Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Here's a very useful mash-up that combines Google Maps with extensive video.  Had I seen something like this for the hotel in which I recently stayed while in San Francisco, I probably would have selected a different place to stay.

Unfortunately, it looks like it only covers Europe for now.  I'm hoping we get it soon in North America.

http://www.trivop.com/

Mike Felkey

Building community around music is nothing new. But this site allows you to compare your music list with others and get matched up to people with similar musical tastes.  The design and user experience are nice too. 

There is an excellent tour function that really helps you get oriented and you can choose to interact with the music either by listening to it, watching music videos, or reading user reviews.   Even without joining you can take a look at what others are recommending.

http://www.mog.com

Bill Camp

What happens when one of the worlds finest virtuosos dons street clothes, takes his $3.5 million Stradivarius down to the DC Metro and starts playing?

The Washington Post journalist goes REALLY deep into his thoughts on the subject, but the overall effect of the experiment he’s covering is still amazing…

I kind of feel…heartbroken.  But it was amazing to watch, definitely.

The article, with video, is here.

Erika Propst

Canada's Framework Foundation has a unique way to tap into social consciousness.  Each year they hold a silent auction, but instead of money for art pieces, they sell them for time.  You bid a set numbers of your own volunteer hours and then fulfill your commitment over the next year.  Once complete, you get the art work.  Artists are compensated by corporate donations at market value.  A truly win win scenario.

Very cool idea.

Vito Greto

So it stands to reason that a certain automaker must be feeling a little guilty. Or at least conflicted. Much like myself. I love cars and always will, but I also know that exercising this fetish can do some pretty terrible things to the earth. But I'm from Berkeley and thus a little more comfortable with hypocrisy than most. Well, especially when it is well meaning hypocrisy, and at least in some way in the service of the greater good.

Which brings me to Honda. This year their F1 team is running some rather shocking vehicle livery: the cars are painted to look like the earth from space. There are virtually no sponsor logos, just the blues and greens of the home planet. What's more, they set up a website where interested "environmental sponsors" can pay a small fee to charity and make a pledge to become in some way more eco-conscious in daily life in exchange for having their name placed on a 2mm x 2mm pixel on one of the two cars. With more than 1.2 million pixels available on Jenson Button and Reubens Barrichello's rides, this loot could add up to something. And a good number of people pledging to ride a bike to work won't hurt either.

Of course none of this changes the fact that the vehicle upon which all of this goodwill is riding gets four miles to the gallon, has next to nothing in the way of emissions controls and  competes in a circus that hopscotches from continent to continent by jumbo jet. Perhaps even worse--and a bigger clue to Honda's motivation--is that Honda was previously sponsored by BAR (British American Racing), a wholly owned subsidiary of BAT (British American Tobacco). BAT's primary purpose for existence was to provide advertising space for their Lucky Strike and 555 cigarette brands. With tougher laws against tobacco advertising on race cars throwing a Molotov cocktail at their raison d'etre, they bailed.

Anyway, all this shouldn't spoil the fact that for a small contribution and a promise to install some light bulbs that I should have put in a long time ago, my name is now going to be emblazoned on the nose cone of an F1 car. How I lucked out and got such primo real estate is beyond me, but maybe I underestimated the power of karmic restoration.

Now if Jenson Button would just let me drive.

Daniel Turman

www.myearthdream.com

IDEO's Diego Rodriguez and Ryan Jacoby have written a new article on design thinking and risk in the Spring 2007 issue of Rotman Magazine (download PDF here. Article starts on page 57).

"Embracing Risk to Learn, Grow and Innovate" speaks about how design thinkers openly acknowledge, embrace, and often times, amplify risk as a key part of any engagement. Rather than fearing the risk of failure, designers view failure as part of an iterative process involving repetitive cycles of feedback and innovation.

While designers openly embrace risk, they are also careful to mitigate their actions through a systematic approach to design thinking. This approach is based on three building blocks: empathy, prototyping, and storytelling.

