Archive for March 2005

The New York Times’ usually entertaining David Pogue (love those video clips, David) has a rather bland take on the three US DVD by mail services. Ultimately he ranks Netflix “the service king,” with it’s “highly evolved features.” Blockbuster is deemed “the value king,” with its $3/mo. cheaper price and free in-store rentals. Wal-Mart, the laggard, is not “a winner.” An interesting factoid is that Blockbuster plans to decrease its shipping times and increase its number of shipping points by an astounding “15,000 percent” by mailing out of all of its 4,500 stores. Beat that you puny Internet company.

It all does raise the larger question of why in fact, Blockbuster and Wal-Mart are getting into the game instead of torpedoing the whole idea with existing on-demand technologies? Surely deckchairs and Titanic come to mind. Here in San Francisco, Comcast offers a fairly impressive array of movies on demand, both free and for-fee. Netflix has announced a deal with TiVo to offer a similar service via their set top boxes, but Blockbuster’s widely familiar brand should allow them to weasel into this space somehow. “Comcast On-Demand powered by Blockbuster” could turn some heads.

Link to David’s Pogue’s ‘In the Competition for DVD Rentals by Mail, Two Empires Strike Back’

Fascinating story featured in the Reveries newsletter earlier this week:

Guerilla Architects.
In Mexico City, where some people may be poor but the building codes
are light, a new generation of mostly young architects is "beautifying
blighted urban areas with bold designs," reports Carol Strickland in The Christian Science Monitor
(3/25/05). The situation in Mexico City is very unlike that in the
United States, where "strict oversight can hogtie" architects,
"resulting in "cookie-cutter solutions and a lot of repetition in terms
of the same firms getting the same types of commissions and using the
same materials," notes Rick Bell of the Center for Architecture. "Our
more litigious culture and [regulatory] agencies imbued with a sense of
fiduciary and public trust mean [that] those who commission
architecture aren’t willing to take chances," he says.
 
In
Mexico City, however, the scene is so unstructured that young
architects commission their own projects: "They become their own
clients and take their own risks," says Enrique Norten, a U.S.-based
architect who dreamed up a show, "Mexico City Dialogues,"
to document the new "market urbanism" that’s happening in Mexico City.
For example, a firm called Higuera + Sanchez bought "a dilapidated
warehouse in Condesa, a neighborhood in transition to a trendy,
alternative-lifestyle arena." The interior was gutted, creating "studio
lofts — a type of housing that didn’t exist in the city — for young
professionals, singles, and couples without children." The firm then
"negotiated with banks to convince lenders that these units should be
eligible for mortgages (At the time, new apartments were only
two-bedroom units and mortgages were available only to traditional,
two-income families with children.)" The project was innovative in yet
another way, as the design featured a "communal space in the heart of
the building … an interior patio."
 

Javier Sanchez of Higuera + Sanchez, higuera-sanchez.com,
explains: "To have an open courtyard protected by its own inhabitants
makes it safe." Not only that, but the common area made fast friends of
the residents, who like to have parties there. "By tiny steps, these
buildings propose new forms of making urban life better," says Jose
Castillo, curator of Mexico City Dialogues. "When the state is not able
to provide infrastructure and required services, architects must
develop strategies to meet the needs of citizens." He adds: "How to
address through architectural practice issues of the environment,
traffic, population density and social injustice is relevant anywhere."
In fact, the applicability of "market urbanism" to "other megacities around the globe" will be the subject of a symposium to be hosted by the Center for Architecture, aiany.org,  in New York in early May.

Reveries

Regine reports in her Near Near about the FlashCam that has already been attached to street furniture in 52 locations
in London, Glasgow and Birmingham, where it aims to deter vandalism,
in particular graffiti, prostitution and illegal trash dumping.

The FlashCam-530 senses motion up to 100 feet away. When motion is
detected, the system starts taking 35 mm photographs. A bright flash
goes off and a loud voice message warns the intruder to "leave the area
now" and that his/her photograph is being taken.

Former London Met police officer Steve Galinsky enthused: "They have
already caught lots of people - some quite literally with their pants
down, engaged with prostitutes. The look of utter amazement on their
faces when the camera starts to shout is priceless."

PSFK wonders if there’s a way some arty folk could do some culture jamming here? Maybe they could find where the cameras are and perform some radical performance art whilst their photo is taken. Then - we’d like to see the look of utter amazement on Steve Galinsky’s face.

Near Near
Flashcam Makers
Guardian Commentary
Locations Of FlashCams in UK & US

The only catch is that you have to be a city and also be the most ‘e-aware’ city in the UK by 2008.

