Archive for July, 2009
Somewhere in the halls of the Minneapolis Institute of Art the Tatra87 is on display. You’ll be forgiven for not knowing that this is a car because cars and their makers have been under much duress lately – plus it was from then Czechoslovakia. But the Tatra, designed and built in 1936 was heralded as the introduction of stylishness to the world of auto design. Every aspect from its aerodynamic silhouette, its chrome elements, its unusual fenders and three-part windshield sets it apart from the practical approach of its time. None other than Mr. Ferdinand Porsche was thought to have borrowed its rear-mounted, air-cooled engine for the VW Beetle. Lawsuits ensued.
Former car-designer Chris Bangle, an American from Wausau, who once ruled car design at BMW, is passionate about the idea of cars as art. Designing a car is not significantly different from sculpting in clay or designing a good suit, he said. Cars are not engineered, they’re designed. Engineers solve problems such as balancing cup-holders, while designers put their heart and soul into it. Automobiles are what we use, but cars are what we are.
Under Bangle’s watch, BMW became the only car-maker to own a design studio when it bought Designworks. He believes that practical concerns such as pollution and congestion detract from the artistic aspect of cars. It isn’t known what he thinks of the Dodge Magnum but Bangle was the design brain behind BMW 7 Series. But it wasn’t all wine and roses for his designs. Automobile journalists – who knew? – were widely critical, saying that Bangle was ruining Europe’s blue-chip brand. It is rumored that he didn’t care, but after 17 years, Bangle up and quit the world of car design earlier this year to head for the Tuscan sun where he is thought to be making wine.
With over 5,000 followers, Best Buy sure has an online entourage for their new twitter-based help service. Best Buy stresses its commitment to customer service and has several Geek Squad employees as well as tech specialists responding to consumer complaints. All product questions are supposed to be answered in real time (because that’s the beauty of twitter). This could radically solve a lot of simple problems, or on the flip side, potentially cause a lot more if a person doesn’t get the speedy response they are expecting. Only time will tell whether or not it will be a good thing.
Twitter.com/Twelpforce
So you’ve lost your tenth charger and your laptop’s almost out of battery and you’ve just barely made it to your gate for your flight to Timbuktu. And in these harried moments you left your book somewhere and now you’ll not only be bored, but you’ll never know how the story ends. You wish you could call someone to commiserate but you’ve ditched your international voice-data plan for being too expensive. Okay, so all this stuff doesn’t happen to you all at once but it could and then what will you do?
The answer for you could very well be to simplify with more streamlined gadgetry. Instead of carrying the charger, get the charger that carries. A solar-powered laptop bag from Voltaic not only stores your laptop but it charges your gear. In your bag which doubles as a generator you would then add your Kindle, where your e-book is downloaded. Instead of hunting for Wi-Fi, get your own Wi-Fi halo through one of the cell phone companies. And when traveling overseas, skip the expensive data plan. Instead you can swap out your phone’s SIM card and pick one up at those ubiquitous kiosks all around Europe. And soon enough you’re traveling lighter through the digital age.
The Voltaic bag gives you instant “green” street cred for being made from recycled materials including soda bottles, one more reason to have a Coke. The bag’s solar panel generates up to 15 watts and the battery pack can charge a laptop. Though not all laptops. If you’ve got a Sony Vaio or a Toshiba, sorry, you’ll have to wait for the technology to catch up. Of course, if your travel is mainly to the Boundary Waters once a year, you should leave your technology at home – all the better for listening to those loons from a canoe on a placid stream. It is thought that technology and water don’t mix - yet.
At home eating my delicious ham and cheese sandwich with gourmet chips and a pickle. Also drinking a very cold glass of raspberry lemonade. That’s what you might be doing now but should you really go ahead and add that to the Twittersphere? If you’re Kim Kardashian – probably people care. But if you’re Kim Johnson – probably not. Twitter may have been about you in 140 characters, a year ago or six months ago but it’s not that anymore.
Twitter is about marketing. Marie Osmond tweets about her lines of dolls and fabrics. Katie Couric tweets about her upcoming interview or about a magazine article featuring her – where you can get details about her life. As expected CNN tweets breaking news whether or not it’s really breaking news. And Kim Kardashian tweets about her Armani jeans, her favorite movie, her e-bay auctions and the two donuts she ate.
One smart cookie in the twitter world is Carri Bugbee, a marketing consultant who spotted the digital marketing capabilities and set out to capitalize on it. Noting that someone was tweeting as the character Don Draper in “Mad Men,” Carri began to wonder. Why didn’t she think of that? Soon enough she had adopted the character, Peggy Olson and was tweeting away. She amassed 12,000 followers and was seeking out other “Mad Men” characters to engage. When other characters tired of imitation tweetery, Carri took on their characters. For her it is a “fun organic thing.” Our apologies to those who think the word “organic” is overused.
