Send your tribe a Christmas card

We've just launched the St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold Christmas e-card. You can choose your tribe (posh totty, ecos, rude girls etc.) to send the card to and your friends will receive a e-card tailored to their tribe. Add your own message to personalise it! So get out there and send everyone an e-card!

http://www.sttriniansmovie.co.uk/christmas_card/

We won a BIMA!

Jollywise went to the BIMA Awards last night at Koko in Camden. We were nominated for three beautiful BIMAs and against stiff competition managed to walk away with one! We won the Special Award - Achievement - Strategy for "The Competition That Rocked" site we did for Spotify and Universal.

We all had a great night; mingling with the Digital Media elite, watching Beardyman perform, and drinking lots and even more once we'd won!

Digital Agencies are Ready to Lead

Great article about the role of agencies with the advertising industry and how they are ready to take the lead.

"...it's clear that digital agencies have proven their value, not to mention their ability to innovate, inspire, and create the big idea."

I think this is particularly true, as the agencies are the ones who will be dropped by the clients if they aren't constantly innovating and producing the best creative and ideas. They are the ones pushing things forward, competing with each other for the work and only the best are going to get the work.

http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=140498

Bebo makes cuts in the UK

Bebo have announced cuts in the UK of 100 jobs. They are also ditching their web TV division, which was working on KateModern and Sofia's Diary. They seemed to fall behind Facebook, and irreversibly so. Their service and support for businesses hasn't matched that of other companies and I wonder how much longer they can continue without finding a niche.

It makes the purchase of Bebo for $850m like another poor business move from AOL.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/12/bebo-cuts-jobs-web-tv

YouTube to try out skippable pre-roll ads

YouTube have been experimenting all different kinds of advertising in their videos. Over the ad, next to the ad, during the ad, before the ad - they've tried it all.

I've previously said that I thought that YouTube would lose people if they put pre-roll ads onto their site. YouTube seem to have agreed, as they stopped testing them. But they are back with new pre-roll testing, however this time it will be skippable with a "No thank you" link. I think that this is far more likely to survive, as it has on other file sending sites, such as zshare and relay it. Maybe they've found a happy medium here? I still think that relevant ads alongside content are the way to go. Make them highly relevant and of a high standard and people are more likely to be interested and less likely to be annoyed.

Jollywise go back to school with St Trinian's

Well the Jollywise team have done it again. This slick site for the second St Trinian's film: The Legend of Fritton's Gold, went live this afternoon. Featuring info about film, cast, gallery, video clips, and two competitions, including your chance to appear in the next film!

To be updated with further content in the future, including more video clips, downloadable content and look out for the widget coming soon!

Pizza Hit with iPhone!

Pizza Hut's iPhone app has apparently made them more than $1 million in sales. iPhone apps seem to be hot stuff at the moment and companies are working out where they are appropriate and useful.
Although a clue to it's success could be that people who book with their iPhone app get 20% off.

http://mashable.com/2009/11/03/pizza-hut-iphone/

Disney launch iPhone app

Disney are launching an iPhone app, allowing Disneyphiles to access content wherever they are. It also features the Click2Life feature, whereby exclusive content can be accessed by taking pictures on the phone of images on posters and on the website.

http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSTRE59R0HX20091028

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/28/business/AP-US-Disney-iPhone.html

Uniques or loyal returners?

Thanks to our little Paul monkey for this link. It's an interesting article about the thoughts of Matt Kelly - and The Mirror project that he oversaw. It discusses whether we are looking at the right metrics for sites. Are we too obsessed with unique hits on a site and should be looking to build a regular returning fan base?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/oct/01/daily-mirror-digital-media

Michael Jackson's This is it - 377 nominations and counting

We've just launched this promotion with our buddies Spotify. We're trying to find out the nations most favourite MJ song. The early front runner is "Man in the Mirror" with the lions share of the voting.

Personally I'm all about songs from "Off the Wall" but hey it's the nations choice. not mine!!

The promotion is a tie up between Sony Pictures and Spotify and the winning entry picked at random, will bag 2 tickets for the Global Premiere of the Michael Jackson's - This is It, plus hotel accommodation and £150 notes spending money.

As far as prizes go.. You can't "Beat It" (you see what I did there?)

