Mashing a blog together

I think I found a solution to boost my blogging frequency. In order to easily share my thoughts with you on stuff I found online, I've set up a procedure that will automatically post anything I share in Google Reader. This is how it works (at least, I hope it works), it's very simple:

1. I activated "post via email" on my blog account, that gives you a special posting e-mail address.
2. Get the RSS feed of my shared items in Google Reader
3. Have Sendmerss.com send all my new shared items to the e-mail in step 1

Sendmerss checks the feed every 1 to 2 hours, so you should see new posts appearing here in the coming hour or so.

When your COO wear's a T-shirt that says ... "Why Work" ...

This is what happens ...
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f2e4m9JeyU&hl=en]

Disclaimer: Henri is a colleague of mine :)

Sydes and Arkafund acquire participation in ONE Agency

Jippie!

Here's an extract/re-edit of the press release:

ONE Agency announces today that Sydes and Arkafund will contribute to the further expansion of the young Ghent-based company. A total of € 1 million is being invested in the further expansion and internationalization of ONE Agency. Management and existing shareholders have also made additional investments in contributing to this development.

ONE Agency, a young challenger
The company is headed by Jo Caudron, Bert Van Wassenhove (that's me)and Henri Cnops. ONE Agency’s rapid growth and strong reference list is the result, among others, of the years of interactive experience of its founders and management coupled with the team’s enthusiasm for the internet as a medium for open communication.

ONE Agency has succeeded in acquiring a unique position in record speed as a “new style” interaction bureau. The emphasis here lies in the use of the latest developments in the domain of rich media and social network applications for the world of marketing and communication.
The increasing role of the user in the explosive growth of rich media (web video, internet radio, etc.) has resulted in a number of new challenges for the market. ONE Agency’s goal is to respond to the many needs of its customers with regard to new forms of media, marketing and interaction.

ONE Agency works for large Belgian and international clients such as Connections, KBC, MTV Networks, Neckermann.com, RTBF, Sanoma Magazines, Truvo, Vedior and VRT. In addition, ONE Agency is also a strategic partner of a number of young companies with a strong online focus such as Billy (Blue Ocean), Tikitag (Alcatel Lucent), CarChannel (Rossel Group) and Aristo Music.

ONE Agency, a company with ambitions
Sydes’ and Arkafund’s investment will enable the company to further solidify its position and initiate further growth in Belgium and beyond. Alongside a reinforcement of the existing team, the company’s rich media and social network platform, currently used by a number of clients, will also be further developed. This will enable the quick and efficient integration of rich media and social services within the strategies of the company’s clients.

Arkafund and Sydes take on their share
Sydes is the investment company of Corelio, publishers of, among others, De Standaard and Het Nieuwsblad. The group also has important shareholdings in the broad media world including, among others, Woestijnvis, Caviar and Passe-Partout.
Arkafund was created as a venture capital fund by Dexia and Corelio. By making recourse to the ARKimedes Foundation, the fund amount was effectively doubled. With its participative share in ONE Agency, Arkafund has confirmed its role as an incubator of new media. Arkafund and Sydes were impressed by the rapid breakthrough of ONE Agency and were above all charmed by the unique combination of a creative and driven management and the disciplined follow up by the Board of Directors. For Arkafund, these are solid guarantees for realizing ONE Agency’s ambitious plan for the future.

Macbook + iPhone + Steve Ballmer + Flickr = FUN

Last week Jo Caudron presented at a Microsoft seminar, and his Macbook remained on stage when Steve Ballmer made his presentation. Frederik Temmermans made picture with his iPhone and put it up on Flickr ... Viewed 216,970 times and counting :)

Check out the comments on Flickr ...

By the way, I saw Steve Ballmer too in Louvain La Neuve (the afternoon session), and I really like the guy. A big gorilla yes, but with loads of drive and a passionate speaker. I never got to asking my question but I do wonder whether Microsoft will manage to be successful in the advertising world (which is one of the three pillars of their strategy). After all they are a software company in the first place (quote from Steve Ballmer), and advertising is all about people.

Ogilvy against ONE Agency ... justice prevails

Just a few months after ONE Agency launched in October 2006, advertising mogul Ogilvy sued ONE Agency for using the name "ONE". They even claimed a compensation of € 25.000 per day that ONE Agency used ONE as their name.

Now, after the trial on February 14th 2008, the judge has totally rejected Ogilvy's claim. Looks like there is justice in this world after all.

I'd like to thank all the people who supported ONE Agency along this battle, especially those competitors ours who were prepared to back up our arguments. It's good to see that most agencies prefer to win clients by doing excellent work rather then trying to weaken competitors through legal claims.

