This man is amazing to say the least. Mashable explains Pugh as, “Lewis Gordon Pugh has swum in every ocean in the world, and was the first person to swim at the North Pole, where the waters are below zero degrees centigrade (which is the freezing point for fresh water). Pugh uses his extreme swimming feats to shed light on issues of worldwide importance such as global warming.”
This man is known globally, rightly so. Goosebumps that Pugh is proudly South African! Enjoy the video – shows you that anything actually IS possible if you really want it.
I came across this on The Next Web. Think I’m definitely Geek 2 but remember a couple of things about Geek 1. I bet you can identify with a lot of these things! Enjoy.
The new ad from Guinness & BBDO London agency. The slogan is “Bring It To Life.”
Director Johnny Green shot the spot in multiple locations around the world. It depicts a group of strapping men physically bringing life - grass, coral, water - to barren places. The spot marks a departure from the well-known Guinness tag line, Good Things Come to Those Who Wait, which has been in use for the past decade. I enjoyed the ad, it’s different.
A poll on Tweetdeck vs. Seesmic has been running on Mashable. Personally, I use Seesmic, well Twhirl, which is a spin off of Seesmic, so falls under that vote. Twhirl is a social software desktop client, based on the Adobe AIR platform. The problem I found with Seesmic was that the summary that it provided on my bottom right screen corner was that it only provided a summary of what my ‘friends’ were saying (ie. “3 new messages / replies”) instead of the actual tweet. I found this annoying, as often I’ll quickly scan the message in the 5 second display period & if I feel it looks interesting then I’ll open Twhirl and have a look, otherwise ignore until something else comes up, then can scan through them all later. I also didn’t need Facebook in my feed, it just uses up a lot of bandwidth by constantly calling the API, so I didn’t need the full Seesmic, therefore opted for Twhirl.
I did give Tweetdeck a bash on a personal level, but still preferred the simplified Twhirl. However, we do use Tweetdeck at work on a big screen as it gives a great overview if you can just leave it open to view. So we can have all 3 ‘window’s open (see below) & follow any newsworthy articles / people as a company.
1. To follow what our ‘friends’ are saying 2. To follow what anyone worldwide is saying about eMarketing or Search Marketing (seeing as that’s what we do) 3. Follow any replies, mentions etc
I managed to put this word cloud below together through Wordle. Wordle is, “a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and colour schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like.”
Basically you can just enter your blog / site RSS and Wordle does the rest. It concatenates all words used on your site and mashes them into any shape or form. You can choose the font, size, colour, shape, basically anything. As I had a bit of fun putting it together, I was trying to think of what you could actually do with this? I guess you could use it as a banner for your blog / site if you wanted to. Hey, perhaps even make a picture out of it and frame it on your wall for the geeks out there. ;-) What would you do? ;-)
Shaun White – the world’s best snowboarder – disappeared over the winter to his secret Red Bull Spot – the Red Bull Project X. It’s set up in the backwoods of Colorado and is for Shaun White alone. It has an incredible setting – just the majestic backdrop of the Colorado mountain range, with a perfectly formed half-pipe at the base of it all. To me, it looks incredibly scary and you wouldn’t catch me even walking anywhere near there, but to Shaun White, it’s a dream come true. What pro snowboarder wouldn’t want their own SUPER SIZE half-pipe that’s never been touched before?
Ogilvy Cape Town have come up with another cracker for Stimorol Air Rush gum that’s recently re-launched. It’s selling point is that it will “blow you away' with its extra-strong, long-lasting flavour refreshing your body and mind..” The product was re-launched in June in 3 new flavours: Menthol, Wicksmint and Orange Mint.
The ad features, “the enigmatic and much-admired ‘new guy' in the office who has ‘something about him', the ad demonstrates the casual power of Stimorol Air Rush by, quite literally, blowing the characters' hair back.” I like that this time it’s the ‘normal guy on the street’ with the ‘wind in your hair’ look and that it’s completely over-done. It’s not the cliche beautiful girl who happens to turn her head your way when the wind is just right. A typical office scenario with the ‘new guy’ being sussed out by the oldies. I love it, it’s over the top, but it works. Great work guys :-)
Invictus is going to be one of those special movies. If you are a South African, you need to see it when it comes out. It’s one of those films that you “just know” will be good. The trailer, below, gave me absolute goose bumps! A reminder of how one event can unite an entire nation.
