DOUG SCHUMACHER

experience designer + writer

Fascinating

Creativing :: New storytelling on the iPhone, Google Chrome shows some personality, and the Xbox goes social

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What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

The PhoneBook – The future of interactive storytelling?

Perhaps iPhoneBook would be more accurate. A simple children’s story book concept for integrating the interactivity of an iPhone with a physical book. The big idea here is that one book could launch an endless stream of stories. I’d think every children’s book writer in the world has to be licking their chops at the potential around this.

Read news fast with Google Fast Flip

A common complaint about reading on the Web is that it isn’t the casual, perusal of flipping through a magazine or newspaper. This may not go quite that far, but the experience does have a more relaxed feel to it. Probably in part because it takes a web page and shrinks down all the little annoying data, so all you focus on are the big articles.

Advertising in Reverse

I completely agree with the foundational premise of this approach, that online shopping is a bad experience. Maybe not as bad as driving all over town, but still. Largely inefficient results for anything other than technology products and books. The idea here is a consumer RFP process, where people submit what they’re looking for, and a specified number of companies respond with products that meet your parameters. Clearly a system like this would have to be monitored for scammers and spammers. But I’ve heard discussed the idea of an ad network in which people are shown ads based on predetermined product categories they’ve stated interest in. This takes that to a more actionable stage.

Online gangs cashing in on swine flu

Fascinating, if not alarming. Sometimes technology actually changes society, and sometimes it just gives the same behaviors a new playing field.

VoiceQuilt Personalized Keepsake – Gifts With Voice Messages And Recorded Voice Memories

The production and presentation on this is pretty cheesy, but underneath all that dairy is a smart idea. A way of bridging people who are naturally savvy internet users (many people under 30) with someone in their life who probably isn’t (their grandparents). I know personally that, given the choice between doing a task online or offline, I’ll usually do it online. It’s simply an easier place for me to navigate at this point. And I think that’s the point here. People wanting to stay in touch with their grandparents could do something like this just because they CAN do it on the internet.

Taking Its Cue From Apple, TV Explores On-Screen Applications

Cable TV companies are looking at ways to integrate the Apple apps type environment into their set top boxes to enable apps downloaded and used on TV. This story underscores two issues. 1. There’s a lot of infighting in the cable industry, and it will likely take a lot of cooperation between TV companies, cable operators and online platforms to make this work. That’s a tall order. Furthermore, Apple has been doing this on a phone – a single owner device that people carry with them everywhere. Not the TV in the family living room. 2. There isn’t anyone in the cable industry with the vision or passion of Steve Jobs to pull this off.

Twitter and Facebook Launch on the Xbox 360

Interestingly, this came out the day after the above article. Everyone’s racing to own the living room. Xbox has already been enabling various social viewing and gaming experiences, including the new Netflix social viewing capabilities. But it’s only been social within the Xbox Live subscriber base. This blows it out considerably.

Statistics Show Social Media Is Bigger Than You Think

I saw the data presented here posted somewhere, but the video component adds a nice bit o’ drama. Some remarkable stats. e.g., 35% of the books sold on Amazon are for Kindle.

If you want a conversation, say something interesting

We’ve all met people who talk and talk and talk and never say anything remotely interesting. This is a great warning to companies engaged in social media not to become that person.

What is Google Chrome OS?

Google apparently learned quite a bit from their arduous Wave launch video. This one is fun, refreshing, and actually makes me want to go out and buy a Netbook.

What Twitter’s New Geolocation Makes Possible

A list of some great examples of how this could be applied. Anyone in marketing should read this.

My latest iMedia article: “9 new marketing tools you need”

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If you’re interested in discovering any new marketing tools, especially if you work in the creative or communication fields, you might find some of these useful. I certainly have. The list includes Skitch, iPlotz, MeasureIt, and Kuler, to name a few.

And I’d love to have anyone turn around and scoop me on any new tools you’re using.

Here’s the link to the article on iMedia Connection

Creativing :: ESPNs anti-social media policy, Facebook’s ad innovations, and change isn’t just for advertising anymore

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What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

ESPN Responds to Criticism and Publishes Social Media Policy

Previously I posted someone’s prediction that going forward, more and more companies were going to have a social media policy, which I certainly agree with. Perhaps no place will these policies be more interesting than with news organizations, who butter their bread by releasing news, often over social media networks. Here’s ESPNs policy, which basically says you can’t do on your own for free what we’re paying you to do. Sounds logical on first take.

