AR? why not?

Waiting for something more appealing, we can start some very intriguing applications using different techniques of Augmented Reality. It consists on mixing 2D and 3D models with your real environment - even more - to interact with these 2D and 3D-contents in your personal space.
Here a video example:



The video camera is a fundamental component of the system and it works as well as using a cell phone with a direct interaction between two or more people, as you can watch here:



A different but innovative approach below





An easy way exists in the traditional form as it is suggested here

Twitter world 01

There are many text communication digital methods: e-mail, sms, chat, IM, forum, blog. These methods could be classified by who is writing to whom (1 to 1, 1 to n), by time presence, by privacy vs public exposure, and by many other ways. But the Twitter phenomenon is something apart. It started a lifestream continuum where live conversation became the new mantra. The NOW is the answer and so.....

Goggle - Twitter
Google.com has suddenly become the source for pages — not conversations, not the real time web. Google is the past Twitter is the present. During the Hudson landing Twitter was the first source of information. If you want to know what is going on now on the Internet, you ask Twitter not Google. If you want to know what went on on the Internet, you ask Google if you want the pages but you ask Twitter if you want the feelings.

Facebook - Twitter
Facebook is the old way: other you need to ask permission or you have to give permission. Twitter is a open arena: if you want to start a conversation, just make your account public and go on. Everyone can read it and, if he likes, can re tweet it or @replies at it.

Twitter data
Twitter has become a popular pastime for many who like to update their daily thoughts and activities, as well as for the voyeurs who just enjoy reading the tweets. The last data available show these trends.

Twitter used by company
Some see Twitter as an extension of the marketing department; others view it as a customer service tool, and some say it's best for corporate communications. In 2008, several brands established a Twitter presence, including H&R Block, Southwest Airlines, Jet Blue, Dell, and Home Depot, Ford, Dunkin' Donuts, Whole Foods.
Tesco from UK
Ford
Currently, the firm has about six accounts, including FordDriveOne, the main corporate account; FordDriveGreen, an account focused on environmental technologies; and FordCustService for, well, customer service.
Dunkin' Donuts
Dunkin' Dave tweets
Comcast
ComcastCares
Whole Foods
@wholefoods
Zappos
The firm's CEO Tony Hsieh

Unbundling Media 03 - internet-overtakes-newspapers-as-news-source

Had to happen. At least in USA.
The internet, which emerged this year as a leading source for campaign news, has now surpassed all other media except television as a main source for national and international news.
The Pew Research Center's report shows the inevitable evidence.
But the devil's in the details. "For young people, however, the internet now rivals television as a main source of national and international news. Nearly six-in-ten Americans younger than 30 (59%) say they get most of their national and international news online; an identical percentage cites television."
Here the complete report

Unbundling Media 02: First USA, second UK, next EU Newspapers?

The economic consequences of unbundling media are emerging everywhere. The combined action of economic downturn and online news gathering and distributions is changing the timing of newsparpers industry crisis. The article stress that the advertising downturn is not cyclical but permanent. If so, and I think the author is right, the Unbundling media dilemma will be the core question for any possible economic model dedicated to the newspapers industry.

Wikinomics 02 Who writes Wikipedia?

Henry Blodget, of Silicon Alley Insider, wrote a post on an open question "who-the-hell-writes-wikipedia-anyway" but the hard fact still remains here. An article of Aaron Swartz, which changes a general assumption supported by Jmbo Wales, the Wikipedia founder: "Wikipedia was actually written by a community ... a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers" where "I know all of them and they all know each other". Really, "it's much like any traditional organization."

Aaron Swartz conclusions are quite different and they deserve a careful reading.

Why? In depends if you do the math with the contributions' number or the contributions' lenght: In the first case you have the Wales results, in the second Swartz' findings

"When you put it all together, the story become clear: an outsider makes one edit to add a chunk of information, then insiders make several edits tweaking and reformatting it. In addition, insiders rack up thousands of edits doing things like changing the name of a category across the entire site -- the kind of thing only insiders deeply care about. As a result, insiders account for the vast majority of the edits. But it's the outsiders who provide nearly all of the content."

The difference between author and editor, perhaps.

Some questions

1.Is a corporate web site different from a business card?
2.Better; is a corporate web site address different from a corporate street address?
3.Still better; is a corporate web site different from a corporate call centre?
4.Do you meet your customers and your prospects where they are? TV, Street, Events, Mall?
5.Do you invite your customers to visit your corporate headquarters?
6.Do you engage them where their atoms lives are?
7.Do you engage them where their bits lives are? that's the problem.
8.Is the digital (bits) life experience so different from the atom life experience? frankly not.

1. If I am chatting, twittering, facebooking, playing, reading a news, writing a post, working and so on, why should I leave my activities and go to your corporate web site more than I should go to your corporate headquarters?
2. Most of all; why should you spend money, a lot of, to bring me to your corporate or brand web site?
3. I am listening to many sources: news feeds, friends, useful sites, video web site (You Tube yes, but Hulu too), please take your place in the queue;
4. I am doing a lot of things: blogging, mailing, facebooking, netlogging, ecc; could you make life better for me?

9.Is there a digital life or is it beyond reality?

Some data on Internet user behaviour

The standard web data sheets dedicated to brand managers show the regular suspects: how many users, how many page views, how long were the user visits and so on; how many click-troughs if we are speaking of a banner campaign. But, as someone perhaps said, everything is relative; comparing the user base growth in the last three years period against itself or the Internet user growth (country speaking, worldwide speaking, on age base speaking, etc...) for instance, could bring to very contradictory conclusions. Nevertheless, the real unasked question is: how is my preferred user spending his time on Internet? not which sites is he visiting in order to plan and run an ad campaign but what is he doing on line all the time long.

We are speaking of hour(s)/day Internet usage against seconds/day corporate web site frequentation. With the development of unbundling media and social networking, the Internet
time per user will growth steady but the fraction dedicated to the corporate web sites visit will be still reduced.

On this subject, a very interesting survey, called Digital
Life Digital World, has been conducted by TNS. The authors say: “we try to capture how the internet fits into the lives of residents from sixteen countries across the world. How digital are their lives? How do they use the internet? Is a digital life the same as a social life or does a social life today require a complementary digital life? This study takes a comprehensive look at these issues and offers answers to these questions.” This survey shows some strong trends in Internet usage. According to the report “we spend a third of out leisure time using the internet”, and we are doing it because is fun and social; while people see internet as a medium for sending and receiving messagges, between the first five activities people are doing online, three “are related to information gathering (looking up news and weather, and using search engine to find information)”. Social media and social networking have a central role in internet life of users. The importance of this role will increase in the future following the actual trend.