DOUG SCHUMACHER

experience designer + writer

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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.

Creativing :: The first Augmented Reality app for the iPhone in US, multi-perspective storytelling on HBO, and a font that wants to lick you

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

Yelp Brings First US Augmented Reality App to iPhone Store

Crazy good, if you have an iPhone with GPS. IMO, the most impressive thing I’ve seen on the iPhone yet. If you don’t have an iPhone, the vid at the bottom takes you through the experience, which for me included the 9 times shaking the iPhone before “Monocle”, the AR app, kicked in. Well worth it, though.

Mobile Marketing: Brands Can Build a Successful App Strategy

With the Yelp AR as inspiration for mobile apps, here’s a good overview on what that can entail. While apps have been over-hyped — at least from a revenue standpoint — they can still be great solutions for brands, when done right. I think the right perspective is to view them not as a big idea by themselves, but as part of an overall, cohesive brand strategy.

BarTab – Facebook gifting hits the bars

Facebook’s first move to take their gifting and e-com platform off the web and into, in this case, a bar. There’s a bit of a ‘why hasn’t this been done before’ factor for me, which is a good sign for the developer. I like this idea. Especially when people use it to buy me a drink.

HBO Imagine – The Affair – multi-perspective storytelling

I’m not sure when this came out, but it’s an impressive take on alternate storytelling methods. Personally, I find a lot of explorations in this area to be intriguing, but not engaging. This one pulled me in.

“I Am A”, where the mundane becomes fascinating and the outrageous suddenly seems normal

A funny meme going on over at Reddit. It’s basically a post in the form of a statement about yourself, truthful or otherwise. Many of them end in AMA (Ask Me Anything), adding a new dimension to the thread. These range from “I worked at a major record label for years, AMA” to “I’m on acid, AMA”. You can imagine where it goes from there.

Ad.ly – In-Stream Advertising on Twitter

The idea is, as a Twitterer, you sign up with ad network Ad.ly and they insert one post a day into your Twitter stream. I like the concept in principle, but think the fact that it’s a paid post, and not even posted by the user, should be more readily identified. Ideally, this would go into the stream without even appearing to be from the user. Perhaps not technically possible, because like most of the technical developments involving Twitter, this one doesn’t involve Twitter. It’s all developed by a 3rd party. Strange? Welcome to business in the 21st century.

Social-Media: Is Seth Godin Protecting Your Brand?

Interesting idea involving Seth Godin and his Squidoo property. He’s pulling together a lot of public and open source data feeds to create a dashboard of a given brand’s online conversation. And for $400 a month, brands can have a hand in what consumers see by editing some of the surrounding text, highlight certain posts, redirecting visitors to their site, etc. If this was a stand-alone service, it wouldn’t be a threat to brands, because it would be mostly invisible. The individual conversations themselves would be more likely to rise to the top of Google search results than the dashboard page. But this site is contained within Seth’s Squidoo site, who’s content is doing very well in Google’s rankings. Thus brands may be forced to play. That’s why one source in the article calls this “brand hijacking”. I’d say it’s either that, or smart product development.

Google Introduces Sidewiki For Annotating Webpages

The concept is simple. In the Google toolbar is an option to leave comments in a sidebar that pops up on any given webpage. Something interesting to note is that this concept was done about 10 years ago. I think it was Gator. And it actually caused lawsuits over the idea of enabling users to make comments visible when other users come to your webpage. (The comments are visible in a sidebar in the browser, not the actual page. There’s a good video here on how this works.) This time, I wouldn’t be surprised if the idea really takes off. What’s different this time? 1. There’s definitely a heightened sense of community now more than ever. 2. There’s a lot less trust in government and corporations now than ever (the previous lawsuits centered around people leaving negative comments on corporate sites). 3. This time, it’s Google.

The Pioneer Woman, an Internet and publishing sensation

Fantastic story about a woman who “moved out of LA to marry the Marlboro Man and live on a ranch”, as she puts it. A couple of years ago, she started blogging, mostly to give her mom something to read abut their lives. Today, she has about 13 million page views a month. At the core of it all is not a fluke, but someone with a distinct voice writing about something people have a curiosity in.

Swing City – Wild customized font for editorial

Crazy example of typography in editorial. This brings up an interesting dilemma. As publishers slash costs, there will be less budget for developing visuals like this. And beyond budget, as publishing moves online, a font treatment like this will likely cease to exist, because headlines for articles just about have to be in HTML for any sort of search engine compliance. And publishers will be less inclined to spend money on something that has diminishing odds of driving interest and readership.

Creativing :: The IRS and LAPD give social media the stamp of approval

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

Scale: The Importance of Cafe-Shaped Experiences

A good excerpt from Chris Brogan’s new book “Trust Agents”. It speaks to how the scope of much product development and it’s related marketing is downsizing, or going niche. And with both products and marketing going less mass, it requires a more personal touch. That effects profitability for sales and cost-effectiveness for marketing. The challenge of doing more for less is all-too-familiar in marketing circles today. This article is a bet that won’t be changing any time soon. It’s an interesting dilemma, because the big question many marketers have for social media is its scalability. Companies accustomed to running national mass media campaigns who then try social media as a more personal approach to marketing often report the lack of a blip on the radar screen of sales or traffic. Perhaps the mass media model will need to take further hits in acceptance or credibility for this trend to completely play out. Or, maybe social media will find new ways to scale the impact of more personal conversations. Whatever the case, a more personalized approach takes time and diligence. And companies accustomed to mass media who try to bring that mindset to social media are likely in for a difficult transition.