However, this policy attempts to build a wall between professional and personal social media use. It may sound easy to a lawyer, but reality is a different ball game. And wouldn’t you want some of your best writers to promote their work to their personal networks, which can be very large? Lastly, if you’re wanting to hire a top writer who may have a blog following of 100k, which she can monetize, how much more do you have to pay her to drop everything she’s built up in social media for the past 5 years to come and write for you?

Why Digital Agencies Are Indeed Ready to Lead

Probably the longest ongoing industry debate to date. I’m not sure it’s a digital vs. traditional question at all. I think it’s definitely going to be driven by someone with a powerful digital sensibility. But I feel like while agencies are fighting over whether the banner or the TV spot should come first, the bigger question is, Should this all be lead by a product development, creative messaging, or media buying mindset? Following the money across a ten year projection isn’t easy. But then if the answer was easy, there wouldn’t be a debate.

Nikon Kick Starts Campaign via Tweet

Mind you, this wasn’t just any Tweet, but rather an Ashton Kutcher Tweet. With 3.9 million Followers, he’s demonstrating that not only is a large social media following a great weapon for negotiating film contracts, but for endorsement contracts as well.

Posterous Overtakes FriendFeed, Set to Overtake Delicious.

The stat is certainly interesting, although I find this a little apples-to-oranges. At least I consider Posterous to be pretty much a content posting tool, and FriendFeed and Delicious more social media platforms. If Posterous hits that magically nebulous thing called critical mass, though, the game opens up considerably, and they can become more of whatever they want to be.

Facebook Launches Friends Of Connections Targeting For Ads

I’m surprised this isn’t generating more noise. The idea that your network of friends is a remarkably accurate predictor of your own preferences should be a closed case by now. And this is one of the only mass scale ways to target the friends of someone who’s a Fan of anything from a movie to a tennis shoe to a car. Seems like a big leap forward. If you knew someone was a Fan of a movie, wouldn’t you want to talk to their average 120 friends to try and get them all to go see it? At least the one’s in the same city?

Microsoft to Include Video Ads in Loading Screens

I’m not sure I’d recommend to many companies to run ads during games, but the loading screens are another thing. They could even add value (imagine that). Of course, there’s the temptation to make game loading times longer to support longer ads. And I wouldn’t want to tempt anyone in need of more revenues at the moment. But at the core, in-game advertising is as inevitable as ads on cable television, which was once anathema to the concept of cable. At least this approach won’t have me seeing a billboard for a new 5 blade razor while walking through Renaissance Venice playing Assassin’s Creed.

LEAKED: The Facebook Ads API

When the subject of integration comes up, the discussion is always around messaging or media spending. It’s rarely about tracking and data. But there’s enormous power in that information. This news isn’t the onset of a revolution, but certainly a good indicator of where the business of performance tracking is headed.

Mountain Dew Crowdsources Agency Review and Selection

If a small business will crowd source a $50 logo, why not a $100 million campaign? This is about all you need to read to see a major trend in the ad industry unfolding.

What EA Sees in Social Gamer Playfish

Like the ad business, the gaming business is going less big idea, more a lot of little ideas. And of course, those myriad little ideas are ongoing, and take a lot of manhours to execute.

The future of business is in ecosystems

The reality is, business models everywhere are being flipped on their heads. This post from Jeff Jarvis (What Would Google Do?) shows that the clients are facing as much tumult as the agencies they’re working with (or maybe it’s ‘not working with so much’). It’s the same story from yet another industry. Keep it small, stay nimble, and don’t stop running.

Creativing :: Craziest iPhone game evah, the future of movies, and Steve Jobs’ presentation secrets

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What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Endless Racing Game for iPhone, Next Level – Video

This is crazy. Using the compass and bluetooth, you can string together multiple iPhones to create an open-ended track that these cars race around. I’ve downloaded it, and am on the hunt for the first other 3G S phone to try it with.

