Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Apples are just a big lump of aluminium

I was eavesdropping on a conversation about the new macbooks this morning. I admit, yes, they are very sexy looking... but still no delete key (and I'm a right mouse button addict) so I'm still not convinced.

Nonetheless I thought you might find it interesting to know a bit about the ethical impact of them.

The verdict in short is, the latest model is having a better impact:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/10/new-macbook-pro-whats-the-eco-impact-of-building-a-laptop-from-a-single-piece-of-aluminum.php

BUT obviously smelting alumnium in the first place isn't the friendliess process (remember basic chemistry lessons?) - are there alternatives? Yes is the answer get a bamboo computer which is of course made of biodegradeable elements - http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/03/asus_bamboo_eco.php.



I wonder what the average life-span of these and other laptops is? And how many people do recycle their plastic, bamboo or aluminium laptops and PC's at the end? Sadly I don't think I ever have.

Monday, October 13, 2008

I didn't write this

I didn't write this - someone else at work did; but it's insightful

The bullets below are from a report in Netimperative. They’re looking at some research commissioned by sapient (a digital marketing agency) who claim that there is a big shift to digital from traditional agencies and among marketing managers.

These are the things that they’ve mentioned on their wishlist:

Digital Marketing Needs to be Offered as an Integral Services Offering
Digital Marketing Knowledge is Crucial
Be Creative and Understand the Brand
More Use of “Pull Interactions” and Virtual Communities
Practice What You Preach

see the link for the full 411.
http://www.netimperative.com/news/2008/october/1st/agencies-of-the-future-top-five-wish-list

Friday, October 03, 2008

Nokia up, Apple down

Nokia have announced the launch of their Nokia Music service. This is a iTunes rival they've been developing across the road for about a year now (and my mate has been ranting about as part of the test team). The service, for those not in the know, is free music for a year when buying a Nokia phone (although the deal is only exclusive to the carphone warehouse which I consider a mistake). Presumably you then pay after that year. I believe there are certain advantages above iTunes; such as the DRM is different, I believe you're able to transfer the track to any device you want, i.e. your PC, PDA, MP3 Player, even your iPlayer or god forbid your Iphone (though as you already have a Nokia I'm not sure you'd do this). Read more here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7649060.stm

Interesting stat I've been bouncing around, although this is second hand information so I can't gaurantee it's validity, but apparently last year in Europe nokia accounted for 45% of the top 100 phones sold. The iPhone (surprisingly I'm sure to us niche techie market folk) did not come into this top 100.


Also, as if the fates were conspiring, the BBC has also reported that iTunes may shut down. The evil music companies are trying to charge poor sweet innocent single mum... I mean multi-national empire of evil Apple more money for the songs distrubted via iTunes. As such Apple is suggesting iTunes may shut-down. Read more here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7645537.stm

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Kylie's web feat nets her two awards

"Wow"! Is the headline for metro. Yes, yes, we all know I'm a Kylie fan (and a stereotype). But I read in metro today that kyliekonnect.com has received TWO BT Digital music awards for best for digital distribution and embracing the online world to communicate with her fans. She's also won Best Innovation. You might be asking why she "should be so lucky"?

What's impressive, and why it's relevant to Enable, is it runs a social network (successfully). It's great as you can create a profile and content on Kyliekonnect that is "especially for you". So I recommend you take a look for tips, I promise you'll be spinning around.



Sign up was easy, the "Captcha" code was legible and short (take note) and I was signed up in under 30 seconds. I'm taken straight to the profile page (which thinking about it is something common with social networks, AND makes sense). The navigation from here is a little confusing; it's very easy to find where to download ring tones as well as finding fellow Kylie fanatics so that you and they can be "2 hearts beating together". But initially I went to the bottom where there are options to do prime actions in the footer.

There are 1358 pages of profiles, 10 per page, i.e. at least 13580 public profiles!!