Remix and let live

Again in More Intelligent Life, I found an article that debated which year was the most important in history, and what metrics should be used to determine its importance. These particular lines stood out:

Another approach is to say that since mankind is driven by ideas we should be looking for intellectual turning points. This is to assert the primacy of cause over mere events. 

I was reminded of this quote by Eleanor Roosevelt: “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” 

The paragraph in the article ends thus:

The trouble is that few great ideas have a single source. We have had a lot of fun with the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s “Origin”, but 1859 wasn’t his eureka year.

Again something that somehow stood out when I read it. Game Theory is one of those ideas that have multiple sources: if you look at its provenance, you will see a range of people who contributed to it becoming what we know it as today. I wonder how many ideas are truly original – an argument for the rise of remix culture.

A Room With A View

In More Intelligent Life, I read about the Hotel Du Vin in Birmingham where every single room is named after a different alcohol brand. So you can stay in the Krug room, or the Fullers room, and so on. Apparently, in addition to paying to have their name on a hotel room door, the brands provide the hotel with free posters, point of sale material and maps. In return, they get at least one spot on the wine list. Tim Atkin, the author of the article, mentions how he is uncomfortable with the exchange – would the bottles be selected on merit or to achieve a sales manager’s target?

I think it’s an interesting business model, and one that I haven’t heard of before in the hotel world. I know that sports brands that sponsor a team expect players to wear only their brand (though when I was with Nike I remember being told of a case where a football player refused to wear a Reebok shoe as he said it would affect his performance, despite being signed on by Reebok), but haven’t heard of buildings that feature competing brands sponsoring different areas before. Perhaps you could even pit them against each other in some way. Imagine a Louis Vuitton and a Chanel room in the same building. Now that would be something!

India Rising

Some interesting stuff related to India I spotted on the interwebs lately, one a BusinessWeek article that tracks the massive increase in the already huge number of people in rural India that are accessing the web via mobile (such as through services like Nokia’s MeraNokia) and the consequent competition amongst service-providers and vendors. Service-based mobiles are empowering farmers and fishermen by giving them valuable access to information related to the weather and crop pricing (among other things), slowly lifting them out of the poverty that they have been accustomed to for years, and they form a huge percentage of the market that is taking to mobiles in a big way. There is also a mention of how India will need to shift to low-rate unlimited data plans, which was responsible for a huge market shift in the US in 2007. An excerpt:

The rush to get into services cannot be explained by the need to make money, says Gupta, but to increase sales of core offerings. According to Simon Beresford-Wylie, CEO, Nokia-Siemens Networks, the “business of pipes”, i.e., plain vanilla products, will exceed $1.2 trillion (Rs 60 lakh crore) this year globally. The current estimate of $100 billion (Rs 5 lakh crore) in mobile services annually is a drop in this ocean but it is not a number to be scoffed at, particularly since India is expected to lead the services revolution.

Second, a summary of key internet statistics from Trendsspotting: 

Trendsspotting Handbook of Online India

View more documents from Taly Weiss.

A New Life

It really was a long time coming. Those of you reading this, thanks very much for updating your links. Blogger was just getting to be too much of a hassle, with very little flexibility. Please bear with me a bit as I iron out some kinks. I’m already more excited about blogging!

PSFK Good Brands Report 2009

PSFK recently conducted a survey of over 100 media, technology and advertising people from the Purple List to get their opinion of which brands are the best of 2009. (I use the word ‘best’ as the superlative of ‘good’ in this case). They narrowed the list down to about 40 based on which brands were being referred to most in posts on their website. In order, the top 10 are Google, Apple, Zipcar, Good Magazine, Amazon, Facebook, Virgin, Twitter, Ikea and Skype. (Disclosure: I participated in the survey). As PSFK says, “They are not just the well-known brands of the day, but also companies that lead by example in innovation, environmental consciousness, and social policy.”

There are always lessons to be learnt from places like those. Here’s the PSFK Good Brands Report 2009:

YouTube in 3D

Wow. YouTube, now in 3D. Check it out here to see the link options drop-down he’s talking about.

The 1/2 Bottle Project

Quite intrigued by the 1/2 Bottle Project. You pay what you normally pay for a bottle, but due to its unique design, you get only half the stuff. The other half goes towards a charity of your choice which will support people in developing countries, which you can specify when you make your purchase. You can pick from 7 causes: vaccines, HIV, water, education, food, sanitation and apparel and a set of linked charities including Save The Children, UNICEF, Tear and Pump Aid. No extra money is required for operations; the 1/2 Project packs and sells the products through a charity contract after paying the beverage companies their due. I like the idea, and the design.

How Spymaster pulled me back into the game

This morning, I awoke to find an SMS on my phone which sounded very cryptic for all of two seconds: ‘The Directorate needs your help. We’ve given you 100 Directorate points to ensure your safe return to the agency.’ Then I figured it out: I hadn’t been playing Spymaster for a while now, and they were inviting me back. I was struck with novelty of it. Spymaster is just a game, linked to Twitter, but because I’ve supplied Twitter with my number, they were able to reach me even at a time when I was not near my computer. I did go back to Spymaster, even if it was just out of curiosity. (If you’re interested, they’ve made a lot of improvements to the game).
Imagine if brands did this in a useful way. Will Twitter ever open itself to brands like this? Wouldn’t that be a way for them to make money? Of course, commercial messages would need to stick to certain rules which Twitter could specify, and limited to a certain number per day, the way Facebook only allows a certain number of status messages to be posted from Twitter on Facebook profiles. Hmmm.