Four trends that will rattle retail this Christmas

Good insights about how much mobile tech – the iPhone in particular – will change shopping this season. Mobile apps and social practices that were early-adopter technologies the past couple of years are now ready for prime time. At the core is a consumer armed with more price-checking technology and the ability to exchange shopping information at the point of purchase, thanks to iPhone apps in particular. Further driving this behavior will be financially-stretched consumers looking for price advantages anyway they can get them.

Uncovering Steve Jobs’ Presentation Secrets

A new book delves into a presentation master’s tactics.

Case Study: The NHL Uses Tweet-Ups To Energize Its Fan Base And Reach New Audiences

I’ve posted about the NHL (wisely) taking the opposite approach to the NFLs ban on Twitter for athletes. A couple of interesting things to note about this campaign: While Twitter got people involved, it was the mainstream press that generated the most noise. That’s simply about being early adopter, not about the campaign itself, although that’s becoming hard to distinguish. The second is, the turnaround time of 3 weeks. Gotta be quick to market these days.

Disney Will Give Mickey Mouse a Makeover

Mickey looks like he stepped out of GTA 4 in this screen grab from the upcoming video game Epic Mickey. A big risk? Maybe, maybe not. The Mickey brand is in decline in the US, and sometimes you’ve just gotta shake the tree. What I found most interesting in the article is that this is actually a return to Mickey’s roots. He launched in 1928 as the Bart Simpson of his day. A rather rude brute who was amorously aggressive with Minnie. I kid you not.

Amazing Fan Video

I think this is the best glimpse of the future of film making than anything I’ve seen. Taking scenes and characters from video games and compositing them with actual footage, the whole thing was shot for $500. And the potential around this is almost endless.

5 Ways To Instantly Boost Your Facebook Page Traffic

Sound, simple advice easy for anyone to follow.

The Open Graph API: What Does It Mean?

Speaking of Facebook, curious what their long-term vision is? It’s as a central authentication point for all your online activities. Put another way, wherever you go, you’ll go as a Facebook user.

Greatest Home Office of 1983

What every uber-geek had in 1983 for a home office. Right down to the Star Wars souvenirs.

Listiti: Google Alerts for Twitter Lists

Fresh off the server, this service just rolled live. The description in the title pretty much says it all. Want to know when a subject gets tweeted? Now you’ll know.

Creativing :: Futbal Hero video, Facebook’s latest marketing strategy, and Sony goes hunting for game spammers

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What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

YouTube – Kasabian Football Hero

It’s always great when a cool video is accompanied by a good song. While more documentary than music video, this is a fun riff on the Guitar Hero user interface, despite actually using open source version Frets on Fire.

Map View from AirSage

Mobile-based location and motion data. They use mobile phone data from individual handsets to predict things like traffic and general movement patters of people throughout the US. They have agreements with both carriers and manufacturers, and are a sort of white label for traffic information. They claim to be able to provide this coverage for 127 markets that cover 85% of the population. There are a lot of campaign applications for this data.

Beastman

Fun, simple street art style from an Australian artist.

Kill Your Idols

Skate culture art style with a rock and roll theme. Can’t go wrong with that.

5 Must Read Social Media Marketing Studies

Some good research and projections on social media. Highlights include a report that American’s spend 17% of their online time on social media sites, and businesses reporting that blogs have the highest social media ROI.

Tobold’s MMORPG Blog: Facebook games: Scam or useful tool?

Good assessment of the four critical components for how Facebook games hook people and pull them in to a deeper experience. Definitely reinforces why so many Facebook games feel so formulaic.

The Myth of Usability Testing

Usability testing isn’t the most exciting subject I’ve ever written on, but I’ll certainly concede it’s value, when used correctly. And that’s what this article delves into. Pitfalls and solutions for good testing methods. One interesting note is how many usability tests are given to existing users of a bad interface, and they compare those results to the same group using a new interface. Of course, given their familiarity with the bad interface, they find that one easier to use. A self-fulfilling prophecy.