BIMA me up Scotty!!!

Well butter my spuds and mash my beans, but the Jollywise crew have bagged not 1 but 2 nominations for the BIMA awards.

We've been nominated in both the Display advertising, and entertainment sector categories. For a company that's only been trading since 2006 this is big news for us, and we're over the flipping moon to be shortlisted with the great and the good.

If you want to see what all the fuss is about, here's the 2 bits of work...

Display Advertising - Client: Walt Disney. G-force UK Media Creative

Entertainment Sector - Client: Universal Pictures/Spotify - The competition that rocked



Wish us all the best of luck for the awards ceremony on the 19th November

Flash comes to mobile (properly)

The full version of Flash is coming to SmartPhones (although the iPhone isn't playing ball). The next version of Flash will be designed to work on SmartPhones as well as PCs. Advances in the software mean that is can be used with HD video and touch screens.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8287239.stm

Article in Figaro Digital magazine.

We had a case-study in the latest issue of figaro digital magazine. It discusses our work with Spotify.

Check out the full article below:
http://figarodigital.co.uk/CaseStudy.aspx?pkCaseStudyID=011c325f-32cf-407f-9555-737f20807c6b

Vinyan Virtual junket

Here's a nice article in NMA about a Virtual Press Junket that we ran for Revolver for their new release Vinyan with Love FiLM.


http://www.nma.co.uk/film-streaming-model-could-be-key-to-lovefilms-success/3004897.article

No-ones clicking any more...

Apologies for the lack of blog posts during the last month - it's not that nothing has been happening - I've just been really busy!




"The number of people online who click display ads has dropped 50% in less than two years, and only 8% of internet users account for 85% of all clicks..."

It's stat-tastic, but despite this it's still an interesting read about web users habits and what they are and aren't doing. The highlight, being that people aren't clicking on ads.


http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=139367

A pet without the mess

Always wanted a pet, but you already blow all your money on a Playstation? Well here's the answer. Get the new eyepet! Available from Nov 17th, this augmented reality pet works with the PS Eye for the Playstation. It all looks like lots of fun and another step towards a fully augmented world.
I can't wait for Project Natal.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/08/eyepet-in-stores-on-november-17/

Will people pay for content?

Paid content seems to be getting a lot of coverage at the moment (not just on this blog!). E-consultancy have put together a nice list of the Five Biggest Paid Content Myths:

• Nobody pays for content
• Content just wants to be free
• We need micropayments
• Content is a commodity
• 
Paid content is a solution to the print media's woes

It's an interesting read. One of the comments makes the very good point, that we'll always have the issue of the BBC and their (IMHO) excellent online content in the UK.

I've also attached an article about the success of the Financial Times, which has been charging since 2002.

Read more:
http://econsultancy.com/blog/4389-the-five-biggest-paid-content-myths

Financial Times doesn't want to be free:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/business/media/17ft.html

"Social news" on the Huffington Post with Facebook

The Huffington Post have been working very closely with Facebook to create Social News on the Huffington Post. It's a much deeper use of Facebook Connect than has been seen before and both sides are hoping that it will be beneficial. Huffington Post want to become the place to get your news on Facebook and comment.


http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090816/huffington-post-and-facebook-go-social-with-connect-on-steroids/

How virals spread

Spanish scientists have researched how memes spread across the web. It depends upon how "infectious" people are, how quickly virals spread and from this: who gets the viral and how infectious they are.

Read more:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17581-infectious-people-spread-memes-across-the-web.html

Kids search for the funniest things

Some interesting statistics on what children search for online have been revealed in a report by Symantec. They search for sites (YouTube, Google, Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo), Celebs (Michael Jackson, Fred - a new one to me, but he has the most subscribed YouTube Channel, Eminem) and of course Sex (sex, porn, boobs).