• Marketing things people don't want substantially increases the risk of failure. Design thinkers listen, emphasize, and co-create with customers through ethnographic research, persona creation, and collaborative workshops/insight sessions. Furthermore, design thinkers obsess unreasonably about what is desirable: from the visceral, to the behavioral and emotional.
• Prototype early and often to accelerate feedback and failure. Design thinkers engage in different forms of prototyping to gather feedback before an idea or concept is considered "finished."
• Use stories to communicate intent. As discussed extensively in Dan & Chip Heath's Made to Stick, telling simple, emotional, and concrete stories is a means of inspiring action and ensuring team members are working towards a common vision.

At Organic, these elements form the foundation of our approach to creating exceptional experiences, from gathering three minds, to listening for insight, and embracing risk through multiple rounds of ideation and prototyping, where ideas freely diverge and converge.

Audrey Carr

Digg has been feeling the power of Web 2.0 this week. AACS, the encryption used for HD DVD and Blu Ray, has been cracked and the processing key has been leaked all over the Net. Once the key was leaked, the lawyers took their time, but eventually sent out their cease and desist notices. Digg was one of many sites to receive the notice, and started to pull stories that mentioned the key. Soon afterwards, users started to notice their missing stories, resulting in a flood of new stories being submitted, many of which were dugg to their main page. Eventually, the first four pages on their site were almost entirely about the processing key.

Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, finally caved in and made the following blog posting: http://blog.digg.com/?p=74

Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
by Kevin Rose at 9pm, May 1st, 2007 in Digg Website

Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts…

In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Even though the code requires both technical expertise and specialized software to actually use, it's a powerful lesson in the futility of censorship in the digital world.

Frank Ribitch

Whether you love it or hate it, grids are very much part of graphic design and web design, and to be able to create designs that "breaks through" one must know what they are breaking. The grid is such a system. Much debated, much ignored, much hated and even less liked than loved, the grid is necessary.
At SXSW this year Khoi Vinh (Design Director for the New York Times online) had a presentation on "the grid", its history, and how it can make things better for designers, IAs and even people who just want to know how to loosely design a site so that its INTELLIGIBLE.

I found this helpful, and although I'm sure the presentation was an exceptional experience, this might not be (because you have to read it).

Where it would come in handy, is in helping you, the designer, IA, client, etc, create and/or recognize an exceptional experience, whether by following the grid or by breaking the grid.

Enjoy: http://www.subtraction.com/pics/0703/grids_are_good.pdf

Lawrence Ardelean

Apple has pledged to phase out some of the most toxic chemicals in its product range, including Brominated Fire Retardants (BFRs) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC).

Their target date of 2008 is also a year ahead of the competition.

Bravo Apple!

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/agreenerapple/

Jim Bachalo

A couple of weeks ago, Forrester hosted their first Marketing Forum in Miami.  It was a great conference.  We were a sponsor and had a speaking slot where Chad Stoller and I talked about futurecasting our personas.

Kerry Bodine is a Principal Analyst at Forrester, and she covers our space.  She gave a great keynote entitled How To Deliver A Great Customer Experience which goes well beyond the usual suspects to discuss brands like LensCrafters and MasterLock.  She also called out our work for Geek Squad as a best practice. 

You can watch Kerry's presentation here.

Mark Kingdon

Don't you hate it when you lose the battery cover off your remote control?

IdeaLab says in a few years, you could just download a file and print one out. The NY Times ran an article about a technology called rapid prototype printing, which has been in use in the industrial sector for several years. Using a layering process, a 3-D printer can produce a three-dimensional object out of powdered polymers.

Once the domain of science fiction (remember the replicator from Star Trek?), this technology is expected in a few years to become as affordable to home and office consumers as desktop laser printing was about fifteen years ago – within the range of $1000. One of the companies pioneering this technology, Desktop Factory, lists potential applications for such a device as creating sculpture using 3-D software, one-off toy production and custom replacement parts for household objects.

One thing's for certain though – as with all printers, those replacement cartridges are going to cost a fortune.

Daniel Modell

Rupert Murdoch (owner of Fox Business, media mogul extraordinaire) has been in the news the past few days following his controversial $5 Billion bid for the Dow Jones Company, whose flagship property is The Wall Street Journal.

I found his following commentary on the changing nature of the media world to be very refreshing, insightful and quite unexpected.

After the jump, here's a glimpse into the mind of a man whose News Corp continues to dominate media properties and media channels globally.

