It's time for virtual worlds to go to work

LindenLabs have smartly given Secondlife, well a secondlife with the SL grid. An OS that allows developers to close off SL and use it in applications however they wish.

One of the more interesting uses we've seen is ImmersiveWorkspaces by developer Rivers Run Red.
ImmersiveWorkspaces enable people in disparate physical locations to come together in one place for the purpose of collaboration and communication using a suite of web based tools.

Farm spoke to Justin Bovington, CEO of Rivers Run Red

'We're just about to enter a new era of immersive collaboration, the need to reduce travel costs, tap into collective intelligence and create a more open ideas environment. This gives organisations a tangible ROI.'

While we're sticking to iChat for now, maybe we'll hook up for a meeting and some virtual soggy sandwiches and cold coffee soon.

Agent Orange

Rowan Durrant steals up in the dead of night and fixes things that well, need fixing.
Archway is a pretty drab area of London, a place that completely fails as a public space.
Separating a council estate from a tube station the wind rattles past the precinct where kids play and mums look for somewhere to put the shopping down.
In the middle of the precinct was an officially neglected bench.
The support pillars of the bench had broke as had the middle section.
Durrant set to work donning a fluorescent jacket and hard had with angle grinder at the ready.
He calls it Superfixing.
In guerilla art secrecy is key...maybe that's why Durrant's next project involved the Queen, MI6, three police officers and a Lion.

viewzi.com

a nice new way to browse the web...

sm.art

Set up by London's Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, The Design Laboratory is like an MIT labs for the arts world.

With alumni including Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney and Galliano, the design laboratory offers graduates a space from which to commercialise their work.

Projects have included building new multi-sensory retail kits for adidas and branding for world famous culinary alchemist Heston Blumenthal, owner of last years best restaurant in the world - The Fat Duck.
As we increasingly seek ever diverse talent sets to help us develop products and services for clients, designlab provides a resource for the best in fresh new talent. Every agency struggles to get talent through the door - why force it when it's in the building next door?

thedesignlaboratory.co.uk

future mobile

getting busy around here... 

but over the past couple of days there has been a conversation worth posting...

basically after being asked by a client to prognosticate about mobile technology in the near and far future two things became very clear to us...

1. in the near (and far) future mobile is ultimately about never "not having it with you"

2. in this future the difference between people who "have" and people who "do not have" will be "permissions"

power of we

Kiva.org is a micro lending site that allows individuals to provide loans to the working poor via the internet. I have been a frequent visitor of Kiva over the last few years and one was always able to find a few hundred people or groups looking for a loan at any given time.

A few weeks ago Kiva created this idea of "lending teams." These teams which anyone could make allows you to "credit" your loan to a particular "team" or affinity group so you are now making loans to individuals from a particular "team." Since that change there are typically zero to only a handful of unfinanced loans at any given time because you can now loan as a connected group. The Power of We.

hey you, what's that sound?

The most popular download this week on Nokia's download site mosh...

...a ringtone that makes your sweet n95 sound like an even sweeter iphone

puffy shirt

there's  lots of talk about the seinfeld / bill gates campaign for microsoft by cp+b launching in september... 

(and the $10 million they paid a guy who spent 8 years on tv using a mac...)

hard to have a constructive comment about the creative as no one we know has seen it...

but from a strategic standpoint...

there are many reasons why it will struggle... some funny... some obvious...

(in fact we think the whole thing sounds like a seinfeld episode... with peterman playing bill gates...)

but in reality... you have to look at the objective... 

what is it? 

looking at the hiring of seinfeld, his age and the demo he will work hardest against... 

the best we could figure the goal seems to be appealing to 30-something and 40-something vista resisters...

...in some combination that brings mac down while boosting vista up...

we think both are going to be challenging in the real world of apple v msft product.

microsoft needs to deal with the fact that it's operating system is under-delivering to the same people who were seemingly happy, loyal customers of xp.... 

as opposed to trying to convince everyone it's just some crazy mis-understanding...

microsoft leadership needs to take some personal inventory and focus on the future of their os... make real changes/fixes... 

assuming people don't outright hate you... if you make things better..people will come (or comeback)... it's a fact.

xp customers with little ill-will don't suddenly turn on you because justin long says so...

just like we seriously doubt a talented funny man from the 90's is going to bring them back...

this is bigger than some perceived pr war engineered by steve jobs and tbwa... 

there are real issues... and our guess is it's better to blame msft central marketing than the engineering culture in redmond.

all that said, the ironic thing is... this has happened before... 

when mac "got bad" (remember os 8?) in the 90's people left... 

people that had been seemingly happy, loyal customers left for something they perceived was better... windows.

what did apple do?

plan a advertising response to microsoft's rolling stones powered "start me up" campaign for windows 95!?!?

no... 

they re-embraced design delivering the imac... developed os x... the os at the core of everything they are today.

it's not like apple didn't advertise during this period... 

but more importantly they learned from their mistakes and responded with products that beat the competition... moved the bar forward in a way the consumer could see and feel...

if we were microsoft right now we would be a bit more concerned with getting cp+b involved with windows 7 development and launch than crying over the spilled milk that is vista...

it's not a mis-understanding... a pr bumle... or those poor bastards at mccann... 

the customer has spoken... and they're just not that into you... (or vista)

i must be in the front row!

if you know what that means you were born before the 80's...

as reported in all the ad rags, (after flirting with it a bit) miller lite will return to its most famous (and best) campaign format with the line "taste great, less filling".

we think this is a really smart, long over due, move.... 

and not just because we remember laughing out loud at spots like this and this years ago... and we can all imagine updating the format with current sports icons as well as the cameo opportunities for madden...

we think today, in the connected world we live in, "taste great, less filling" as huge potential for consumer involvement and ownership delivering real time spent with the brand...

or specifically farm believes this has the potential, if enabled, to be bigger than the total sum of the television ads.

many of us have worked on sports brands....

and have used these brands to present a position or an option of positions to consumers in a forum where they can act...

and whether it's "do something like this" or "pick a side -  you're either for this product or that product"...

consumers take the idea and run with it... 

a lot of the time making it their own... making it bigger than the advertising...

so the point of this post is... 

whoever is working on this... please...

think about "taste great, less filling" as an idea first... and then make the funny ads to promote the idea... 

if you do that, it will be larger than advertising and have longevity long after your media money runs out...

my phone is now sick!

a barabarian turned me onto this...

we are farm and we approve this message

check out saysme.tv.

they have canned messages (political television spots) from candidates that you can buy, tag with your support message ("we are farm and we support this message") and put on tv.

yes, real live, your mother can see it, tv.

basically it looks like they have a cost-per-spot deal worked on the back end with the cable soft systems (like spotrunner) so you can buy just one spot... which is cool.

look for the farm obama ad coming soon.

right in anyone's @#$%

i was pulling together a nice farm club mix on muxtape....