Facebook’s ‘Reconnect’ Strategy is Brilliant

You’ve probably seen random people popping up on the right column on Facebook, under the title ‘Suggestions’. These are friends of yours Facebook has identified as relatively inactive on Facebook. And they’re encouraging you to reach out and get them participating. Facebook’s explosive growth is starting to flatten out. And now they need to figure out other ways to grow their business. Typically, companies tackle this by increasing usage among current users. Facebook’s approach to that — getting users to connect amongst themselves — is both genuine and cost effective. And while the term CRM isn’t mentioned anywhere in this article, it’s a blend of that, permission marketing, and user generated marketing. Pretty savvy.

Sony creates online detectives targeting ingame spammers

According to this article, Sony’s 9-member detective team has already shut down 295,000 spammer subscription accounts. And I thought my inbox got a lot of spam.

5 Fresh & Innovative Collaboration Platforms For The Creative Community

Looking to reach out and connect with other creatives? Here are some good places to do so.

Creativing :: Seinfeld on smartphones, a variety of iPhone app approaches, and development issues marketers should know

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What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

What Seinfeld thinks about Blackberries and iPhones

I don’t know what he’s been doing for the past five years, but he hasn’t lost it.

Adobe’s Photoshop.com iPhone app goes live

I’m digging this. It has the standard color balance and tinting features, a couple of special effects, and a series of preset image effects. It very fluid: Love the interface of sliding your finger left to right to adjust the strength of the effect. That part of it actually feels more intuitive and accurate than the computer app.

Volkswagen latches onto iPhone game for GTI

Not all iPhone apps have to be a big production. This game behind VWs GTI app was around for a while. Apparently VW just dropped in the GTI module, and then gave it away for free as branded content. I think this is a smart way to spend an ad budget, and suspect we’ll see more of this type thing. As the iPhone app store shoots towards a projected 100,000 apps by the end of this year, there’s a lot of great content out there with very little exposure. And VW realized they didn’t have to reinvent the wheel to make an impact.

Branded Virtual Goods Clicked 10 Times More Than Non-Branded Counterparts

An interesting report amid all the clamor about how sick people are of commercialism. Sounds like it’s more the commercials they’re sick of. There have been a million definitions about what good branding means — a promise to the customer; what people say about you; the value of a company once you subtract all the assets. This finding is a testament that good brands still matter. And whatever branding represents, it’s something people respond to.

Microsoft Cuts Deal With Twitter and Facebook to Integrate Feeds With Bing

Clearly a lot written on this subject this week. Beyond the amusing love/hate quadrangle going on between Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, the big headline for me is that this is the first time I’m aware of that Google has had a search competitor who was able to generate search results for content that they couldn’t. That combined with Bing’s already positive reviews and this should get interesting.

Martha Stewart Says It’s About Omnipresence

Love her or not so much, she’s build a powerful brand and shown resilience when the chips were down. Her statement about omnipresence is really an amalgam of concepts including touch point marketing, CRM, brand consistency, and social media’s best practices. This also underscores the need for authenticity, as the more places and forms a brand’s communications live in, the harder it becomes to forge a message that’s not true to the company’s core.

Infographic of the Day: Watch the World Wake Up, on Twitter

Called ‘Good Morning’, this animated infographic takes tweets that say “Good Morning” and charts them on a rotating globe graphic by what time of morning that was tweeted. Early, mid or late. What results is a wave of colors sweeping across a region of the world. What’s most noticeable in both of these is the lack of activity on Twitter in China. Maybe he just couldn’t parse Mandarin, but if that’s not the case, it’s a striking difference.

An Inside Look at 4 Developer Ecosystems

Facebook, iPhone, Twitter, and Google Wave. A look at the pros and cons of developing on each. As creative marketing solutions continue to be heavily defined by the platforms they live on, an understanding of the benefits and challenges of those four majors is not only important for developers, but also the creatives, strategists, producers, and account people involved in the project.

iPlotz: wireframing, mockups and prototyping for websites and applications

One of my favorite new Web hosted apps. If you do any level of wireframing or diagramming and aren’t wed to an installed app like Omnigraffle, this is worth looking into. Some very smart time saving and customizing features.

Full Circle In Sight As Inventor Of The World Wide Web Signs Up For Twitter

Tim Berners-Lee, credited with inventing the Web, has found Twitter, and apparently isn’t impressed. I love that the guy who gave us the wild and wacky chaos of HTML finds the Twitter interface confusing.

