So, what’s Pond ?  It’s an aggregator and publishing tool for social media services, that allows anyone to manage their social graph on a single place. You can import your friend list from social web services, merge friend contacts and update your social web status on the web, mobile or desktop.

The wide range of platform support is certainly the highlighted feature:  Besides the web, Android, and Symbian mobile apps are available (iPhone soon) and desktop software (Mac, Windows and Linux) will also be released.

Currently Pond supports Twitter, Flickr, SAPO Fotos, YouTube, SAPO Vídeos, Facebook and SAPO Blogs, as well any RSS or Atom feed. It will surely be a great way to introduce the power of social web to a wider portuguese audience, since the application is sponsored by TMN — the largest mobile carrier in Portugal (disclaimer: TMN is a Fulllsix client) — PT Comunicações and Meo (it will be interesting to see a social app on a IPTV service: social TV).

With smartphones becoming more affordable, growth on the social web will be fueled by mobile web with centralizing services like Pond or Vodafone 360 taking full advantage our digital identities. I only wish i could add more metadata to my friends info, like birthdays, tags or events. Give me that, and i’ll be a happy ? Ponder ?

Great work, SAPO team!

P.S.: the service is on beta — invitation only for the moment — with early registration for TMN clients.

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While working for companies with start ups and online marketing and PR, she also helped bring passion to the communities she’s involved, and continued her involvement with Shift as a Super Duper Advisor :).

Photo by redsoda747, all rights reserved

Unfortunately, i wasn’t able to attend the talk where Henriette presented the ideas on the book, but as a big fan of her personal rockband, i’ve asked her a few questions she kindly accepted to answer.

Henriette, Toothless Tiger, avant garde social business expert: who are you really ?
Who am I really ? I am a lady from the north hunting integrity, authenticity, remarkability, creativity, and trustworthiness in business all over the world. I am a first mover within tech and business and how to implement the ways and ideas of the internet in organizations. Heck some people even call me a guru =)

At Shift, we had a first glimpse on “why every company should be a rockband”, that has now been self published as a book. Sounds like there’s a story here, and i’d love you to share how this book was born and the main ideas discussed on it.

Well the book was born because my own book deal in Denmark got canceled. it’s not that I cry myself to sleep every night over it, it just shows that when you’re battling in places where i am battling – the publishing industry does not understand. I have felt it on my own body that publishing houses wants to make everything mainstream. I think mainstream is so incredibly boring and without attitude. It makes everything become normal. meh. Anyway I decided to make my own publishing house (called Toothless Tiger Press), where nothing had to be mainstream – it could be as quirky and strange and wonderful excentric, and all the power over the works had to be in the hands of the author. To make Toothless Tiger Press I needed to have an ebook. People at shift really loved the talk so I decided to work a bit longer on the slides and turn them into an ebook. It collided with my blog post on the 7th of December on 24ways.org – it was a blast and now it’s out there and people are sending me mails to say thank you – it rocks =).

The main idea in the ebook is that the world has changed and it doesn’t look a bit like “business as usual”. Still we conduct business as usual. s. It heavily related on some blogposts I have done on toothlesstiger.com for the past year arguing that “the business of business needs to be more than business”. and that’s the main idea. It’s a way of changing the world. which is also why I hope that everybody will read this ebook and react on it, and spread the ebook like wildfire – in some way – making something more.

Bands have groupies. Companies have …
groupies too and fans. Groupies are the hardcore people surrounding your company and who can’t live without it. Fans are more moderate. You need to work on getting people who purchase your products to first become customers, then to become fans, and if you’re lucky they will become groupies as well.

We’re both very interested in creativity. Bands have it, the web as lots of it, but companies are usually stifling it. Are companies behaving like the music industry instead of focusing in being rock bands?
I think that the creativity is lacking in companies because of control. In some companies it’s extremely hard and I think that some companies are acting as the music industry. let it go man. You can’t control the chaos of the web. it should not be managed – it should be lead. so let go of the command and control mentality, it doesn’t really belong in a rockband (or in the music industry – but I guess they are waking up to see that)

Game time. Match each one of the brands / companies below with a rock band.
(I haven’t given these much consideration so I hope I won’t be held responsible that much)
Nokia : R.E.M
Motorola: Lordi

Nike: MGMT
Adidas: Daft Punk

Ford: Sisters of Mercy
Honda: Nightwish

PriceWaterhouse: The Pogues
Accenture: The Corrs

McDonalds: Hanson
Ben&Jerry’s: spice girls

Pepsi: The Doors
Coke: Janis Joplin

Amazon: Coldplay
Google: Red Hot Chili Peppers

H&M: Abba
Zara: Manu Chao

Head on to Toothlesstigerpress.com and get your piece of a rockband for your company today.

Update:
Added links to the original concept and the talk’s slideshow.

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On his own words “the concept of the ad is that the subjects are being compressed into the magazine“. And, boy, they look pretty good to me. Congrats Andre.

Credits
Agency: Uzina (Portugal)
Creative Director: Gustavo Suarez
Art Director: André Breda
Copywriter: Roberto Ferraz
Account Director: António Roquette
Production Company: Garage Films (Portugal)
Director: Enrique Escamilla
Photography Director: Carlos Lopes (Cácá)
Executive Producer: Miguel Varela
Editor: Marcos Castiel
Post-production Director: Marta Metrass
Phantom Operator: Raoul Rodriguez
Post-Production: Ingreme (Portugal)
Music Supervision: Level Two Music (Australia)
Song: QUA – Painting Monsters
Composer: Cornel Wilczek
Sound post-production: Ameba (Portugal)

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Osocio features a new branding and a complete redesign, with several additions such as NGO’s profiles, latest news and agenda or a dictionary on social advertising terms, wraps the previous outstanding content, with advertising that inspires us all.