David Feldt

A client recently forwarded me a link to Vivian Lives, a lifestyle site for young women that was founded in 1999. Users follow the life of Vivian, an animated character who lives the kind of fantasy New York lifestyle (sizeable apartment that she lives in by herself, perfect little dog, non-demeaning job in the fashion industry) that young women around the country dreamed about long before Sex in the City and Paris Hilton made it a cliché.

What fascinates me about the site is not the content, which has not been updated in several years, but the glimpse it provides into the way marketers thought about avatars, rich media, and online communities just a few years ago.  We are finally getting to a point where the web is old enough to provide an archeological record of our earlier ideas.

Vivian is one of the better early attempts at creating a community around common interests, in this case focused on a virtual character.  It's like a bridge between the Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.  How would this kind of site be different if we built it today?

It would be video-based rather than illustrated & animated, to take advantage of broadband.  If the illustration-style was deemed central to the brand, maybe a e-newsletter like Daily Candy.  But think of the product placement opportunities in Lonely Girl.

It wouldn't be based on a fictional character.  Sherrie Krantz, the founder, would probably feature herself as the expert, and maybe start a vlog (like Ask A Gay Man) or even a plain old blog like Perez Hilton.

It would be based on a fictional character, but Vivian would be an avatar in Second Life.  It's clear from interviews that Vivian was the younger, hipper, more popular alterego of Sherrie, a real-life fashion publicist.  As Phillip Rosedale told an Organic audience a few months ago, your physical body is one of the few things about yourself that you cannot really change.  Second Life is a chance to physically express the person you want to be inside - it's no surprise that Second Life is full of beautiful, sexy people.

It might not rely on a "star" at all.  In the last few years, the web community has discovered that building a community of interest- in this case around fashion and youth culture - doesn't necessarily require a star (or a virtual star).  From Digg to Slashdot to Flickr, the community itself takes center stage.

Can you think of other sites that were early attempts at today's successful online experiences? What about sites that managed to change with the times?

Misha Cornes

After several tough years as an industry, interactive marketers clearly have the wind at our backs.  According to a TNS Media Intelligence report on US Advertising Expenditures for 2006, Internet display advertising grew by 17.3% in 2006, vs. a modest increase of 4.1% for the industry as a whole.  Marketers continue to shift budgets towards targeted, digital media.

So who are we stealing our ad budget dollars from?  Network Television grew only 2.5%, although total spend was off-set by a big jump in Hispanic TV ads.  As Forrester analyst Peter Kim writes, "consumer behavior has made the shift to Internet from TV unavoidable - they've tied companies to the gas pedal with no choice but to keep on going."  Newspapers and TV radio are also hurting. 

It's an open secret, and I think the traditional advertising agency community is finally catching on.  Ad Age has just released its second Digital Fact Pack, which is a great compendium,  and has launched a separate Digital Channel on AdAge.com.  But to me, the coverage still treats interactive as a side-show.  Page after page of the print publication still covers the latest in glossy TV campaigns.

On the other hand, I recently realized that we are not the only marketing players who are dreaming of the day when we take center stage.  An Organic alum sent me an article by Matt Shaw, VP of the Council of Public Relations Firms: Advertising Posing as PR: Why They Want to Be Like Us (and What to Do About It).  It's a great read.  His pitch is that social media (buzz generation, publicity, influencer outreach, blogging, viral online activity) has long been the provenance of PR firms, and that he and his peers shouldn't be seeded "earned media" work to other marketing agencies.

I think this is the point where I am supposed to say that it's all about the client, that ideas should be media neutral, and that it doesn't matter which agency owns a particular campaign.  Taking the high road.  But I do think that interactive agencies were the first marketers to really understand user-centricity and the need to engage customers in a two-way dialogue.  Everyone else is still playing catch-up.

Misha Cornes

Amnesty International Puerto Rico launched "La Casa del Horror" site which is in fact, a house of horrors, illuminating the shocking global human rights violations that exist throughout the world.