Creativing :: Twitter Celebrity Death Match, Info Gets Entertaining, And The Future Of Everything

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My weekly update of what’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Demi versus Perez? See Twitter

So celebrity angst is blowing up on Twitter. Let’s see, you take a group of people flush with cash and  big egos from getting lots of adulation, a good percentage of them are relatively unstable, and, they’ve had handlers taking care of most of their public presence and interface with the media. Now let’s suddenly give them a line of communication direct to each other yet in front of millions of gawking fans and make it a format that practically encourages short, shout-like bursts. Hmmm.

Flickr Co-Founder Caterina Fake on the Value of Viral Loops

Some interesting points in this peek behind the curtain of the inception and launch of a quintessential Web 2.0 site. For one, like a lot of great internet companies, it started out as something very different from how it went big. The idea sprang, not from photography, but from conversations. Adding photos to conversations, versus making photos sharable and viral. By contrast, the other major photo sites at the time, Ophoto, Shutterfly and Snapfish, all came with baggage about how photo sites should behave. As online experiences continue to become a key part of many company’s complete brand package, remember that it’s not only about conceiving and developing these experiences, but also improving them over time. In some cases, radical changes are needed to make things happen.

Visualization Lab at The New York Times

It’s nice to see a paper like the Times — going through one of the biggest economic struggles in it’s history — continue to push ahead on the innovation front. The Visualization Lab lets you take content from data sets, articles, and speeches (like Obama and Lincoln Inaugural addresses), and crunch them into various visualizations.  The options include visualizing text, comparing values, relationships among data points, maps, and assorted charts. Perhaps the best example is a chart mapping religious affiliation to political party membership. In a time where much news is formulaic and regurgitated, this is a great way of adding impact and meaning to their content.

50 Years of Space Exploration in a cool info graph

More ways to work with information. This pops graphically, and also shows how extensive our space exploration has been. While 2001: A Space Odyssey made space feel remote and empty, this makes our trips to space feel like a habit trail of errands and shopping trips around town.

Pew Internet Reports Future of the Internet III – Selected quotes

If you’re even remotely interested in the future, this is a good read. A selection of quotes from various industry leaders on where things are going. Topics covered include the future of connectivity, social tolerance, intellectual property law and copyright, privacy and transparency, and virtual and augmented reality. What I like best is that these projections are for the year 2020, not 2050. Blink and you’ll miss it.

4 Ways Social Media is Changing Business

While the future can seem so, oh, futuristic, these are changes going on right now. There are a lot of attempts at summarizing what’s currently going on in the business world — and this certainly isn’t exhaustive — but these four boil it down concisely: 1. From “Trying to Sell” to “Making Connections”; 2. From “Large Campaigns” to “Small Acts”; 3. From “Controlling Our Image” to “Being Ourselves”; and 4. From “Hard To Reach” to “Available Anywhere”. All of which are reflected in From “Broadcasting Messages” to “Engaging In Conversations”.

Average Internet User Now Spends 68 Hours Per Month Online

While the average is still well below television, it’s gaining steadily. And in a few years, the line between the two could be impossible to draw, making the whole comparison a moot point. (I’d say watching Hulu on a big screen far more emotionally tied to TV than the Internet.) Perhaps most striking is that in those 68 hours, users visit an average of 2,700 sites. Yes, that means they spend an average of 57 seconds on each site. Marketers, there lies the challenge.

New App Tries to Fill the Need for a Dislike Button on Facebook

How many times have I wanted to ‘dislike’ something? It even feels weird ‘liking’ a good story about a tragic incident. I’m not sure we need to break down our stream of emotions into a digitized ranking system (like pretty much the rest of the Web?), but here’s one company’s take on it. One problem I see here is the overbearing presence of the threadsy brand name in the post. Takes the punch out of ‘abhorring’ something.

Simple, Fluid Navigation System

This takes about a minute to check out, and is worth every second. While some of it is in Portuguese and the content seems random, it’s not difficult to imagine how this could be applied to a number of situations. I do think the UI’s hot zones and responsiveness needs a little tweaking, but the central idea is there.

Alice in Wonderland Pictures

Tim Burton’s latest work looks amazing.