Author archive: admin

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Inspirational and beautiful – stop motion and Google street view.

Sometimes inspiration is a kaleidoscope

I won’t lie, clips like this turn my crank while simultaneously floating my boat. Can’t picture it?

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, time to get back to more serious things… like watching this clip for the 58th time. Good day!

Go to your quiet place

Go to your quiet place… free from the distractions of a connected life. 

Seriously, try it. A 90 second break from modern life (kinda).

Most stressful 90 seconds of my life, but I get the point. Back to Facebook.

Digital world, taking stock

Released by Ericsson, ‘Networked Society’ isn’t really a futurist vision per se, but more of a snapshot of where we’re at right now. Might not blow your mind, but sometimes it’s nice to sit back and look at where we are right now, right here.

Online communities are great – unless you piss them off!

Online communities are a powerful resource for brands of all industries, but none more so than gaming. Titles can gain huge followings, complete with user generated content and insane brand advocates. But what happens when the community is not brand controlled? And what happens when this community turns against you? Just ask EA Games.

When EA rebranded their online store to “Origin” the concept seemed sound. The idea was to take on entrenched competitor Steam for control of the online game store market. Their launch day blog post talked about a unified gaming experience,

Great in theory, but the platform had bugs, most of which were exposed when mega-title Battlefield 3 launched.
Not only was there bugs with the final platform deployment, but when users turned to the online support, they found it almost useless.

In the past, this might have been the end of the story. Sales might have dipped slightly due to word of mouth reviews or possibly a negative article in a niche gaming magazine, but this was before the rise of  the online community Reddit.

Horror stories emerged about web chats being cut-off mid session when things got too tough for the Origin representatives. The games section (subreddit) of Reddit has taken over with posts containing screenshots of the terrible customer support.

So what’s the moral of this little story? Online communities can turn an average product into a superstar, but they can also turn something full of potential into a PR nightmare. Oh, and don’t piss off Reddit.

Is this advertising or…?

I’m still not sure if this is advertising or just something amazing. To be honest, it doesn’t really matter – any clip that features velvet paintings, chilled out grandmas and synchronized sword/butterfly knife dancing is a win in my books. Now take my money!