The site's intro relies heavily on sound as a navigation device so put on those headphones before entering. The dark, murky visuals and frightening soundscape scared me senseless (and that doesn't happen very often online).  If users are shocked into taking action against these atrocities then the site will have done its job very well indeed.

http://www.lacasadelhorror.com/english/casa.html

Angela DiPietro

http://www.yourclubworld.ba.com/

In the world of consumer and product marketing we all know the customer is the driver behind a products ultimate success or failure. The power of both word of mouth, good or bad, and customer insights are key to ensure a brand and product succeeds in the marketplace. British Airways understood that they needed to connect emotionally with their target audience when launching their new new Club World product in creating the “Club” feel.  The interactive site brings customer insights to the user and aims on winning over the premium customer in the ever competitive airline industry, where premium fare paying customers are still key revenue drivers to the bottom line.

What better way to spread the word on luxury travel and comfort then by having your own customers speak to the product and why they like. Sure, the scenes have been staged, but they are believable nonetheless because it creates an emotional experience for the user. Each customer talks about what features they like in the new Club World cabin and which ones make the new product relevant to their needs and wants during business travel. Each scene is actually filmed on board the aircraft while in-flight, thus adding to realism of the experience.

Listen to our own Chad Stoller talk about the ins and outs of social media.

Mark

Rick sent this to me.  I generally love maps and I really love this one.  I don't know who created it but its been passed around for awhile so I thought I'd put it up on ThreeMinds for posterity.  Its definitely an EE.

Mark

I’ve always been fascinated by clocks – these devices used to track an abstract concept….that perhaps does not exist until it is tracked?  The master of time analysis, Albert Einstein, once referred to what he did, with typical whimsy, as “combinatory playing”.

I feel the work of this sculptor reflects that spirit of ‘playing with time’ very well.

Check out www.klockwerks.com

What do you guys think?

Tim Willison

Back in August of last year, Sprint came to Organic looking for a way to create buzz and raise awareness for their recently launched Music Store.

We went in knowing two things:

1. the space was very crowded – Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T/Cingular and even Walmart offer music downloads. Whatever we did, it had to stand out.
2. the audience we wanted to reach, called "Advanced Connected" in Sprint terminology, is extremely averse to traditional advertising and blatant promotion.

Our solution was to create an entertaining and engaging online destination featuring two “music experts”: Ian and the DJ. Each has a back story – Ian is a washed up pop star from the 1980s running a record store on Melrose and DJ is an aspiring turntablist, working in Ian’s store. Users participate by creating playlists and getting a personalized “expert” review of their choices.

To further embellish the story we created a music video for Ian’s one and only hit from the 80s, “Under the Moon”. Launched simultaneously on YouTube and Ian’s MySpace page, the video has gone viral, currently appearing on 25 sites. Music video legend Nigel Dick, (Tears For Fears, Guns N’ Roses, Britney Spears) directed both the “Under the Moon” video and the Mix Sherpa video performances.

Visit the site:
http://www.mixsherpa.com/

See the entire Ian experience:
http://www.sprintspecialoffers.com/ian/index.html

Dave Sylvestre and the Sprint cast and crew

We're continually having conversations across the agency about how to help our clients create experiences that ultimately go beyond advertising and marketing to give something valuable, meaningful and relevant back to the community.

Here's a wonderful story that takes this concept a little further, utilizing a simple outdoor billboard at the MC Weiler School in Alexandra Township on the North Eastern borders of Johannesburg.

Nedbank, a national financial services organization, and its agency (Net#work BBDO, one of our sister agencies within the Omnicom family) came up with an innovative idea - utilize the abundance of sunlight in South Africa to generate energy to give school children a hot meal every day.  The school has over a 1,000 students and the majority of them receive their only meal of the day at the school - a hot meal that ensures they are focused and energized to reach their maximum potential at school.

Ms Flaki Ramothata, principal of the school, says that the power generated from the  solar panels attached to the billboard is sufficient to run all the lights and fridges and provides hot water for their kitchens.

“This kind of communication is really close to my heart,” says Net#work BBDO's Creative Chief Mike Schalit. “Why shouldn’t advertising, especially in SA, pioneer ways of putting something back into the community - even more so when it comes to outdoor billboards, the ugly duckling of advertising? Billboards are often seen as the biggest perpetrator of crimes against urban landscapes. Here’s our chance to lead the world in showing how we can convert urban pollution into urban renewal.”