What is it about? “The film tells the inspiring true story of how Nelson Mandela joined forces with the captain of South Africa's rugby team to help unite their country. Newly elected President Mandela knows his nation remains racially and economically divided in the wake of apartheid. Believing he can bring his people together through the universal language of sport, Mandela rallies South Africa's rugby team as they make their historic run to the 1995 Rugby World Cup Championship match.”
It has a brilliant cast on top of it, Morgan Freeman as Mandela, Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar & directed by Clint Eastwood.
I’ll be buying tickets to see this as soon as humanly possible ;-)
Three groups account for most of the increase in Twitter use:
1. people who use social networks 2. those who access the internet via some mobile device 3. younger internet users (under 44 years old)
What type of people tweet? The below graph shows a nice mixture of age, race & demographics. Note that more women seem to tweet than men in the US.
Social Network Users:
35% of internet users who use social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook or, LinkedIn also use Twitter (35%), compared with just 6% of internet users who do not use social network sites. Those who use social networks account for 47% of all internet users.
Mobile Internet Users:
From September 2009, 54% of US internet users access the Web via a wireless connection from a laptop, cell phone, gaming console or other mobile device. One in four (25%) wireless users uses Twitter or another similar service; in December 2008, only 14% did. Among internet users who rely on a tethered connection, 8% use Twitter, up from 6% in December 2008.
So it seems that more devices a person has access to, the more likely it is that she or he will use a status-update service such as Twitter. Some 39% of people who have four or more internet-connected devices (e.g., laptop, cell phone, game console, or Kindle) use Twitter, compared with 28% of internet users who have three devices, 19% of those with two, and 10% of internet users with just one. This is definitely the case with me. I’ll Tweet from work or home when on my laptop, otherwise via my mobile phone when I’m on the run or too lazy to log on. :)
So Twitter is definitely on the rise, not just in the US but worldwide. As more and more people gain access to the internet, especially via mobile for the poorer countries where mobiles are easier to obtain than PC’s or laptops, the more people want to feel connected. Twitter is catching on fast.
If you haven’t seen the Castle Lite’s new beer ad for 2009 yet, then go and see it. It’s brilliant. Vanilla Ice jetted into Cape Town for a few days to star in this ad.
Ogilvy Cape Town with SAB came up with this fantastic ad. Sure, it’s maybe a bit corny, but the fact that I’ve played it over and over and still love it says alot. It’s catchy and it works. The ad promots & highlights the Castle Lite’s new thermocromatic ink stickers which appear blue when at the beer’s ideal temperature for consumption is reached. Ice cold that is.
Here is the making of the ad. I love going behind the scenes seeing how it’s all put together. Great job Ogilvy, SAB & cast.
That’s So Swag is a new search engine that promises to bring the fashionista types up to date & all recent news on trends, make-up, fashion shows, which seasons a thing of the past etc by providing live time search through Twitter. So in essence, it’s a type of Twitter application.
So what’s the use and how does it work? If you search for anything fashion related, the search engine filters tweets using keywords related to fashion and displays what's trending in the fashion world in real time. So it works the same real normal search works, but is specialised to the fashion industry. I did a search for “New York Fashion Week” and up came all the latest tweets on New York’s Fashion Week. The site aims to target 18 to 24 year-old women / all those fashion conscious & integrates itself with shopping site Viva Swag to help users find & purchase products quickly after identifying the latest trends. ”That’s Swag!” – will this become Paris Hilton’s new catch phrase, after the much publicised, “That’s Hot.” Let’s see, but in the meantime, That’s So Swag.
I saw this on the CherryFlava site. It’s a marketing video for the 2010. It’s fun, it’s catchy, it portrays a bit of the beautiful Cape and it’s proudly South African. Peter Greenwall put this together.
As the CherryFlava guys stated (on the lack of much marketing for 2010 thus far), “at least somebody’s got their arse in gear and showing some interest.”
The Parlotones are one of my favourite bands of all time in SA. They’re classy, they’re funky and they’re super-talented.
“The Parlotones are known for their electric, polished stage performances delivered against the backdrop of their deftly crafted and darkly romantic lyrics. Their sound, described as alternative in their formative years and influenced by the likes of Muse, Radiohead and the Smiths, has evolved substantially becoming more refined and focused with each album.”
