Montag, 10. Januar 2005

The WiFi Trekker. Their WFS-1 might not the hottest WiFi detector on the block now that Canary Wireless has their Digital Hotspotter on the way, but SmartID has resurfaced with the WiFi Trekker, a brand new model which can automatically alert you whenever you stumble upon some WiFi[~]you just press a button on it twice and it will beep when you[base ']re within range of a hotspot. Please someone build this into a laptop bag for us, ok? [Via I4U] [Engadget] 3:26:50 PM    comment []

James Bond 007 Master Set. It[base ']s hard not to want to be James Bond[~]he[base ']s a great dresser, smooth with the ladies and gets to have the best gadgets and gear. The S.T. Dupont 007 Set pays homage to the master. It comes with a table lighter, Ligne 2 lighter, Gatsby lighter, Orpheo Fountain pen and ballpoint, bullet cufflinks, and bullet keyring. They are arranged in the box to resemble a gun and the entire set is done in a brushed gun metal gray with a guilloche pattern to mimic the look of James Bond[base ']s famous Walther PPK. Unfortunately, James Bond fans, the kit doesn[base ']t assemble into an actual gun. Still the bullet-themed lighters are pretty slick. The kit sells for around $7870 and other items in the series are available separately. [Luxist] 3:25:09 PM    comment []

Web 2.0 Weekly Wrap-up, 2-8 January 2005. I thought I'd trial a new feature on Read/Write Web, a weekly summary of news and views relating to Web 2.0 (Web as platform). Most of the links will be sourced from my linkblog, which btw I'm now managing with del.icio.us. So here are some highlights from this week: 1. Weblications is a must-read article by Adam Rifkin, that clearly explains the benefits of using the Web as a platform. He cites Gmail in particular, which I too cited in my Best Web 2.0 Companies of 2004 article. Choice quote: "They don't see that the power of Weblications is that "simplicity and flexibility beat optimization and power in a world where connectivity is key", as Adam Bosworth put it." NB: see also The Web Way by Adam. 2. Tim Porter on morph, re content and containers. Continuing the Tom Curley discussion, Tim gets to the nub of the issue for journalists: "Adaptation, flexibility, innovation, intentional decision-making, distinctive content, recognizable point of view Â[^] these are the qualities of the news organizations that will flourish in the coming decade." See also this great post by Jay Rosen from PressThink and a Simon Waldman article on Permanence (also from PressThink). 3. Mitch Kapor converts to Web 2.0! This is big news because of course Mitch made his fortune with the first killer app for the PC - Lotus 1-2-3 - and now he's building a smart client app called Chandler. Choice quote from Mitch: "For 25 years, I've preached the superiority of the PC as an application platform, but times change and reconsideration is in order. The web browser and the infrastructure of the World Wide Web is on the cusp of bettering its aging cousin, the desktop-based graphical user interface for common PC applications." 4. Shore Communications: 2005 Content Business Models. Quote: "All-singing, all-dancing proprietary content vendor interfaces and exclusive distribution are "out": being able to deliver information built to "just-in-time" custom client specifications, facilitating the collection, distribution and linking of content from individuals and institutions and providing content through any and all distribution channels desired by a wallet-holder are "in" - especially those that build upon the search and aggregation tools which enable users to create content value on their desktops and in portable devices." 5. Six Apart acquires LiveJournal. You will have heard this news already, but here are some good quotes and stats: - Six Apart pov: "Many of our weaknesses are LiveJournal's strengths and many of LiveJournal's weaknesses are our strengths." - LJ pov: "...we'll continue to focus on technology and they'll help us make our stuff pretty and usable. They want LiveJournal to stay LiveJournal..." - LJ stats show what SA is getting: Age Distribution is clustered around 15-20 year olds; 67% female users; 2.4 million "active in some way" accounts (5.6 million total). [Read/Write Web] 10:41:33 AM    comment []

