A Source Of Inspiration

Bill Gates and Jay-Z (who now owns an ad agency). Photo by Nial Kennedy

Following a recent question by Paulo, Ilya quotes a quite provocative note by Scot Karp at Publishing 2.0:

When you think about it, it makes perfect sense that technology companies should take over the advertising industry. Nobody in Silicon Valley will win a Clio Award, but they will help clients get more than $1 back for every $1 of advertising they spend — and advertisers have always cared more about their bottom lines than Madison Avenue’s ego.

So, it’s not only about ad agencies being able to change, it’s also about being able to resist the hits from money makers Microsoft and Google. What do you think?

It’s all over the news:

Microsoft Makes $44.6 Billion Bid for Yahoo

Microsoft said Friday that it would offer $44.6 billion for Yahoo, the ailing search giant. The surprise offer of $31 a share represents a 62 percent premium to Thursday’s clsoing share price. Yahoo shareholders could elect to receive either cash or stock.
(…)

“This proposal represents a compelling value realization event for your shareholders”, Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, said in a letter to Yahoo’s board sent Thursday.

My take? Now there’s no excuse for EU blocking on the Doubleclick acquisition by Google. Tough competition ahead.

Source:Pedro and Hugo

I’ve said previously that convergence is becoming mainstream, and we often see new applications being brought from the web to our physical spaces, as connectivity becomes ordinary.

Wable is one of these projects, streaming the feeds from Plazo, Flickr, Last.fm and del.icio.us, visualizing

the changes of your web identity over time and create a physical link between your virtual and real identity (…) The interface consists of both a physical table and a web application. This direct feedback from your web identity is customizable and can be connected to any RSS feed”

.

The project was developed by Physical Interaction Lab, using Arduino, a ethernet connection and 4 small motors.

Source: information aesthetics

Video: Bill Gates Last Day CES Clip

If Microsoft is now Ballmer, then we already miss him.

Source: Carlos Andrade, via Prt.Sc

I swear i wasn’t aware of this video before posting my latest question on Facebook: “Why aren’t we questioning Facebook about privacy issues (specially after the Microsoft ad funding) ?“.

That’s scary.

Source: Cpluv/todaynow

Are you addicted on TV series? Do you considered yourself a geek?
Then you can’t miss “The Big Bang Theory” on CBS.

© CBS

The show features two MIT like geniuses and a blond neighbor working in a cheese factory, with exquisite dialogues discussing string theory or quantum mechanics. A must, and not a bad idea for adjusting TV to today’s digital connected audience.

For RSS feed readers, here’s the Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1WQVME4Ojg

More videos at YouTube’s CBS channel.

You know those weekends where you have no idea what to do or what to visit?

How about some geocaching?

If you haven’t heard about it, don’t worry, me neither. Well, that is until last weekend when i was introduced (thanks Ricardo!) to this GPS treasure-hunting game, a global activity with more than 400,000 “caches” (waterproof containers) in 222 countries.

All you need is to get a GPS device, register yourself in geocaching.com and find the cache coordinates (in GPX format) you want to search for.
Once you start, you will eager for your next challenge, always confident that the community members have hidden the caches in interesting places. If you think it’s easy just because you have the latest GPS gadget, don’t! The hard part comes when you find out how hard it is to reach to some places or your GPS signal suddenly goes berserk.

The beauty of it, it’s how simple it is (although variations are encouraged):

1. Take something from the cache
2. Leave something in the cache
3. Write about it in the logbook

The site offers some precious advices and helps you get started with this addictive outdoor experience. If you want to get involved, Geocaching.com even provides tips and materials to place you own caches.

So, what does this have to do with online advertising, you might ask? Everything!
It’s a DIGITAL based SEGMENTED activity involving SEARCH and ENTERTAINMENT with highly motivated COMMUNITY USERS that leave their FEEDBACK on LOG books and TRADE gifts. Connect your own dots.

Are you seated? Great, because what Adobe is cooking up for the next Flash version is out of this world.

• Realtime video preview at authoring mode
• Inverse kinematics in shapes or movieclips
• C/C++ translation to Actionscript 3 (Ruby interpreter running in Flash player, or native porting of Quake I from C to Actionscript 3)
• Flex Builder on Linux (now available on Adobe Labs)
• Flash Home for Mobile

Get a sneak peek by Peter Elst at Adobe Max conference.