Introducing the new iPhone netbook

Wouldn’t it be nice.

CueLight Interactive Pool Table System

“Transform any pool table into a digitally-enhanced video experience. High-definition imagery responds in real-time to every shot. User-selectable themes yield infinite possibilities. As seen in the Paradise Tower Penthouse, Hard Rock Hotel & CasinoTM, Las Vegas and the Esquire SoHo apartment.”

Enough said…link over here

Getting your hands in the dirt

Beautiful work from Roland Tiangco, especially this really nice poster which I have unfortunately spoiled by showing the outcome of the piece, rather than the beginning – for a full breakdown of the poster, check it out over here).

What’s interesting here is how the viewer is being carefully and curiously led to be a participator in creating the very simple, clear message with the medium. I think what I loved most about this piece is how it made me reflect and take a step back and look at the advertising agency model at large. Obviously this large statement has much more to do than the very narrow, shallow world of advertising – but being in the “ad” world…let me a take a selfish perspective and speak to the 0.001 percent of the population who might actually care about this.

We’ve all heard and maybe even coined the phrase “you can’t just talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk”, or maybe we’ve heard another such as “it’s time to roll up the sleeves and get your hands dirty”. The strange thing is that you hear these mantra’s all over the hallways of advertising agencies all over the globe, but how many places can honestly claim that they hold true to these values.

One of the diseases of the ad industry is the concept of spinning around in circles. We’ve all been there, those 4 hour meetings with 20 people at the table where we talk about what happened in last meeting. Everyone feeling the need to justify their employment by inputing their 2 pennies on the table, the read in between the line statements and whispers of side conversations going on in parallel between smaller groups. What usually happens in these meetings is that you walk away accomplishing absolutely nothing…a big fat donut. People being pulled into meetings when they have actual work to do and timelines to meet, thus missing deadlines and milestones where the solution is only to dump more bodies on the problem – lets brief in another creative team, or add another strategist, when in reality it will take just as long to brief a new team then to spend an hour doing it yourself. We have become a group of politicians, which have found any way possible to pass the hands-on, get in the gutter work to someone else.

There was an interesting article on Creativity which announced the departure of Erik Vervroegen, the former TBWA/Paris creative leader who recently left to join Goodby, Silverstein & Partners as a creative director. This was a guy who ran the whole shop and was extremely respected by TBWA and he decided to leave to be a CD at Goodby? Don’t get me wrong, Goodby is one of the top 3 agencies in the world in my opinion, but here’s a guy who could have been the global ECD, CCO for any agency and he leaves for a much humbler position (albeit a great shop). The real gem in the article was a direct quote from Erik about his new move:

“I’ve been offered prestigious jobs such as worldwide creative director, etc., but I don’t want to turn into a politician, stuck in meetings, first class lounges or fancy hotels. I want to stay close to my boys and be on the battlefield with them. I will always be a sergeant, not a general.”

Respect. Here’s a guy who cut his teeth on the ground, front lines at war as a foot soldier and climbed his way through the ranks. If you were going to war, would you follow the sergeant who’s reputation speaks for himself? Or would you follow the general, who never paid his dues, never went to war, never knew how it smelt or felt to be in the front lines with your troops? He may know how to talk and politic about war, but is this the guy you’d follow into a warzone?

We’re currently trying to climb our way out of the gutter of a beaten down industry – we’ve gotten our asses kicked. Now is the time to really roll up the sleeves and stick our hands in the dirt and walk the walk. Less meetings with fewer people. Do more with less. Quality not quantity…let’s find the people who are not afraid to thrown down and get in the gutter with everyone else.

On one last note -here is probably the best idea I have seen to minimize those 4 hour long meetings. Over here for the secrets to efficient meetings.

Food Probe by Philips Design

Forget molecular gastronomy of today, Philips design has some concepts for the future of your fine dining needs:

“Philips Design in Eindhoven have designed a series of conceptual products for food, including a machine (below) that prints combinations of ingredients into shapes and consistencies specified by the user. Foods would be constructed from ingredients corresponding to the nutritional needs of the user, using a similar process to rapid prototyping.”

Lots more here via Dezeen

I ♥ Nokia N900

With all the Apple hoopla happening today, thought I would take the time to take a tangent from all the tweets and blog posts about the bright future of that company in Cupertino (it is bright, don’t get me wrong). Instead let me take a tangent and take this moment to confess my love and admiration for the soon to be released Nokia N900.

As some of you may now, I have an extreme problem holding onto the same handset for more than a month. I tend to sport the wandering eye to all the bright new shiny objects I see coming down the pipeline, but the one that has my absolute attention now is N900 or Rover as I used to know it. I’m not going to spend the time to break it down to granular details until I get it in my hands, BUT ditching Symbian for Maemo, Linux powered, hardware QWERTY, 32GB storage (expandable to 48GB), ARM Cortex A8 600 MHz, PowerVR SGX graphics, 800X480 resolution, 5 megapixel camera, flash 9 enabled etc. are all reasons for me to believe that this is a device for me. You will be able to download movies with a torrent client and watch your 1.3gig 720p divx movies all straight from the device…nothing but applause here.

Yes it’s a bit pudgy and a bit of a brick, but that’s the price you pay for having a cpu in your pocket. I’ve had the luxury of holding and playing around with the device a bit to put it through some quick tests, and I have to say that the easiest way to explain the N900 to the N97 is to look at it as the evil twin. Both are convergent devices, but with a different makeup.

N97 = Spiderman, N900 = Venom.

One is the hero, while the other is the villain. You wont see any big ad campaigns for the N900 (although W+K and one dot zero did something pretty spectacular using the N900 – breakdown here) and unlike all the PR and buzz around the N97, I’m sure the silent, but deadly N900 will like it this way.

What’s most interesting about the device is that you get a glimpse into the future of Nokia and where I believe they will be putting most of their chips – will this be the slow death to Symbian over time, or will they continue to create different product streams for the next 5 years? My guess is that that while the N97 is the pinnacle of what is possible with Symbian, that the future with Maemo will be very bright indeed for Nokia – now if only the company could put the pedal to the metal and be swifter to adapt and change with the speed of light. While Nokia is the clear cut leader catering to emerging markets and mid-range devices, there is only a matter of time when Apple will introduce the cheaper price point iPhone Nano to go for the jugular beyond the high-end affluent consumer.

All the details you need here

Multi-touch wall from Hard Rock Cafe

Interesting interactive museum wall for the Hard Rock Cafe in Las Vegas. Users can deep dive into content about different musicians, play touchscreen intstruments and find granular detail about Hard Rock and their different locations all with a slick multi-touch interface.

via Gizmodo