Business Blogging. I mentioned before Christmas that I'm starting a new business and now's the time to let you all know what it is. It's a new business blogging company, called Weblog Solutions Ltd. It's a 50/50 venture with another New Zealand blogger, who's a bit shy about revealing his identity right now (but a lot of you will be familiar with him and his work, because he's developed some products which many bloggers all over the world use on a daily basis). We're targeting New Zealand companies in particular with our new business venture, but we're also looking for overseas work - to take advantage of the exchange rate! You can read more about us and our services on the blog - which has recently soft-launched. Comments and advice greatly appreciated, especially if you're a New Zealander who is interested in our company! Anyway for this week's paid Marqui post, I thought it'd be timely to review Marqui's new blog - called Marqui's world. My new company is all about business blogs, so what better topic to write about in my sponsored post. Let's take a look then at Marqui's effort at setting up a blog and compare it to another recent company blog on the scene - General Motor's GM Fastlane Blog (which I wrote about on the Weblog Solutions blog this weekend). Content They both started about the same time - the first post for Marqui's world was on 30 December and GM Fastlane Blog's first post was January 5. In terms of content, GM's blog got off to a voluminous start. They've already posted 9 items and some of them are lengthy. It looks like they had a bunch of posts pre-prepared (a couple of speeches converted into posts, links to interviews, biographies, plus some actual conversational posts). Pre-preparing content is a practice I'd recommend if you're launching (any) new blog, so top marks to GM for that. And what's more, the content is compelling - evidenced by the 68 comments (and still growing) that have been made to a post about GM's new Saturn brand. Marqui's world has only 3 posts so far - and none in the New Year. So they're off to a slow start. The one piece of advice I'd give to them straight off the bat is to post regularly - momentum is vital in keeping blogs afloat. I should note though that GM probably has more resources to throw at their blog, being a huge multinational company and all. Target Audience GM are obviously targeting car enthusiasts and, judging by all the comments they're receiving, they seem to be striking a chord with that audience. As for Marqui, they are targeting marketers. The 3 items so far have been an introductory post, a post entitled Firing up the imagination, and a post about an SEO paper. Nothing yet that will bring marketers scurrying out of their business lunches and commenting on Marqui's blog. And remember that one of the main goals of an external business blog is to get conversations going with your customers. However I do think the tone of Marqui's blog is encouraging. It's conversational and informal - that's good. But the subject matter isn't compelling enough yet. Nothing against SEO papers, but it's hardly the sort of thing that your customers are going to get all excited about. Actually, the best piece of content I've seen from Marqui isn't even on the blog - it was a write-up by Janet Johnson about "a fascinating breakfast meeting in Portland about innovation and risk taking in marketing [which] yielded surprising insights". OK, that's the kind of thing you should be blogging! Talk about your marketing theories, about innovation in your field, about "surprising insights". That is much more likely to get marketers conversing with you, than a dry paper about search engine optimization. Links If you look at the GM blog, you'll notice they've started to compile a list of links to other car enthusiast websites and "blogs we like". In the blogging world, this is known as a 'blogroll' (they may be going out of fashion on the homepage, but generally most bloggers keep a blogroll somewhere). It's particularly important to maintain a blogroll on your homepage if you're a new business blog looking to connect to a community of readers. My suggestion to Marqui is to find out which are the marketing blogs that interest you, then link to them on the side of your blog. What's more, regularly read what they're blogging about and comment on that on your own blog (and leave comments on theirs). Two-way communication is important not just with your target audience, but your community of like minds. Design I mentioned above that GM probably has many more resources to throw at their blog - and it shows in their slick design. It's a bit unfair to ask Marqui to match that, but one thing I suggest to Marqui is to differentiate your blog more from your main website. Currently it looks too same-y. For the blog to capture the imagination of your customers, and compel them to converse with you, it needs to have its own identity and (most importantly) personality. Summary GM's new blog is off to a great start and the conversations with their customers (and potential customers) seem to be flowing like wine already. Marqui is by comparison off to a slow start, but I think the tone of writing they've adopted is promising. They just need to come up with some more compelling content that their target audience (marketers) will be excited by. I also suggest they find out who their blogging community is (other marketing blogs, primarily), and regularly read and link to them. Also a distinct design for their blog, to give it its own personality, would not go amiss. That's just a start... OK here's where I add a plug for my new company, Weblog Solutions Ltd :-) Marqui, we're available to help you improve your blog! That invitation extends to any other company or organization wanting to get started in the blogosphere, or wanting to put some pep into their current blog. Feel free to contact us to talk. Disclosure: I mentioned and linked to Marqui as part of my sponsorship arrangement with them. See here for details. [Read/Write Web] 10:40:36 AM    comment []

Low-tech "Hipster PDA" (cards and a paperclip) hacks. Cory Doctorow: Merlin Mann's "43 Folders" blog is devoted to turning the advice in David Allen's amazing productivity book Getting Things Done into material that is suited to people who lead technological lifestyles (Getting Things Done barely mentions computers and doesn't have anything on stuff like hacking producivity with perl scripts). But sometimes Merlin goes low-tech, as he did with his amazing post from last September on the "Hipster PDA" -- a bunch of index cards held together with a binder clip. Now he's extending the Hipster PDA with tips and tricks he's derived since then. It's great stuff -- Craig of Craigslist carries around old business cards in his shirtpocket with notes to himself in tiny writing on the back of it. Hipster PDA is like that on steroids. The Hipster PDA (Parietal Disgorgement Aid) is a fully extensible system for coordinating incoming and outgoing data for any aspect of your life and work. It scales brilliantly, degrades gracefully, supports optional categories and beaming, and is configurable to an unlimited number of options. Best of all, the Hipster PDA fits into your hip pocket and costs practically nothing to purchase and maintain. Let s make one together. Link [Eyebeam reBlog] 10:38:47 AM    comment []

