middledigit.net | jonathan hopkins

Right now (and I mean as I type) there are some guys in Norway spraying the Qik logo on a wall and broadcasting it via a mobile phone using Qik. People are watching as they “talk” to the Norwegian police and generally have a laugh doing something very cool using mobile technology. They’re also using their laptops connected via 3G to keep a check on comments and also engage with people further. Paul Walsh even got them to spray segala.com on the wall too. (Nice hijacking there for him). Live and engaging guerilla activity for a brand. It’s the way forward.

PS I asked for a smiley face too and by the sounds of it, they’re about to do one (will update if it happens).

Because then I wouldn’t have to get really frustrated at seeing stuff like this and not being able to get my grubby mitts on it - the Korg DS 10 synthesizer for the DS. There’s blatently going to be so many more things like this out over the next year. And I CANT WAIT.

With the iPhone/iPod Touch SDK out and Nintendo showing all the right signs - mobile music is getting even more exciting all the time. New Macbook Pro for me next week - means I can crack open my copy of Logic Studio and get Live and Reason up and running again. I haven’t done any tunes for a couple of years and now the potential to do so is just round the corner . . . I’m really rather excited about the whole prospect.

Via Wired (one of the only magazines I still absolutely have to go and buy in print, which actually gives me an idea - say you were reading Wired whilst clutching a mobile device, then let’s say that the cover had an RFID device in it and your phone could read it, wouldn’t it be cool if your web device served up supporting multimedia content whilst you were reading the mag? Hmmm, back to thinking about making music again.)

As with I suspect most people I’m suffering from a slight bit of green overload. Not that I don’t think it’s important (it is), it’s just everywhere and my brain is doing the natural thing and starting to filter. Amongst all the noise though comes this from Honda/Inferno. A really simple idea that does the job well - a letter containing embedded seeds that you are supposed to plant. I reckon if I received it I might just go plant it. Or at least look at it rather than whack it (ironically) in the recycling bin. If you look at the comments (as I just have done) - looks like it’s not a completely original idea but never the less, it caught my interest.

Oh and while we’re on the subject of the future of the planet, you might want to read this. ‘Climate science maverick’ James Lovelock encouraging us to ‘Enjoy life while you can’ [via PR Blogger]. He basically says that we’ve got 20 years “before it hits the fan”. And he’s the guy that predicted lots of things that have since become true . . . eek.

This looks pretty amazing. With stuff this good on the web, who needs crap British TV? More from Scoble here (he cried when he saw this). Just one of the TED talks available now online.

Jemima Kiss lists out the latest ABCes for the main newspapers. No surprises that the numbers are up year on year across the board, but as she points out, very interesting that more and more so lots of traffic is from outside the UK. More fuel for the fire in my mind which tells me that to try and split digital comms activity into US, UK and so on is getting even more ridiculous. We need to think about (and do!) things differently, fast.

“Even given meteoric online readership trends, January’s results from the ABCe are remarkable. The Mail Online’s unique user numbers increased 165% year on year to 17,903,172. In the same period, Telegraph.co.uk increased 65% to 12,348,706; Sun Online grew to 13,322,535, up 40% from January 2007, and Times Online increased 39% to 15,087,130. Guardian.co.uk remained the highest traffic website with 19,708,711, a rise of 26% year on year”

Just been sent this - a trio of geeks using a couple of iPhones and a Nintendo DS to make some tunes. With nice interfaces comes nice software. Can’t wait to see what’s in the pipeline and the implications for making music on the move. Below that is a another video of the ‘iAno’ in action that surfaced a few days ago. After Electroplankton, the continued success of Guitar Hero and Rock Band and stuff like the Tenori-On and lots of other stuff in development, the future looks very exciting indeed.

Having worked with Yahoo! at two agencies across pretty much all of its products (including Search with Ged as a client!), I was a bit sad to hear about the job cuts in the pipeline and read some of the more cutting articles that appeared after the financial results. A lot of people have pointed to the fact that Yahoo! lacks any sort of vision and has yet to deliver a solid product roadmap that gets people all excited about its future again.

