May

29

I love my Sony Ericsson K800i

Filed Under The ramblings of a creative consultant | 9 Comments

I have a new ‘phone. It is a beautiful new mobile ‘phone. It is a beautiful new Sony Ericsson K800i and I love it.

Yeah, of course it is just like any other typical ‘phone. It has bluetooth, it has a camera (although it is a Cybershot!), you can put some mp3’s on it and it also has radio but there is something on this ‘phone that is EVEN better and has made me fall in love with Sony Ericsson… It can recieve RSS feeds! Thats crazy and I love it.

So, what do I mean by an RSS feed?;

RSS stands for ‘Rich Site Summary’ and you can download a piece of software on your computer that basically sends you a summary of websites and blogs pretty much as soon as they are updated. This means that you dont have to keep heading over to these websites your RSS feed will update you as and when it happens.

On my mac I have 100’s of websites that my RSS feeds update me over - the latest news, the latest entertainment and media news, various blogs that I follow and much more. However, my K800i has an RSS feed which is damn exciting. This means that when I am on the road I can still keep updated with information from the blogs that I follow.. yeah!

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All praise to the Sony Ericsson K800i

May

29

Mark Bowness loves twitter and wonders why!

Filed Under The ramblings of a creative consultant | 1 Comment

A lot of people on internet land are going completely crazy over a website called twitter.

Evan Williams and Biz Stone are co-owners of what they have described as a social networking and micro-blogging site. The actual website describes it service as;

“Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you’re doing. For some friends you might want instant mobile updates—for others, you can just check the web. Invite your friends to Twitter and decide how connected you want you to be.”

Still dont get it? Let me simplify. Via twitter you update your friends my answering one question, ‘What are you doing?’ You have 153 characters to inform the world of what you are up too. You can have ‘friends’, you can develop your own ‘followers’ and you inform the world of what you are up too using msn, instant messaging or SMS. It’s brilliant.

If you head over to the twitter site you will see the front page constantly being updated with people’s tweets, the site changes rapidly as a Global addiction is occuring and thousands of people are becoming twitter-holics. It is quite intriguing to see what people are up too however, I wonder what the point is? There is no REAL point but it is intriguing and has become a very successful start up with apparently some great hopes for the future.

As a product is launched along these lines, internet fans create mash-up’s which are combinations open source projects and there are some great twitter mash-ups. One particulary mash-up I love is twittervision, which is a mash-up of google maps and twitter creating a web page that moves around the world displaying individuals tweets literally as they happen. Incredible!

Check it out: www.twitter.com
Check it out: www.twittervision.com

May

26

Random tribewanted coincidences leads to marriage

Filed Under The ramblings of a creative consultant | 3 Comments

So, I come up with the idea for tribewanted, I then meet Ben Keene who decides to take on this business venture with me. We then launched a quest to find a female Tribal TV Presenter who would ‘present’ the story to the rest of the tribe members via our online community and we were inundated with over 100 e-mails from tribal TV presenter wanabee’s. After an audition process we then picked Becky Hunter who was clearly the most talented. Meanwhile tribewanted had launched and our first tribe members had signed up, including a Ryan Smith.

We then zoom over to the 1st of September when Becky was on the island and Ryan as a first footer, the rest is history and an announcement is made:

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“After meeting on Vorovoro last year, we are so excited to be coming back to that beautiful island. Not only are we going to be celebrating the one year anniversary of Tribewanted but also we will be getting married the following week on the 8th of Septmeber!

Vorovoro and all the people there are so special to us and without the Tribewanted project, we never would have met. That’s why it is the perfect place for us to begin the rest of our lives together.

We can’t wait to see all the friendly faces of the island family and get back in to island life. What better way to honeymoon! It’s been an amazing year for us both since Tribewanted and we’re looking forward to beginning the next one, right back where it all began.

Thanks to Ben for welcoming us back and to Tui Mali for giving us his blessing to be married on Vorovoro, it truly means so much to us.

All the best

Ryan & (soon to be) Becky Smith ;-)”

The fact that one individual comes up with an idea, a team forms around him who are a vital team to see that project happen, a snow ball of events take place and something magical like a wedding occurs. I sit here wondering what random and crazy coincidences that could have led to something special have never occured because the dreamers did not dare to launch their dream.

May

25

Mark Bowness loves Joost

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I have been hearing about Joost for a long time and had been dying to take a peak when a friend at a TV production company sent me an invite. Joost is currently in beta mode on an invite only basis, I couldnt wait to see what was going on behind the scenes.

So, what is Joost?

Joost is an online TV community that numerous TV production companies have signed up to in order to air their programming on their own specific ‘channel’. Joost then enables the user to watch high quality TV programming, on demand… How good is that? There are a whole range of Joost channels from cars to comedy, from documentaries to episodes. Joost provides an experience that enables it’s users to watch TV but also enables them to interact. You can chat in real time to people watching the same programmes, you can add friends and you can interact with other TV fans. Plus, all this is free!

So, whats the big deal?

Taking a look at Joost has fasincated me. It is interesting to see the merging of media and cross multi-media platforms. The ability for people to log on, for free and view their favourite shows of past and present moves the media into the here and now, on demand age. Joost is also provides a new outlet for the backlog of programming that TV production companies have previously broadcast that have up until now been firmly locked away in their cupboards.

Joost is an exciting move forward for the media world and by all accounts Joost should be launching in the UK shortly.

Check it out: www.joost.com
Check it out: www.babelgum.com (A similar internet based on demand tv platform)

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