The British government has noted a growing ‘digital divide’ in the UK and it hopes this compeition will encourage cities and local councils to transform the delivery of public services.

Ideas being considered include:

· online access to real time reports of criminal acts in a locality, so helping to establish any patterns of crime;

· ways in which children can do homework projects online together in small groups;

· use of video cameras so doctors can examine patients in their homes;

· use of IT to set up micro businesses.

"The city of e-technology would become a pioneer in exploiting technology for socially useful purposes."

Guardian Article

Converse has a site that lets their customers really show the company what they think about their iconic sneakers. Folk can upload 25 second video shots to a site and budding (and established) film makers can receive $10K if their spot gets shown on MTV and the like.

The site was launched last August by San Fran agency Butler Shine Stern + Partners and reflects their slant towards OpenSource Advertising: here the consumers create the ads. The films are still coming and the quality and quantity is just outstanding.

Let us know which one’s your fave in the comments box!

Converse Gallery
BSSP
Open Ad Site

Staff at Technorati, the blog search engine, are busily preparing the celebrations to commemorate 1 billion links tracked by their search
engine. It’s a terrific achievement for what is one of PSFK’s favorite elements of the blogosphere. Technorati describes its mission as:

Technorati displays what’s important in the blogosphere — which
bloggers are commanding attention, what ideas are rising in prominence,
and the speed at which these conversations are taking place.

Recently we used Technorati to try to conduct research on a few of our articles. The experience left us wondering: A billion links on Technorati, but to where?

Our research was hampered by having to sift through the sheer number of, what we are calling, SpamBlogs - blogs set up to fool the search engine to simple redirect users to ecommerce sites. Try for example one of our searches on Technorati: 3G Phones

After the first page of informative links we were hit with pages and pages of links to SpamBlogs set up by a small and probably clever phone retailing business based just north of London. They include http://nokiauk.blogspot.com/ http://samsunguk.blogspot.com/ http://motorolauk.blogspot.com/. Simple pages listing each product within a post with links through to their ecommerce site.

How can Technorati monitor "what ideas are rising in prominence" when their system is being hijacked?

Right now, there seems to lot of concern about how ad agencies might set up faux blogs to sell their clients’ wares. PSFK thinks it’s more important to address how Technorati and the other search engines deal with these other faux blogs, the SpamBlogs. We sent an email to Technorati’s press office and even left a comment on CEO David Sifry’s blog - but no response so far. Update!! See David’s comment below.

We thought about sending an email to the mobile phone operation in Watford, but then we thought - good for them. They must be the ones celebrating right now.

Technorati

Mitchell Levy is Executive Editor and CEO of Happy About which writes and publishes books for corporations. He is also a partner in CEOnetworking, the Director of the Silicon Valley Executive Business Program and a board member at Rainmaker Systems, a NASDAQ traded company.

He has just released what he believes to be the top ten trends that software vendors need to factor in to their business plans for 2005.

1. Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) goes mainstream

2. China’s Power and World Economic Influence Grows

3. Working at Home Goes Mainstream While Small Business Thrives

4. Offshoring Activity Picks Up

5. As the World Shrinks, the World Market Expands

6. Technology Stocks Increase in Value

7. Cell Phones look more and more like PDAs and vice versa

8. Blogging and Social Networking Become Accepted Business Tools

9. Continued Sophistication in Corporate Internet Usage

10. Enterprises Increasingly Demand Flexible Solutions

Full trend report

Wal-Mart Stores has kicked off a new advertising campaign, specifically tailored towards the Asia / Pacific American community in the US.  The ads, developed by the retailer with the Los Angeles-based IW Group, include television, radio, and print advertisements that will be featured in Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese and English in key U.S. markets:  Los Angeles, Houston, San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose.

Like previous ad campaigns, this one will feature "real" people - this time customers as opposed to the store staff that are usually
involved.

Ad Jab Report

In response to the problem of noise pollution at the Glastonbury festival this year (which
has traditionally led the district council to issue a license for the
festival on the condition that its main stages and tents shut down on
the stroke of midnight), organisers will hand out wireless headphones to let festival goers dance
to whatever record the headline DJ plays.

Imagine the scene for onlookers: 3000 of them! Dancing in silence!

Reminds PSFK of the Mobile Clubbing they do in Europe where folk turn up with an iPod loaded with the same tune and they all click play at the same time and start dancing!

Guardian Article
PSFK Article On Underground Collective