I read a fascinating article in The Times this morning about a competition run by DARPA (the US military innovation organisation that has invented everything from the early internet to the M16 Assault Rifle and Stealth bombers) to test the power of social networks.
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.
It’s the end of the year and coming up to Christmas. Here at twentysix, we’ve launched a new site, based on Twitter, which tracks and counts which seasonal subjects are garnering the most conversation – our Christmas Tweets site. Each subject is represented by a different character and they chase each other round and round the world based on the rate of tweets.
Commercialism – Is Christmas about spending, commercialism and consumption?
Credit Crunch – Has the recession taken its toll this Christmas? Will the credit crunch cast a shadow over Christmas festivities?
Religion – Will this year revert back to the true meaning of Christmas and be focused around the religious festivals?
Christmas Spirit – Can Christmas still be about celebrating the occasion and enjoying the season of goodwill? Is the fun and magical aspect of Christmas still alive?
By clicking through to each character, you can see a breakdown of what the key words at the moment. So with Christmas Spirit, all talk seems to be about buying the Christmas Tree. Other popular subjects are Christmas shopping and presents, but elsewhere people have no money
We love the characters we’ve created. You can use these images if you want for a blog post, or go to the site and download a pdf to make a desktop version of them!
We’re almost at the finish line and have managed to raise a fair few pounds for a very good cause. And, in the space of a couple of weeks, we’ve managed to cultivate the most manly, rugged and sophisticated looking digital agency in London.
Thanks again to Lex for the moustache categorisation (and Erik for the photos).
The First Eleven
The Clear and Present Danger
The Wife Taker
The Bounder
The Five to Ten Stretch
Squadron Leader
The Musician’s Apprentice
The 10110010110110
Don’t forget, there’s still plenty of time to sponsor us. Just click here.
This morning I saw something that made me laugh so I thought I’d share it.
We have a problem with people tidying up after themselves in the kitchen. So much so that it gave rise to this post-it note.
Not only do I find the note funny because I like the idea of ‘Magic Spoons’ but, by the time whoever wrote the note – in the style of Gordon Brown – they could have put the spoons in the dishwasher themselves.
I always tell myself that one of the joys of working in the online space is that you constantly get exposed to human ingenuity in all its glory. To prove the theory, I experienced two innovations this morning and read about another.
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
Andy Berndt, MD of Google Creative Lab and Tom Uglow, Creative Lead did this presentation at Advertising Week in New York last month. The presentation shows the ways consumers; brands and Google are using technology to create new ways of engaging and interacting.
Many of the examples in ‘87 Cool Things’ highlight mashups, interactivity, unique data usage, and the fusion of virtual worlds and reality, all in combination with Google tools.
Some great stuff in here: http://bit.ly/87coolthings