David Feldt

To launch the Nikon D40, Nikon gave out 200 of the new cameras to the residents of Georgetown, South Carolina, which they've since dubbed "Picturetown."

An elegant campaign site pays homage to the results -- compelling amateur photography with plenty of story and humanity -- with a proper balance of editorial and consumer-generated sensibility. What's even more impressive is that I didn't learn about it while reading the blogs or through a banner ad (the usual means).

I was thumbing through ESPN The Magazine and came across a full-page ad with a young woman in a bright yellow dress holding a large photo print of younger boy in a baseball uniform with the caption, "I used to delete 89.7% of my photos." The magazine fell open to this page thanks to an inserted life-size die-cut card of the camera itself ,which is remarkably compact.

Without realizing it, I'd learned the two key "why buys" of the D40: size and shutter speed. I took out the camera insert to show my wife -- who has been asking for something smaller than our Canon Rebel DSLR. She opened the card and read me the simple premise of the Picturetown project, where we've both spent significant time relating to ordinary people taking above extraordinary pictures. Every piece of media worked to engage us while building a case for the Nikon D40. And now it's on our short list, where it wasn't before. (We're also considering a vacation to South Carolina.)

Sam Cannon

This site (http://www.blogotheque.net/takeawayshows/) posts video footage of (mostly Indie) bands performing in public environments (street corners, parks, elevators) for the camera and whomever may happen to be walking by.

Says the site’s founder, “[The films are] sort of a marriage between music and cinema, between documentary and raw capture, they try to give rhythm to images and to color music, they are the event as well as a testimony of the event.”

Not only is the concept original and a fantastic use of the medium, it’s delivers a true independent music experience, free of marketing, packaging, and other music industry trappings. It provides an unfiltered view of the musicians and their music, disseminated directly to their fans through the website.

Additionally, the site design is arresting yet simple, providing a distinctive backdrop to the performances themselves.

Whitney Browne

http://users.design.ucla.edu/~akoblin/work/faa/Documentationl2.html

A great example of taking data and turning it into something beautiful from designer Aaron Koblin.

whitney Browne

Flipping through my mom’s latest copy of Better Homes and Gardens, I came across an ad for Be Brave Not Beige.  Intrigued, I checked it out. 

Ikea does a great job here of showcasing the breadth of their inventory and their multitude results in a highly interactive, engaging, and fun fashion.  For a first-time visitor to an Ikea store (or to www.ikea.com), I think this site could reduce how overwhelmed someone might feel by Ikea’s immense product offering.  So, don’t fear color and check out their site!

Erin C. Patterson

I recently had an opportunity to play with one of Nokia’s latest handsets, the N95. The phone has several unusual features including: GPS with integrated software, WiFi, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a 5mp camera and, most importantly, is being sold unlocked.

Cellular phones equipped with Wi-Fi are few and far between, so when I got hold of the N95 I immediately wanted to test all the new applications made available by that feature.  The most remarkable is, without doubt, VoIP.

Fring and Truphone are mobile VoIP clients that provide access to Skype and Google Talk over Wi-Fi, GPRS, and 3G networks. With these applications I can use my skype account to call anywhere in Europe, Canada, Australia, China and North America for $0.021 per minute. It means that I can do it from my cell phone and that I can do it without using my Cingular anytime minutes. Unfortunately, the service is, at the moment, limited to “skypeout” calls.

Fring and its competitor Truphone have the potential to bring VoIP into the mainstream because they reduce cellular fees substantially and it put the protocol into phones thus eliminating the most inhibiting factor - that many people are unwilling to make calls from their computer.

The age-old debate of who has more fun, and whose hair looks better, has come to life from Sunsilk.

I'd seen the ads on TV, capped by an adorable animation of blonde and brunette silhouettes dueling it out at the end. The production quality was so impressive, it drove me online, where I discovered:

http://colorshowdown.com

Great site. Beautifully executed, fun, engaging and useful.

And so far... Brunettes are winning. That's right.

Kelley Barry

If you are looking for an excuse out of visiting your in-laws this summer, perhaps a better understanding of how your "vacation" may contribute to global warming will do the trick.

