Talk Dirty (Laundry) to Me: Kenmore released a series of washer/dryers that come equipped with pretty fresh technology – when you have a service issue, you press some buttons on the machine, then hold your cell phone up to the unit (the service number will have already been dialed) and the machine will transmit data through the phone to the company and pinpoint exactly what is wrong.
What Would You Do For a Cool Mil?: Yesterday, we saw some pretty bizarre offerings – British billionaire Alki David will give a million dollars to the first person to flash President Obama – the one condition: “Battlecam” must be written across that person’s chest. Check out the explanation for that one here. The second – Anderson Cooper was offered a sweet mil by a company promoting Go Away Gray – a pill that will apparently turn gray hair back to it’s original color. Don’t do it, Andy!
A Dollar Is What I Need: The Dollar ReDe$ign Project hopes by rebranding US bills, we can rebuild our economy, and their latest entry by graphic design firm Dowling Duncan is making waves.
Save the English Language: In an attempt to take back the English language from our LOL-laden society, the Oxford University Press developed a new website, Save The Words. Along with simply browsing words that are almost extinct (most don’t even come up on Dictionary.com, gasp!), the site gives you humorous tips on how to revitalize these words, extends a “word-a-day” email offering (not to be confused with yours truly, “word. daily.”) and allows you to “adopt a word.” My foster word is “traboccant” – meaning SUPER abundant. Used in a sentence: I have a traboccant yearning for a Red Robin Whiskey River BBQ Burger.
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The question of how technology impacts our thinking, decision-making and cognitive abilities is a question that marketers are always trying to crack. But what if a small break from technology could allow us to communicate with our audiences more efficiently and encourage them to listen more closely and pay attention to the things that matter?
An article from today’s The New York Times by Matt Richtel discusses how a group of five neuroscientists took a journey to a remote area of southern Utah to “understand how heavy use of digital devices and other technology changes how we think and behave, and how a retreat into nature might reverse those effects.” In conjunction with the article, the Times also asked readers to “temporarily give up their technological tethers, then make videos about the experience.” You can find readers’ video responses here.
Check out the video from the neuroscientists’ trip to Utah here, and see how they responded to being without technology for an extended period of time.
Have you unplugged from technology recently? If so, we would love to hear your feedback, and if you haven’t, we want to hear why, as well.
If 18-month-olds understand how to operate an iPhone, I can only imagine how far we will go when it comes to advancing technology and the way we interact with technology. From app development to the way technology interfaces will appear in years to come, tech companies and marketers should start studying the next generation of tech users now.
Thanks to BuzzFeed’s Jon Steinberg for the link to the video. If you had to name the next generational group, including Jon’s daughter in the above video, what would you call it?
“ What’s the word HOSPITALITY without human contact? It’s nice to have the technology but when it all goes wrong, and it WILL go wrong, you BETTER have somebody to talk to.
Travel expert Peter Greenberg on How Tech is Changing Travel
Cadbury Creme Eggs Benedict: Well, ladies and gentleman, what we have here is more than just a “same name” puzzle on the Wheel of Fortune, it’s a breakfast treat — the Cadbury Creme Eggs Benedict. This glorious creation involves doughnuts, brownies, frosting, Cadbury Creme Eggs, and fried pound cake masquerading as hash browns. We’re literally tearing up thinking about it.
Skin Is Amazing:Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft have teamed up to make “touch screens for our bodies” that they are calling Skinput. What does that mean? Well, imagine a standard keyboard being projected onto your arm. When you touch the “keys” with your fingers, Skinput uses soundwaves to determine what keys have been pushed – meaning that one day you could replace the keyboard in front of you with a light projection on your forearm. But that’s not all, this could also mean huge innovation for gaming, mobile and the skincare industry.
Pizza in a Cone: I hope you’ve Scotchgarded your chair, because this will blow your mind. Opening yesterday across from the Empire State Building was K! Pizzacone, promoting “pizza on the go.” As its names suggests, this pizza is shaped like a cone. It starts out with a crust cone filled with cheese and your choice of a sauce or pesto; you then have the option to add more fillings. Congratulations, human race, you did it!
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I’m not sure that this necessarily falls into the “digital trends” category — but I’ve always had a rather loose definition of that concept.
This is the ElectroluxScan Toaster — developed by Sung Bae Chang and entered into the Electrolux Design Contest. The premise is simple: you hook up the toaster to your computer via USB and then download an image, news story, or Cathy cartoon to the toaster. The modules within the machine then realign and toast the image onto your bread.
I don’t want to overstate this, but I’m fairly certain that this is the best thing to ever happen in the history of mankind. Take that, Guttenberg.
Florence Henderson (a.k.a. Carol Brady), just launched a tech support service. Actually, this isn’t that surprising. Before Ol’ Flo got her cheekbone implants, she was pretty well known for handing out advice (for instance: “Don’t play ball in the house,” and “Face facts, you’re never going to be as popular as Marcia”).