Read more:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-10306357-235.html

Facebook eats Friendfeed

Facebook has acquired startup FriendFeed. Facebook say that they did it to attain the "the best engineers". FriendFeed employs many ex-Google employees - whom I'm sure that Facebook will be keen to have in their building! Initially the two sites will remain separate, but much of the functionality of FriendFeed will eventually come under the Facebook site.




http://www.facebook.com/press/releases.php?p=116581

http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009/08/friendfeed-accepts-facebook-friend.html

Scan with your mobile

M&S have started to use QR codes on their products to provide more information and to give access to exclusive offers. Although QR codes have been around since 1994 it's only recently that the technology has become commonplace to read them on the go. Now that most mobiles have cameras with a high enough resolution to read QR codes and have access to the web, a simple lookup is possible. By scanning a QR code the user can then be taken to a website for example. The applications here are endless...


http://www.crackunit.com/2009/08/07/qr-enabled-ms-orange-and-mango-juice/

Increase in Online Video Streaming

Apparently Americans have taken to streaming TV show and movies online like ducks to water, according to the increasing online viewing stats.

I was particularly interested by the following line:
"This is more than two times the levels measured in September 2008, and indicates that - fueled by ad-supported websites that make it happen..."

They think that it's ad-supported websites that make it happen. Which would beg the question whether it was a good decision by various big players, notably Disney and Rupert Murdoch, to be making users pay for content online in the future.
Is the uptake good because it's free? Or because people actually want to watch these programmes and are willing to pay for them as well?

The monetisation of the web, whether it be video, news or music is a particularly hot topic at the moment, and one that I don't think anyone really knows how it is going to pan out. I'm sure that what people are willing to pay for will vary in different industries.

http://www.marketingvox.com/hulus-growth-fuels-rise-in-online-video-streaming-044799/

Murdoch makes you pay

Rupert Murdoch has said that he will introduce payment for content on all News Corp sites. This includes: foxnews, Times Online, The Sun, News Of The World, New York Post and Wall Street Journal (which already charges for content).

Murdoch wants to distinguish the journalism on the News Corp sites. By ensuring it is of a high-quality, he thinks that people will be willing to pay for the better sites. It is unsure of exactly how the payment scheme will work. This could be by subscription, or micropayments per article or both.

I'm unsure of whether this will ever be completely successful, especially when there are free sites such as the BBC News in the UK, but many sites are looking to subscriptions at the moment. See Spotify in Europe and Hulu in the US.


Read more:
http://www.marketingvox.com/murdoch-empire-to-charge-for-online-content-next-year-044800/

What other people have to say about it:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/06/charging-content-sunday-times-website

Guardian FAQs:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/06/charging-online-content-murdoch-faqs

Yahoo and Microsoft seal the deal

Yahoo and Microsoft have made their deal official. It's probably easily summed up by this quote from the MS press release:
"In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers."

There's not much more to say other than this is a 10 year agreement. Read below for full details.


Gigaom have got an updated blog post with the details of the deal:
http://gigaom.com/2009/07/29/yahoo-microsoft-ink-search-deal/

Yahoo and Microsoft have created a site to celebrate their deal. It's got some hilarious corporate clip-art too.
http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com/thedeal/Default.aspx

Microsoft Press Release:
http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2009/jul09/07-29release.mspx

Surrogates page takeover

Check out this pretty awesome page takeover that's been done for Surrogates. I love the way it spills out and becomes a proper experience. And the fact that the leaderboard and MPU ads only change occasionally - giving more impact when they do.

http://www.vidiia.com

Government Guidelines on Twitter

Whitehall has released a 20 page document on government use of Twitter. It's all seems like sensible advice, if a little lengthy. Precautions are taken to avoid government gaffs, and the use of a proper tone with Twitter is mentioned, which I think is key to successful tweets.


The 20 page document:
http://blogs.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/digitalengagement/

Guardian article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jul/27/twitter-socialnetworking

Yahoo goes Bing!

What is it about these exclamations eh? YAHOO! BING! Now Yahoo search may be powered by Bing does that make it YABING? or BINGHOO?
Well whatever people are exclaiming, we've got to wait until next week to have this confirmed.

