will be available to buy in the next few months. Leap Motion – claims to be 100X more sensitive than the Kinect – bold statement. But very impressive and don’t let the use cases dampen the possibility.

Offer - O2 wireless: Virgin have locked up underground for the Olympics but O2 are looking above ground and have come to us to see if we want to sponsor their free London offering. Users will have a once only sign up process with brand messaging on the page and the opportunity to push more information on request. For more info please speak to the mobile guys Roberto Agosti / Michael Vitello or Milton and they can share the full deck.

And finally... With one of the trends mentioned above as the rise of the Maker I found this fun piece about a real life Tony Stark (Iron Man) who turned a Citroen CV into a motorbike to save himself after his car broke down in the desert

Have a great w/e.

Oli.

Afternoon all,

Your w/e papers will either be filled with stories of “proof of internet bubble” or “internet ride is over” as it’s FB IPO day today. We will have a FB focus at the bottom but in the meantime let’s shine a light on the other social spaces out there.

Twitter celebrated its year in the UK with some new stats: 140m global users 10m UK active users 1bn tweets every 3 days 1 in 6 users exclusively mobile 80% of UK users are mobile (not exclusive) - global leader 40% of users never tweet - consumption platform

One of those 10m is Liverpool’s striker Luis Suarez who in an attempt to open himself up to his fans with a Twitter interview got a bit more than he bargained for – some brilliant tweets and a real warning to how a “good” but ill thought out social idea can backfire

Google Knowledge graph: A big shake up in the US version of the site on Wednesday. Google launched the Knowledge Graph, their next big step towards the Semantic web – understanding what you are searching for without you having to be literal about it. Better connecting the relationship between words, context and things. Build into that the years of data Google has about follow up searches people make, where they click etc, so Charles Dickens as an example is more likely to be a search about his books rather than anything else so they give you that info straight up and other likely searches built into your results. This explains it

One of the speakers uses the term “from an information engine to a knowledge engine”, it pulls heavily from places like Wikipedia and starts to answer in a more Wolfram Alpha way rather than the traditional search list way. For me though it pushes Google closer to being a destination engine where you spend more time rather than just a search and then you leave engine. Very exciting and could create a whole new time suck for searching. Also noteworthy is the reduced Ad real-estate on the page.

For our very own search expert Kevin Ting’s views check out

G+ and brands: As Google announces it has over 190m Google+ users and that 64 of the top 100 valued brands (Interbrand) have created a Google+ page Simply Measured have released some interesting topline stats about how brands are interacting with it:

Such as 22% of them have amassed more than 100,000 subscribers in their circles or that the top 5 categories are Auto / Electronics / Luxury / Internet Services and Beverages. Wednesday is the best day to post and photos get the most interaction.

For the full list and more ripper graphs click here

Ever wondered what happens when you send an email?: Google have put together a fun interactive site that takes you through the process as well as really highlighting the green and social good they do at the same time - here

Is connected TV about to become mainstream: About 6 weeks ago IKEA announced the Uppleva – their all in one TV and storage solution.

For those that just want simple technology it will be preloaded with internet apps such YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, an open internet browser (most likely Opera) and apparently some casual games such as everyone’s favourite Angry Birds. The reason to care is that this has caught the imagination of the completely tech uninterested, a case in point being my 72 year old neighbour who still uses a Nokia 3310.

[Here for video of the Uppleva] (not my neighbour, that’s on the paid email) - (http://bit.ly/UpplevaIntro)

And keeping with the IKEA vibe they have been quite active on Pinterest of late

bonus nugget - who have just been valued at $1.5bn:

Now for the FB focus:

There is still time to cast your vote on what you think the end of day price will be when the US markets close – opening price will be $38 with a $100bn valuation (currently the belief is it will be on the bigger side with 37.5% each on $46-$55 and +$55 which would value it at well over $100bn)

BBC2 Money Program FB show: If you missed it when it aired on Monday night then you can catch it here. It is on the whole quite interesting and I was surprised at much Zuckerberg time they got. They also focus on the mobile issue – see below

Mobile becoming business critical for ebay and still FB issues: The biggest challenge FB is having around its IPO and future returns are to do with the potential of mobile. They readily admit they haven’t cracked it. Stats have been coming out during the week that the average desktop user sees 7-11 ads per session where as the mobile visitor (of which almost 50% of the user base are) tend to see less than 4. This is a huge focus for them moving forward and one I am pretty confident they will nail.

