Oh happy day! Robot dog joins Media Catalyst
Bok bok! Sweet robot pooch! Down boy!Our lovely friends at Sony Europe have just lent us this cute little AIBO robot doggy dog.
Pretty much everyone is in love with him. Competition for his attention is super fierce.
I've had to create a new category to accommodate the recent spate of robot-related news...
Robots! Robots!
Mmmm, robots... is there anything better?So how did I fail to notice the Robodock festival which has been happening under my very nose for the past 4 years?
Blurb on the site sez: "Voor wie verslaafd is aan overdonderende, nieuwe ervaringen is het festival een must: Robodock is één grote creatieve en interactieve totaalbeleving."
What, you don't speak Dutch? Tsk. OK then: "This is the must-see festival for anyone addicted to overwhelming new experiences. Robodock is a great big creative/ interactive total experience."
There's only today and tomorrow left, so get down there quick. Don't miss out on seeing/ hearing some ultramodern robotart, crazy bands and great stuff like Tesla coils, steam hovercraft and ultrasonar sound effects. Lekker lekker ding ding.
Thanks to Guilio for pointing me in the right direction.
Great idea
Some tips for flash authoring
The following are some tips for making Flash files. None of this is very glamorous stuff, it won't let you make flashy effects or slick tweens. But it does make your Flash tighter, and most importantly, a lot of these tips will make it easier for other people to work on your files.
Let me explain why this is so important. In order to create quality work, you need to have enough time to do it. Almost every Flash file we make is revisited and reworked at some stage, often by people other than the author. This means that if the file is a mess, is confusing to work with, or is generally not put together well, this takes a lot longer than it should. When this happens, budgets get eaten, and time that should have been spent on producing quality work is instead spent sifting through a thousand movie clips all called "Tween 4". This also applies to people opening their own files a few days or weeks later when they've forgotten how they work. (Read more...)
Mozilla getting sloppy as hackers turn their way
This is a small quote found on several publications on the web.
"The report, which provides an update of Internet threat activity worldwide every six months, noted 13 vulnerabilities affecting IE. That compared with 21 vulnerabilities affecting the Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox browsers during the survey period."
Read more about it here
Although i love my FireFox (couldn't live without my developer extentions), switching back to IE seems the safest thing to do, and is it not all about security? According to the average MS hater it is. So here are some numbers to feed on.
For me, i'll stick to FF for now... Just had the urge to get some positive MS stuff out there, 'cause he, they actually make some good stuff too, are we not all (save that 3% MAC and 0.05% linux) viewing this page through a windows OS?
Truth in Advertising (2X)
I've never actually had a glass of Carlton Draught, but I certainly like their approach to advertising. Check out their latest ad here: http://www.bigad.com.au/
And on a related note, I wanted to share a couple of ads from Sun Microsystems with you, which Sun published on its website under the headline "Sun Censored but Not Silent". In the four ads, Sun compared its new servers to those of Dell, and made fun of its competitor. From the website: "Top business publications refused to run our bold ad concepts because the headlines were thought too controversial."
And guess what: the page is removed from their website. More truth in advertising?
The cached page from Google:
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:kJzb_qGvAgMJ:www.sun.com/emrkt/rejected/+&hl=en
Update (19/09/2005)
The removed page is
back up again. Sort of. Sun has put a page with approved ads in its
place. But the ad on the top right should give you a taste of the
'quality' of the other, rejected ads.
Sony Europe selects Media Catalyst for email marketing
I mentioned a couple of months ago that we'd won a pitch to be Sony Europe's email marketing agency...Well, this week saw the initial fruits of our considerable labours, as the first two 'postcards' were distributed - driving traffic to the newly relaunched Sony site. Check em out (clicky biggy):
Sony Europe selected Media Catalyst mainly for its strategic thinking and creative originality. So all you lucky people who receive the My Sony, Digital Imaging, Home Entertainment and Walkman newsletters will join several million fellow subscribers in 35 European countries (and 28 different languages) in enjoying the fresh new look.
Client quote!
"Media Catalyst not only provides what we are looking for in terms of strong creativity and rigorous process, it brings specific expertise in digital marketing using a variety of channels, and is able to think with us about the best ways to reach our diverse consumer base."
Our quote!
"Our experience in navigating the changing landscape of emerging technologies and new marketing techniques will help us to deliver practical value - not just memorable marketing messages."
We're now busting our asses producing several more, full-length newsletters for release over the coming months. Watch the skies!
Just when you thought it was safe to boot up Word
Just when you thought it was safe to boot up Word, they redesigned the whole interface from the ground up!
(Warning, the author of this post enjoys being rude about Microsoft for purely personal reasons. They're OK really, I mean, they actually make pretty good mice) (Read more...)
Creative Social
The next CreativeSocial will be held on October 28th in Barcelona! This event is put together by Mark Chalmers & Daniele Fiandaca and sponsored by MSN. These wonderful guys put together a crack team of europe's best digital creatives and match them with inspirational speakers to inspire debate and help carve out issues relating to our medium. This event is a great way to hang out with people who would normally be considered "competition" and learn from each other. MediaCatalyst has, again, been asked to take part in this invite only conference, there'll be a full report on the event posted in the begining of November. Read more about the last CreativeSocial here and here
Help me I can't think straight
I've seen a couple of links today to this site: www.ideagenerationmethods.com. Er... it's a big list of idea generation methods! Looking forward to trying some of these out.The dudes over at Organic also referenced Ideo's Method Cards.
And I'm going to throw some Oblique Strategies onto the pile, too. Great stuff, this. Less for idea generation than little nudges to keep you focussed during a creative process, including gems like: "What mistakes did you make last time?" and "Trust in the you of now".
You can even download apps (for Windows or Mac OSX) that pop up a card on your screen. The Windows implementation is pretty horrible looking, mind you.
By the way, if you fancy getting a set of the actual cards, I recommend getting them from Eno's site, not eBay.
Night of the unexpected
News reaches me of another Night of the Unexpected - celebrating the diversity and dynamics of contemporary music - on 8 September at the Paradiso, Amsterdam.Last year they featured a woman suspended from the ceiling while playing a harpsichord, some crazy performance art honking, player pianos, ace low frequency oscillations and crazy green rave lights, all topped off with some splendid nutty playground electrrrroids from DAT Politics. It was brilliant.
This year sounds just as varied and inspirational: Fourtet, Supersilent, Pow Ensemble & Luc Houtkamp, Amstel Saxofoonkwartet, Spinvis, Helios Kamerkoor, Pan Sonic, Evan Parker & Joel Ryan, Eitetsu Hayashi & Circle Percussion, Gustav, Florintintin, Joel Ryan & Keir Neuringer.
The Night of the unexpected is curated by Roland Spekle of STEIM. He does a great job of combining sound with visuals, and audience with artists. Get down there and get rinsed. More blah at the Gaudeamus and Paradiso sites.
