July 29, 2008

Make a MIXA!

Make a MIXA is a cool site that answers the question:

Whatever happened to all of those cassettes?

Take a look... and send me one! I'd love to get one of these as a gift!

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 05:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 16, 2008

Euro RSCG buys a record label!

I read today (via LinkedIn) that my business' parent company, Euro RSCG, has purchased a startup music label. The quote from our CEO, "in this new content creation model and world, our ability to actually be owners of content and make money out of content is something very exciting" is exactly what I've been thinking lately, and very exciting to me.

It brings two highly creative industries together as creative partners, not buyer and seller, but collaborators in a process that should ultimately lead to better ways to spread ideas. Very cool concept. What's next? Ad Agencies buying up film production companies?

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 08:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 22, 2007

Send your Flickr Photos as Postcards

I read an article recently that surprised me when it said that Photobucket has the lion's share of the "photo sharing sites" category. Whilst I can't find the article I read, I did find a post on TechCrunch, which referred to this post from Hitwise which proved it.

The article I was reading was saying that the Flickr audience are extremely proud and loyal of their site, which I am. I have always been so shocked that people I know aren't automatically registered with Flickr, or have registered but don't remember their password. But that's only because I've always assumed that Flickr owned the market. It should, but then again I'm biased because Flickr is the first website I've really used as a method of sharing photos.

I used to (and, in fact, still do) have a photo gallery on one of my personal websites, but I host my websites through a friend's company (Shelfspace.com) and he gives me really good rates, so I do my best not to overload his servers with lots of large files. I also had a son and started taking a lot more photographs than I used to. I did some research into the "photo sharing" world and read so many good things about Flickr (mostly about their "tagging system", or folksonomy as it has come to be known) that I joined.

In all honesty, I don't spend enough time tagging my photos and always wish I did... however I am definitely an extremely loyal customer.

One of the reasons is the fact that it keeps changing. I just found a site called Delivr on which you can search (by tag) for just about anything, including your own photos, add a message to it and send it to someone over email.

That is really cool... I'll post again about things I like about Flickr.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 03:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 02, 2006

The Best Site on the Web today...

Nike's Football (not American Football) Website located at www.nikefootball.com shows you how Web communication should be done. Everything from their television ad (see the link called "THE BEGINNING" and watch the ad) which declares to the world that Football is about skill, teamwork and beauty and challenges all of the footballers of the world to "make our game beautiful" to the video "THE CHAIN" where you are encouraged to submit a video of yourself receiving the football and then passing it to someone else... Nike is splicing the film together into a very cool chain video (currently 10 minutes long) that shows all of the people around the world that are committed to JOGA BONITO!

I don't even play Football and am already thinking of a video I can do and upload to the site... and everyone I've shown this site to thinks it's absolutely beautiful.

Well done Nike!

Drew

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 04:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 04, 2006

Ever thought of working in advertising?

It is an all-out war!

But I've never seen it presented as well as this...

More and more sites are becoming full blown interactive experiences...
this one is one of the best I've ever seen.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 02:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 19, 2005

Interesting TiVo thought...

I was on the plane returning from a trip to Orlando (and boy what a trip that was), sitting next to a couple that were on a trip to Fiji and struck up a conversation. One thing led to another (and of course a couple of drinks) and we were all talking about what we do for a living... then a few minutes later, I'm spewing out stories about how the advertising and marketing world has been turned upside down by TiVo, TV series on DVD and the Internet - all of which have made it possible to receive content with little or no advertising. Next thing I know, the woman I was sitting next to made an interesting point that I just had to share.

She said that she had actually booked a recent trip to a certain hotel from having recalled their TV spot on TiVo. She was fast-forwarding the commercials and even at a sped-up rate with no audio, they had created a commercial memorable enough for her to follow up. She wanted to book her vacation and remembered that she had seen an ad during a recent showing of Will & Grace and was able to call up the ad on her TiVo and get the telephone number.

It touched off an interesting conversation that I thought should be put out there for people to think about (all 3 of the people that read this blog). Talk about a clear and concise brand message - how could your ad still be impactful if people are watching at three times the speed and don't have any sound.

I thought it'd be funny to create an ad that, when played at regular speed came across in slow-motion, but when fast-forwarded through TiVo actually made sense. Kind of like the old urban myths (are they urban myths) about playing records backwards and getting demonic message, or that movie theaters insert frames into the films that send subliminal messages to buy popcorn.

Maybe advertisers can salvage TV spots afterall...

I doubt there's a way to insert them into the DVDs, but this TiVo thing could be fun.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 02:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 08, 2005

Your Own Personalized Radio Station

Ok, I'm purely throwing this in here because I think that someone with an idea this cool deserves as much publicity and attention as they can get. I guess that's kind of my point in having a blog at all is to highlight the things I think are cool.

Pandora is an internet-based business designed to help music lovers stay in touch with music. You go to their site, enter the name of an artist or a song that you really love, their computer analyzes this artist and/or song against all sorts of criteria (everything from the timbre of the vocals, to the style of the guitar being played in the background and more) and put together a playlist (which they call for you of similar music that they think you'll love.

Today, I entered "Boogie on Reggae Woman" by Stevie Wonder. The first thing that Pandora did was to play "Happier Than the Morning Sun" by Stevie Wonder (they explained why they didn't give me the gratification of playing the song I wanted to hear... which I didn't read because I was over here typing my blog... but I do intend to question them on that... but only after I've judged their service after 10 hours of free music.

The things I already like... if for example a song makes it onto my radio station that I completely don't like, I can click to have it removed from my "station" and they will (hopefully) adjust their algorhythm to know that song was not a good connection (I'm not yet sure if they'll do this just for me or not or if it would happen globally).

(Second song "I've Made Love to You a Thousand Times" by Smokey Robinson - and again I missed their rationale for selecting it for me. But I think it's really cool that they do that.)

The other thing I really like about them is that they employ musicians (according the the article I read in Fast Company by Linda Tischler) to help them break down the music into "genomes." Someone actually gets paid to listen to thousands upon thousands of CDs (my dream job) and break the music down for the database.

(Third song "Jagger the Dagger" by Eugene McDaniels. Which was sampled by A Tribe Called Quest, making it doubly appropriate for my station).

The other thing I really like is their interface. Very user friendly...

Well worth checking out, already. I was just thinking that I am tired of all of the music I've loaded into my computer. It's all stuff I've owned for years and just ripped into iTunes so that I could have some stuff to bang at work while I do my job.

Some things for Pandora to think about... the one problem I have with digital music services is that they are all based on computers and/or iPods. One of the main places I listen to music is in the car. It's a proving ground for the music I make, and the best personal listening space I have. The other main place I listen to music is in my house. I wonder if Pandora could create relationships with a satellite radio service, making it possible for me to port their music into my car stereo (not that I have satellite radio, but it's an interesting thought). In essence, how do we get the music away from the computer????

Nonetheless, after only 12 minutes of listening, I'm already a huge fan. Thanks Pandora, keep up the good work!

Followup: How Pandora Picks songs

Ok... so I found in the Pandora interface that you can click on "Guide Us" and that's where you can choose the following:

"I love this song, play more like it"
"I don't like this song, don't play more like it"
"Why was this song chosen"
or
"I want to add more kinds of music to this station"

If you click on "Why was this song chosen" you can get that selection criteria I kept missing in my original post.

So for example, "Land of La La" by Stevie Wonder was selected for me because

"Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features electronica influences, a subtle use of vocal harmony, repetetive melodic phrasing, groove based composition and techno synths."

Oh, and Pandora also features links to Amazon and iTunes music store if you want to buy the music.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 10:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack