"so we'll be taking your money anyway"

"you probably thought it was smart to buy a foreign import of superior quality, with better mileage and resale value. maybe you even thought that years of market share loss might prod us into rethinking our process and redesigning our products with better quality in mind. but you forgot one thing: we spend a shitload of money on lobbyists. so now you're out $25 billion, plus the cost of your subaru. maybe next time you'll buy american like a real man. either way, we’re cool. we're the big three. we don't need to compete."

Posted by netzkobold in finds at 00:39 | Permalink | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

the south west regional development agency (swrda) has launched a viral campaign "the harvest" aimed at attracting new work and staff to the region by raising awareness of the south west's creative industry credentials. the overall creative concept of the campaign is aimed at highlighting the strength of the creative industries in the south west of england.



"the harvest" has been planned, produced and seeded by bristol-based viral agency rubber republic www.rubberrepublic.com and you can find some more information about the campaign at www.creativejuices.org.uk

[tags: the harvest, rubber republic, viral marketing, swrda, south west, creative juices]

Posted by netzkobold in viral marketing at 19:42 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

i have been a nokia fan since i got my first mobile phone, the nokia 8110 which became popular as the matrix phone. since then i went through probably 10 other nokia phones until i switched to the iphone, then iphone 3g and android g1 and nokia wasn't catching up, until last night. nokia just launched the n97 at nokia world 2008 in barcelona.



a very slick and beautiful full touchscreen plus slide-out qwerty keyboard 'internet phone'.

"the world's most advanced mobile computer, which will transform the way people connect to the internet and to each other. the nokia n97 introduces the concept of 'social location'. with integrated a-gps sensors and an electronic compass, the nokia n97 mobile computer intuitively understands where it is. the nokia n97 makes it easy to update social networks automatically with real-time information, giving approved friends the ability to update their 'status' and share their 'social location' as well as related pictures or videos."

Posted by netzkobold in technology at 19:52 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

i attended the under the radar conference on wednesday, met a lot of friends and made great new connections. i was impressed again by all the innovative ideas and startups presenting their services and products for the first time. i don't want to go into detail about all of them, you can find some more info at www.undertheradar.com but two of them really stood out for me.



my6sense - bringing sense to your digital life

my6sense ranks content from your different information streams based on what matters to you the most and allows you to interact in one click, it is focused on solving the 'firehose effect' of information deluge on mobile handsets.

"the amount of information that flows into our lives daily is growing rapidly. not only that, each information stream includes many pieces of content. the volume of information leads to lack of attention. the situation is getting worse with mobile. with our first consumer product, my6sense, we are aiming to solve a very big problem in a unique way — by presenting consumers information they need most"

"starting with cutting-edge machine learning technology, my6sense found an ingenious way to elicit the relevant variables needed for effective personalization. what is remarkable is that my6sense avoids added burden to the users and dramatically enhances the quality of their experience. the result is a groundbreaking solution for the mobile user."

"our philosophy is that there is no good hassle-free solution yet to the contact management problem. we aim to link all currently disconnected address books to each other. a change in one of these address books will result in a change in all your connected devices."

Posted by netzkobold in technology at 23:51 | Permalink | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

mashable just kicked off the 2nd annual open web awards, an international online voting competition that covers major innovations in web technology. through an online nominating and voting process, the open web awards recognizes and honors the top achievements in 26 categories. this year, mashable is partnering with over 100 blog partners and i am one of them. the first open web awards achieved over 250,000 votes combined between mashable and 50 international blog partners.

now it is time for your nomination, the open web awards are now accepting nominations in 26 categories via the widget below. you may nominate a site/company in as many categories as you see fit. however, there is only one nomination per category per e-mail address, so choose wisely.



nominations will be held from november 5th till sunday, november 16th 2008. the voting round will be held from november 19th till december 15th and winners will be announced on december 16th.

if you want to support your favorite service/company, here is how to grab the widget and preset the category and company name.

please find all the info at 2nd annual open web awards

[tags: mashable, open web awards, nomination, voting, innovation, web technology]

Posted by netzkobold in word-of-mouth at 19:57 | Permalink | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

the upcoming election won't be decided by tv ads, news cycles, or the polls - it will be decided by you! voting is absolutely crucial, important and every single vote counts! 537 people decided the 2000 election so yes, every vote counts! here is a great customizable viral video that you can send to your friends to make sure they'll go and vote.



and if you still have the feeling you don't know enough about barack obama, here is a great 3 dimensional timeline about his life provided by kronomy, with news clips, pictures and a lot of background information. you can share this timeline via www.fight4obama.com

"we're coming around the turn. america recognizes that at this time in history, with so much at stake, with the economy nose-diving, with two wars and the threat of terrorism, the threat of climate change, we need to do something fundamentally different. and all of you are the shock troops." - barack obama

Posted by netzkobold in word-of-mouth at 23:59 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

good friend and jajah iphone interface designer thomas marban just launched the first twitter client for the t-mobile g1 google android mobile phone called twidroid.



it's the first twitter app for android mobiles. some of the highlights of twidroid's feature set are: fully featured twitter client (postings, replies and direct messages), user detail information, follow/unfollow a user, auto-completion of your contact names, secured operation via ssl, directly integrated photo-posting from cam or disk via phodroid.com, directly integrated search through all public tweets, background notifications for replies and direct messages, auto layout for landscape and portrait mode.

i just installed it on my t-mobile g1 and it works like a charm. i always admired thomas' taste for great ui design, creative skills and eye for details and this is a great piece of work. so if you twitter and have a g1, go to 'android market - applications - communication - twidroid' and get the app, you'll love it.