She would go on to win a social media award – who knew those existed. Now she has opened an advertising agency around social media marketing. She is offering her promotional services to other television shows who want to create a social media relationship with their viewers. She sets up different Twitter identities around topics such as jazz, to stay organized and market more effectively. Here’s a tweet from her - Why are S. Korean prisoners such good dancers? It’s rather impressive. Are American thugs this light on their feet? http://bit.ly/lzGWb
In the FAQ section of a company, a customer outlines the type of swimming pool pump and the subsequent problems then asks – “Is my pump broken?” The FAQ genie answers – “NO.” And technically that’s correct but could the genie have elaborated? No, your pump isn’t broken but usually this type of problem is due to x, y or z – call us directly. So often, customer service is - not. Weeks to get your car in. Dentist doesn’t work on Fridays. Notarized copies of the receipt, bar code and wrapping required. You wade through the web site and find goofy answers to seemingly simple questions.
But not everyone is like that. There’s the story of the guy who had a problem with his Nintendo Wii. He called the customer service people and once they discovered he lived in Redmond, Washington where they are located, invited him to hop on over. While he waited in the lobby, his kid played with their demo games and 25 minutes later his equipment was fixed. To his surprise, they apologized for such a long wait. Are they for real?
Another company, Mill Creek Entertainment sells inexpensive bundles of movies on DVD among other things. But in the course of DVD duplication sometimes side A and side B of a two-sided DVD are mismatched while the label reflects the original intent. When someone discovered such a case while watching a 50 pack of movies, he didn’t expect much from the company. He had no idea how long ago or from where he had even purchased the pack.
Still, he contacted the company via their web site just for the heck of it. Within a business day he had received an apology that was followed by a corrected set of DVDs plus all sorts of extras. Which just goes to show that you can catch more customers with good service than with vinegar. Though, a quality balsamic vinegar is like honey.
InStyle, Vogue, and Lucky might be the leaders of the newsstands but online they are definitely struggling to hold on to an audience. Three ex-Yahoo engineers crossed over into high fashion territory by starting up a first-of-its-kind user generated online clothing magazine called Polyvore. Users get to play around by creative collages (called “sets”) of pictures of clothes, accessories, and models. When someone sees a set she likes, she can click on a dress, necklace, or pair of shoes and be taken to the website that sells it. Polyvore is definitely outdoing the competition as far as popularity- In June alone it had 25% more traffic than Style.com and InStyle.com, according to Compete analytics. It’s tripled its audience in the last year.
What started as a recreational site with 95% user-generated content, Polyvore is now shifting its focus to making money. It runs ads like the magazine sites do, also earning a commission when users click on or purchase clothes from select e-commerce sites. The company is trying to craft relationships with clothing and accessories sites in return for uploading their product catalogues to the site. With options to Shop, Explore, or Create, the site’s primary purpose is still to be aesthetically stimulating and interactive. With design contests and the ability to title sets with customized fonts, Polyvore really is in the hands of its users and is demonstrating the power and success of this.
Even as physical music has given way to digital downloads and various companies are looking at live streaming movies, enquiring minds want to know what types of players to invest in. Should it be a Blu-ray or DVD? Will the next logical audio-visual format be flash-drive? How is anyone to know what’s next? No one wants to go whole hog, buying the latest and the greatest player, only to have it go obsolete the next minute.
Have no fear. All sorts of experts are weighing in on the subject. It isn’t known what makes any given person an expert. But news from the world of expertise is that the brave new world is neither. It is instead a world of multiple, already-available formats. Or at the very least, experts are arguing for multiple formats rather than just live-streaming content in the interest of consumers having ownership over their movies and music.
People don’t want to be stuck with someone else in control of their audio-visual property. One argument against live-streaming content is that Amazon recently removed George Orwell’s “1984” from people’s Kindles without telling them. A somewhat amusing news item since “1984” is the novel about Big Brother watching you – and by extension inspiration? for the television show. Either way, it’s too bad that speculation about future scenarios are mostly depressing. We’d rather have something we can celebrate.
Couldn’t it be that Big Brother is a happy-go-lucky party guy? Or at the very least Big Brother is an app with a magic wand? It lets you name your chosen movie format and Big Brother delivers. Want live-streaming content? Blu-ray? DVD? Shazam!!!! It’s yours. Come to think of it, everyone would be better off if Big Brother were more like Captain Marvel than the Gestapo.
True outside-the-box thinking took over when a creative group charged with assembling an unusual advertising for Yellow Pages in New Zealand went into the forest and up a redwood tree. Sure, all sorts of folk will claim to have originated artistic tree houses long before such a venture. But this one takes the cake in a somewhat literal way. It’s a restaurant. Someone noted that Yellow Pages claims that it can deliver anything and that’s where the project began.
Could it deliver a restaurant in a tree? The project’s manager, Tracey Collins sourced all the materials through the New Zealand’s Yellow Pages, online and in printed form. Who other than the Tasmanian Devil knew that the Yellow Pages guy was in New Zealand? Either way, it is not truly a way out concept to search for building materials in a directory that lists businesses. Isn’t that the purpose of directories in the first place? The way out idea is the really the design. It catches attention for being something few have imagined.
The building, an open oval form tied around the tree was constructed with poplar and redwood slats. There’s an acrylic covering to keep out the rain while letting in the light. And even there in the forest, the split level restaurant required building permits because if you have a restaurant, the customers need to be safe. The bathrooms and kitchen are really at ground level, presumably to keep water from pouring down on hikers. And ultimately, such an unusual design has attracted much publicity for Yellow Pages New Zealand and all affiliated with the design.