Sweeeeeeet!

Here is a picture of the MotionPlus, and what Nintendo says about it:

Nintendo’s upcoming Wii MotionPlus accessory for the revolutionary Wii Remote controller again redefines game control, by more quickly and accurately reflecting motions in a 3-D space. The Wii MotionPlus accessory attaches to the end of the Wii Remote and, combined with the accelerometer and the sensor bar, allows for more comprehensive tracking of a player’s arm position and orientation, providing players with an unmatched level of precision and immersion.

I really love Nintendo for innovating in the field of interface design in gaming and technology. Looking forward to checking this out and all the new possibilities this is opening up, to further spur game design.

Games publishers: Bring ‘em on!

 Are you a startup in the Online advertising business? The econnomy is in a very shaky state and many companies think about their future.

This is what the Google Trends graph looks like for the search term “recession”:

Google Trends: term “recession” in searches and news.

I found a great article on “Futuristic Play by Andrew Chen” called Online advertising during a recession: 5 key trends for ad-based startups

Ultimately, the dynamics here are complex and uncertain, but here some of the key trends worth watching if you’re an advertising-based startup:

1. Accelerating movement of offline to online ad spend
2. Brand areas weak, direct response will be less affected
3. Weak areas to watch: Video, social networks, communication, etc.
4. Rise of direct-to-consumer revenues?
5. Timing is everything

A very interesting read, lots of good facts and links to other articles in there. Another good source with tips and advices is the article on folio called Selling Advertising in a Recession - How to convince marketers now is a good time to buy.

There could be a recession coming—or not—but some advertisers are behaving as if one has already started. Responding to media buyers looking to cut ad budgets has become a priority.

Let me know what your strategy is and if you have other great articles covering this topic.

Jusr saw this over on GigaOM and I have to say I really love this great post titled:  Real World of Warcraft: Is Offline Part of the Plan?

A real-world MMO has one more advantage: Revenues. The opportunities for sponsorship, or for driving players to real-world locations to make real-world purchases, make Blizzard’s current revenues look tiny by comparison.

I think the Offline world is often overlooked when it comes to Online worlds and social media sites and the fact that it is very impotant to link the On- and Offline worlds together, let them interact.

Some of this is certainly happening with e.g. Facebook, Google, Yahoo! [... you name it] dev events, but why not for “everyone”, the normal user?

 A very interesting post from Darren Herman (his blog: DarrenHerman.com) over at AdAge.com: How to Plan Media in a Non-Linear World :

We live in a non-linear world but are taught linear business processes. Yikes. We’re doomed. Grab the Starburst and let’s head down to the cellar to hide.

It’s 2008. Wake up. Drink some Patron and lets start thinking rational: How do we harness our non-linear world?

New digital brief given to [insert agency name] by a client.
“Can someone put together a ComScore run?”
RFP the top 25 on the list
Media planning time …
 [...]
Linear thinking would lead us to pick the same process over time and usually select the top sites on the list and work with them. Non-linear forces us to work harder and sometimes, chaotic, but allows us to participate in a non-linear world much better. With this said, we need to start developing the tools, processes and technologies to harness our knowledge in a non-linear world. I haven’t seen many tools that do this, but I’m certainly willing to listen.

Darren is asking for input on new ways and tools/technologies to support and tap into the new possibilities which arise in this very fragmented Online world.I think the “chaotic element” is what makes this question really challenging. How do you account = plan for this?

Are you gunning for the big properties or what is your process to target your audience?

The blogosphere in the USs is growing into “big biz” says eMarketer in its recent article called: Who doesn’t read a blog now and then?

So, we would have 16% of the internet users in the US “producing” content! A really significant number which needs to be reflected even more in marketing campaigns in 2012 than what we see today.

Let’s look at the numbers on the “consuming” side of the blogospere:

We’ll reach 70% of “blog readers” of all Internet users in the US. This underlines the important role blogs will inhabit by 2012 and how important it is for brands to “play nice” with the still young “communication channel”.

Next: What money will be spent on advertising on the pages of blogs in the US 2007-2012?

From the eMarketer article:

“A big factor driving the increases is the niche orientation of the blogosphere,” says Mr. Verna. 

“Once a haven for techies to communicate with each other in their own lingo, blogs have long since shed this mantle and tapped into the zeitgeist of American culture,” says Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, The Blogosphere: A Mass Movement from Grass Roots. “There are blogs for virtually everything under the sun, from celebrity gossip to political commentary to the most mundane personal minutiae.”

Are you writing your own blog or contribute to one?

