Man with Talent

Who doesn't know Heineken beer is not from this planet... Heineken is active in more that 170 countries and belongs to the largest brewers in the whole world! I really love its commercials and its marketingstrategy. Every commercial of this brand is just amazing! This is because they all work! You hear people talk about the great commercials everywhere, which is a good sign for the company. And what do you think of the slogan 'Biertje?'? It has become an everyday expression (especially if you drink every day;)).

A half an hour ago, I saw the new commercial of 2010 (again!). I couldn't resist to share this commercial with you. Soooo...here it is!

Have a look and enjoy:

Do you wanna play a game??

Spil Games( an online gamecompany) and Hyves have designed a new game portal: http://www.hyves.nl/games( you can have a look). A logical move from these organisations. Earlier this year, Spil has taken steps to Facebook with Zapapa and now also on Hyves. Especially with the introduction of Hyves payment, which makes micropayments possible, it is of course very interesting for Spil Games.

For completeness, the entire press release is shown below:

Hyves en SPIL GAMES kondigen online gameplatform voor vrienden aan (2010)

Hyves Games Sociaal netwerk Hyves en online spelletjesbedrijf SPIL GAMES werken samen aan het nieuwe gameplatform www.hyves.nl/games. Deze stap speelt in op de trend van de consument om steeds meer tijd door te brengen op sociale netwerken als Hyves en op gamesites als Spelletjes.nl. Deze samenwerking stelt gebruikers in staat om games met Hyves-vrienden te spelen.

Het sociale aspect staat centraal bij de samenwerking. Zo worden per spel de highscores van vrienden getoond en kunnen vrienden worden uitgedaagd een hogere score te behalen. Ten tijde van de lancering zijn er meer dan 300 games beschikbaar, waaronder bubble shooters, racespellen en andere populaire games. Bovendien is er wekelijks nieuwe content update van Hyves Games.

Peter Driessen, CEO van SPIL GAMES: “Hyves Games powered by Zapapa.nl is een aanvulling op de 45 spelletjessites die wij wereldwijd exploiteren en leent zich bij uitstek voor deze samenwerking. Spelers kunnen op dit platform hun eigen vrienden uitdagen of spelen om een topscore neer te zetten. Deze sociale manier van gamen sluit dus perfect aan bij de toenemende interesse van het publiek om met vrienden te spelen.”

Marc de Vries, CEO van Hyves: “SPIL GAMES is de wereldmarktleider in online casual gamesites. We zijn dan ook erg blij met deze samenwerking, dankzij hun games kunnen Hyvers nog meer tijd met hun vrienden besteden op Hyves.”

iPhone 4G prototype: found on a bar floor??!

People lose their iPhones all the time. But it's not often that a super-secret prototype of a not-yet-released iPhone is carelessly left on the floor of a local bar.

Apparently that's what happened anyway... That this would happen to a company like Apple, which takes security of its products very seriously, is very surprising. Apple has not yet said there even is an iPhone 4G(although it's a safe bet there will be based on the pattern of the past three years). Steve Jobs has said that new iPhone software is coming "this summer," but the company has stopped short of acknowledging that new hardware is in the works.

Normally the first time we see a new Apple product it is in jobs' hands while standing on a stage in front of an audience of geeks and journalists. So what happened this time?

Engadget posted photographs what is said might be the forthcoming phone (iPhone 4G). Here's Engadget's explanation on how the images surfaced:

Apparently the phone was found on the floor of a San Jose bar inside of an iPhone 3G case. Right now we don't have a ton of info on the device in question, but we can tell you that it apparently has a front facing camera (!), 80GB of storage (weird, right?), and isn't booting at this point (though it was previously, and running an OS that was decidedly new). It's not clear if this is definitely a production model, or just a prototype that found its way into the world, but it's certainly a compelling design, no matter how you look at it.

How did this happen? For a company for whom secrecy is indispensable, consider the stories about the iPad prototypes that were bolted to tables for developers to work on and hidden under cloths, something so careless as to leave one of the most wanted consumer devices in a public place seems incredibly stupid.

3D Fairy Tales

Koreans bring children's books to life! We all know that interactive picture books are crowding the paper picture albums, but Korean researchers are taking children's book to a even higher level with 3D-animations.


These books, which are presenting 3D-animations are called 'Digilog Books'. When you look into the book with special glasses, you can see the fairy tales in a reality form. Each page contains a 3D-animation, which is a part of the chapter of the book. The animations do also have sound, but they only developed two fairy tales in this special way.

Below you can see a short video of this new technology:


In my point of view, this will be a wonderful implementation in the information technology. Kids would like this three dimensional idea very much!

FRENCH CONNECTION

The Britisch French Connection Group PLC, known from its brutal marketing, wants to close the large half of its stores in the VS.



French Connection already exists for 40 years, but is really known for its commercials with the word ‘FCUK’. The company's agency used an internal company moniker, FCUK (French Connection United Kingdom), as the conceptual basis for a newly brash brand image. Featured on product labels, storefronts, and in advertising that overtly encouraged the subliminal rearrangement of the acronym, the letters FCUK proved an immensely successful marketing device.

The primary target for the FCUK Her and FCUK Him fragrance lines was 18- to 25-year-olds, but FCUK also placed "Scent to Bed" advertisements in publications primarily read by much younger teenage girls. Given the ubiquity of sexual imagery in the media at the time, sexual appeals to young people had to be extremely explicit or daring to stand out. FCUK's ability to make a splash in a hypersexual environment was primarily a function of its products' brand name, which, in combination with the clear sexual implications of the ad imagery and the "Scent to Bed" tagline, amounted to one of the bluntest sexual appeals in recent mainstream U.S. advertising.

The company has always been really successful, until the profit loss in the past two years. French Connection had a net loss of 24, 9 million pounds on a sales volume of 214,3 million pounds this year.

