What Kind of Tech User Are You?

Can you go a day without emailing or twittering? Has your laptop replaced your TV for entertainment? Do computers provide more or less control over your life?


The Pew Research Center offers an online test to see how digitally reliant you are. For the record, I am (unfortunately to some) locked in as Digital Collaborator - meaning I'm lost without my i-Phone, laptop, and internet. Whereas fellow SMaRT marketer, Anna, is a Roving Node who uses her gadgets for dealing with the logistics of life and enhancing personal productivity.

Take the test and see where you stand. Are you an Ambivalent Networker, Media Mover, or Drifting Surfer?

The Pew Center is a nonpartisan, nonprofit "fact tank" that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world.
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PCs in China May Have Trojan Horse

American Public Media's Marketplace recently reported that all PCs sold in China must have "blocking software" installed on them to block access to pornographic web sites. Those cautious about Big Brother warn that the mandatory application could act as a Trojan Horse for hidden tracking software to be used by the Chinese government to monitor user's computer activities. PC makers like HP and Dell are complying with China's demands because, well, China is the next big market.

Transcript of audio segment here. Read more!

Yeow! Get The Computer Off Me!

Nintendo Thumb, Cell Phone Elbow, Guitar Hero Wrist. Technology, it seems, is out to cripple. What next? Well, it appears that more and more often we're either falling over our equipment or it's falling on us. According to American Journal of Preventive Medicine, an increasing number of Americans have wound up in emergency rooms after crashing with computers. "From 1994 to 2006, injuries caused by people tripping over computer wires or getting hit by falling equipment rose from about 1,300 a year to 9,300 a year, an increase of 732 percent nationwide."
Complete Live Science article here.
Original American Journal of Preventive Medicine report here. Read more!

Japan's 1st Green IT Expo

We all know that Japan is such a tech-driven country, whether its about robots, gadgets, cell phones or back-end data storage and securities. And now they're officially trying to go green with their gizmo world.

Yes, everyone appears to be jumping on the green bandwagon. Yet sometimes stamping brands with green badges sometimes appears to be only a marketing nod to current social trends and energy challenges. Yet, the first step is acknowledgment at least. At Japan's first official "Green IT Expo", I did find several booths that addressed issues of energy conservation by being audited to determine carbon footprints and taking necessary actions to minimize their environmental impact. But I also found a majority who didn't acknowledge the title of their expo in any way.

What I did find were lavish displays that featured showroom sets for entertainment productions to introduce or discuss the latest server or security package. At one was a full-on magic show complete with dancers! (I was asked to turn off the video camera before the magician appeared suddenly in a cage). Each booth also featured scores of women to hand out advertising brochures and collateral. Others were quietly stationed in and around the massive center patiently displaying their services, hardware and software.

Was it green? Yes and no, but it's a start.
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Alternative Tokyo Subway Advertising

In Tokyo, one is bombarded by advertising everywhere you go. You can't escape. Above is a video display built into the top of a subway turnstyle. I can't imaging how anyone is going to retain any message because you're usually flying through the turnstyles with the masses anxious to catch the next train or get out of the station. But you do glance down as you swipe your automatic prepaid Pasmo train card. So, perhaps a one second glance will get planted into your subconscious.

Since the advent of e-ink and its very public launch on the cover of Esquire magazine in October, '08, we are now seeing it pop up in advertising, like this banner hanging in Tokyo subway trains.

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I'M YOUR VENUS, I'M YOUR FIRE, IT'S YOUR DESIRE

This past week Fujitsu Ltd. announced that they have developed the world's fastest central processing unit, called Venus, capable of performing 128 gigaflops - er, billion calculations per second. That's about 2.5 times faster than the previous record-holding model made by Intel. Comparatively, it takes your hand and a pencil .0119 seconds to jot down instructions from your brain. Which is a little different than the calculations speed per second for your mind to determine whether you need brats or dogs for Saturday's BBQ which may or may not happen depending on whether it rains. Can you compute that faster? Maybe.