Read more:
http://www.marketingvox.com/bing-may-power-yahoo-search-044724/

Spotify iPhone App is finally here (almost)

Spotify have released a video of their iPhone app. Apparently a few reporters have been able to see the app in action as well. It will be available to all Spotify Premium users for free.
The key to the app is the that you will be able to play songs offline, so you can use the app at home, on the train and even on the underground with no connection.

http://www.spotify.com/blog/archives/2009/07/27/spotify-for-iphone/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/jul/27/spotify-digital-media


EDIT:
A more in-depth review:
http://sharemyplaylists.com/spotify-iphone-app-in-depth-review/

Facebook Connect in many languages

Facebook connect is now available in 64 languages. This means your facebook connect applications will now be easily accessible to people all over the world!

http://mashable.com/2009/07/21/facebook-connect-adds-foreign-language-support/

Ads you can share

This is an interesting article about shareable banner ads. We've been experimenting with this here at Jollywise, by trafficking our widget as an ad.

http://digital-examples.blogspot.com/2009/07/blog-post.html

Would you pay for it?

Company bosses disagree about whether people will pay for content online. Disney boss Bob Iger reckons they will, I think they won't. It seems there is an even split across the two camps. Only time will tell to see who's right!

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-sunvalley8-2009jul08,0,6252478.story

The Medusa Project site launched

The Medusa Project is an exciting new series from Sophie McKenzie and we've just launched the new site. Featuring character profiles, with Spotify playlists for each character and details on their special powers, about the books, and a competition where you can win iTunes vouchers.

http://www.themedusaproject.co.uk/


Following this up, here is an interesting article discussing why young adults like reading book about character with supernatural powers:
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2009/06/28/young_adults_feel_affinity_with_supernatural_characters_in_books/

Pixar's lamp comes to life

Check out this cute video of Pixar's logo lamp "Luxo Jr" as he comes to the real world.

http://gizmodo.com/5303312/pixars-animatronic-luxo-jr-melts-our-hearts-in-live-action

Useful implementation of augmented reality

The US Postal Service are doing the first useful implementation of augmented reality that I've seen. You can find out which size bracket your parcel falls into. You can see a video of how it works here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpS3LeCiCtc

I've seen fun uses of it, the best being the music video for Ride My Star:
http://www.julianperretta.com/ride_my_star/

More information here:
http://www.marketingvox.com/augmented-reality-technology-brings-useful-service-to-usps-044353/

Community site for kids on Cartoon Network

Cartoon Network's new site is being launched on June 16th, with a social networking site "My CN". I like the idea of letting kids communicate through pre-written messages. It means that they can still express themselves and their emotions to each other, yet there's no chance of any unsavoury messages appearing on the site. It's a bit like letting them communicate via emoticons.


Read all about the site's new features here:
http://www.netimperative.com/netimperative/news/2009/may/cartoon-network-gets-community-site

Social Media Trends

The news is that whilst Facebook is expanding, Bebo and MySpace are contracting. Facebook is continuing it's world takeover, with more and more members each day. Also on the rise are LinkedIn and Twitter, although I believe Twitter will be a passing fad for the masses I'm sure, remaining popular only for the insecure celebrities and the geeks.

MySpace is a great place for bands to host a few songs, tour dates, and advertise themselves, but as a personal profile social networking site I never though it had any longevity. And Facebook sealed their downfall in this area I think. I would love to see MySpace evolve into an online directory for bands, artists, creatives etc.

Bebo I feel has just not provided a high enough quality of service. The site has always been behind in changes to the way it works and the support is reportedly not to a high level. I think it might just be a case of the better person winning when you compare Bebo and Facebook.

Interestingly FriendsReunited is mentioned. They made the massive mistake of making you pay, which Tagged doesn't seem to have learned from. They "entice" you to buy VIP memberships to give you extra functionality on the site. A mistake I think.

Read more with the full stats:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/11/myspace-bebo-social-networking

Epix: Hulu for film

As Hulu grows and grows and in the wake of it's deal with Disney, it seems that other film studios are getting in on the act of online films. Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM studios have got together and developed epix.
Working like an on-demand TV channel, the service is currently in beta, it will only be available to those with the epix TV channel. This means that your cable provider will be a deciding factor in whether you have the channel or not.