In the meantime, it is interesting to see other web giants who have got it and continue to plough straight in, for example eBay. Here is a short video introducing their new fashion offering it is great to see how they have totally redesigned the experience for the phone. It is worth noting eBay are on target to handle about $8bn of business via mobile devices, building on the $5bn it did in 2011 and $2bn from 2010 proving that a commitment to the channel can reap huge rewards.

A load of FB UK stats from Hitwise to pepper into your w/e chat:
1. > 1.3 billion visits to FB a month in UK (2nd only to Google) accounting for 14% of all page views. Getting 40m unique visits p/day
2. We spend 500M hours a month on FB, averaging 22mins a session.
3. It is the most popular social network in the UK, accounting for 50% of all visits to social networks. Twice the size of YouTube and 17 times bigger than Twitter in terms of visits from UK Internet users.
4. Facebook is the most searched for website in UK. The term ‘facebook’ is the most popular search term typed into all search engines including Google, Yahoo! and Bing and three of the top 10 most popular search terms online are Facebook related (‘facebook’, ‘facebook login’ and ‘fb’).
5. 1 Facebook fan = 20 additional visits to your website over the course of a year. Using the top 100 retail websites as a sample group, Hitwise data shows that for each additional fan acquired on a branded Facebook page companies can expect to see 20 extra visits coming to their main website over a 12 month period.
6. 25% of all visits leaving Facebook go straight to an Entertainment site, showing the close affinity between Facebook and people’s interest in movies, TV, music and games.
7. Manchester is the new Facebook capital of the UK with Internet users from Manchester 9% more likely than the average person to visit Facebook in a given month.

And finally... If you are going to rob an internet café, make sure you log out of your FB account before you leave

Have a great w/e.

Oli.

Afternoon all,

Before we begin, hold your hats it’s Britain’s Got Talent final this w/e. To be honest I haven’t watched any of it, but I will be tomorrow as during the show Samsung will be doing a live Zeebox competition to give away 10 of their shiny new wifi cameras with winners announced before the end of the show. So look out for the Sponsored BGT page, the synchronised Zeetags that will magically appear as the tv ad shows, tweet about it using #WinDuringBGT and generally get involved.

This is just the first bit of Zeebox wonderment that Samsung will be rolling out over the next few weeks and we have got some very cool things lined up and will be letting you know nearer the time.

Now for the main bit...

Next week is FB IPO week, with Friday the 18th being the day it floats and people will be able to buy shares.

For most of us though we won’t be able to afford to get involved but you can still have fun and plenty of bookies will be taking bets on what final price at first day will be. For the less risk averse you can still get involved in our own little poll

And if you hadn’t already guessed today we are all about building on the FB fever that is going to set in next week, so I bring you the FB edition...

FB continues spending in the mobile space – 3rd buy in a month or so: Glancee is the latest mobile offering to join the FB family. It hove in to the public consciousness back at SXSW in March, (we had it on our top services to watch out of SXSW – phew!) when together with Highlight it allowed people make connections with like minded folk in the immediate vicinity using such things as your friends and posts on FB and Twitter. As a differentiator, Foursquare is about places and Gancee is about the people in those places.

Why have they bought it? As well as wanting the skilled people it also wanted the location engine that they have developed. It should also bypass a big problem that FB Checkin had which was that people weren’t checking in – this will no doubt allow you to automatically check in (keep an eye on your security settings if you don’t like the sound of that). As well of course of building the recommendation of others back into FB.

Like that – clothes hanger: Judging by how this took off on Twitter last w/e I am guessing many have seen it already, but just in case you haven’t here is a clothes store in Brazil using live FB likes built in to the clothes hanger to show what the most popular garments are.

Finally an end to the “but it’s big in Brazil” answer for social network Orkut: In January of this year Facebook finally won its battle to become the #1 social network in Brazil. For years Google’s Orkut inexplicably ruled the roost where it went gangbusters back in 2008 Google even took the decision to move the Orkut team out to Brazil where the majority of its users were based. More recently, late 2011, almost 70% of the 66m users were in Brazil.

FB App Center: Unless you have a mega hit that grows organically getting your app or game promoted on FB can be quite tricky. Well fear no more for FB have announced the imminent launch of the App Center. Unlike the Apple App Store and GooglePlay, FB’s App Center will not be a traditional a storefront for apps. Instead, visitors will have the chance to browse and learn about the apps in the App Center before being sent to Apple's App Store or Google Play to download the apps.

