Thompson Brand Partners

Pantone-chic

Hola Geeks:

9 different colours available for iPhone, 4 for iPad, available from a shocking £30 each in your local Apple store.

Now if you ask me, the Pantone mugs were pseudo-ironic cool, i.e. if I got one in my stocking, I'd secretly be pleased and insist on having my Earl Grey in nothing but. That chap on Come Dine With Me lining his kitchen with a spectrum on green mugs because he thought they were the height of designer cool? Get off my telly.

As for the iPhone cases - not for me thanks.

Rach x

You Are A Tourist

 

I do love a good music video, so I was very pleased to see that one of my favourite bands, Death Cab For Cutie, have come up with a really fun and innovative video for their new single "You Are A Tourist".

What makes this video even more interesting is that it was the first video to be performed live whilst being streamed over the internet, making it all the more impressive. It work's really well and give a real sense of pace to the video and the song is great.

Guy

Google it

If I had a pound for everytime I said 'Google it', my piggy bank would need to be the size of an actual pig (and not one of the super cute Teacup Pigs. See below.)
And second only to that phrase is 'What does Wikipedia say?', or words to that effect. The two go perfectly in hand - Google it and it's guaranteed (pretty much) that Wikipedia will feature in the top 5 results. For many people, this makes it the first port of call when it comes to research, firstly because we're intrinsically lazy and tend to only sift through the first page of Google hits, and then because it soon becomes clear that it's a useful resource and an automatic choice. Need that facts, quickly? Wikipedia it.

Problems do arise however; as a collaboratively built database Wikipedia is known for it's inaccuracies. Sometimes the results can be only inconvenient sparse, sometimes embarrassing inaccurate (as many students would testify) - but sometimes worryingly misleading as may have been written by sometime with more spare time than expertise.

I've learned from an interesting BBC article however that some are coming to realise the impact that Wiki has and that we are each empowered to change it. For example upon realising that a Google search of 'Breast Cancer'  brings up Wikipedia as the second search result whilst Cancer Research UK is only eighth, the charity decided to take matters into their own hands. They have assigned a task force of experts to edit the Wikipedia page to make sure it is as accurate as possible, to ensure that those researching the condition are met with up to date, easy to understand and most imporantly factually accurate information. Seems like a great idea to me - I hope that more charities and health organisations catch onto the power of the omnipotent beast that  is Wikipedia. 

Rachel

PS want more info? Google it.

Blooming Beautiful Stuff

I'm feeling a burning desire to share some musical treats of late... Happily, this is as beautiful to look at as it is to listen to. May I introduce to you, the one and only...

Bloom.

 

It's a generative music iPhone app co-designed by Brian Eno (he of atmospheric musical fame) and Peter Chilvers (musician, engineer and software designer). Put simply, you pick a mood, all of which sound more like massage oils than anything else ('Bergamot', 'Labdanum', 'Neroli'...), touch the screen as randomly as you like and listen to the wonder of throbbing, delayed sounds, echoed onscreen with fading... blobs. You can also set a sleep timer on it so you can use the hypnotic sounds to lull you to sleep. Lovely.

 

Prepare to be convinced that you truly are the ultimate composer, your talents wasted managing accounts or designing fliers - surely your life must now be dedicated to the crafting of haunting atmospheric music.

Download now from the App Store.

I-theatre

I just came across this amazing, but incredibly simple piece of gadgetry. The video below shows it in action:

 

It was invented by Jitsuro Mase, allowing the user to experience the joys of 3D without the need for dodgy looking and uncomfortable glasses.

There is no word as to whether they will be produced commerically, shame, what with Christmas coming up, it would have made a perfect stocking filler for any iPhone lover (even if the novelty would wear off after 5 minutes, I did say stocking filler...)

Guy

Say a fond farewell

It has been announced that, from January 31st Apple will be discontinuing everyones favourite server unit, the Xserve. Although to help all you Xserve lovers out there they are releasing a 'transition guide' to help catch the tears from the loss of that solid rock that has been holding your life together for so many years. 

But wait! Not all is lost.

It has then later been revealed that the Xserve is to be replaced with a shiny new 'Mac Pro Server' (fanfare). Boasting a single 2.8GHz quad-core Intel Xeon 'Nehalem' processor, 8GB (4 x 2GB) of DDR3 ECC SDRAM, a pair of 1TB (7200RPM) hard drives, one 18x SuperDrive, ATI's Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB of GDDR5 video memory, and a copy of Mac OS X Server. Not too shabby, although I can't help but feel like it should come with more hard drive space as standard, being a server and all. But I guess Apple never gives you everything you want, just enough to make you fork out a load of cash every time they release something.

 

 Mmmm Apple products.

–
Adam 

All things digital

We held a fantastic internal development session for everyone in the team yesterday. 

Our old friend and collaborator Jon Moss came in on Friday for a few hours and ran the first of a series of digital training sessions. As with most companies doing what we do, keeping ahead of what's happening in the digital world is really important and critical to the success of our business and our clients brands.

We're really cranking up our digital knowledge as it's becoming increasingly dominant in the marketing world we inhabit and keeping pace with the lightning fast developments is almost impossible.

The key take out for me was that the world has changed - and is continuing to change - at a very fast speed and a lot of the traditional marketing channels we know and trust are changing too, otherwise they'll disappear. If marketing today is more about conversations and the web allows more of these conversations to take place anytime and anywhere, then being plugged in and connected is everything.

The one thing that I do know is that a lot of clients are increasingly reluctant to commit huge sums of money to traditional media. In the past they'd have said, lets produce a huge piece of print containing everything and then send it out to everyone. I had a discussion with a client this week who previously did that but now puts most of the information online and drives traffic to the site with a combination of traditional and new media. 

Of course, this has been going on for the past 10 years but it seems to have reached the all important tipping point where it turns into a landslide.