SensoryMetrics

There’s something magical and ethereal about Matt Harding’s quest to “dance badly” in all of the planet’s corners. You may have seen the original video from 2006, in March a second installment was released. the premise is simple… Matt dances, carefree, badly, in wonderful offbeat locales: Korea’s DMZ, Antarctica, Galapagos, Yemen… 42 countries in 14 months. Nice job if you can get it huh?

Stride Gum (A Cadbury brand) is a master at internet marketing. The understated nature of its Matt sponsorship is a credit to the company. The Matt videos are YouTube allstars. Last week, Matt released the HiRes version to Vimeo – a much better experience!
BTW – according to Wikipedia, the accompanying music features a traditional Solomon Islands song and dialect.

Watch this beautiful experience here:

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Keep your eyes peeled for Where The Hell Is Mitch!

Popularity: 25%

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Business, Media stride-gum, viral-video, wherethehellismatt

Finally those difficult to use and awkward little buttons on iGoogle are about to be nixed. The problem with the UI is that the ‘remove this’ button marked with an ‘x’ is right next to the ‘expand this’ button marked with a ‘+’. If you’re like me you’re forever deleting the application you’re trying to use.

A new improved iGoogle is now in testing and the annoying delete buttons have been removed. This new version will also be transforming iGoogle into a social network with some Facebook like features. I just hope you’ll be able to turn those features off. Now where again is that delete button?

Popularity: 27%

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Usability, User Experience, Web Apps Google, social-media

In 1941 a ballpoint pen cost $9. With such a high cost, trusty Consumer Reports built this pen testing machine to compare how long different brands of pens would last. Nearly 70 years later, consumers are still being pillaged by the ink cartridge pirates…

A short history of ink gouging:
1888 – John J. Loud gets patent for un-manufacturable ballpoint pen
1938 – The Biro brothers of Hungary patent a manufacturable pen – pens cost hundred$
1960 – BIC battles the ink pirates – begins selling the ubiquitous 29 cent pen
1984 – Ink jet printers are introduced

Popularity: 23%

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Business, Innovation, Patents, Pirates ballpoint pen, bic, consumer-reports, ink-cartridges, ink-pirates, pen-testing

The interweb has done it again! A video ad for US-based department store JC Penney is working viral magic. It’s winning praise from ad agencies and You Tube fans. It even won an award at the Cannes Advertising Award last week. It even has the potential to transform JC Penney’s boring stodgy middle-American image into a “sassy, fun and irreverent” brand that appeals to teens.

There’s only one problem. The ad wasn’t made by JC Penney. In fact the boring, stodgy, middle-American execs of the company are outraged and insist on taking…

any action it can to have the ad removed from the Internet. “It’s obviously inappropriate and nothing we would ever condone,” he said. “We’re very disappointed that our logo and brand position were used in that way.”

The clever ad was apparently produced “after-hours” by a contractor hired by ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi. According to the The Wall Street Journal,

The video, called “Speed Dressing,” ends with the teens heading down to the basement as the words “Today’s the day to get away with it” flash on the screen, echoing Penney’s use of the phrase “Today’s the day to…” in a series of ads it launched last year. Penney’s logo and “Every Day Matters” slogan then appear on the screen.

watch it here, while you can!

Popularity: 71%

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Business, Media, Pirates brand, ever-day-matters, Image, JC-Penney, speed-dressing, YouTube

Our friends at iotum released their latest product yesterday amid a lot of positive industry buzz, and Hollywood-style excitement. Calliflower extends the functionality of iotum’s Free Conference Calling service on Facebook. FCC has been used by 200,000 people.

Calliflower is a web-based conference service that features an engaging easy to use interface (3 simple steps!). Business users can quickly set up conference calls, or use it to present content. Colliflower is also launching Communiques which features scheduled live chats with interesting people. Sign up here to listen to William Shatner talk about his latest book. This Communique is live on Thursday (6-8pm Pacific Time).

Here’s a screenshot for creating a new conference:

Congratulations to Alec and his team!

Popularity: 35%

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Business, Events, Innovation, Media, SaaS, Software, Usability, User Experience, Web 3.0, Web Apps Alec-Saunders, calliflower, iotum

Have you ever had to repair a small missing chunk of caulking? It requires a whole tube – when sometimes you just want a touch-up. This GE package idea is brilliant. No more caulking waste!

via The DieLine

Popularity: 13%

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Innovation, User Experience GE-caulk

If you happen to be bored in France this week, you might want to attend the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)’s board meeting.