The Real Costs is an interesting and possibly useful plug-in for the Firefox browser that adds emissions data to the results page on air travel e-commerce sites like Expedia.com, Travelocity.com, or NWA.com. Later versions will provide CO2 data for driving directions, car rentals, and even shipping.

Download it at http://therealcosts.com/

Bridget McKinley

Want to know what the world will be like five short years from now?

New Yorker Magazine recently held their inaugural New Yorker Conference, “2012: Stories From the Near Future,” which took place last week.

Watch the views of luminaries like Malcolm Gladwell, Barry Diller, Arianna Huffington, Will Wright, and Craig Newmark.

Topics covered include:

• Genius
• Intellectual Property
• Power shifts in society (future of the organization)
• Morality
• Gaming
• Architecture
• Surrendipity
• Solutions
• Design
• Mobile Technology
• The Web

David Feldt

It's true.  Two pre-historic Geico pitchmen will have their own TV series this fall.  At this week's upfronts, ABC revealed that it will introduce "The Cavemen" for the 2007-08 season. 

Can we still draw a distinction between entertainment and advertising?

Misha Cornes

Last night I found myself in an unusual situation: I was actually watching a television commercial. I usually record everything on the DVR so I can zap the commercials, but just before bedtime my husband and I were waiting for our local weather forecast to come on. That’s when I saw BP’s new “a little better gas station” campaign. (At least, I assume it’s new—we may have been zapping it for months.)

I’m a complete sucker for animation, so the commercial caught my eye. It was a brightly colored (predominantly green) world peopled by little PlaySkool-like round-headed figures. It had a happy, catchy tune about making the world “a little better,” and directed me to www.alittlebettergasstation.com. When I’ve heard about other gas companies creating web presences to advertise their gas stations, I have always wondered why. I select my gas stations on the basis of price, proximity, and, occasionally, the temperature of their drinks cooler. Brand has never figured into a gas purchase (unless I was boycotting a company), and I had never before visited the web site of a gas retailer. But I thought I’d take a look at this site, to see what was going on that would make the world a little better.

Of course, by this morning I’d forgotten the URL and I had to go to BP.com and go through a couple of links to get there. It wasn’t too difficult to find, and the main BP site prominently featured environmental sustainability. The BP-Amoco campaign to rebrand British Petroleum as “Beyond Petroleum” and associate BP more than any other oil company with environmental concerns has been going on long enough that I remembered that the commercial I’d seen was for BP.

This is the latest from EVB… fill out the form and send it to the person next to you.  Just watch their reaction.   It’s simple, but flawless in execution all the way down to the fake You Tube site and a last minute surprise.

http://www.freakyourmind.com/

Mike Merit

How many government officials does it take to change a light bulb?

Apparently, it’s very difficult to break the psychological barrier to convince consumers to abandon cheap incandescent bulbs that last for a mere 1000 hours in favor of compact fluorescent bulbs that cost upwards of $15 but last over 10,000 hours. Many people are also turned off by the idea of fluorescent, recalling earlier generations of these bulbs that cast a harsh, blue-hued light. So governments are beginning to step in to flip the switch, so to speak. This week, Canada became the second country in the world to announce a ban on the sale of incandescent light bulbs to eliminate their environmentally unfriendly carbon emissions. Australia recently announced it would be doing away with them by 2009. Canada’s ban will go into effect in 2012.

The latest entry into the ultra long-life bulb market is the EcoLED. Still in its early phases, this technology is showing a lot of promise. The “bulb” is actually a single 10 watt LED that emits the equivalent light of a 100 watt bulb. In addition to being mercury-free (unlike compact fluorescent bulbs), the maker of the first generation LED bulb claims it will save about $450 in during its lifespan, reduce carbon emissions by over 9,000 pounds and last up to 50,000 hours. In moderate every day use, that works out to a lifespan of up to 20 years, or 11 years if used for 12 hours a day.

While it is very environmentally friendly, there’s still a long road ahead before the EcoLED is truly consumer friendly. Its current form, which sells for around $100, produces a directional (non-ambient) light, meaning it’s not a suitable replacement for a desk lamp just yet. An omnidirectional LED bulb is in development, and may one day replace your incandescent bulbs for good, especially when costs come down. Imagine installing a bulb the day your child is born, and replacing it for the first time during his or her second year of college. By then, you’ll be thankful for the money you saved that can cover the tuition costs.