About the wine - “I feel that wine is often associated with romance and the romanticism in The Parlotones lyrics makes this combination ideal. I would describe ‘Giant Mistake’ as a wine where sophistication meets creativity.” Kahn Morbee (lead vocalist of The Parlotones)
The amazing guys over at Afrigator & Hands on Wine are running a fantastic competition to win a private dinner with the award-winning Parlotones. What an offer huh? I shouldn’t really advertise such an awesomecompetition as it lessens my prospects, but with such an exciting product on its’ way to the public, how can one not give kudos to such an awesome band, who will hopefully release their wine to their fans in the very near future.
Exciting times guys, well done to The Parlotones, Afrigator & Hands on Wine. It’s a fantastic collaboration and I for one definitely look forward to a rockstar dinner. It would be a giant mistake not to pick me ;-)
Google announced an impressive growth with revenues up 7% to $5.95 billion. Net income was up 27% to $1,64 billion.
* Google generated $1.8 billion for AdSense partner sites, or 30 percent of revenues.
* Paid clicks on AdSense ads were up 14 percent annually and up 4 percent from the second quarter BUT
* Cost per click (or how much Google and AdSense publishers make from each of those clicks) was down 6% annually and 5% sequentially.
The breakdown is covered in this impressive slide-show, found on TechCrunch.
The 3.7% of online ads served on social networks is split among such sites as Tagged.com, Hi5.com, Bebo and other smaller sites - most of them with only 0.1% share or less of the total online ad market.
Should this percentage increase? Do any of you actually click on ads on a social network.? Personally, I get annoyed with the ads. I switched to Facebook Lite instead of the old, standard Facebook layout because the ads irritated me and just made the page load time that much slower (being in Africa). I get the point that people on social networks are generally ‘browsing’ around, therefore perhaps in less of a hurry to ‘look for’ something & possibly more open to clicking on something that may interest them. But personally, i just find it annoying. When I’m watching a YouTube video, I’m generally not looking for other things to look at simultaneously, so why the ads? Yes, yes, to make money, but what about the user experience?
Perhaps it’s just me, but more ads on social networks is not something I look forward to. I want my social / personal experience to be ME time and not advertisers time to hamper the experience. Anyone else feel the same?
I came across this on the newly launched Technorati blog. It’s an interesting watch on how to get the most of the “media” out of the social media space. Technoratie states, “There are obviously wonderful viral and engagement opportunities in social media, but it's important to remember that there's a pure media play necessary if any type of consistent scale is to be achieved.” Very true and very simply put. This video was taken at SES in August 2009 and tracks the conversation between Lee Odden and Richard Jalichandra. (CEO of Technorati)
Here’s a great, animated video on the much hyped & anticipated Google Wave. Some have been lucky enough to have received invites and are already testing / using Google Wave. I’m still eagerly awaiting my invite! So until that invite reaches my inbox, it’s video’s, friends comments and a patient wait for me.
I very recently blogged on Google’s Dominance for Mobile Search Advertising. Google has announced optimized Adsense ads for high-end ‘smart’ phones. (iPhone etc) Google has estimated that global sales of smart-phones will increase by 27% in 2009 to 177 million items.
On Monday, Google announced, “we're excited to announce a new feature for our AdSense mobile publishers that enables them to serve text and image ads on their sites — specifically on these high-end smartphones. This helps mobile publishers earn revenue and fund more mobile-specific sites and web content.”
One of Google’s product managers explains Google Mobile Ads in the video below.
Ads served to smart-phones can now support images & other features. Google is trying to ‘get ahead’ by testing / introducing optimized ads so that when mobile search hits us with a bang, Google are already that key player. Google continues to innovate and find new ways to stay ahead of the rest of the pack. They are already making their move on the mobile world now, when smart-phones only occupy 20% of the mobile market at the moment. As contracts come to an end, more and more people are signing up for smart-phones. It’s a clever move.
A VERY simple explanation of what a web browser is. WhatBrowser has this video on its site, which shows you what current browser you are using (if you had no idea.) So mine shows Chrome 3, but then has options for you to choose another browser, Internet Explorer or Firefox. I guess this really is just a ‘what is it’ and ‘which one should I use’ video. If there are those out there who you feel should learn about browsers, then, consider sending them to WhatBrowser.
Born & bred in Africa, I've worked in the eMarketing industry for the last 5 years at Clicks2Customers in Cape Town & London. I'm passionate about everything online & live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Cape Town.