Looks like we might need to watch through more ads Online, too. Online viewing moving close to the “TV model”?

MarketingVOX: ABC to Pump More Ads into Online Commercial Breaks

Starting this week, ABC will insert multiple commercials into ad breaks within shows streamed online. Each break typically serves one :15 or :30 commercial.

Because the medium is new, the standard for streaming TV shows is one spot per break. Some sites, like Hulu, give users the option of watching a single two-minute trailer at the beginning of a show, in exchange for an otherwise uninterrupted experience.

Is this a loosing battle for the TV industry in its “traditional definition”? Time to move your media to the Internet and build a new business model? Or not yet?

From AdAge.com: Adults Spend 1/2 Their Media Hours With TV

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — It seems marketers and TV executives are having a half-full, half-empty kind of argument over TV’s prowess. The results of a survey on consumer media habits commissioned by the Television Bureau of Advertising show that adult consumers spend a little over half of their media hours with TV. Meanwhile, a recent survey of marketers and advertisers by the Association of National Advertisers found many were losing confidence in TV as a medium.

From AdAge.com: Marketers Losing Confidence in TV

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Whether traditional TV advertising has truly lost its power, marketers and advertisers are already eager to find alternatives. The Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research’s fourth biennial TV and Technology survey shows a dramatic loss of confidence in the medium as the industry gears up to explore new ad formats and forms of video commercials.

Indeed, two thirds of the C-level-executive respondents said they are watching the medium closely, up from just half two years ago, and 87% of respondents said they were going to be spending more on web ads in the coming year. The study was conducted in January and is based on a survey of 78 leading advertisers across all major industries and categories. 

Came across a new service called Drop.io which was mentioned on ZDNet: Weekend Gadget Guidance: Send a fax for free — digitally.

Well, no more, folks: Drop.io, a fairly innovative file-sharing service, sends and receives faxes for free.

It works like this: to send a fax, upload a document to Drop.io. Enter the fax number and click “Fax.” Boom — no beeps to haunt you in your sleep.
On the receiving end, Drop.io will generate a cover sheet you then e-mail to the sender. As long as they use your cover page on the fax, it will end up in your Drop.io account as a PDF.

It is true that a free fax service is always good to have But on the receiving side for this fax solution to work you need to provide a special cover sheet to receive it in your “drop” and becomes available to download. This makes it not a solution for sensitive data which you don’t intend to share freely (even if you make your drop private…. ).

This is how the site describes its service:

Drop.io enables you to create simple private exchange points called “drops.”

The service has no email signup and no “accounts.” Each drop is private, and only as accessible as you choose to deliberately make it. Create multiple drops, add any type of media, and share or subscribe as you want. 

And it gets even better: Drop.io supports different media types, like photos, videos and (text) posts! You also have the option to embed a widget in your blog or social network of choice. This enables visitors to upload and download files to/from your drop. You get 100MB per drop for free and you can add more storage for $10/GB. Embed the files located in your drop in another (e.g. blog) page and add comment to the files. This makes it a truly social app which should attract further users/traffic.

Please leave a comment and provide your feedback if you work with the service or want to test it out @ Drop.io!

Check out the new site called bizak - The Web… Quantified.

You go to the website, enter “your biz numbers” and receive and estimate, called The Bizak Estimate. It creates an apples to apples comparison and benchmark that can be used as a starting point for comparative purposes.

The Site is created by Tom O’Keefe, you find further info about him on his site here: tomokeefe.com.

Bizak is a business network which computes the profitability of internet startups and connects entrepreneurs with investors.

Entrepreneurs - compute your business valuation, compare your performance to the industry and connect with investors.

Investors - evaluate the earnings potential of internet startups, compare them to industry benchmarks, and connect with entrepreneurs.

Student Entrepreneurs - are you a student entrepreneur? Bizak can help!

Came across a chart from eMarketer about the distribution of e-commerce in Europe mentioned in the article: The UK Internet Boom:

This is a very interesting find. I would not expect the UK to be this far ahead in Internet sales. Also if you take the size of e.g. UK vs Germany into consideration. To underline their numbers eMarketer says in the article mentioned above:

“A long tradition of catalog and mail-order shopping has contributed to the practice of online buying in the UK,” says Ms. von Abrams. 

Is this why so many companies from the US pick the UK as their first “destination” in Europe (besides the language, of course…)? Or is it the other way round, that UK is “exposed” to have more Online shopping choices due to the fact, that there is no language barrier which stops them from ordering on US Internet e-commerce sites?