Lady Gaga’s rise to fame through social media makes the Arctic Monkey’s story look very pedestian.

Mobile Apps are starting bring yet more power to the shopper, this time right in the heart of the offline retail experience.

The test involved a competition to find ten red balloons tethered in locations across the United States. Rather than me whitter on about it here, read the coverage in CNN. Very interesting, shows that the sum of social media’s parts is greater than the whole of Stephen Fry.

The solution – Juicy Fruit….

The iPhone is the new Star Trek Communicator

I’ve had my iPhone for over a year. It drops calls, heats up like a stick of uranium and sometimes crashes, but it is a thing of beauty. I read about RedLaser – the hottest barcode scanner app – and installed it this morning. It is a work of genius. You can scan any barcode and within seconds it will tell you where you can buy the product online and for how much. Retail will never be the same again. People are already innovating – one bright spark used it to catalogue his book collection before packing them all away. You can also get a dieting version.

Another amazing app I witnessed today was Layar, which uses augmented to show web data overlaid on the iPhone’s camera display. In fact this is more Terminator than Star Trek.

The Ethical Web

Tim Berners-Lee is at it again. Not content with making the web ubiquitous in the developed world, TBL launched The World Wide Web Foundation; its aim is to “ensure a free and open Web that empowers people to bring about social and economic change.” The first two initiatives have been launched – one to help inhabitants in the Southern Sahara use the web to access knowledge that will help them  to combat climate change.

The other is the launch of 800 computer community centres across Latin America and the Middle East.

For the full story read the Fast Company article:  http://tinyurl.com/yfw2hmj

Everyone’s heard about the eventual demise of the printed newspaper, but there is an interesting online start-up called Newspaper Club that is seeking to reverse the trend by offering us the facility to produce print and distribute our personalised newspapers. One example quoted is that of an eight page local paper focussing on content from one specific postcode – the equivalent of 15 households.

I wonder what my local street’s version of “Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster” would be…

At the same time Business Week is running a report about another set of internet entrepreneurs – this time in Berlin – who are breathing life into the venerable medium of newsprint. The concept is Niiu, a printed newspaper which can be customised by users by aggregating content from 17 different German and international newspapers. All you need to do is select your articles for print before 2pm on the day before delivery.

On the other hand, with the launch of Kindle in the UK, it looks like another front has opened in the war between paper and plastic. Despite my scepticism about the swapping my beloved paperback for a $259 gadget which you can’t use in the bath, it looks like its picking up momentum. Some people already think it’s going to grow faster than the iPhone.

 The subject of the ad is the Power Mat which magically powers your gadgets without using wires. That really is Star Trek territory! The ad itself reflects what you’d probably say (and definitely think) if you had one in your hands. The product is almost too good to be true, but it’s real.

Great work from a brave agency for suggesting it, and a brave client for buying it.