Monthly Archives: August 2008

12,000 laptops LOST every week in US airports

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This story caught my eye – quite possibly as I’m flying tomorrow… 12,000 laptops EVERY WEEK, that’s 624,000 per year, or one for every 500 people. 

What’s even more astonishing is that 70% of those aren’t reclaimed.  Is everyone feeling that flush despite the crunch?

Ironically, 40% of the lost laptops are left at the security checkpoints. The departure gate (23%), toilets (9%) and restaurants (7%) are other places worth hanging around if you fancy picking up a free PC.

The article (In PC Pro magazine) finishes up by saying that 14% of the laptops have “intellectual property” on them – which is a bit worrying, as that means 86% had nothing at all on them, or maybe just a bunch of unintellectual property.

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Posted in Uncategorized

Replacing faces

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The guys at Image Metrics have released some footage of their latest “facial animation” abilities, which are really starting to look, well, real.  To date, faces have always seemed some way off the rest of the pack in the CGI world.

 

So, another step closer to replacing actors in movies?  Probably, but also a step closer to building more vivid, friendly and familiar interfaces with our various machines.

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Posted in CGI, UI

Rent-a-Crowd, Apple Style

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Just spotted this on the excellent Register:

Actors paid to queue for Poland’s iPhone launch

Mobile phone carrier Orange Poland admitted today that it hired actors to stand in line for the country’s iPhone debut.

“It was a part of our marketing strategy, the concept was thought up at Orange Poland,” the company told the Associated Press. “The aim was to ‘warm up’ the atmosphere around the launch of the iPhone.”

 Orange said they set up fake queues in front of about 20 stores around the country. Meanwhile, there were no lines outside of rival Era retail stores which also carry the iPhone in Poland according to several reports.

Well, there you go, the rent-a-crowd marketing method is still going strong.  Or Poland has realised that there are better phones than the iPhone!

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Posted in marketing, Mobile Phones

Individuals… until we conform

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I spend my time working on solutions that tailor to individuals, so it’s fun to take a moment out and see the social situations that we conform in – as true in ‘those days’ as it is most likely true now on Facebook etc:

Thanks to Psylog for the heads-up on that one.

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Posted in Psychology

Top 10s: Who’s using Twitter?

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Well, lots of people is the answer to that (maybe 2.5m and growing) .  I’m still a bit sceptical of the utility of “I’m eating a burger” messages, but here are the individuals (and 2 organisations) who are really creating some traction with their followers.  Thanks to twitterholic for this Top 10 list.  Notable Web Gurus, Barack and some news sources (CNN/NASA) make up the list

#
Name
 
URL
Followers  
Friends 
 
1.   Barack Obama   http://www.barackobama.com 60,601 63,304  
2.   Kevin Rose   http://digg.com/ 57,606 99  
3.   Leo Laporte   http://leoville.com 53,287 486  
4.   alexalbrecht   http://totallyradshow.com 35,773 27  
5.   MarsPhoenix   http://tinyurl.com/5wwaru 32,888 1  
6.   Jason Calacanis   http://www.calacanis.com 32,813 38,107  
7.   Robert Scoble   http://www.fastcompany.com 32,606 21,025  
8.   CNN   http://cnn.com/ 31,832 1  
9.   Veronica   http://www.veronicabelmont.com 30,759 381  
10.   John Dvorak   http://dvorak.org/blog 28,527 665  

10 Downing Street (home of the UK Prime Minister) has 3,800 followers, for comparison.

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Posted in top lists