Month: January 2013

Approaching the era of blip-verts

Posted on by Andrew Morse

Intensely concise, subliminal television advertisements (known as ‘blip-verts’), were released on an unsuspecting world in 1985.

Some viewers died!

Network 23, (responsible for creating blip-verts), went out of business a few years later.

Blip-verts, Network 23 and the cyberpunk futuristic vision of “Max Headroom” were all fictional!

However, the appetite in today’s developed society for ever-briefer snippets of content, (including video advertising), is moving rapidly toward ‘byte-sized data’.

Twitter has just launched “Vine”: a platform for video. The duration: six seconds, on an endless loop!

Within a few hours, Facebook had blocked links to Vine content. Within a few days, users had uploaded clever short films such as Stalking cursor!!!  and brownies in six seconds (a visual daydream for anyone with the munchies)!

It also raises the common legal issues of any user generated content, which is hosted ‘for free’.

The user will retain copyright of the video content, but must agree to “grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media .. with no compensation paid to you”.

Despite this, a number of companies have already created Vine accounts and uploaded advertising. In some countries, 10 and 15 second commercials are permitted on air, but 6 second stories are ground-breaking.

With the ability of creative people to communicate messages effectively within any media or time frame, and the immense growth in mobile market penetration, it may not be long before we are deluged with six second spots. The duration will certainly impose a rigorous brevity in storytelling, and some cleverness in looping.

The opportunity is almost defined as an abbreviated word association Haiku.

Video.
Brevity.
Vine.

Whether it will cling and cover, or wither, will depend on whether it can achieve rapid critical mass.

 

About Max Headroom

“Max Headroom” was a quirky television celebrity in a 2D (cell animation) world, who first hosted a music video program in 1985.

Created in Britain and aired in the USA, Max was ostensibly a product of artificial intelligence. The character became rapidly famous for his rapid-fire wit, his rock-solid hairstyle and Ray-Ban sunglasses, his smooth cabaret singing style and his distorted, staccato stuttering, electronically sampled voice.

The character’s personality was partly intended as a satire of insincere and egotistical television personalities .. but also was “media-wise and gleefully disrespectful” which appealed to young adults.

Max Headroom was such a success, that a ‘back-story’ had to be invented to explain his origin, which resulted in “Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future“.

Network 23 hotshot reporter Edison Carter, (played by actor Matt Frewer in pre-CGI-era latex and foam prosthetics and a snappy fibreglass suit), discovered an immense commercial secret (blip-verts), and almost died while attempting to escape a basement carpark. The last thing he saw before hitting his head on an up-ramp’s boom gate, were the words “Max. Headroom 2.3 m”.

 

Sources:
Vine
Vine: Stalking cursor!!! http://vine.co/v/bJBDredWvLd
Vine: Brownies in six seconds http://vine.co/v/b5dwBuW016P
Wikipedia: “Max Headroom”
Wikipedia: “Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future“

Corporations and Countries: The Biggest

Posted on by Andrew Morse

We are not yet in the world of “Jonathan E”, where the world and the Rollerball teams are run by global sector monopolies (Transport, Food, Communications, Housing, Luxury, and Energy).

However, today, the revenues of the world’s biggest corporations (and the major banks who hold their stock) are larger than many national economies.

Seven of the top 10 are oil and gas companies. Royal Dutch Shell has revenues higher than all but 25 of the world’s largest national economies. Exxon Mobil, SinoPec and BP are individually larger than all but the top 29 nations.

Five of the top 25 corporations are automotive groups: Toyota, Volkswagen, GM, Daimler and Ford.

The annual revenue of Warren Buffet’s investment firm Berkshire Hathaway, is greater than the GDP of most of the world’s nations. Could these companies be managed more efficiently than some countries?

An infographic from visual.ly (using data from TNI) presents this comparison in a powerful visual form.

Planet Earth: A Corporate World

Source:
TNI “Planet Earth: A corporate world infographic”

Australia Day : Let’s Celebrate

Posted on by Andrew Morse

On the day that we officially recognise the birth of Australia as a modern national entity, we can be proud to acknowledge some of the Australians who have carried the name of Australia to the world.

