Lougheed

Micro blogging is ready to pop

It sounds like Zappos CEO is experimenting with Twitter.  He's giving away pairs of shoes to his followers on the soon-to-be-household name microblogging site.  I have to admit I'm starting to like the idea of another channel for broadcasting the minutiae of my day for the amusement of my friends.  There are hundreds of uses for real-time multicasting.  For those new to the idea, real-time multicasting means composing and sending messages that can be broadcast to your contacts who have chosen to "follow" you via email, SMS, or instant messenger.  (In short, no matter where you are, you can communicate in real time with anyone).  The web community is buzzing loudly about Twitter and I predict we'll see the mainstream media catch on very soon.

Shitter

My friend Peter Munck, executive creative director of at Blast Radius in Toronto, said something funny about a year ago.  Upon discovering how people were using Twitter to keep the world abreast of their every micro moment, a flash of disbelief and anger came across his face.  "That's it!" he shouted.  "I'm starting Shitter.  Every time I take a crap you're going to know about it!".  On careful reflection I can't remember if I was actually there or if I heard this story through my friend Derek Vaz, but it's a great 2007 moment.

blue pushpins

I started to play with Google's My Maps during a sleepless night and had fun.  I put pushpins in the places I've travelled to do web consulting over the years.  During my days at Cap Gemini it wasn't uncommon to travel 4 days a week (New York, Detroit, Ottawa) for months at a time which was pretty crazy looking back.

Thank God for the Internet

http://www.beerhunter.ca/

Best. Use of Google maps. Ever.

Good Experience Live

At the end of this month, I'm headed down to New York City to attend the Good Experience Live conference.  GEL is hosted by Mark Hurst, one of the co-founders of Creative Good.  If you haven't been, try to go.  Last year's was an eclectic group of speakers with not much in common other than something amazing to share.  For instance, we saw Eloma Barnes, an amazing orator who stunned the audience with one of Dr. Martin Luther King's speeches.  The piercing bass of her voice and the emotion she evoked was pretty incredible to witness.

Brian Collis of Ogilvy + Mather told the crowd that brand was a promise made over time.  He asked the audience to close their eyes and imagine being on a boat at sea.  All of a sudden on the horizon, you see another ship with an unmistakable black flag.  His suggestion was that the skull and crossbones is one of the world's most enduring brands.  He pulled out a massive pirate flag and yelled "you're fucked!" which was actually pretty damn funny.

I signed up for the two-day event this year.  The second day is another crop of speakers, but the first is made up of field trips.  This is the one I signed up for:

The street: Michael Counts and the Counts Media team (see yellowarrow) have created an interactive experience, taking place in Manhattan, using their creative blend of multimedia tools and tricks. We're not allowed to say more - that would spoil the surprise! Note - Attendees on this track must bring their own device (PDA, Blackberry, phone, etc.) that can send and receive text messages, and must already know how to use the device to send and receive text messages.

That sounded like the most fun to me.  Check out the other options here.  I'll report back soon.