When will the United States get on board? Hopefully it won’t take 20 years.

Daniel Modell

The buzz in Toronto this past week is all about Facebook – as of 2pm this afternoon, Toronto has 573,355 people in the Toronto, ON network on Facebook – that’s 11% of the population of the greater Toronto metro area (GTA) and is the largest regional network on Facebook by a significant margin.

Ryan Feeley has created a comparative table of major metros on his blog.   To put this into perspective, Toronto has more Facebook members than New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco combined (the combined population of those cities is almost 9 times the size of Toronto). This phenomenon extends beyond Toronto to the rest of Canada too – both Calgary and Montreal have 8% of their population on Facebook.  It also extends beyond the major metropolitan regions to small towns across the entire country.

So, why are Torontonians (and the rest of Canadians) so addicted to Facebook? As reported in the local press, the Ontario government, concerned that its employees were spending too much time on the site, banned it from its office computers last week. Thousands of civil servants came to work only to find that Facebook had been blocked like porn.

CTV reported on the phenomenon - they theorized that its because there are 100,000 students across the key universities in the city.  Nice try CTV – that’s not the answer.

A recent post on Facebook’s blog entitled “Oh Canada...” says, “There may not be one single reason why Facebook is so popular in Canada, but rather a combination of tipping-point factors that continue to make networks like Toronto so unique in terms of growth.”  Canada has 2 million Facebookers which represents 10% of the Facebook universe.

Any insightful points of view?

David Feldt

image: MontanaRaven

I saw Björk in concert at the Shoreline Amphitheater this weekend, and one of her musicians was using a very cool new bit o’ technology- the ReacTable. 

While it was being played by one musician at the Björk show, the ReacTable was created to be collaborative as well. The interface is truly physical… I can’t do it justice with words, so just check out the vids…

http://mtg.upf.es/reactable/?media

and at Coachella, a horrible horrible audio video (shot from the crowd).

Suffice it to say, I want one. 

David Lewis

Are you the next Andy Samberg?  The SNL performer got his start making short films on YouTube as part of The Lonely Island comedy troupe.  The Lonely Island continues to move on up with their own movie deal, this summer's Hot Rod.

But you should be willing to start small.  Three short videos and some votes from the YouTube community are your ticket to online immortality.  Oh yeah, and the winner also gets to film a short for Sierra Mist.com, this year's sponsor of The Sketchies.

http://www.youtube.com/sketchies

Misha Cornes

http://www.instinct.ru

http://www.canneshunting.be/

I am staying about a block from Radio City Music Hall in New York,  and this evening I followed my nose to M&M's World on Times Square.  I had heard that they pump chocolate scent onto the street, and it's true.  M&Ms is only one of the more visible companies using scent marketing to lure consumers.  According to Forbes, Sony sprays a special vanilla and orange formula in its stores in the belief that it encourages women to buy more electronics.

I hadn't thought about it much since the controversy in December over chocolate chip cookie-scented bus shelters in San Francisco.  They were ultimately banned by the Board of Supervisors only one day into their operation, based on concerns over potential allergic reactions. 

But it seemed at the time that the ban was riding a general consumer backlash against "environmental pollution" from advertisers. 

I think there is definitely a place for properly-executed scent marketing.  As ThreeMinds reader Alan van Roemburg writes, "it seems these days if you’re not stimulating your consumers’ every sense, you’re going to be left behind."  He pointed us to Melbourne's Air Aroma, "the major supplier of diffusion systems across the world and a specialist in the development of aroma and essential oil blends".  Very interesting site.

Who are the major players in the scent marketing game?  Do you believe in the connection between smells and consumer behavior?

Misha Cornes

Technology-driven organizations have traditionally based their growth strategies around technology-based research and innovation, primarily carried out by highly skilled engineers and product designers in closed research labs.  Think about the skunkworks team of engineers responsible for the design of the Motorola Razr. 

Realizing that technology-driven innovation drives short term growth, but often fails to deliver on long-term value, many organizations in the past decade have adopted a consumer (or marketing) innovation focus, driving growth through in-depth consumer research and observation. Popularized by leading design firms such as IDEO and Cheskin, consumer-driven research is still carried out by experts (anthropologists), although with a more human focus.