Whether an individual appointed manager of the New Yorker magazine at the age of 26, a company providing technology to the triple world championship winning Red Bull Formula One Grand Prix team, or a new supercomputer running the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator (ACCESS), the Australia Unlimited website and app celebrate people and organisations which showcase Australia’s natural resources: resilience, creativity and an unquenchable desire to succeed, no matter what the challenge.

At the heart of the Australia Unlimited concept is the idea that Australia’s development has been forged through its enterprising spirit, natural optimism and sense of untold potential.

As a nation, we should also recognise the vast human resource of millenia of experience and culture
of our first nation people. We should be celebrating the art, technology, culture and contributions of Aboriginal Australians and looking forward to a shared future with respect and support.

As an individual, I passionately feel that we should be offering every opportunity in health, education and career growth, and promoting role models of those first Australians who have succeeded in academia, business, entertainment, law, medicine, politics, and so may other sectors.

Activities today will offer boundless community and individual opportunities to participate in the celebrations. On Monday, (when many corporations give their employees a day off ‘in lieu of’ the public holiday), Australians across the country and around the world will be working to promote their particular skills and capabilities for their international clientele.

National pride can be a positive thing, when based in a non-discriminatory, inclusive philosophy. Nationalism for the sake of belonging to a group and aggressively excluding others who do not copy your fervent flag-waving, is a negative. Growth in the former and reduction of the latter can only be good for our country.

Australia Unlimited is a part of the Australian government’s Building Brand Australia initiative.

 

Reference reading:
australiaunlimited.com
australiaday.org.au/events
antar.org.au
Building Brand Australia
creativespirits.info
indigenous.gov.au
innovation.gov.au/indigenous
reconciliation.org.au

m.commerce growth continues

Posted on by Andrew Morse

Projections have just been updated by Forrester Research for the next 5 years of U.S. m.commerce

The reputable company predicts that US mobile payments will reach US$90 billion by 2017, a 48% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from the US$12.8 billion spent in 2012.

Forrester’s five-year mobile payments forecast segments mobile payments into three categories:

  1. in-store mobile payments (proximity payments)
  2. mobile commerce (mCommerce)
  3. mobile peer-to-peer (P2P) and remittances

This trajectory is reinforced in a chart recently published by Statistica, which displays comparative growth on handheld devices. Over the next 4 years, while the value of m.commerce on smartphones is predicted to increase by 250%, on tablets it is predicted to grow by over 425%.

Chart_US_mobile_commerce_sales

Digital Tsunami has promoted the use of efficient and innovative online tools since 1996.

Responsive design is the latest mechanism to persuasively present your content. The dramatic  market penetration of handheld devices, combined with broadband access and the extensive availability of WiFi hotspots, has resulted in some users accessing the Internet by a smartphone only.

All new websites Digital Tsunami develops will now also be mobile compliant.

For a free consultation to discuss your mobile needs, contact us today.
Sources:
Forrester Research
Statistica

 

Online security. The past .. and the future.

Posted on by Andrew Morse

Over a 2 year period at the turn of the century (1999-2001), when the World Wide Web was still in its infancy, some of the most contagious malware was released.

January 1999: The Happy99 worm invisibly attached itself to emails, wished the user a Happy New Year and displayed fireworks to hide changes being made. It modified system files related to Outlook Express and Internet Explorer (IE) on Windows 95 and Windows 98.

March 1999: The Melissa worm was released. It targeted Microsoft Word and Outlook-based systems, infecting 15-20% of all business PCs on the planet, and created considerable global network traffic.

May 2000: The ILOVEYOU worm, (aka The Love Bug), infected millions of Windows computers within a few hours of its release. In a single day, it infected 10% of Internet connected computers, worldwide. The Love Bug caused $5.5 billion damage and is considered to be one of the most damaging worms ever.

February 2001: The Anna Kournikova virus overwhelmed e-mail servers by sending e-mail to contacts in the Microsoft Outlook addressbook. Its impact caused some users to replace desktop computers.