The service — which is aimed at “mature” computer users — is called FloH Club (which sounds like the name of a terrible discotheque in suburban Milwaukee). La Henderson describes the experience in a quick video on the site (check it out, they must have had a serious budget for floral), where she says FloH Club is “like roadside assistance…but for your computer.” Just call up her team (who, she mentions several times, are based in America — she does everything but stare into the camera and wink to emphasize this point) and they’ll coach you on how to use Facebook, print out a document or take a picture. She then holds up a camera, as if to say, “This here is an automatic daguerreotype machine. Press this button on top and it will trap your likeness.”
In fairness, the concept is a good one. I know a lady, let’s call her “Carol Rossi,” and from time to time she has difficulty with techie stuff, like streaming videos of the Barefoot Contessa on FoodNetwork.com. If she joined FloH Club, she could get telephone support from a woman who once rocked a serious mullet, rather than call her son — who we’ll call “Fandrew Rossi” — at work.
The paradigm of publishing is shifting, evidenced by this week’s Conde Nast closures. Newspapers and magazines need to move with the times, and that might mean literally embracing movement.
Entertainment Weekly and Esquire generated serious buzz with their respective forays into the integration of motion + magazine. What’s next? Check out the above video, which shows where the future of magazines could be headed. It is a fascinating look at what might be in store for a changing industry. It is also a helpful catalyst for thinking about how the public relations industry will shift in response.
The ad wars: Microsoft vs. Apple. Apple recently did away with their ad campaign featuring actor Justin Long, and replaced it with a new set that teaches consumers about how environmentally friendly Apples are.
I’ve got to give this one to Microsoft. Their ads communicate that the product is easy to use. Apple tells me how my laptop won’t be too toxic once it’s in the landfill. I’m all for being environmentally friendly - but when I’m spending over 1,000 bucks on a computer, I’m not imagining it anywhere near a landfill.
Amazon officially launched the second version of the Kindle today and judging by blog comments, it seems as though no one is excited as they thought they would be. Many of the differences are strictly aesthetic and the $360 dollar price tag has stayed the same. According to TechCrunch, below are the features that have changed from the original:
The new Kindle is slightly lighter. The first generation weighed 10.3 ounces while the second weighs only 10.2 ounces
It’s much less ugly. Gone is the retro look of the first generation for a curvier and more symmetrical design that (like every other mobile device hitting the market these days) borrows elements from the iPhone
The screen has a higher wow factor At six inches tall, it can display 16 shades of gray, and it can turn pages 20% faster (or so Amazon claims)
It can actually speak to you Amazon’s new Text-to-Speech feature will use a computerized voice to read any book to you in one of three speech rates, and in either a male or female voice
The new controls are better designed. Instead of a weird slider on the right-hand side that’s used to move from line to line, there’s a new 5-way joystick. The keyboard is also no longer split into two regions like those funky desktop keyboards you see at Fry’s but never buy.
There’s been no price drop It still costs roughly the same amount ($359) but at least there’s still no monthly wireless fee for downloading books, magazines, etc.
It can hold a much bigger library Storage has been boosted to 7x the original size, allowing the device to carry over 1,500 titles at a time
It downloads content just as fast. Amazon is touting 60 second downloads for books, etc. — the same rate it gave for the first Kindle
You can pick up your reading on a separate Kindle. I’m not sure how useful this will actually be for people, but a new feature called “Whispersync bookmarking” makes it possible to start reading a book on one Kindle then continue reading it on another, just where you left off
It still comes in only one color. White
“It downloads content just as fast.” Uh, would you purchase it if it didn’t?
Despite the snow and ice, Maria and I decided to rep M Booth at the NY Tech Meetup in Chelsea last night. This month’s meetup included several mobile demos, including one from Mobile Commons that I didn’t really understand because it was Simpsons-themed and I never really watched The Simpsons (don’t hurt me!).
My personal favorite was definitely OMGICU, which allows people to send in celebrity sightings via text message, kind of like a mobile Gawker Stalker. Cute name, right? I also liked the demo of Peek, a simple mobile e-mail device that I might want to get for my mom. At the end, Jeff Jarvis got up to speak about his new book What Would Google Do?, which is a question I often ask myself (sadly, not joking).
For more NY Tech talk, check out Matt Caldecutt’s writeup of the event, or you can live vicariously through Maria and me, via last night’s livetweets.
A new survey found that C-suite executives and IT managers trust social media just as much as mainstream media when considering tech purchases.
The “Tech Decision Maker” study found that decision makers consider their personal experience (58%) first when short-listing tech vendors, followed by word-of-mouth and industry analyst reports, tied at 51%.
But a nearly equal number of respondents cited user-generated media (28%) and traditional media (27%) as most influential in purchasing decisions. Advertising (17%) and direct marketing (21%) were listed as the least important information sources when short-listing vendors.