Besides the stores in the US, all stores in Japan and Northern-Europe also will be closed, in order to focus on Great Britain and Ireland.

Below, you can see a commercial of FCUK:

Strategy On Facebook

TILBURG - The University of Tilburg is recruiting master students Service Engineering recruit with a campaign on Facebook. The Universities of Stuttgart (Germany) and Crete (Greece) are also participating.

If the campaign succeeds, the largest e-card in the world could be created!!
The main subject Service Engineering trains students to work on 'the cutting edge of software services and global business.'
There is a need for such scientists and therefore the European Commission offer scholarships from the program for toptalents. This is wonderful! Since this is a specific target group, which recording to the university is very active in so-called social networks, there is a campaign designed especially for them: Hello World.


E-card

Tilburg University puts a promotional text on Facebook(you know all about Facebook, i guess?). Interested students can send the text to others who might want to social engineer. In this way their photo is placed on an e-card.
The more others approach the student, the bigger the picture is!... The more participants, the greater the map on the Internet. The campaign was launched Tuesday and has already drawn 64 participants.

Vogue.it

The Italian Vogue has re-launched its English website. New is that the content is divided into three topics: Black Vogue, Vogue Curvy and Vogue Talents.

Black Vogue is about the dark talent in the fashion industry. Think about the supermodel Tyra Banks!
Vogue Curvy logically be filled with women with a figure formed. This subject is currently supported by an interview with perhaps the most famous plus-size model Crystal Renn.
Vogue Talents seems finally to act on broader issues. This issue is currently up-coming fashion label Rodarte cited.

Why the Italian Vogue presents these three issues separately is not clear. The medium, however, seems to want to jump on them in the current changes in the fashion world on issues of discrimination and chronic underweight are more exposed.

I think it's a brilliant idea! It is very important that 'other' people also get a chance in this modelling world. However, I think it's remarkable that they only launch these three topics on the website of Vogue. Why don't they also change this in their magazine. What makes it easier to change or append an issue on the website? is there any difference between the two kinds of media??

By the way...did you now that there is another new application for the iPhone? (Blog about iBritney) Take a look for yourself...!!

A new technology that will change the world

The software giant Microsoft has built a new touchscreen computer: a coffee table that will change the world! The next generation of computer interfaces will be hands-on.

You can see a first look of this new technology(video).



And what do you think? It shows the magic of touch and i think it definitely is the technology of the future!It is a really amazing development and i believe it could really change the world.

Now, I'll exemplify this new touchscreen computer.

The name Surface comes from "surface computing," and Microsoft envisions the coffee-table machine as the first of many such devices. Surface computing uses a blend of wireless protocols, special machine-readable tags and shape recognition to seamlessly merge the real and the virtual world (also called "blended reality.") The table can be built with a variety of wireless transceivers, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and is designed to sync instantly with any device that touches its surface.

One of the key components of surface computing is a "multitouch" screen. It is an idea that has been floating around the research community since the 1980s and is swiftly becoming a hip new product interface. Apple's new iPhone has multitouch scrolling and picture manipulation. Multitouch devices accept input from multiple fingers and multiple users simultaneously, allowing for complex gestures, including grabbing, stretching, swiveling and sliding virtual objects across the table. Its interface is the exact opposite of the personal computer: cooperative, hands-on, and designed for public spaces.

Britney on your iPhone

Today, I read an article in a Dutch magazine. So, guess what? It's about iBritney!!

There is a new application for iPhone, which is called 'It's Britney!' Britney is keeping her fans up to date thanks to this new programme. You don't even have to go to twitter.com anymore to read her tweets.



"In bezit van een iPhone en Britneyfan? Download dan de It's Britney! applicatie voor 1.59euro. Britney houdt haar fans sinds kort via dit programmaatje als eerste op de hoogte als er wat te melden valt. Naast exclusieve berichtjes, lees je ook gewoon haar tweets en BS (BulShit) Alerts. Verder kun je jezelf transformeren tot Britney's danser(es), honderden foto's bekijken en als je de iPhone schudt hoor je haar ineens roepen: 'It's Britney Bitch!' Britney is hiermee de allereerste artiest met zo'n applicatie. Wedden dat er binnenkort meer volgen?!"

I think it's crazy, but it is very popular! Who would pay 1.59euros for being called a bitch by Britney? Not me...

iCrap

You should think that it has been gone for a while now.. A modern little 'languagething' that makes your mind spinning: once is fun, twice is already very stupid, so why do i see it everywhere now???

Of course, I'm talking about the prefix 'i'. The computercompany Apple has started the whole thing. iPod, iTunes, iBook. There will be some marketing department behind all this, where they were out of control or something like that.... ""i" is about individuality, i see people who own their lives, i see a modern society where we will let each other be ourselves, be you!" Such kind of crap. However, this crap is really succesfull, because the i-prefix turns up everywhere. iFood.com wants to inform about healthy food, iLove is a contact advertising site, iSex also. iGarden is a garden shop, iWomen is software to track your menstrual cycle, iChristian is something with merchandising about Jezus. iBearness doesn't exist yet, but it wont take long... Not long ago, everything was with 'e-'. E-mail just became cool, then they came up with names lake e-commerce, e-dentifier, e-buddy, e-learning or eBay. But it has always something to do with 'electronic'. The prefix 'i' doesn't meen a thing.... you can simply fling it for any word. The same thing is going to happen with 'you', because YouTube is very populair. What do I think about the 'i'??? I think it is iCrap!

BLOGGING

From now on, I will post a very interesting BLOG every week.
I'm supposed to do this for the course I'm taking at my university: 'Media Use in Organizations'. The main subject of all blogs is IT(Information Technology).

Enjoy yourself on this site;)