Afternoon all,

Not yet got Para Olympic fever? Then watch this and love the next week and a half.

Now on to the other things. You’ve all seen the scene in the movie where FB’s original investor and co-founder Eduardo Saverin is talking to New York advertisers about why FB is such a great opportunity. Well, here is the real deck that FB were pushing back in 2004:. Quite fun to see how even in that really early stage, 70k users, they were already thinking much bigger. Now almost a billion members later it is a much changed beast. Talk to the FB team to find out the best opps across API buying and others.

The new hit makers: A thank you to Pete Beeney @Spotify for sending this through. An interesting look at how platforms like Youtube (by extension Vevo), Spotify, Twitter and FB can be the driving force for artist promotion and not traditional airplay. That’s not to ignore the power of the traditional, as with many of our clients, but to understand the interplay betwixt the new and less new.

The legit Dr Who: TV program piracy is one of the most common uses of P2P torrent sites. Often times it is simply easier (apparently and so they say) to just find a torrent copy of the program rather than a legal one and certainly far quicker. Sky did it a while back with the last episode of LOST and now it is going the other way. ABC will stream this Saturday’s episode of Dr Who directly after it finishes here in the UK beating the pirates and enabling them to amke money off it. Good to see sensible solutions being put in place rather than relying on draconian measures of fear and fines to beat piracy.

More processing power than Apollo: An oft used wonder stat is that smartphones now have more processing power than NASA used to get Neil Armstrong to the moon. Well, now it seems NASA have put two and two together and embraced the new powerhouse by building the next generation of small satellites with the phones.

And now here is the updated version of it – One Google search uses more computing power than the entire Apollo space mission. Details on the link

Mars spams us back: For decades we have been sending radio and tv waves out in to space well now Mars has got its own back and broadcast Will.i.am’s song Reach for the Stars back. The first ever song to be broadcast from another planet. Pretty cool regardless of how you feel about the song

One more thing... Old Spice have gone and done it again, a very very cool ad that taps into the Maker trend we mentioned a few weeks ago where everything has the power to be connected and trigger an action If you then want to have a go just press letter and number keys on the keyboard. I love this ad, very well created, more fun watching probably though rather than investing time creating music, but lots have and Vimeo feeds are filling up with user tunes. And interesting to note this doesn’t seem to work on a mobile/tablet but well worth watching.

Have a great w/e.

Oli.

Afternoon all,

And so the torch has been extinguished. A record medal haul and an amazing mental cinema of memories and moments play on loop. This came out last week and chances are you have already seen it but let’s revel one more time. To the backing of Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen, here's Team GB

Stanforth’s warriors (a.k.a. the Research team) have been busy with a great piece of research exploring how people followed along to the Olympics. Here is a tiny sneak peak at some of the mega findings:

6.6m viewers pressed the TV Red Button for the first time to watch the Games 7.2m used a mobile or tablet to follow the Games 2.7m ‘dual screened’ for the first time – watching TV while discussing it on social media

Keep an eye out for the full research over the next few days and we will also have the full round up next week here.

Look at the shiny lights: After the opening and closing ceremonies, Coldplay do it and now Disney are doing it; crowd synch light shows are all the rage and a great way to bring the audience in. It is so amazing to see how geo-location is being used in more innovative ways and how simple tech applied differently is taking us in to new experiences.

The power of content: For those of you who have to meet with Liquid Thread’s latest super acquisition Rupert Britton, here is a short video interview we did with him discussing the role of content. Areas such as why the media agency is best placed to understand it all and the need to think like entertainment producers are covered. It is only 5 mins and very insightful

If you haven’t already then seek him out on the 5th floor and see how Liquid Thread can help you and your clients.

And a client putting some great content up is StubHub: If you haven’t checked out their new Google+ page then get involved

Mobile now: A very well reasoned and written piece from our own Danny Hopwood (Dir. of Product AOD UK) about the current state of mobile and why it up to all of us to move it forward

Changes at FB: Another good point of view comes from Jon P. Harris on the implications of the new FB ads in your newsfeed.

Trip down Internet history – Creating the @ for email: Ever wondered why we have the @ in our email addresses? Well wonder no more, here is an article from WIRED that shines a light on its creation.

I looked at the keyboard, and I thought: ‘What can I choose here that won’t be confused with a username?’” Tomlinson remembers. “If every person had an ‘@’ sign in their name, it wouldn’t work too well. But they didn’t. They did use commas and slashes and brackets. Of the remaining three or four characters, the ‘@’ sign made the most sense. It denoted where the user was … at. Excuse my English. Article here

And finally...