Apple – Movie Trailers – Art & Copy

I’ve seen this going around the web, and apparently it opens today in a few small markets. While Mad Men will broaden the appeal of this, it’s still likely to be a special interest movie. I’m curious how soon films like this will go straight to online viewing. If they could get 5% of the ad industry to see it for $2, I can’t imagine there aren’t profits to be had.

New Site for CMO’s

CMO.com. Curious what they paid for the URL. Launched by Omniture, they’re accepting content submissions, but seem to be mostly aggregating at the moment.

New Facebook Privacy Policies Will Have A Significant Impact On Platform Applications

I’ve been writing a lot on privacy issues lately, which is odd for a creative guy. But I’m confident these issues are going to have a strong bearing on creative capabilities, particularly in social media, over the next several years. Seriously, most people have no idea what information is out there on them, and how easily it can be dug up. Facebook seems to be taking the self-regulatory approach that the alcohol and tobacco industries have taken for years. But they have their challenges. Reading Facebook’s Privacy Settings section reads like the Ts and Cs of most websites. So I’m not expecting people to really take this over for themselves. Facebook in general isn’t known for it’s great user interface, so I’m curious how they’ll handle such a complex issue with a mass audience in time before this blows up.

Is ‘Friending’ in Your Future? Better Pay Your Taxes First

On the subject of Privacy, you may be surprised to know that the IRS is hanging out on social media sites, looking for confirmation or contradiction of your latest filing. Seems like small potatoes stuff, but tax revenues for the government are at devastatingly low numbers due to the economy. They’re looking behind the sofa cushions for loose change.

LAPD releases security cam vid of break-in at Lindsey Lohan’s house

Speaking of government agencies using social media, LAPD released this break-in video. On YouTube. While this makes sense, I think the big story is, the IRS and now LAPD are both using social media to improve their performance. Yet as recent surveys have shown, there are still CMOs of major corporations that aren’t convinced that social media has a role to play in their marketing efforts. Interesting.

New campaign for CWs “The Vampire Diaries”: Tying cause marketing with for-profit business objectives

Not every marketing story can have an ‘green’ or ‘socially conscious’ angle to it. But here’s a TV show tying into the Red Cross as a way to promote both. I like this as a way of bringing a heightened social awareness to the campaign, which feels compassionate and relevant in troubled times like this.

Justin (shitmydadsays) on Twitter

A pretty good story. A simple daily Tweet of what a 28 year old overhears from his 73 year old dad. And the growth has been remarkable. I first noted this last Tuesday, when ‘Justin’ had 53,000 followers. Earlier this morning, it was at 149,000. It’s now over 151k. Like Daily Candy, it’s simple in structure — just one posting a day. A good reminder that an impacting message doesn’t have to have large budgets or extensive production timelines. There was a rumor that this was tied to V Australia, which I’ve not been able to confirm. However, if this does turn out to be marketer-driven, I’ll be curious to see both a) Who it’s for, and b) How people will react.

Cheese and Burger Society

Fun site from the Wisconsin Cheese council. I’m always up for a new burger or sandwich recipe. I do think there’s a lot more they could have done in the way of social interactions around this site, though. But good content all the same.

Photoshop Artworks

Striking photoshopping applied to portrait photography.

Creativing :: iPhone is #1 on Flickr, crasher squirrels, and a lot of funky new tech

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

iPhone to Become #1 Camera on Flickr

I don’t take this as so much a testament to the greatness of the iPhone camera as much as the power of convenience. In the same way the ‘always on’ aspect of broadband was probably even more powerful than the bandwidth speed, the ‘always with you’ aspect of mobile phone cameras means exponentially more photo opps. Or at least perceived photo opps.

Upload Your Songs and See If You’ve Got a Hit!

This sounds space age, but I’m pretty doubtful that we’ve gotten this far with AI yet that a computer can tell you how big of a hit your home-brewed mp3 is going to be. Or more likely, not. I’m going to get a musician friend of mine to try this (i.e., someone who could upload something that won’t crash the computer).

8 Facebook Applications Now Accepting Facebook Credits

They’re mostly games right at the moment. However, the story isn’t about who’s doing this now, but rather where this will go now that 3rd parties can use the Facebook ‘credits’ platform. I think there’s going to be a lot of interesting opportunities for brands in this area. It might not be a new line of business, but if they can inject their dwindling marketing budgets with bits of revenue, I think they’ll jump at it.

Top 10 Crasher Squirrels

You’ve probably heard the story about the Crasher Squirel at Banff National Park. These are some of the funnier pics on this photo meme.

Google Forced to Reveal Identity of Offensive Blogger

Last week’s “On The Media” podcast covered this exact issue, and the consensus was that brands, including Google, are backed by the courts in not pulling offensive comments about another person. And the courts were backing them. This changes that considerably, but also opens up what would seem to be a titanic can of worms. If saying something offensive and incorrect online means legal action, the lawyers must be parading in the streets.

Translation Party

Aptly titled. Enter your phrase and this will translate it into Japanese, back to English, then to Japanese again, and finally English. It’s a good example of the difference between translating and interpreting. Also, a cautionary tale against using any of the auto-translator tools.

Graphic Data with Design

Regular readers will know I have a thing about data visualization. It dates back to my earliest days of subscribing to Wired, I’m sure. These are excellent examples of how data can be made to look anything but drab.

Click and Draw to Navigate

Then there’s my interest in navigation. In particular I like the cummulative visited link approach. It really makes sense, and seems so obvious I’m surprised it hasn’t been used before (that I know of).