internet cool?!

It is getting mixed reviews, but I think this is fantastic. Want to make something geeky but need an extra 3k to do it? Ask these guys.

Consulting firm Herman Blackbook launched a new micro-fund for application developers who want to build stuff on top of “Twitter, Boxee, AppNexus, Trulia, iPhone, etc” called the New Platforms Fund.

You give up a little bit of IP…and they are only investing in “up to 10 cutting edge ideas.”

Whatcha think? Get on it!

With all the political uptake of Twitter in recent months, it was only a matter of time before these kinds of services popped up. As you know, I am a pretty big fan of Twitter, and these properties clearly shows why Twitter’s simplicity and versatility makes it the swiss knife of communication platforms. Not into Politics? (you fucking should be) but if you’re not - you’ll still be able to appreciate the idea and the implementation.

Tweetminster, simply put, follows the UK political scene through Twitter. It helps you find all the UK politicians that are active on Twitter, but it also organizes these tweets in a wonderfully useful way. You can check out which political party is the most active on Twitter, you can sort tweeters by constituency, and - if a politician is not active on Twitter - you can contact them directly from the site and try to convince them they should join the fun.

There is a huge opportunity here that is starting to be exposed. The same principle could be used on almost any subject matter. Imagine a service for organizing celebrity to celebrity gossip, or sports commentary, different types of musicians, scientists, the list goes on!

The service is inspired by a similar US-based service called Tweet Congress, and it’s perhaps even better, with a map of United States, fancy graphs and statistics for Twitter using US politicians. Hopefully, we’ll see more and more similar services based on Twitter as it permeates the social landscape.

Hey there. I’m in the process of making this year’s Holiday Card. Going to go with something funny this year like, you know reality. I’ve been thinking about headlines for this one, whaddaya think?

“Peace. Love. Joy. (Well, Love and Joy anyway…)”

“From our chaos to yours. Happy Holidays.”

“Wishing you Peace and Quiet this holiday season.”

C’mon! Any favorites? Other ideas? :)

Have you seen Flightography? It is the work of James Mann from Elk Grove, CA. He uses his twenty years of R/C Piloting skills to shoot awesome aerial photographs of towns, landscape, farms, etc. Oh, and also to bomb the shit out of his neighborhood.

I just added this video of an R/C airplane pilot bombing his neighborhood to UPL8.tv

Apparently the Flightography crew have developed something that has all sorts of deliciously malicious applications, a radio controlled plane water bomb rig. Imagine the possibilities, while not endless, there are plenty of cool things that could be done with one of these.

[via UberReview]

If you aren’t one of the ones lucky enough to have seen Oktapodi, here’s a little glipmpse. Oktapodi is a simply wonderful animated short. Video below, and official site here.

Although it was created in 2007, parts of the student short film from Gobelins, “Oktapodi,” seem to have finally been released into the wild.

Julien Bocabeille, Francois-Xavier Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier and Emud Mokhberi have upheld the French academy’s incredibly high standards of excellence with this charming story. Kudos team for all your creativity and dear reader, don’t miss the Gallery and Making Of video on the Oktapodi site.

Having had my own animation studio in a former life I can tell you that producing truly great animation with emotion, great acting, SISOMO, realistic weight, character design and beliveable backgrounds that captivate is nearly impossible. It is truly lightning in a bottle for most animation teams. But sometimes examples of creativity are so ahead of it’s class and so stand out, they transcend languages, culture and even beliefs. This animated movie is one of those inspirational examples.

Oktapodi
Uploaded by victorvharo

 

You’d have to have been either on vacation in a place only Jack Bauer goes or been living under a rock not to know about the interweb’s latest Meme, The Shiba Inu Puppy Cam.

Missed it? Oh, cool. Well here, watch:

Live video by Ustream

People have complained about losing all productivity after finding out about the puppies and some even stoped working almost entirely to watch the puppies sleep. It just goes to show, (yes that people are retards) but more importantly, sometimes when you want to get attention, a nice single-serving, simple zinger really does tend to pack a wallop.

(And it doesn’t hurt if that zinger is cute-as-fuck, too.)

Peece.

Hey Gang. Sorry I’ve been MIA for a few. I have been out celebrating the birth of my newborn son, Gino! Yay. Gino has been brought into a pretty amazing world, wouldn’t you agree? Nothing says that louder for me than this “Did You Know?” video. Enjoy. (Oh and I’ll be back in action in about a week. Hang tight!)

Hey gang. Great comments yesterday. User participation is really picking up - glad to see it. Keep it up!

As you probably know by now, I try limit how much I focus on statistics on this site. I am a creative strategist by nature and there are always ways to get data to tell the story you want it to - and while I focus on strategy and technographics, this site in particular isn’t about “numbers.” But I think the future of social media will be dramatically affected by one more thing: age.

We at POKE are often asked about how demographics and particularly AGE affect campaign performace or internet usage. Clearly there has always been a drop off in age - but having focused recently on a project aimed at Baby Boomers, I can tell you the drop off point has moved signifigantly. People interested in social media marketing often ask me how age impacts Internet usage particuary when it comes to UGC type of web properties (as opposed to brand sites, etc). New data from Pew Internet & American Life Project and eMarketer shows this drop off clearly.

As you might have expected GX and GY top the charts. They are digital natives and use the web to find, connect, entertain, archive, the list goes on. But what is really fascinating is that the numbers stay strong through several generations until you get to age 71, when Internet usage starts to drop. (Sorry Mom and Dad, I guess you weren’t interviewed by fine folks at Pew.

All the other data I’ve seen shows that numbers across the board continue to climb, and even if you’re targeting older Americans, there are sites such as Eons and Third Age that do a great job targeting older people for social media marketing.

I happen to be in the middle of a few projects right now that aim to engage people beyond GX and GY. I am seeing more of those type of engagements showing up quite often actually.

I have a prediction:

The “Age” technographic/demographic is facing extiction. I read these numbers as the gap closing - fast. Competitve marketers will need to focus on more exact means of splicing customer data - personality, interests, time spent, the list goes on. But age? I think our parents (and their parents?) are trying to tell us someing: “We’re here too. How brand _ will you engage me?”

The following is a response to a posting I found today:

my response:

2008 is the beginning of the “Curation” process. There is a quality revolution taking place in social media - video’s, blogs, photos, microblogs, etc will get more specific and more focused. Content will be much more focused on “how good it is” not on “how many people have seen it”.

excerpt from the posting:

Looking back at Social Media, we have had a significant advance (a ‘this year’s big thing’) every year since 2004.

In 2004 - blogs started to really take off
In 2005 - audio podcasts started to take off
In 2006 - video podcasts started to take off
In 2007 - microblogging (Twitter, etc) started to take off
In 2008 - ???

We are in November now of 2008 and I still don’t see any big transformative Social Media technology which has occurred this year.

Has it stalled? What am I missing?

What do you think?

I stumbled upon this online today. It was titled “Drawings under the influence of LSD” and only carried this description:

The artist was given a dose of LSD and free access to an activity box full of crayons and pencils.

I’ll be honest, there’s a side to me that wonders if this is real and another that is inspired by it, so I thought I’d share. See the original post here. It’s long so give it a second to load…