Let's just say a CPU chucking out 128 billion calculations per second is fast, and after you throw tens of thousands of them into a super computer you've got something that should be able to do your laundry. There is a supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory nicknamed "Jaguar" that can crunch a quadrillion calculations per second. It's like if everyone in the world performed one mathematical calculation per sec, it would take 650 years to do what Jaguar can do in one day. And that's about 55,000 times faster than your typical PC. Vavoom!

So, Fujitsu's plan is to have a supercomputer chock full of these microprocessors, fully named Venus SPARC64 VIIIfx, up and running by 2010 at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Science (Riken). Again, Moore's Law of computational miniaturization is in full swing here. Fujitsu was able to double the number of central circuits integrated onto a chip -- measuring about 2 centimeters square -- from four to eight. That's a chip 2 times the width of a CD case according to the over-hyped and almost useful Wolfram Alpha.

And The Venus will be greener -- designed to be energy efficient by cutting electricity consumption to about one-third of current levels.

Like many of the largest supercomputers churning out Matrix-like realities, the Venus will be used for new industrial pharmaceutical development, earthquake prediction and rocket engine design. But on the consumer level it may be used in devices such as personal computers and digital electronic appliances, perhaps leading to the development of equipment such as portable simultaneous interpretation machines and automated driving devices for cars. That's what I need.
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Take a Sad Song and Make it Worse?

Trafalger Square, London, UK
Telecom giant T-Mobile recently staged a pseudo Flash Mob marketing spectacle in London. I was there to witness the sneaky shenanigans orchestrated by agency Saatchi and Saatchi where they pulled off an ad scheme/event that was part Web 2.0, part media, part guerilla, part interactive, part show, part event, part viral - and part disturbing!

At 7:10pm, Thursday, April 30, I ascended from London's tube at Trafalgar Square station to find 13,000 people singing the refrain from Beatles' Hey Jude. "Na, na, na, na na na naaaaaa, na na na naaaaaa, Hey Jude!" Caught off-guard by the spectacle, I found myself in a dream - what could be more London? What crazy vortex did I step into? But in front of the crowd was no staged Beatlemania band, just a stadium-sized karaoke screen with song lyrics. Thousands gleefully and mindlessy sang; hundreds into microphones (some reportedly fake). US popstar Pink even showed up, er was hired, to sing-along. And then I noticed large camera booms swinging over the audience. Something was amiss. It was too orchestrated. The dream evaporated the next morning when my suspected fears were confirmed and learned it was a staged promotional flash mob "karaoke" event hosted by global telecom giant T-Mobile.

I learned this was the followup of their "successful" Liverpool Station flash mob last February which became a viral marketing hit ala youtube. At the Liverpool gig 400 dancers (who rehearsed for a month) appeared at the station in disguised randomness and performed a pre-choreographed dance, capturing unsuspecting passerbys "in the moment" as they hastily texted event images to friends afar - all while being filmed by hidden cameras and later posted online. (In the "making of" video, producers even wholly admitted "as soon as the public spots a camera, game over".) How sneaky is that?

During April's latest event, thousands descended on central London after T-Mobile posted a youtube teaser, distributed flyers, and texted those who carry their service. And yes! The lemmings amassed! Whereas the Liverpool Station spectators were unwillingly ensnared into a promotional event, this "Hey Jude" shindig brought the willing onto the camera screen in some faux feel-good sentimental aura. The next day, the local media fawned all over it. Participants talked about the "once in a lifetime event", posted videos, texted friends. Bingo! All free viral advertising. Keeping the momentum going, Saatchie edited their footage in 48 hours and showed a 30 second spot during Saturday's #1 TV show "Britain's Got Talent". Within a week, the subway advertisement video screens were aglow with 10 second spots of the event. All under the T-Mobile tagline "Life's For Sharing!" smartly tapping into social marketing trends - we're all connected - right?

As a 2009 marketing tool, yes, the event was a successful awareness campaign: part human, part Web 2.0, part mobile, part guerilla, part interactive, part show, part event, part viral.
And part disturbing.