At this year's IIT Institute of Design’s Strategy Conference, Josephine Green of Philips Design introduced the idea of social innovation.  She spoke about the need for businesses to adopt an innovation strategy based around the delivery of socially-driven products and services co-created directly with experts, customers, and future-driven entrepreneurs and creative communities.

So how do socially-driven organizations operate?

I recently started reading Ambient Findability. a short but inspirational and idea-packed book  published through O'Reilly Press by Peter Morville. 

I thought that others might find it an exceptional read.

Subtitled, "What We Find Changes Who We Become," here's what the O'Reilly site has to say about it:

"A thought-provoking book that describes the future of information and connectivity, examining how the melding of innovations like GIS and the Internet will impact the global marketplace and society at large in the 21st century."

Morville keeps a blog at:

http://findability.org/

Excerpt:

http://alistapart.com/articles/ambientfindability

Jim Bachalo

This is an embarrassing truth, but one that I’m not likely to ever break free of. It’s one of the reasons that I own a convertible to be sure, but it also explains my predilection for cold-as-hell late-night top-down motoring. See, I got my first car right around the time that Miami Vice ruled Friday nights on NBC. Going out after watching the show would invariably result in a dramatic, film-noir drive home—window down, soundtrack up.

Frankly, I’ve never really gotten over the magic of the late-night drive. The reflections, the lack of traffic, the clean night air, it all adds up to something that by itself can be quite exceptional.

Volkswagen UK is leveraging this feeling to some considerable effect in their new campaign, Night Driving. The accompanying microsite isn’t long on flashiness or information, but it is mesmerizing nonetheless. This is largely accomplished by way of really seamless video integration and a large palette of selectable camera angles.

Of course, it ain’t Crockett and Tubbs driving through Miami at three in the morning in a Ferrari Daytona Spyder with Phil Collins on the Alpine, but really now, what is?

Daniel Turman

PS—Compare the advertising to the original below.

We are live and in attendance at Where 2.0, O'Reilly's conference focusing on the latest in geo-based information and application services. "Location is everywhere" according to O'Reilly and map / location based applications are rapidly making their way into popular social networking services and consumer electronics products.

The 2 1/2 day conference kicked off last night with the official and un-official launchings of new consumer and content developer offerings and a lightning round of "Ignite Where," where companies have 5 minutes to present 20 slides as part of a competition (15 seconds per slide, max) for a future speaking appearance during the conference.

Shocking the world with their ingenuity today, Microsoft introduced us all to their new multi-touch system, called Surface. Multi-touch platforms and systems are nothing new, the idea, which was first born in the 1980s has recently been propelled forward by thinkers like NYUs Jeff Han, who has started Perceptive Pixel based on his work in the fast growing area. But were talking about Microsoft here, the software behemoth, which, due to its sheer size is usually incapable of keeping innovative ideas raw and hushed up. Not so the case here though. Surface is all about being smart with regard to the objects that come in contact with it, whether its a cell phone, glass of water, or your finger. According to Microsoft, the system allows you many of the ooh-aah possibilities that weve seen in previous multi-touch examples; such as dragging multiple items, scaling, rotating, and grouping. However, the power of Surface comes in its ability to recognize and communicate with different digital devices that are placed on its surface. For example, take a photo with your digital camera and place it on the Surface table. Surface recognizes the new photo and pulls it out onto the canvas. Next, place your favorite PDA or smartphone down as well. Now, just physically drag the photo to your smartphone and its saved there. This hybrid model of interacting physically with digital media, and moving it between tangible physical devices is where Microsoft really is the pioneer. The company is obviously not disclosing the method that its using to communicate between devices, but with the upcoming Bluetooth 2.1 update arriving in the next few months, and the scheduled 3.0 release sometime next year which will be able to carry much larger amounts of data and pair faster and easier Surface might just be the perfect fit. The first ones to jump on the Surface bandwagon will have to fork over a hefty $10,000 and will be the likes of hotels, casinos and wireless carriers who will be looking to use the system for games, reservations, shopping, and product demos. Max Zabramny