Tip for Ogilvy's legal department: there's still "ONE Cleaning" to go after, they have an office right next to our's in Ghent.

For your info: I work for ONE Agency, which makes this even better news :)

Google docs offline - ready to move 100% in the cloud

The off line feature of my Google Docs account just got activated. This means that I can now produce and edit texts, spreadsheets and simple presentations on Google Docs without being connected to the internet.

Since this feature was announced I have using Google Docs more and more and for 80% of my activities this suite is perfect. Almost exactly a year ago I posted a review of a number of office solutions, here's a short update:

Mail:
I'm all over Gmail, it works perfect to me. If the for Firefox would work all the time, it would even be better. In order to be able to work off line or with low bandwidth I've got IMAP enabled so I can use Gmail on my iPhone and on my MacBook. In "Mail" on the MacBook I have a full copy of all my mail (also through IMAP) ... just in case.

Spreadsheets:
Anything that involves huge lists or pivot tables requires Excel, but for your budget, forecast or any other sophisticated sheet Google spreadsheet does just fine.

Word processsing:
For now I'm only using Google Docs for writing, editing and sharing texts as such. I still need to figure out how we can get good-looking templates in there for official documents we send to clients.

Presentations:
Google presentation is very basic, so only fit for occasional simple stuff. Keynote on the Mac is still my N°1 presentation making tool. Although the new Powerpoint for Mac is said to be good too. Need to check that out some day soon.

Blogging:
The Blogger editor is still crap. I use ecto from time to time but inserting pictures doesn't work there and the tags are not linked with the Google tags. An alternative is using Google Docs and then publishing to Blogger, but that doesn't work flawlessly all the time either. Any suggestions there are welcome.

Just for fun

MIPTV Cannes: Panel: What's the future of social networks? Will social advertising really work

The panel kicked of with a short , very elegantly done by Loi Le Meur. Next up was Wandrille Pruvot showing some slide about mobile http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifsocial networks. But too damn fast to write something about it. Currently Pascal Thomas from Orange explains how they are integrating community in marketing.

Loic hacking Sarah's panel, referring to the South by Southwest debacle. About 10 people in the room seem to be on Twitter, not enough to really get something going here though.

switced to live streamig

MIPTV Cannes: Internet TV Keynote - Joi Ito: Share, Remix, Reuse - Legally Creative Commons and the sharing economy

Joi Ito on stage, starts of good. Passionate speaker.

"Traffic is the currency of the internet."

On artists:
Before, you had to interact with your fanbase through a small box inbetween thousands of others. Now you can do much more, get in real contact with fans who will pay for this. So give away the music to the masses as a form of publicity, and charge more to those people prepared to pay for it (e.g. sell them a signed DVD box like Nine Inch Nails did).

How to make sharing profitable:
Sharing is something young people want to do, they are the fans stupid! Don't sue them, help them to share, provide them with tools to share.

Sharing is not people stealing your content, it's people marketing your content.

By locking up content, you will lose young people's attention to e.g. video games.

MIPTV Cannes: Social Networking Keynote - Joanna Shields: A new vision of the social web, combining community, self expressino and entertainment

Joanna Shields is President of Bebo, with an impressive CV. However not really a gifted speaker I'm afraid.

Most interesting learning: Content and Social Interaction are coming together. Bebo (and also MySpace) really see these two worlds come together online.

I totally follow this:
In social media advertisers have to think conversation. It's not about jumping in for a few weeks and then jumping out again.

Joanna is more interesting in an interview then in a speech:"social network innovation is not decided at Microsoft or Google, but at content companies"

MIPTV Cannes: BBC iPlayer on Nintendo Wii

Small message in-between.

Yesterday Erik Huggers of the BBC announced that the BBC iPlayer will soon be available on TV "where it belongs" through the Nintendo Wii. Good move, the BBC clearly has understood that it's all about getting your content on as much screens as possible. And not be locked into crappy digiboxes of all sorts.

MIPTV Cannes: Social Networking Keynote - Travis Katz: Digital

Travis Katz is the General Manager for the international operations of MySpace.com and Fox Interactive Media. He's being interviewed by Stephen Armstrong, a UK journalist.

Travis mainly talks about all types of TY style content that is being distributed through MySpace. A 'special announcement' is that they signed a deal with some big production company to distribute content worldwide through MySpace TV.

How about 'fictional' characters that promote their own content. Travis thinks this is key to the success of MySpace and the media they distribute. People want to interact with both the real and fictional characters they admire. In case of music that's mostly real people, in TV shows the characters are fictional but people don't seem to mind.