Now, I know that really recently Yahoo! revealed it is testing Del.icio.us results being incorporated into Yahoo! Search, but I’m still left with that nagging feeling that I’ve had for months that they are failing to make the most out of what is one of the most essential things on the web for me today - Del.icio.us. Now I didn’t get on board with Del.icio.us until 2006, March 18th to be precise - when I saved my first bookmark, a guide to free open source software on Open Source Mac. But, since then I’ve fed it like a beast and have saved over 2000 links to valuable, interesting stuff. If I lost all of those links I would be really rather unhappy indeed. In fact, I regularly back them up. Not that it would be the same but at least I’d have some record of all those amazing things I’ve found on the net.

Anyway, I’ve digressed a bit. My point is that even though I’d consider myself a fairly heavy user, I never really use any of the other features like saving links for other people or using the delicious network to find links from other people. Instead, I either stumble into someone’s bookmarks after they pop up in search results or go on a bit of a bookmark Safari after checking out someone’s blog that includes a link to their del.icio.us profile. I also think that the only person whose delicious master feed I get over RSS is Lynette Webb at Google (more on Lynette here). Surely that’s a bit odd - am I alone in this?

So the big question. Why doesn’t Yahoo! work more closely with Del.icio.us and integrate it FULLY into the Yahoo! Search experience? Surely, it’s sitting on a goldmine of filtered information - hand selected and saved information from human beings across the planet. Even just a custom simplified big search box start page (crude mock-up above!) that defaulted to searching the del.icio.us network and a better UI for the results would be a start. Just like we’ve learnt with Twitter, the Google homepage and countless other examples (very recently Instapaper too) - simple is best when it comes to the tools used to manage information. Sometimes it’s better to strip back features than serve everything up in one go.

Now that’s just one thing that could be done. There’s heaps of other stuff that I’m sure is possible. I just don’t see whay it’s taking Yahoo! so long. Remember - it was December 2005 that Yahoo! bought Del.icio.us - over 2 years ago. That’s ages in web-time, especially at a time when Yahoo! needs to pull a rabbit out the hat more than ever before.

Umm, haven’t we agreed all this already? (via Open/Anthony)

Without developing the detail right now, let me suggest that traditional models of advertising where vendors pay for messages to be delivered to prospective customers will be challenged longer-term by various forms of collaboration marketing and advisory services where customers pay trusted advisors to recommend relevant products and services….

Unfortunately, this short-term advertising revenue growth has had a narcotic effect and made a lot of online businesses lazy. Longer-term, I anticipate that most businesses online will have to make money the old fashioned way – by offering products, services and experiences so valuable that people will actually pay money for them. Those who begin to develop this discipline today will profit in the long-term.

This year, I’m really looking forward (me included) to more action and less words from everyone. It’s about time we put all our shared thinking into practice, stopped just agreeing with each other and do as we say/think. I know that Stephen is feeling the same and Will blatently agrees, so come on, let’s make that resolution, if you haven’t made it already.

As Hugh said (and so did Robert Stephens of GeekSquad) advertising is increasingly becoming a ‘tax you pay for unremarkable thinking’.

I really like this idea and will be trying my hardest from here on in to help brands I work with think remarkably and execute on amazing things. Or am I just adding more words and no action . . . !?

Well said Faris. I’m just a little bit biased but there we go. Go here for a truly awesome round up of what happened this year from the nice people over at Contagious magazine.

This looks really interesting. I’m right in the middle of lots of stuff right now so have only had a quick poke around. First stab at the holy grail . . . how to rate and rank people’s digital presences

“Be seen how you want to be seen
Up until now there has been no way to measure digital presence, to see where you fit in to the online world. At Garlik, we’ve analysed the digital profiles of the nation and have made available a QDOS score for every UK adult . Your QDOS score is made up of 4 different components:
Popularity
Who you know and the extent of your online network.
Impact
How much people listen to what you say online.
Activity
What you do online e.g. shop, chat, blog.
Individuality
How easy you are to find online according to your name, your age etc
Put simply, the more you are out there surfing, buying, selling and socialising online, the higher your QDOS score.
To find your QDOS simply enter your name and postcode in to the site - it’s as simple as that. Once you’ve found your QDOS you can also claim it, and from there you can tell us a little more about you that will help us refine your QDOS score and make it even more reflective of you. Your QDOS will also change over time according to what you do online. Take control of your online status with QDOS.”