Yes, they effectively moved beyond static "Us to You" campaigns. Kudos for that! But it somehow appeared hollow, lacking honesty and sincerity. They used the zeitgeist of Flash Mobs and tainted it. In an age when consumers see through marketing manipulation, I'm surprised so many fell for this. But perhaps that's London for you. It was a participatory event where OZ willingly revealed himself pulling all the levers of what was really a controlled media experiment.

Yes, Life IS for Sharing. But for a marketing event? A sign of things to come.
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IT Support Expo - London Style

SMaRT Marketing Director, Jeff Wichmann, explores the latest tech support vendors in Europe and their various marketing techniques at London's annual tech event.

The International Help Desk and IT Support Expo was held at the end of April in London. On hand were many IT Service Management companies from both Europe and America holding seminars, demonstrating case studies, workshops and briefings. ITIL best practices were stamped everywhere. I went in and explored the creative and whimsical displays. Notice the SDI "Lounge" guarded by a Star Wars figure holding their latest PR catalog "The Service Desk Strikes Back". Read more!

University of Milan During Design Week, 2009

Seriously, everyone is up against superhuman Italian conceptualizer/artist Leonardo de Vinci with his Mona Lisa, Last Supper and his plans for a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, and an outlined rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. And that was 500 years ago!
But you have plans for the latest and greatest green solar commune lounge. That's nice. But it's not stopping students of the University of Milan, a leading institute in Italy and Europe for scientific productivity, and professional designers from trying to develop the next best thing. As part of Milan Design Week, the Uni put on quite a show in their courtyards: large installations that focused on energy in terms of smart and sutainable use, with attention focused on the home, the city and landscape. But also energy "as a creative process, a project attitude which in not - or is no longer typical of a group of professionals since it is now a commonly shared thought."

Surrounded by the college's historical architecture you could find sustainable, ecological architecture and new inventions by Italian and international designers such as Mauricio Cardenas, Marco Piva, Luca Trazzi and David Chipperfield. The daytime offered relaxing strolls through the exhibitions, but at night, the place was lit up like a rock show, with thousands of revelers packing the halls.

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PANASONIC - An Intro to Milan Design Week

SMaRT Marketing Director, Jeff Wichmann, explores the Panasonic exhibit at Milan Design Week.

The vast array of installation displays at Milan's Design Week was mind-boggling. Thousands of world-class designers descended onto this gorgeously grungy fashion-conscious city to make it the Capital of International Design. Hundreds of old warehouses, courtyards, and ancient Italian pavilions and courtyards were filled with elaborately furnished innovative design concepts for furniture, architecture, auto, lighting, art, fashion, appliances and housewares to be used in either the home, corporate boardrooms, hotels, restaurants, or clubs. All together, it was a design lasagna: inspirational, abstract, efficient, low-brow, hi-brow and a little absurd.
Electronics giant Panasonic featured Japanese lighting designer Naoto Fukasawa on opening night to show off his latest concepts. Set in an upscale Milan district warehouse, he and his team converted the interior into a minimal black and white labyrinth of lighting installation. Though the white mannequin statues at the entrance desk were unexplainable, they brought abstract comedic relief to a corporate stage show of dangling orbs and desk lamps.

Marrying design and technology, Panasonic used... "concealed mechanisms and quality materials to make for better design." Their fixtures consisted of glowing spheres, domes, and buckets, all with a classical appearance, yet Fukasawa emphasized, "They may look old, but they are very modern." In other words, if it ain't broke... Yet, Panasonic claims their latest "light sources" are built with environment-concious, energy saving designs "for high efficiency and long life." Today, while every company is tattooing itself with green stamp mantras to demonstrate at least an essence of sustainability, Panasonic is no exception.

Also on display were relaxing lounge chairs that electronically swayed forward and back. Reclined in these futuristic Lazyboys, staring up at the myriad of lights on display, I got my first taste of holistic design that the Festival portrays: our lives, surrounded by good design, is essential to our well being.

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