This. This is beautiful.

SCINTILLATION from Xavier Chassaing on Vimeo.

Via CDMotion

Posted by funnelbc at 4:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

DSC_0049, originally uploaded by funnelbc.

Got a bunch of shots over on my flickr from my weekend visit to the Melbourne Museum of Print.

This is a shot of the Albion style presses. There's two of them and the design is very similar mechanically.

Shot taken at the Melbourne Museum of Printing (www.printingmuseums.com). It's an amazing facility and these shots are just a fraction of the stuff they have.

Posted by funnelbc at 1:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From a discussion on infront about Twitter.

And "want" is a great reason if that's all there is, just doesn't provide me with a functional reason outside what current communication channels I use do.

And I am asking out of real interest. It is the industry I work in and so I am seeking information for the purposes of providing either additional monetary opportunities or else a communication channel that's new and useful. I'm yet to see justification of the latter unless I want to sell you folk stuff. ;o)

Orrite then. Actual real world grown up uses for twitter.

I think there's a lot more depth in there, than just saying you can tell people what you're up to as a business. Other folks probably say it better, but twitter is about the conversation.

Personal, tailored, directed marketing. People opt-in to hear about what you're up to, and as long as the twitterer doesn't abuse the trust by turning it into a spam fest and actually communicates then it's a great channel for businesses to communicate direct to end users. That's a more intimate connection than many consumers/businesses get. Even more than that, it's about building rapport and customer loyalty than telling them what to think it intiates the (feeling at least) conversation. That's substantially more than a conventional marketing where all communication is one way. The fact that people have to opt-in means, that people can easily choose to opt out if you abuse that. More difficult to get right, but better rewards for savvy companies.

You can also monitor what people are saying about your brand. I tweeted about how much I loved the remote software from apple for iPhone and that the Sonos (they make a cool remote music jukebox system) jukebox which costs a significant amount of money, and their respective owners could eat their hearts out. I was essentially slagging off the Sonos product in deference to the freebie apple remote app. Shortly thereafter, a Sonos PR guy tweeted back to say that it was cool, but I should check out the Sonos iPhone app as it it's got more features and it's a different experience. He was respectful and I had the opportunity to ignore him but the way that he approached the situation caused me to re-think my attitude towards the product. I thought what an amazing thing for PR folks to engage with end users in a meaningful way. If your ability to communicate online is well honed it's a massive opportunity.

This works especially well for software companies I think, and the updates by Lucasarts and Valve Software are good examples of using twitter without abusing the trust. Lucasarts posts trivia questions about old Lucasarts games and Valve posts about updates to their games and blog posts. All of these drive traffic and help them maintain a direct line of communication with the end user.

As far as a new means of communication question goes.

I would suggest that it's a hybridisation of the kind of things we're all already engaged in. You get the ability to talk to a larger group of people and it's easy. It's harder to get bogged down in an argument like a forum and is no substitute, but just another method of communicating. If you ever used IRC back in the day, I think it's a similar feeling. You can just blurt out what you want and if it's of interest than sometimes people respond. The low emotional investment and speed at which you can post ensures that you get the thought out rather than loosing it to the day to day business, which is also something that's nice.

Which is not to say that I love twitter and want to marry it, I just think it's a rather neat solution to a problem I wasn't even aware of.

Posted by funnelbc at 9:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)