CrapHammer

Connecting more than information...

Brilliant video: an anthopological introduction to YouTube.

For anyone looking to understand the growth and role of YouTube (and other social media technologies) in our world today.  From the guy who brought us "The machine is using us" video and one of the earliest to run a digital ethnography study of YouTube.

"I think of [media] as mediating human relationships... when media changed, human relationships changed..."

Hat Tip: Johnnie Moore

Digital Storytelling

I concur that this is a wonderful example of digital storytelling by a brand.  I enjoyed the flow, pace, and the fact that it treated me as a person.  Funny how many sites forget the last part.

http://www.truthaboutsmart.co.uk/

Pros:

• Great use of the medium.  I love the opening while it's loading the flash.  One of the best wait screens ever.
• The interactive parts were integral to the experience and I found it sort of fun.  Something I didn't expect from a selling-a-car website
• Simple and consistent progression of the story, allowing me to dig deeper should I so choose.

Cons:

• I could have done without is the flying cursors of previous visitors.  It looks like a "cool gadget" that someone wanted to try but it really doesn't play into the experience at all.  Sort of distracts from it.
• I'll save you from my "yet another micro-site" rant and just leave it at that.
• It would be nice to see some elements I could have used to spread the word about this campaign.  A short youtube video teaser?  A small interactive guess the right answer widget?

P.S.  Let it sit idle for a minute.  LOL.  Nice.

Many thanks to swissmiss for this find.

Future of Account Planning (JWT)

I have to come clean.  I've too often put slides in front of my audiences touting the insane number of mobile subscribers globally or the penetration of broadband in North America.

Guy Murphy's talk on the future of account planning gives a sobering view of a world where "more people in the world do not have a mobile phone than do have one, that only 13 per cent of the world have a computer and the global penetration of broadband is just 4%".  It's an awesome and cogent plea for a focus on building global brands, albeit a little strong on the ever increasing profits front. 

"There is no such thing as a global consumer. There are only local consumers enjoying more and more globally available things."

"Ideas for global brands will be rooted less in consumer insight and more more in human truth."

Guy Murphy:'What would Stephen say?' from JWT on Vimeo.

A quick shout out to Paul at Hee Haw for this find.  His post is worth checking out as it had no less than 5 tantalizing links from Mantyhose to an amazing book I have finally put on my wishlist.

Mental Illness Expose

I'm back.  Thanks to everyone for checking in on me. 

Just catching up on my blog reading and stumbled across this disturbing but masterfully shot expose by photographer Jenn Ackerman on Mental Illness in America's prisons.

Trapped: Mental Illness in America's Prisons from Jenn Ackerman on Vimeo.

Many thanks to vaughan over at mindhacks for this find.  I Llove mindhacks as it covers breakthroughs and items of interest regarding the human mind.

The Pirate's Dilemma

[link to embedded video]

The above 5 minute video is a great recap of a book by the same name and it eloquently explores the ripples that are changing the way we value, sell, consume and share media around the globe.

I wanted to point out another article by the same author regarding hacking Detroit.

Matt talks about "systems that allow for change".  Something any book on Innovation invariably deals with - from creating an environment for change to supporting initiatives for change.  Not an easy task any way you cut it.

In Experience Design (human factors), we look for how people are hacking systems.  It's often a key insight into how products or services are not meeting the needs of the audience (or could be improved). It could be a note taped to a door telling users to pull, not push.  Or it might be a complicated piece of medical equipment with buttons taped off so they don't get pressed. They are critical and very blatant hints to a problem in how something was designed or deployed because they represent an innovative hack of a product or service to make it better serve it's customers.

Online, users have been hacking services in a positive manner since the beginning of computers.  Many online businesses began as combining (hacking) services from companies like google and yahoo to form new businesses/services.  We came to call these activities "mashups" and they came to define what web 2.0 was.   In essence, they were hacks - people altering or building upon products to better meet an underserved need in the world.

Smart companies paid attention to mashups and embraced this revolution in end user created innovation. They developed services that supported or built upon what was being explored or expressed.  Many opened up their API's and actively supported users to mashup their services.

Which leads me to a desire to redefine the role of hacking.  Or better yet, how to support hacking as a form of innovation internally.  How do we embrace and identify hacking that innovates inside our own firms?

Wordle Me Pretty

The above is what happens when I run craphammer.ca (my RSS feed) through wordle.net.  An online application for building clouds that are quite lovely.  Be neat if they still worked as a navigation cloud (ie: clickable.)

Found on Leigh's Blitherings.