Read about it here:
http://mashable.com/2009/06/08/epix/

Flash coming to Android

Flash is coming to Android and probably before it appears on the iPhone. Flash has been sorely lacking on many mobile devices. With Android being open source, it was only matter of time before someone enabled Flash on it. Although Apple and Adobe are working together to get Flash onto the iPhone. The Palm Pre (which I'm quite excited about) will also support Flash.

http://www.moconews.net/entry/419-will-flash-come-to-android-before-the-iphone

new iPhone ad units

Ahead of version 3.0 of the iPhone and its software, AdMob have announced three new types of ad unit.
The new units will be:

• Mobile Social Networking, which lets consumers access advertisers' social content from an ad, including their Twitter feed, Facebook page, Digg, MySpace account, Flickr photos, and Linkedin.
• Search, whereby users can run searches within an advertiser's mobile site straight from an ad unit.
• Multi-Panel Banner, which delivers multiple calls to action in one rich media ad unit.
• Scrolling Canvas lets audiences access more information about a product or service without clicking away from the application they're on.

Read the full story here:
http://www.marketingvox.com/new-iphone-ad-units-focus-on-social-search-fresher-rich-media-044269/

Window's 7th Heaven?

So Acer UK's boss let it slip: Windows 7 will be released on 22nd October this year, not even 3 years since Vista was released.
I haven't had a play with Windows 7 yet, but it can't be worse than Vista. Nothing was compatible with it, the user interface was all wrong and the Aero-preview certainly didn't make up for it.

Read more:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8081003.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/02/windows7-october

Germany and Turkey are biggest online

Germany has the most unique visitors of any country in Europe and Turkey is the most active, viewing the most internet pages.

Marketing Vox does a nice summary of the stats:
http://www.marketingvox.com/germanys-online-audience-europes-largest-turkeys-most-engaged-044230/

Homepage Takeover tips

This is a great article on homepage takeovers.

10 keys to a homepage takeover that works:
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/23305.asp

Bing launched

Microsoft's new search engine bing has been launched. Now I didn't like live.com (now redirects to bing) but I've had a play with bing and it's actually a decent search engine. They've got a lot of ground to make up, but Microsoft might actually have something worthwhile here. Now they've just got to convince people of it and probably pull something out of the bag in the next year or two - to give people a reason to use them over google.

Read more: (Make sure you read the acronym note at the end. LOL)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/01/searchengines-microsoft

Pixar launched UP to top of US box office

Pixar's latest film UP has gone straight to the top of the US box office, taking $68.2 million. All I've got to say is go and watch it. This film is beautiful, funny, emotional and cinematic!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8076541.stm

Adobe UK price raise

Adobe is increasing the price of its software. Creative Suite Premium 4 will rise £123 to £1,372 (all ex. VAT). This means that it will cost £1,578 incl. VAT a total of £480 more than in the US.

Quick summary:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/254173/adobe-hikes-uk-prices-by-10.html

Lots more here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/01/adobe-price-rises-pound-dollar-exchange

Google's new Wave

Google's new large venture is Google Wave - a kind of mix between email and chat and the future. It's easier to read the Tech Crunch article than a summary by me, but they're pretty excited about it.


Read more:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-drips-with-ambition-can-it-fulfill-googles-grand-web-vision/

Read about WaveProtocol:
http://www.waveprotocol.org/

MS Ba-da-BING

Microsoft is launching it's new search engine: Bing.com
It can't be any worse than Live Search - which is awful. Competing with Google is always going to be a challenge. As I've blogged about recently Wolfram-Alpha is taking on the search giant, but with a different slant on searching.
Bing will try to be intelligent about searches, by using the current date, time etc. to make your search results more relevant. It will also provide related search results and search terms.

It's explained well with examples here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/may/28/microsoft-bing

EDIT
More information here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/may/28/microsoft-search-bing-google

EDIT 2
And more about how it works:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/may/29/microsoft-bing-search-engine

Facebook runs a fifth of all UK ads

Apparently Facebook ran 21.6% of all ads in the UK. That's a lot of ads.

Read more:
http://www.nma.co.uk/new-measure-of-ad-views-finds-facebook-runs-a-fifth-of-all-uk-ads/3000814.article

Is adding the third dimension worth it?

This journalist on the Guardian website reckons that the new spat of 3D films isn't anything big and isn't going to be here to stay, and that cheaper technology is far more important.

I'm inclined to agree. I saw UP in 3D the other day and it being in 3D added nothing to the film what-so-ever. (Excellent film by the way.) Coraline (Which is a beautiful film.) made much better use of 3D, but I still think it would have been a great film without 3D.

Read more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/may/28/up