Clare Townhill

'Keeping you Kosher via iPhone'

Welcome to the app. economy.
Good piece in the Grauniad yesterday about the financial winners (anyone?) and losers (largely the developers) of applications or, as they've slipped quickly and seamlessly into popular conversation, apps. Here's one of my favourites:

'Then there was an app called I Am Rich designed by satirical German developer Armin Heinrich. Once downloaded and activated, it displayed a glowing, red "ruby" on the user's iPhone screen – an enduring testament to the owner's lack of taste and their excess of wherewithal. Heinrich wrote in his App Store description: "The red icon on your iPhone or iPod Touch always reminds you (and others when you show it to them) that you were able to afford this . . . It's a work of art with no hidden function at all." Reportedly, eight customers paid $999.99 for I Am Rich, before Apple decided to withdraw it from the store.'

The religious apps are pretty interesting too: iBlessing, which is billed as "keeping you kosher via iPhone" and tells you the correct prayer to recite in Hebrew over a particular dish. The Catholic church has an app called iBreviary, which "allows the believer to pray simply via an intuitive interface", according to a communique from the Vatican's Council for Social Communications. iBreviary, which is free, is updated with prayers each day. There is also an app that keeps its users updated with the pope's recent speeches, so if the pope condemns gay social networking apps such as Grindr, they will probably be the first to know.

The Guardian: The App Economy

"Twitter is for Old People"

Odd piece in The Times about a 15 year old intern's report on teen media consumption that seemingly is setting investment bankers' inboxes alight:

Radio With online sites streaming music for free they do not bother, as services such as last.fm do this advert free and users can choose the songs they want instead of listening to what the radio presenter/DJ chooses

Newspapers No teenager that I know of regularly reads a newspaper, as most do not have the time and cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text while they could watch the news summarised on the internet or on TV

Internet Facebook is the most common, with nearly everyone with an internet connection registered. On the other hand, teenagers do not use Twitter

Music They are very reluctant to pay for it (most having never bought a CD) Teenagers from higher income families use iPods and those from lower income families use mobile phones

Directories Real directories contain listings for builders and florists, which are services teenagers do not require. They can get the information free on the internet

Viral/Outdoor Marketing “Most teenagers enjoy and support viral marketing... Teenagers see adverts on websites (pop-ups, banner ads) as extremely annoying and pointless...they are portrayed in such a negative light that no one follows them.”

Cinema Teenagers visit the cinema more often when they are in the lower end of teendom but as they approach 15 they go to the cinema a lot less. This is because of the pricing; at 15 they have to pay the adult price. Also it is possible to buy a pirated DVD of the film at the time of release, and these cost much less than a cinema ticket

Mobile phones The general view is that Sony Ericsson phones are superior, because of their long list of features, built-in Walkman capacity and value

Whilst it's tempting to scoff at such seemingly obvious observations (apart from his view on cinema which doesn't seem to ring true) perhaps we should reflect on the kind of thing that a media agency might have produced if asked the same question. Interestingly he doesn't offer an opinion on TV - doesn't he consider TV to be media?

The Times: Twitter is for old people, work experience whiz-kid tells bankers

Brand U.0

Watch Personal Branding, David Armano, Critical Mass in Technology  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Lying or Crazy?

Skinner Inbox

 
“We’re polluting the pool, and we don’t see the cost,” said Dan Ariely, professor of behavioral economics at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business and author of the Predictably Irrational blog. “When you’re carbon-copying 30 people on an e-mail, you’ve just stolen 30 seconds of 30 people’s lives. If we had to pay 25 cents per e-mail, we’d think more carefully about what we wrote, and probably write fewer e-mails.”

I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about email recently, partly because of the projects I'm involved with at the moment for BlackBerry and partly becuase I'm developing a bit of an inbox/email checking compulsion. In the corporate world, e-mail overload has led to concerns about diminishing productivity, prompting a group of technology firms, including Microsoft, Intel and Google, to band together to devise solutions. Intel has experimented with e-mail free Fridays, (in the UK Nestle has also started doing this too) and Google unveiled a Gmail feature that locks users out of e-mail for short periods of time. E-mail motivates humans the same way random schedules of reinforcement motivated rats in experiments conducted by behaviorist researcher B.F. Skinner. People check inboxes obsessively in the small but irresistible hope of reward: an important e-mail that requires immediate response.

'Hello voicemail my old friend'

'Hello voicemail, my old friend. I've called for tech support again. I ignored my boss' warning. I called on a Monday morning. Now it's evening, and my dinner first grew cold -- and then grew mold. I'm still on hold. I'm listening to the sounds of silence. I don't think you understand. I think your phone lines are unmanned. I punched every touch tone I was told, but I still spent 18 hours on hold. It's not enough your software crashed my Mac and it constantly hangs and bombs -- it erased my ROMS! Now the Mac makes the sounds of silence. In my dreams I fantasize of wreaking vengeance on you guys. Say your motorcycle crashes. Blood comes gushing from your gashes. With your fading strength, you call 9-1-1 and you pray for a trained MD. But you get me. And you listen to the sounds of silence.'

A Tweet Philosophy

If a man has a Twitter blog but never tweets does it really exist? Philosopher Alain de Botton has 2,877 followers but never says a word. Is he like the rest of us for whom signing up was more than enough to sate and kill our interest, or is the silence a comment on the moral emptiness of the universe? Yeah, I reckon.