Hotel Victor. The Miami Herald reports on the new Hotel Victor. The hotel has all the mega-posh earmarks of a South Beach luxury hotel and is already receiving the sort of breathless press that precedes the opening of a new hotel. No wonder then Hotel Victor is making sure that its secret origin remains under wraps. It[base ']s (gasp!) a Hyatt. Hotel Victor[base ']s draws include a [base "]vibe manager[per thou] (basically a concierge of coolness), a ice covered vodka bar and a a lobby aquarium full of jellyfish. The article quotes Hyatt VP Victor Lopez. [base "]If you say I[base ']m going to the Hyatt South Beach, their perception of what they[base ']re going to get is totally different from this.[per thou] Rooms at the Hotel Victor run upwards of $450, which is a bit above standard Hyatt prices. But the Hotel Victor is full of luxuries such as pillow menus, bath menus and a cigar menu with $1,500 pre-embargo Cubans. Can a Hyatt be cool? Or is it a bit like the Olive Garden suddenly serving wagyu beef and Cristal? [Luxist] 10:37:05 AM    comment []

New Hotel Trend--The Non-Hot Spot. We[base ']re all familiar with luxury hotels in South Beach, New York or Los Angeles. But Greenwood, Mississippi, Aurora, Ohio and Fargo, North Dakota? Today on Ohio.com there is an article about Walden Country Inn and Stables, a luxury country inn which we recently wrote about when they became Ohio[base ']s first five-diamond rated resort. The country inn has its own movie theater, private loft suites and an indoor horse arena that is one of it[base ']s primary draws. Recently, Forbes.com listed their places to stay in 2005 and on that list was The Alluvian in Greenwood, Mississippi. The Alluvian, owned by the Viking Range Company, is a luxury hotel with stainless steel fireplaces, flat-screen TVs and the type of decor one would associate with a New York boutique hotel. The place we really want to stay at is Hotel Donaldson, an art-filled boutique hotel in Fargo, North Dakota, a place we learned about when Hotel Chatter interviewed the owner. At Hotel Donaldson each suite is designed around the work of a single artist. They also have a rooftop hot tub, a restaurant featuring locally-grown organic meat and produce, heated ceramic tile floors and one room has a soak tub that fills from the ceiling (shown here). Is the promise of a gorgeous place to stay enough to lure you to a place you never considered visiting? [Luxist] 10:36:24 AM    comment []

T-string update Last December Mia reported on the coolness of the T-STRINGS mobile phone holder , and they've just gotten a whole lot cooler. According to the the folks at T-STRING , 200 people wore them in the NY Marathon, providing the makers with information to help make them even better. They went on to explain that the T-STRING, which is patented worldwide, "is truly engineered" and is the product of a delicate balance of not being too wide (uncomfortable) nor too narrow (unstable). They were invented by Wouter Francois and Carlo Bakker in Holland. T-STRING promises to add new designs every month to their current line which includes campy styles like faux rabbit fur and faux leopard, as well as denim, twill, and black leather. The T-STRING is also available wholesale and can be custom printed with a corporate logo from promotional products distributors like www.CustomPrintedEverything.com . The T-STRING retails for $9.99 and consumers can purchase them at www.t-string.com . - camilla [Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women] 10:33:37 AM    comment []

The joy of being frozen. Fancy a $3,250 Canadian trip to the edge of the Arctic, sleeping five nights in an igloo that you have to build? Churchill Wild, an eco-tourism company, invites travelers to an exploration of the Polar Bear Lodge area by dogsled, snowmobile or tundra buggy while looking for polar bears, caribou and seals. Possibility to skip the DIY igloo for a nearby heated lodge. Via WandaLust < LA Times. The second Absolut Icebar in the world after that of Stockholm, opened a few months ago in Milan . Everything is made from crystal clear ice from the Torne river in Sweden, including the wall, counter, sofa, lamps, the glasses that serve the cocktails, etc. Temperature inside is -5 centigrades, so thermal cape and a pair of gloves are handed to you at the entrance. The ice will last six months and the bar will then be reconstructed. Via Milano da bere. While we're at it, don't miss the pictures of last winter Snow Show in Lapland. Sixty icons and emerging artists and architects designed large scale structures out of snow and ice. Related entry: the Ice Hotel. [we make money not art] 10:32:15 AM    comment []

The anti-dust noise ointment Japanese company Fumakilla is selling the House Dust Block , an alternative to face surgeon-like masks. Just rub the ointment inside your nose and it will form a protective membrane that prevents dust from entering while allowing you to breath. Once again: thank you Japan! Via Japan Today . - regine [Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women] 10:17:38 AM    comment []