(via thomas marban at tombot)

[tags: twidroid, twitter, thomas marban, google, android, t-mobile, g1, app, client]

Posted by netzkobold in technology at 16:12 | Permalink | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

product placement is not a new way in advertising products and services, it has been around for centuries and is known from many movies. we got used to it, just spend enough dollars and james bond will drive a bmw or will smith an audi - cell phones, laptops, furniture, tobacco, deodorant, food, all sorts of consumer electronics, you name it.

now the industry seems to have taken this approach a step further and professionalized 'brand dropping' in songs of popular music artists, simply selling elements of their songs to the highest bidder.

"that's the news from wired who shows how artists are approached by agencies to include brand placements in their songs. and if you check out the opening flash sequence for the kluger agency there's a couple of product placement jingles that will sound mighty familiar."

"things have gotten so weird in the music business that high-profile acts are inserting ads into their song lyrics. the next time you hear a brand mentioned in a song, it could be due to a paid product placement. and unlike magazines, songs are not required to point out which words are part of an advertisement."

Posted by netzkobold in advertising at 00:47 | Permalink | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

two days ago i blogged about the eloquently captured two word cover of the economist describing how we are all feeling about the current state of the financial markets. today i read thomas' comment over at basic thinking pointing to the german answer - der spiegel's (the mirror) most recent cover - the price of arrogance (der preis der ueberheblichkeit) and i think that this is how many people outside of the united states feel about what the us has gotten themselves into - affecting many others.



('ueberheblichkeit' could also be translated as 'presumptuousness')

(via der spiegel)

[tags: der spiegel, the economist, oh fuck, cover, ueberheblichkeit, financial markets]

Posted by netzkobold in word-of-mouth at 18:33 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

thanks to anya i recently discovered budurl, a great service to measure the power or reach of social networks, email campaigns, blog posts or simply giving you a short url and providing some great detailed metrics about when and from where people clicked on your url (referrer), budurl makes link tracking amazingly simple.

"what kind of power would you have if you could not only shrink a long url, but also add notes and tags along with detailed analytics like you have on your website? detailed statistics is marketing nirvana, but your website statistics only cover your website. what about social networks, emails, print marketing materials, presentations, etc. the list goes on and on! budurl gives you the power to quantify this traffic and make decisions that were once a shot in the dark."

Posted by netzkobold in marketing at 19:01 | Permalink | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

hats off to the uber-intelligent folks at 'the economist' who have, in just two words, so eloquently captured how we are all feeling about the current state of the financial markets.



(via the economist)

[tags: economist, the economist, oh fuck, cover, financial crisis, financial markets]

Posted by netzkobold in word-of-mouth at 01:09 | Permalink | Comments (11) | Trackbacks (4) | Bookmark

i just downloaded the most recent album of my favorite dj duo - thievery corporation - called radio retaliation via amazon music. i have been to their 'richest man in babylon' tour concert in berlin, germany and was blown away - it's electronic music, downbeat with elements of dub, reggae, rap, triphop, brazilian, house, indian sounds, lounge-jazz, bossa, global beats and a bit of percussion boldly yet smoothly combined. but simply check it out yourself, this is my 8th thievery album and i'm sure you'll enjoy it too.





get the new 'radio retaliation' album via amazon music or via itunes.

more about thievery corporation and on wikipedia.

(via jeremiah owyang)

[tags: thievery corporation, radio retaliation, downbeat, thievery, electronic music]

Posted by netzkobold in word-of-mouth at 01:20 | Permalink | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

this morning google and t-mobile launched the first android-powered handset manufactured by htc. this largely anticipated device comes with a big touchscreen and a slide-open full keyboard. it's a 3g phone, wifi enabled, built-in gps, drm-free amazon mp3 music store, android market app store, 1gb storage, copy and paste and a chrome-lite browser. it will be available october 22, 2008 at $179.

i had the chance to play around with it for a while and i have to say it is better than i expected. the touchscreen functionality competes with the apple iphone, design and look and feel are pretty good (despite what i expected from google), the htc device itself is bulkier, thicker and heavier than the iphone but still competes in a market where blackberry's and sidekicks are popular devices. there are already tons of fun and helpful applications available and based on it's open google android platform i'm sure there is way more to come. congrats to t-mobile and google, great move.



for more information check out walt mossberg's first impressions or simply techmeme.

[tags: google, android, t-mobile, htc, g1, apple, iphone, sidekick, platform, amazon mp3]

Posted by netzkobold in technology at 20:23 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackback (1) | Bookmark

for the weekend, cern's 27 km large hadron collider explained in a rap.



experiments at cern help us understand the world we live in by the telegraph

(via tom foremski / silicon valley watcher)

[tags: cern, rap, physics, alpinekat, hadron collider, geneva, proton, accelerator]

Posted by netzkobold in technology at 02:25 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark

a little while back i received an invite for ping.fm from ryan merket, who i worked with before. in short ping.fm is a status update tool that sends your updates to a bunch of your favorite microblogging services like bebo, blogger, facebook, hi5, jaiku, linkedin, livejournal, myspace, pownce, tumblr and twitter and there are more to follow. you publish your update at ping.fm and within seconds all services are updated with your message.

"ping.fm is a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap."

"ping.fm was created for the sole purpose of making it as easy as possible to share your posts with the world. now you don't have to fumble around the web in order to post anymore, you can just post once, and be done with it. the idea came about when making some posts to twitter and tumblr. the idea of posting the exact same information in two places seemed a bit tedious, so ping.fm was born.

Posted by netzkobold in technology at 20:54 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackback (1) | Bookmark