August, 2009

The official Microsoft Twitter account tweeted on Friday about the first “image” of Microsoft retail stores in Scottsdale and Mission Viejo. The twitpic has a number of comments asking when one is coming to the UK. I have the same question :)

Actually I’ve been thinking about this over the last few weeks – about maybe trying to find a role in the retail side. About 5 years ago I wrote an internal memo about why it’d make sense to have a retail store and I still have the same passion for the topic. I’m not sure what I’d do or even if they have jobs but I could sort of see myself in retail, helping to get the word out about Microsoft products.

I dunno….maybe it’s a crazy idea. We’ll see….meantime, I like the way Bing is the entry point to the store on this hoarding. Subtle.

@cooganphoto is the source of the photos and he has a few more on his Flickr page.

A fabulous video and story about Johnnie Walker starring Robert Caryle. Evidently it was shot in a single shoot (albeit over 40 attempts)

Why is the Johnnie Walker bottle square? Why is the label at 24 degrees? Watch the video to find the answers and more…

Oh and for my friend Mr Marutiak, trust me….blue label really is very good even if it is a blend :)

This video reminded me of Shift Happens and will probably get just as many views on YouTube over time. Plenty of useful stats in there which are listed below. The cynic in me wanted to question the source of all this but Socialnomics.com has them all listed out so hats off to them…..and hat tip to my pal Donard for sending me the video.

The stats I like the most? #26. It’s what makes Twitter so important but some of the stats I just don’t buy. 80% of companies use LinkedIn for primary research? I doubt it.

1. By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network 
2. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
3. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
4. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
5. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia
6. Yet, some sources say China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services (Facebook’s ban in China plays into this)
7. comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network
8. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
9. 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
10. % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
11. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
12. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama
13. 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
14. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
15. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
16. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
17. Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
18. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
19. 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily
20. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
21. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour
22. Facebook USERS translated the site from English to Spanish via a Wiki in less than 4 weeks and cost Facebook $0
23. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
24. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
25. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
26. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations 
27. Only 14% trust advertisements
28. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
29. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
30. Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
31. 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone
32. According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available
33. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
34. In the near future we will no longer search for  products and services they will find us via social media
35. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
36. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy Listening first, selling second
37. Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser

I just ran the system update on my Lenovo T61p and was pleased to see a miniature icon of the T61 show up in Devices and Printers under Windows 7. I was even more pleased when I double click on that and got a Device Stage page with some custom images for the T61. See both below….you also get he T61 icon in the taskbar and a jump list to go with it.

These small touches should hopefully make it easier for people to get the most out of their hardware and to troubleshoot any nagging issues with kit.

Lenovo also has some drivers out for their hardware that are Windows 7 specific.

We all know about the love/hate relationship with Marmite and I’m in the hate camp…but I love this advert to coincide with the Ashes cricket series. The detail of the stitching look on the side is particularly impressive. A very clever ad and £4.49 a jar…though it would have been really smart to sell them in 6 with one free and call them an over + a wide. 

hat tip to The Dieline