BTW – ICANN is the organization that “runs” the internet.

A few proposed changes could significantly change our beloved cloud. First, ICANN is looking at ways to limit domain tasting. In case you’re wondering, Sensorymetrics.com tastes like chicken. ICANN currently offers a 5-day money back guarantee on your registration. This was originally offered so that registrants could test the marketability of certain domains. Currently – this feature is used mainly by scammers. In 2007, GoDaddy reported that out of 55.1 million domain registrations, 51.5 million were refunded – leaving only 3.6 million actual paid registrations.

In other ICANN news, France24 reports that personalized TLDs could be a reality…

Watch out for dot-mitch coming soon!

Paul Twomey, the president of ICANN, tells the French daily, Les Echos, that you’ll even be able to register domains in alphabets other than the Roman standard, such as Cyrillic or Chinese.

The Internet regulators, Twomey says, have already tested 15 languages to make sure that the segue to new domains will run smoothly on Microsoft, Mozilla or Apple browsers.

Those with complaints may soon be asked to visit www-dot-whereismydomain-dot-disappointed.

With the potential explosion of TLDs, the loser would be navigation usability – although this would likely be solved with improved search and bookmarking tools!

Popularity: 23%

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Business, Events, Long Tail, Media, Usability, User Experience, Web 3.0, Web Apps domain-tasting, icann, personalizedTLDs

LOL – ok – so super home producer FatBoy Slim – recruits David Byrne (of Talking Heads fame) and makes this retro 60s “group” party video. This may be slightly NSFW – as they say… but not really…

The best part is Pong with the “middle finger” ball!! Relax – just turn up the volume! (I’m reporting this now only because 100k people have seen this on YouTube – SM – early music adopters!)

Popularity: 17%

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Innovation, Long Tail, Web 3.0 fatboyslim, toejam

TagClouds were born out of Social Bookmaking – trying to represent relative content popularity… Here’s a tool that let’s you visualize the complexity of your world, as you define it. It’s Wordle by Jonathan Feinberg! This is terrific for spicing up a Powerpoint presentation!

BTW – no offense to anyone / anything I left out… I like a lot of things!

Via IdeeBlog

Popularity: 18%

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Long Tail, Media, SaaS, User Experience, Web 3.0 favouritethings, ideeInc, tagclouds, wordle

Driving through the small Quebec town of Portage-Du-Fort this afternoon, I came across this real-estate jewel. The seller’s marketing approach is oddly contradictory! It’s for sale (implying value), yet it’s dangerous… go away!

This got me thinking about the dozens of chats I’d had with software startups about pricing models – or lack of. Developing a sound business model is tough work. Perhaps the web 2.0 “model” is a convenient excuse for ignoring monetization: “we’re gonna focus on traffic, then worry about making money – you know, like Google does it!” Well, even Google knows that nothing is really free. Somebody’s paying for it somewhere along the chain.

Selling software is very different than selling consumer goods. Many established pricing models don’t apply. For example, cost-plus pricing takes into account the cost of raw materials, manufacturing, packaging, shipping, warranty returns, margins for the distribution channel, and direct & co-marketing. Then profit.

In the software world – development and sales are the main cost-centers. Instead of cost-plus, look at pricing to value. If a customer using your product makes an extra $5,000 in profit (whether by enabling new services or cost reduction) surely your product is worth more than “free”. What’s it worth? $20? $99? $450? If your product is indeed as good as you say it is – then go for $450!

Marketing guru Seth Godin agrees,

Your sales force and your customers may scream that you need to lower your price.
It’s not true.
You need to increase your value. If people don’t want to pay, it’s because you’re not delivering enough value for the money you’re charging.
You’re not selling a commodity unless you want to.

If you’re still not convinced, read Ronald J. Bakker’s book Pricing on Purpose: Creating and Capturing Value.

There is one more important step before the cash starts to roll in. The most difficult part (for the non-salesman) is to stare into your customer’s eyes and demand they pay you the money you deserve, without flinching. That’s why great salespeople are hard to come by!

Popularity: 25%

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Business, Innovation, Long Tail, SaaS, Software, Web 3.0, Web Apps pricing-on-purpose, pricing-to-value, ronald-bakker, selling-software, seth-godin