This 2 year period; which included the Millennium bug scare, aka “Y2K” for Year 2000, (in which systems were upgraded to ensure that system clocks would not reset to the common two digit 00, but recognise the 4 digit year 2000); was fertile with the growth of community security awareness, more cautious computer behaviour and the broad-scale adoption of anti-virus software.

November 2008: The Conficker worm infected +/- 10 million computers worldwide; including French, German and UK military networks; and is currently regarded as the most virulent of recent era infections.

Historical perspective is a valuable thing when it comes to recognising the potential for malicious threats.

Even though an outbreak on the scale of The Love Bug or the Melissa virus has not recurred, the potential has not diminished. In many ways it has increased, as malware is far more covert, polymorphic (an encrypted combination of trojan, mutating virus and bot), which is able to constantly modify itself to avoid detection or eradication.

All government, educational and corporate networks and individual computers (including handheld devices) are vulnerable.

Common sense dictates that you never open any attachment from anyone (including friends), unless first verifying that the attachment was requested or pre-notified. Never open .exe files unless downloading on demand from a reputable source. It also establishes trust if you do not send or post online any file which has the ability to carry a virus (e.g. Word / Excel). The PDF file format is even potentially vulnerable from infection or from embedded links to malware sites. Therefore, an anti-virus software configured to scan attachments before they are downloaded / opened is mandatory.

All users should implement the highest level of security, including no less than: individual high-security passwords (at least 8 units long, in a combination of at least one lower and upper case character and one numeral, and where accepted, special characters such as *#/%), a firewall, anti-spam and anti-virus software, and regular scans to detect unwanted cookies or malicious threats. Using a reputable software, these threats should be quarantined and eliminated.

At least one backup generic email address (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.) should be created, to enable communications in case your domain name becomes infected and email on that domain is blocked or unusable. This email can also be used to retrieve passwords for an email account on your corporate domain.

Recommended security vendors:
Symantec.com
McAfee.com
TrendMicro.com

Talk to Digital Tsunami about security for your web hosting.

Dynamic city: Hong Kong

Posted on by Andrew Morse

When the GFC hit (after SARS and 9/11), and air traffic to Asia plummeted, two heavily tourism-based cities reacted differently.

Singapore Tourism halved the previous year’s marketing and advertising budget.
Hong Kong Tourism doubled it!

The mentality was not one of reticence and despair, but one of practical opportunism. (When market size contracts, expand your market share!)

Why do people in Hong Kong retain this dynamic mindset? Is it a vestige of adventurous ‘gweilos’ (‘foreign devils’/’white ghosts’) who flocked in, a characteristic of the entrepreneurial locals (who traded between China and the rest of the world for centuries) or is it something in the water (or G&T)?

In Hong Kong last week, everyone I encountered reminded me of this question. The people were local business-owners, foreign-educated Chinese, newly-arrived expats and ‘Old China Hands’.

The examples include the young Irish barman who founded a hospitality empire and effectively retired; the Italian artist who runs four discrete businesses; the Canadian copywriter who owns property in three countries, the Venetian engineer who is manufacturing houses for markets across the globe; and the French wine vendor who set up a new enterprise within days of arriving. Then there’s the Chinese man who was selling fabric 20 years ago and is now an energy mogul!

There is a real sense of energy and industry in the territory. When the British 99 year lease lapsed in 1997, China didn’t change the nature of the place. Now that China is one of the few countries in the world with significant growth, the position of Hong Kong is once again pivotal for entrepreneurs.

Decisions are made. Fast.

Unlike many other countries, where gatekeepers ‘protect’ their Executive employers from approaches by potential suppliers / partners / clients, in Hong Kong you can speak with decision-makers and receive a (polite but brief) hearing and a rapid response.

After presenting a pitch you can be commissioned in hours, rather than weeks or months!

If Beijing’s definition of business is “a market economy with Chinese characteristics”, Hong Kong’ surely must be “a market economy with extreme entrepreneurial spirit”.

As I write this, I sit in a five-star hotel in the capital of the North-Western province of Ningxia. The number of construction cranes evokes so many other Chinese cities, and the airborne dust is not solely from the desert and the steppes. New buildings are under construction across this city of over a million people. But where will you find the global headquarters of the owners of many of these apartments, hotels and office buildings?

Hong Kong.