Whenever you find a great campaign, contact me or post a link to my del.icio.us (for:thedlab) so we could keep Outlust the best website on social advertising (not the Zuckerberg kind). Or join us on Twitter or at Facebook groups Social Advertising and Osocio.

So here’s what Osocio is all about:

Osocio is dedicated to social advertising and non-profit campaigns. It’s the place where marketing and activism collide. Formerly known as the Houtlust Blog, Osocio is the central online hub for advertisers, ad agencies, grassroots, activists, social entrepreneurs, and good Samaritans from around the globe.

Despite there being hundreds of other ad blogs on the web, Houtlust stood out by focusing exclusively on social advertising. Unlike commercial advertising, which only attempts to influence purchase decisions, non-profit ads seeks to connect us with other human beings. Social advertising has an uncanny power to make us stop, think and then take action to help a person, or a group of people, who we don’t even know, who might be from a foreign culture, living thousands of miles away. And for that reason we celebrate these ads, study them and discuss them at length. We hope you will too.

Created by Marc van Gurp in October 2005, Houtlust began as a personal collection of non-profit ads. Originally the site was only written in Dutch, with no thoughts of a wider audience. But the demand for an English version quickly grew. The tiny niche blog got bigger and bigger. And it wasn’t long before Houtlust became known as the authoritative reference of non-profit advertising for the ad industry and socially minded people everywhere.

In the spring of 2007 discussions started on how to take Houtlust to the next level. Interactive agency Onstuimig and branding agency Alef de Jong were quick to volunteer their services to help with the re-brand and re-launch of new website. The result of this cooperation is where you are now: Osocio.

Osocio is more then a blog. It’s a complete resource for all things in the world of non-profit and social messaging. It’s a platform for global and local social issues, both large and small. It’s a community of social thinkers and marketing do-gooders.

While Houtlust was curated by one person (Marc van Gurp), Osocio has several contributors, each of whom are specialists in a specific field of the diverse non-profit sector. We are glad to welcome these experts to the Osocio team (see below).

Of course, we have our own ideas on how to make the world a better place. However, Osocio promises to never push any political agenda of its own. The campaigns we publish in no way directly express our personal stance on a specific issue. Our focus is solely on the communication of social messages.

If you feel you can collaborate in any shape or form, please contact us. We’re always keen on new social campaigns. So please send us the non-profit marketing you’ve been working on, or the work of your agency, along with news, links or tips.

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Claudio Jordão is a talented CG Artist and Motion Designer from Algarve, Portugal that worked with me for the past 3 years and has now opened his own studio Kotolab, together with Nelson Martins. One of the main reasons to go solo was his new animation project “Conto do Vento” (Tale By The Wind).

The whole story builds upon the concept of setting the wind as narrator, an idea that has been evolving since February. The companion blog (in Portuguese), documents the whole creative process, with concept boards, script descriptions, illustrations and entertaining videos.

From what Claudio has told me, this promises to be his most solid short animation, keeping the high standards of his previous work “Esperansia”, that you can watch at his personal website claudiojordao.com.

I’m really curious to find out more about Conto do Vento, so keep those blog posts coming. And again, it’s an honor to have you as a friend.

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For those who don’t know Lynette, she has a fantastic flickr set, with slides describing the changes in online and media. She works for Isobar and is a guest author at Future Lab.

Besides being self published, the wonderful thing about this book is that photos are all from flickr users thanks to a creative commons license, with Lynette carefully selecting quotes for the captions on each slide. I often use some of her slides for presentations and even have been inspired to create some of my own, so it’s wonderful she has pulled this digital resource out of the web into paper.

Great work, Lynette (and co-photographers) !

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So, without further delay, here are their entries:

Press (Honorable Mention, Awarded):

“Economy”

Click to view larger image
“Fighting climate changes helps to protect your business”
“Invest in your environment”

Cyber (Honorable Mention):

“Coin”

“If you don’t invest enough on environment”
“You’ll have a different cost later.”

After giving a hand at previous Cyber winners such as Leonardo and Claudio, or Tiago and Carlos, this year i was quite proud for these brillliant folks having earned 2 honorable mentions, and being selected to compete at Cannes. Oh, did i mention that we won Cannes Young Creatives award in 2004?

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Their 3 entries for PETA are the only portuguese works being selected, so I’m crossing fingers for their win !

“Guess who`s the lucky one”

“Due the fast-growing drugs chickens take now half of the time to grow.”

“Anytime is good to warn you that 98% of fried chickens contains faeces.”

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Finally, with some coding help by Nuno Ribeiro, prideparanoia.com is live!

The site starts with a random background, with indexed color in gray tones, but the obvious section to look at is “Works”. A interesting navigation interface, similar to a fish-eye view, presents the commercial and personal projects he has been involved.

The gray tones feel a bit strange at first, but  on the other hand it’s easier on the eyes. An interesting addition would be a next/previous button to easily jump within the portfolio.

Anyway, congratulations João for the new website.
http://www.prideparanoia.com/

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