Shouldn’t everyone be on the internet?: An ad from 1995 that has been doing the rounds this week (thank you Gavin) challenges kids to find out more about the internet. As well as having some awesome haircuts and cool, seemingly 80’s hangover, big jumpers they are pretty much bang on [with how the internet has evolved] (http://bit.ly/Shouldntweallbeontheinternet).

Have a great w/e.

Oli.

Afternoon all,

My Olympic fever gauge is still quite high, big closing w/e to come. But on Monday morning I found myself putting Olympic excitement on the back burner and waking up freakishly early to watch the Curiosity Mars Rover land on Mars and start sending pictures back to Earth.

As a marvel of modern technology you were able to live stream the action and see inside the NASA control room and get footage at the same time as them. A truly momentous occasion and if you are interested in that kind of thing the NASA app is continuing to do live shows about it all.

Here is a glorious shot of a Martian sunrise

Curious to know how the Curiosity got the pic?: A nice piece from Digital Photography Review where they discuss the camera choices (it’s only 2mb) and some of the data constraints involved with beaming pictures 150M miles. Amazingly the data limits on Mars are 4x what O2 customers are offered on the main monthly contract.

Curiosity Tweets: In a really nice move NASA decided to create a 1st person twitter account for the Curiosity Rover

Google Doodles for Olympics:

Seemlessly linking from Mars the Google Doodles (look above the G) during the Olympics have been pretty special. Showing off some nice HTML5 functionality many of the Olympic themed drawings have been mini games. Click here to check them out and have a go. If you can break 40 on the Basketball I want to hear about it and demand a screengrab for proof.

Olympic tech 2012: Gadgets and gizmos of the games Whilst Sir Chris Hoy and co sweep up the medals with their incremental edges due to new technology and covering off the finest of details in the Velodrome the Olympics is also a host to huge amount of tech in its own right. Want to know more about the Timing clocks or how you measure a hit in Taekwondo then scratch your head no more

Bolt photographer: And if you watched the 200m last night you might have seen Bolt take a photographers camera and start snapping away, here are the images if you are interested

And finally... We all spend far to much time in Excel so here is a nice little Excel smile for you to carry you in to the Friday finish line, a music video made entirely in Excel

And here is how it (and all 740 frames) was made

Have a great w/e.

Oli.

Morning all,

Slightly delayed from Friday.

Mop my brow with a chilled flannel I have serious Olympic fever. What an opening week! From the almost 10 million tweets to the opening ceremony to the drama of the Men’s first medal in 100 years of gymnastics, Wiggo’s burns on the road and and now the golds raining it has been a whopper.

Wiggo Twitter analysis: Our very own Research team have been busy counting the tweets and pulling out some amazing stats from Bradley Wiggens’ gold meddling time trial ride of Wednesday

Opening ceremony light show: The Olympics provide a really good marker as to how technology progresses giving us a scorecard every 4 years to measure up against and this time we are seeing online video blow all out of the water with the ease of Mielutyte in the women’s 200m breaststroke.

Were you entranced by the light show that was coming from the crowd at the opening ceremony? Here’s how it was done

In other news...

Beyond Google glasses: What will we be doing in the future and how will technology impact on that? This is quite a frightening view of how technology can get out of hand and cross the cool/creepy line. It doesn’t help that when the info is being accessed via the contact lense it makes the guy look super baddy. Amazing to think that this came from two students rather than a major tech company though.

Intel Musical your life: Another very cool FB API campaign from Intel. Having done the Museum of Me they have now turned your life into a musical. Warning, it is very catchy song.

Mobile search getting smarter: I saw this on the w/e. A great example of mobile search and how you can take advantage of the device in your text copy:
Geo targeted and aware – at the time of search you are 12 miles away from the restaurant
Click to call direct to the restaurant
Click to open up the map and get directions from where you are
Get reviews straight from the listing and it pulls in a star

Kinect changing how we interact with technology: This is a great example of how new technology is changing the way we interact.. On the surface of it this is just a new release of a game. But watch the video and you see that the game is responding back to how we speak to it. The referees changing their behaviour based on if you swear at them. Really interesting and exciting.

And finally... Tom – best to stay in the pool a bit to cool off, those are very tiny shorts after all...

Have a great w/e.

Oli.

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.