Learnings for TV people: The new generation has been brought up with unlimited choice and control. They will still be compelled by content, but they will interact with it in a totally different way.

Adobe Media Player, Hulu, IPTV is here to stay

I had given up on Joost because of lack of good content, and because the player doesn't work on my Mac anymore. I'm currently testing Adobe Media Player (watching CSI NY as I write) and yesterday I fooled around with Hulu. Oh and I also had a look at tv.adobe.com which interestingly has a homepage layout that is identical to Hulu.com ... some connection there?


Both hulu.com and Adobe Media Player have great interfaces, based on standard technology (Flash/Flex & Air) which works perfectly on many platforms. OK, Joost may be a bit more creative, but Hulu and the Adobe Media Player simply do the job. Streaming (even full screen) delivers a great experience, I can't wait to attach my Mac to the big screen at home. I suspect the quality will be as good as standard digital TV.

Even more important is the content. Hulu (if you can get past the IP-blocking for non-US viewers) offers a huge database of movies and TV shows I really want to see, and the latest episode of CSI N.Y. is rolling in swiftly on the Adobe platform.

I just found a lot of reasons to throw out the iDTV box and put a Mac Mini in place. No Apple TV though, because I want to get content from more then just iTunes. TV is really in for some big changes over the coming years, that much is clear.

MIPTV Cannes: Conversational Marketing: The Power Of Online Social Networks and 360 Campaigns

OK, gearing up for the next presentation but juice is running out. So I may have to stop blogging halfway this presentation.

We start with Caroline Slootweg, Director, Digital Marketing and New Media, Unilever. Looks like Unilever does get the idea of the social web, the internet as a communication channel. I also agree that some things never change, but I don't agree it's only about good products and good marketing. What doesn't change are the people themselves, and their hunger for social interaction.
So, adding a 'topic of discussion' to each campaign is not enough if you ask me. The way people communicate, the intensity, etc. changes fundamentally. And we have to learn to work with that.
Here comes the "campaign for real beauty". Great campaign, but why does Caroline have to over-do it? The video was not launched on YouTube, it was on a traditional microsite and damn difficult to share with friends. No embed codes, no direct links. It's a great campaign Caroline, but admit you learned a lot as you went, don't pretend you knew al about social media before you started the campaign.

Next up is Michael Tchao, General Manager, Techlab, Nike. He's the man behind Nike+.

Nice thought: "How can we turn information into inspiration?"

OK Michael, nicely prepared speech, but we know what Nike+ is ... The advertising campaign is nicely done, lot's of creative brand activation, cool ...

MIPTV Cannes: The New Rules of Engagement for the Digital Consumer

Panel discussion with an spicy discussion going back and forth between panel members. Some old-fashioned TV is better, no internet is better discussions going on there. One thing NOBODY talks about is iDTV, as @jcaudron quoted on Twitter: "the red button is dead. Create emotion and traction on TV, divert them to the web to get them engaged"

What keeps on coming back in this conference is the mind-shift for video producers of all kind (TV stations, producers, etc.) to let go their content and even promote it on all kinds of platforms. So don't restrict content to your own little site, show it everywhere. Capture attention where it is.

The word "ecosystem" has fallen ... about time too.

"YouTube is the largest focus group in the world."

Cool campaign against drugs, make sure to check out the video's:
http://www.talktofrank.com

MIPTV Cannes: Jeremy Allaire: "Beyond Aggregation: Unlocking the Value

Racing to keep up with presentations, Jeremy Allaire is CEO of Brightcove.

The fundamentals of a website have changed, it's no longer content only ...

Some stats showing that online content consumption is totally different then how people consume TV (surprise ...)

Things to remember with regard to business models:
- Capitalize on your community, not only on video.
- Capitalize on deep engagement between with your audience

MIPTV Cannes: Internet TV Keynote - Sex, Lies and Online TV

Goodmorning Cannes, back in the Esterel room for the Internet TV Keynote by Hulu CEO Jason Kilar. Christel De Maeyer from Plugmedia sits next to me, we're in good company.

- cool little quote to set the scene -
Google paid more for DoubleClick then the Indian group Tata paid for Jaguar and Land Rover.

1. Strong trend
All indicators concerning online video have tripled over the last 24 months.

2. Atypical user experience

Three design principles:
- Not overloaded (should not look like Tokyo at night)
- My mother should be able to use it in 15 seconds without help
- Light & stylish

"There will always be more people on the internet who are not on Hulu.com, that is why we want to take this experience to as much as possible other sites." This is something we've been talking about a lot lately. Next to your own site, you have to build an ecosystem of sites around you where people can consume your content.
And Hulu.com also turns it around. If e.g. "Lost" is not available on Hulu.com, but it is available legally somewhere else on the web, Hulu.com offers this content too (links to those sites). So they actually 'promote' competitor's content for the sake of consumer comfort. That alone may just be enough to make Hulu a success.

