Coffee and battle

By Harry Smals on 4 March 2010

The BeMoved coffee-machine is a great idea! This apparatus does not only dispense coffee but also supplies you with information from internet, it helps you to know your colleagues better and it makes it possible to lose calories instead of gaining them. Imagine: a cup of coffee with minus 5 calories! It is an advanced coffee-machine, with a touch-screen and a camera. The result is quite similar to a multi-touch table, but you can’t put your cup on top of it, it serves your coffee. The next step could be that you drink your coffee with your colleagues in India and Brazil; plus share photo’s and synchronize agenda’s etc. 

tagged with: public space, gatekeeper, journalism, innovation

'Immersion'

By Dick Swart on 3 March 2010

Not so long ago when I did some research about Alternate Reality Gaming, I found out that there are a lot of misconceptions concerning Immersion. Without starting definition debate #2197 about what Immersion is and what not, I think it is safe to say that it is basically the intensiveness of a person to ‘be’ in a fictitious realm and the ability to lock out his own realm of reality. A big problem is of course that it can be difficult to determine what is the real realm in which you actually live and what the fictitious realm is in which you have immersed. I think it was 庄子 who said: ‘Am I a man dreaming he is a butterfly or am I a butterfly dreaming he is a man’. The answer is unfortunately all too easy: The most boring realm in which you keep ending up after switching from realm to realm is most likely the one you actually live, pay taxes, loose kidneys and finally die in order to go to the biggest fictional realm ever conceived by human called heaven and/or hell.

tagged with: immersion, alternate reality

Pandora’s Neocracy #3, The future of mobile communication

By Kees Winkel on 18 February 2010

Communicating, interacting and participating by means of mobile apparatus is booming; social networking, banking, navigating, watching (delayed) television. The mobile communication trend seamlessly fits in the development in which more than one media is available and used (crossmedia) to provide in the (information) needs of civilians and consumers. It also has an impact on the social and commercial development.

tagged with: neocracy, mobile, communication

Mediabattle

By Matthijs Rotte on 13 February 2010

Last week students of the Universities of applied sciences Utrecht and Enschede took part in a media battle. The concept of the battle was quite simple; Five companies presented a real life case before the students which they had to find a solution to. The companies presented them with cases varying from funeral services to branding of a region. All this in only two and a half days time whilst working in teams of three or four. The challenge was on.

tagged with: target group, mediabattle, crossmedia

Back to the future?

By Yvonne Buma on 12 February 2010

Not so long ago all you heard when you asked which communication method should be used to get the result you wanted from your communication efforts, was internet related methods. “I’ll send them an email. ’’Oh, you need a website.”  “Use Twitter.” Etc. etc. But there are all kinds of signals that old-fashioned methods are making a comeback.

tagged with: print

Those good old fax machines

By Niniane Veldhoen on 11 February 2010

This week I took another trip down memory lane. I was cleaning out some boxes at the attic and came across a bunch of old faxes. It drove me right back to when I was about fifteen years old.  Me and my girlfriends used to spend evenings faxing to a group of friends living on the other side of the country. My dad always used to wonder why the fax machine was out of paper, again…

tagged with: privacy, social media

Brand Building in the 21st century

By Harry Smals on 1 February 2010

A brand is an association network in people’s brains.  It’s not just a logo and a name stitched on a shirt or burned on a tea casket. The shape and colour of the logo mean something to people. They associate the sound of the brand-name with positive or negative experiences. People attribute their experiences to the brand, as well as the stories from other people’s experiences. Whether brand managers like it or not and whether the stories are true or not. 

tagged with: follow-group, fragmented target-groups, brand-building

Loose the iPad! Get me an iProxy

By Harry van Vliet on 28 January 2010

Daily life is becoming more and more complex despite the increasing use of ‘intelligent’ applications and services. The latest being the iPad. Of course ‘intelligent’ is a term whose meaning is quite relative, as Negroponte has already subtly pointed out: “A dog can recognize you from your gait more than one hundred yards away, whereas a computer does not even know you are there. Almost any pet can tell when you are angry, but a computer does not have a clue. Even puppies know when they have done wrong; computers don’t.”

tagged with: personalisation, ipad, user profile

“NO CHOICE TV”

By Dick Swart on 20 January 2010

I don’t think that a lot of people will agree with me but for me; having around 200 TV stations and a decent remote control is a mixed blessing. Of course I’m very happy that I have this enormous amount of choice. I can’t get enough from MGM, SCIFI, Discovery, History Channel, Holland doc Etcetera but I also have to admit that I rarely finish a program to the end. Usually I wander of from the program I like and end somewhere else. This is mostly instigated by the curse called commercials but not so long ago I realized that it’s not only avoiding commercial breaks, but also an unconscious and pathetic need to zap around. My thumb just doesn’t like to miss things, This so called WWILA (Where Was I Looking At?) is annoying afterwards. I feel stupid that I haven’t finished a documentary or movie although it was really worthwhile to watch it. It makes me feel a gluttonous entertainment junky who just happens to be hooked on imagery.

tagged with: zap, tv

This is cool!

By Yvonne Buma on 12 January 2010

Have you noticed the Content Marketing Playbook, 42 ways to connect with customers? I discovered it on Junta42. There is more fun stuff there by the way. But this is really cool. You want to know which media you might best use to spread your content and don’t have the time or energy to really study all the different types of (social) media and what there pitfalls mights be? Take a look at this small booklet. You can download it for free, so why not.

tagged with: social media