Get you cheque book ready you will be able to buy FB shares next week: As such here is the video that is part of their investor roadshow. It really is worthwhile putting 30 mins aside to watch this and hear about FB from FB and how they are changing the world. Pretty compelling and really makes you understand the scale and impact of it beyond just the big numbers - (it being from an IPO doc there are a few disclaimers you need to go through, but is quick and worth it).

In the Advertising and Finance blocks you really pick up on the crucial importance of mobile and a fairly honest realisation as to how early on in the journey they really are.

Who is the real Zuckerburg?: What is there to know outside of the Social Network film about Zuckerburg? Quite a lot it would seem. A great piece from the New York magazine that paints a pretty comprehensive picture of the “boy billionaire” and how the company grew to what it is today- http://bit.ly/MeetZuck

And finally... If you really want some bed time reading this is a lengthy but compelling breakdown of the battle to become the bank leading the IPO

Have a great w/e.

Oli.

Afternoon all,

This was the week when it seemed that it would never stop raining, LinkedIn spent a load of money to buy Slideshare, DrawSomething announced they have lost almost 30% of their audience since Zynga bought them but you can now get your brand into the game as a word to draw and Facebook announced the date for their IPO, May 18th. But enough of all that, here’s what really matters...

Galaxy S3: Rejoice rejoice for the S3 has arrived. Early impressions from the tech world seem to be very positive, still early for full reviews but here is a quick overview of the phone (ignore the Nokia ad before it).

How does search work?: A nice little 101 to Google and how search works from their very own Matt Cutts exploring crawling, indexing and ranking - video

Google X: Over the last few months the products and innovations coming out of the now admitted “Google X Labs” have been pretty mind blowing. For example the driverless car taking the blind man out for a spin or the very sci-fi Project Glass glasses. Here is an interview with the guy behind them – Sebastian Thrun .

In the video he discusses the projects, what the aims are and other things he is working on. It is 19 minutes in total but really worth a listen as is very much the envisioning of a future world happening now. There is also a very bonus moment in the first couple of minutes where he takes a photo and posts it to his Google+ page using the glasses.

Sunny QR Code: Weather triggered media is always a favourite, we ran a great Bulmer’s campaign in the late summer of last year where the target audience were sent text messages directing them to their nearest pub when the sun came out across the country - ask Jack Kelly for more info. Well, in Korea they have used the shadows created from the midday sun to create a short term QR code to encourage users to act in the timed sales, check it out here

New AV moves in to old TV space: Netflix had LilyHammer, (it gets 8.3/10 on IMDB and has one of the guys from the Sopranos) their first commissioned and produced series. Hulu have committed $500m to new programming, Y! and Google are involved and now Amazon are getting in to the production game announcing this week that they will be optioning 1 new show a month around Kids tv and sitcoms to be housed under Amazon Studios. This isn’t the first time Amazon has done something like this they also have a book publishing arm for authors – no doubt we will start to see crossover soon.

The evolving crowd: Threadless was one of the first to do it all the way back in 2000, bring in the masses allow an idea to float to the top and then when enough commitment to the t-shirt it was then created and sold. More recently Kickstarter has been using the power of the crowd to enable creators to bypass traditional funding methods to get their idea built (remember the Pebble watch from 2 weeks ago? It was about to break $5m in funding, well it is now up over $8m, will it break $10m???. Well almost a combination of the two is a very interesting company called Quirky (thank you to Adelia for highlighting it). People submit an idea for a product, the crowds vote and offer improvements on it, Quirky then bring in a crack team of designers and developers to build it. Once produced the users of the site can also help to sell it. Throughout the whole process people earn “influencer” points and these are then used to allocate a share of the spoils if the product sells. A really interesting concept and already a few successful products in market. Here is their Manifesto video set to the apparent oratory style of an early Eminem song

And finally... Who is the most influential on Twitter within SMG London towers? Katie Dobson. Check out the Kred league table that Mat Morrison (@MediaCzar) has put together and see where you rank (if you aren’t listing just drop Mat a note).

And if you didn’t know, Twitter are now accepting a minimum booking of £5k, so get a campaign going and no doubt see your influence rise.

Have a great w/e.

Oli.