3. What about content owners
A big plea for online TV as a form of 'sampling'. "We are in an impulse business". Give your content away online (with some advertising to pay for part of it) and when people like it, people will go buy your content to be consumed in other occasions (DVD, TV, etc.).

MIPTV Cannes: TV Keynote - Elisabeth Murdoch: Creativity without borders

... not the most creative title to start with ...

Introduction about Elisabeth's history in Cannes ... yawn ...

OK, so this is officially the most uninspired, uncreative speech of the day. Elisabeth is actually reading her speech from a nifty system, a kind of auto-cue projected on two small pieces of glass that stand about a meter away from her. It looks as if she looks in the room, but in fact she's not. Old-skool TV habits I guess ...

Some quotes, for what it's worth:
- Creativity is not hierarchical
- Creativity is not linear

That was it, I leave you with a picture from the presentation so you have at least something interesting to close the day:

Update:
Apparently more people were live blogging, or not? This was up before the speech began ...
http://www.c21media.net/news/detail.asp?area=1&article=40995

MIPTV Cannes: Green Day - Keven Wall: Live Earth employs 360 content

While TV execs swarm around David De Rothschild (no joking, at least 30 fighting to exchange business cards) Kevin Wall gets on stage. I not a big promotor of the 360 thinking (I think one should use the media best fit to reach a goal). However, "Live Earth" is BIG and and it does a great job in generating awareness for environmental issues. Well does it really? Or is it just a cool event with popular music?
Kevin Wall is Chairman & CEO of Control Room and Founder & CEO of Live Earth
Let's hear it ...

Mark Halper (Journalist) is chit-chatting with Kevin Wall ... nothing really interesting yet ...

To what extent is Live Earth eco-friendly?
Rock concerts are not eco friendly by nature. Live Earth trained the organizations extensively to be as eco-friendly as possible and as result they were 1/3 more eco-friendly then the best example until now. As audited by PWC ... which does not really convince me I must say.

Cool quote, while praising MSN for giving them a HUGE audience, and the possibility to connect back with this audience afterwards:
"Wake up to the real world: People are not watching TV"

About bandwith and servers ... as expected they did not have too much trouble (thanks to Akamai), another quote:
"The internet is ready for large scale broadcasting".
No surprise for me there, but unfortunately for Mr. Wall broadcasting is not what makes the Internet so powerful.

Looks like Kevin Wall looks a the internet as some kind of interactive TV, not so much as a communication platform. There is a point of course in the 'on-demand' feature, the global reach and the lean forward aspect of being a bit interactive.

MIPTV Cannes: Green Day - David De Rothschild: TV's big green

In the "Esterel" room at Cannes but not live blogging. I took a WiFi subscription at the hotel so will upload this later tonight. I don't have the illusion anyone is so interested in this they want to read it live. Moreover, if you read this through an RSS reader (like most), there's a big chance you will read this with some delay anyhow.

- update - just got a WiFi connection, so uploading near live now -

I don't know Mr. De Rothschild, but judging from his name I guess he's some rich guy with nothing on his hands except for a lot of money, trying to give sense to his life by giving an environmental twist to his adventures. But then again, this was somehow what I thought of Dixie Dansercourt (did I spell that right) before I actually met the guy. So, let's give David the benefit of the doubt ...

"Technically we are all adventurers, we create stories ..."

The world is in the 'dispair' phase of the Kübler-Ross model (the stages of grief) when it comes the ecological future of our globe. So how do we get away from the negative to the positive. The next step is 'acceptance'. The answer: KIDS. Kids are the future, so "Adventure Ecology" (David's company) put's kids in control of environmental things. Help them realize small things so they can discover there is a future and they can do something about it.

Nick's Big GREEN Thing, is a program David makes with/for Nicolodium where kids are challenged to take small steps towards a better world. It's done in a very interactive way, next to a really entertaining piece of TV there's all kinds of interactive features such as blogs for the kid and all kinds of other feedback mechanisms.

Great message if you ask me. I'm bringing up an 11 year-old and I want her to have a bright future, but she must learn that SHE is one of the people who will have to build her own future. In fact, this goes for all of us.

"The only thing an adventure ecologist needs is - passion!"

Keep an eye on the launch of the PlasTiki, a boat entirely build of used pet-bottles. It sets sail in december 2008.