Ultra Mobile by Intel
.
Doesn’t it look all so “iFuture” ?
Link to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_FS2TiK3AI
Source: Adverlab
Business
Google buys DoubleClick
.
The circle is now complete, with Google closing the gap and acquiring the only thing that was missing in their digital marketing services portfolio. With the strong reputation of asset management that DoubleClick technologies offer, and mainly through their ability to integrate third party assets, Google has given the final stab in Microsoft aspiration at online advertising.
DoubleClick did some buzz lately, with their intention to create a online ad marketplace, and perhaps that spurred the interest at Mountain View, that had some changes ($3.1 billion) to spend. One of the question that remains to be answered is wheter the platform will be provided to Google users for free, much in the same way that Urchin became Analytics. If this happens, it will represent a enormous boost in online advertising, as publishers could finally benefit of a widespread technology and standards, with equivalent metrics and centralized asset management.
Press release: Google, DoubleClick
Newspapers with terminal disease
.
The newspapers were already under a terminal disease, but now the undertaker has just arrived and began digging.
Advertising spending online overtook national newspapers’ share of the pie for the first time in 2006 as companies continued to chase a growing web audience.According to data from the Internet Advertising Bureau out today, online spending smashed through the £2bn barrier in 2006 while television revenues fell and press barely budged.
A 41% leap put 2006 UK online spending at £2.016bn, representing 11.4% of total advertising revenues. IAB said that helped offset declines in traditional media and meant the overall advertising industry was able to clock up modest growth of 1.1% over the year.
Source: The Guardian, IAB U.k.
Adobe CS3 is out
.
The software package has just launched, with several editions available, and thanks to some early leaks we had a sneak peak on pricing and packaging details:
| Product | Retail Pricing |
| CS3 Design Premium (up) | $1799.95 |
| CS3 Design Standard | $1199.95 |
| CS3 Web Premium | $1599.95 |
| CS3 Web Standard | $999.95 |
| CS3 Production Premium (up) | $1699 |
| CS3 Master Collection | $2499 |
| InDesign CS3 | $699.95 |
| Photoshop CS3 Extended | $999.95 |
| Photoshop CS3 | $649.95 |
| Illustrator CS3 | $599.95 |
| Flash CS Professional | $699.95 |
| Dreamweaver CS3 | $399.95 |
| Fireworks CS3 | $299.95 |
| Contribute CS3 | $149.95 |
| After Effects CS3 Professional | $999 |
| Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 | $799 |
| Soundbooth | $199 |
Source: MacRumors
Source: Apple Insider
The editions scheme seems a bit confusing, as if Adobe is borrowing ideas from Vista. But be warned: if you want to be a designer these days, it will cost you at least of $999 USD.
Update: this morning (GMT 0) , there was a product special on Adobe homepage, and there will be a webcast of the launch event.
My favorite features (as a flash developer):
- Flash integration with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects
- Flash IDE now supports Actionscript 3, with improved debugger
- 3D compositing in Photoshop
- Improved vanishiog points in Photoshop, exportable to After Efffects
The big winner in CS3 seems to be Flash, although Photoshop has some impressive features on specialized areas.
Some budgets are bigger than others
.
These might have been the words from Morrisey describing online advertising budgets. Indeed, in the recent US online advertising boom some industries were the main drivers, with Auto and Telecom categories leading the way.
| Top Ten Advertising Categories: Full Year 2006 vs. Full Year 20059 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Source: TNS Media Intelligence |
As for Portugal, i’ve seen some some odd behaviors, with the big advertisers coming from the financial sector, mostly from personal loans and credit, followed closely by the telecoms, mobile and ISP providers.
Browse through a bunch of Portuguese websites and 7 out of 10 online ad units are probably some credit card or personal loan company. That surely explains the large deficit in family’s budgets (more than 110%), quite different from the private savings rate we had 20 years ago (about 20%).
Telecoms and mobile operators are also extremely aggressive, specially the ring tone operators that get quite happy with a CTR of 0,00001%. Go figure. I wonder what will become of these banner-spammers when the iPhone arrives or people become more tech savvy and learn to upload a MP3 to their phone.
The question that remains to be answered for Portugal is why the auto companies seem so reluctant to invest heavily in Online Advertising. I know that the industry is going through a long crisis, but a high ROI medium seems a good medicine, don’t you think so?
If you have any other strange national (non US) market behaviors to share, i’ll be glad to hear from you.
A Golden Ticket to your next job
.
New media industries have really changed the rules, and that goes for recruitment also. Red 5 Studios, the makers of the World of Warcraft, set the bar really high when it comes to finding the best professionals in game development with a fantastic direct marketing campaign: Golden Ticket
They realized that the usual recruitment tactics (usually email or phone) wouldn’t be enough to catch the best minds, so a different approach was in need.
A unique invitation was sent to one hundred professionals, highly admired in the industry. Their work, habits and personal tastes were studied. With that knowledge in hand, the design agency Pool handled the invitation and really made a offer you can’t refuse.
The iPod had a personalized message from Red 5 and access codes to a website, where the professionals could find out more about the job they were being hired for.
Result: nearly 100% response rate on their campaign. And of course, a kick-ass team of happy developers.
Naming your company
.
Vitamin has a great post on naming your company, with a step-by-step guide:
- Set Your Constraints
- Schedule Your Time
- Structure Your Brainstorming
- Sleep on It
- Test it
Definitely worth reading.
Advertising 2.0 – the Web as platform
.
* Part 2 of 3 of my lecture Advertising 2.0″ [read part 1]
In 2006, Chevrolet launched a website endorsing the reality show “The Apprentice”. Users could play with the site tools to create their own version of a Chevrolet Tahoe commercial, mixing several audio and video clips. But not everything went the way it was supposed to …
Of course there are also some positive examples, like this one, created by Firefox fans.
Flash Player 2.0
.
From http://www.moock.org/blog/archives/000201.html
Quote: Jon Gay and Robert Tatsumi (the creators of Flash) have teamed up with Gary Grossman (the creator of ActionScript) and Peter Santangeli (former vice president of engineering at Macromedia) to create a new start up company named Software As Art. So far, no public information on the new company’s products or services is available. Looks like for now, we’ll all just have to wait and see what these Flash pioneers get up to.
Posted by moock at November 8, 2006 06:35 AM
Will we have a new “Art Player” ?
Ricardo Semler
.
Just found on BBC, an audio recording by Charles Handy about Semler, one of most influential gurus in Human Resource Management.
He is the one of the most important business person’s in Brasil and author of bestsellers Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace and The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works, encouraging us to look at management in an entirely different way.
Gosh, if only i could work at Semco.