Anyone with a tappy keyboard will get evil looks and anyone with VoiP may be in serious peril. Business travellers will have no respite and kids will squeal at miniclip in delight. American Airlines has just launched WiFi on 3 routes. Is WiFi going to change air travel as we know it?

The Airplane is one of the last vestiges of calm. On the whole people sit quietly reading, sleeping or watching flickering screens in silence. Mainly they’re bored. This is a good thing. Boredom makes people quiet. And quiet makes people able to sustain confined conditions. With the arrival of WiFi, air travel just got a lot more… interesting. My big fear is the dreaded phone call and VoiP would certainly enable that. Try sleeping with the suit next to you on a 3 hour teleconference. Maybe we need some restraints - Quiet Class. Or just this excellent campaign a la Metro (above).

Enough sour grapes. Being online will make travelling immensely more enjoyable for most of us. I suppose we should just take a moment to reflect on the passing of the quiet calm of boredom and introspection that being cut off from the rest of the world forces upon us.

So long petitions. RIP protest marches. Now if you want to get heard, just start a Facebook group.

What’s going on? Faceboook used to be a hangout for friends and their “friends”. Organising birthday parties, school reunions and insignificant fan club groups was all part of the set up. Now it seems Facebook’s nature is becoming increasingly political. Facebook users have always used the social network to air their rants and raves in an online Speaker’s Corner. No one ever really took notice. The media seems to be taking notice now though. And with that, the site’s power and importance is growing.

When Twitter announced it had cancelled its UK SMS delivery service yesterday in a cost cutting exercise, within hours a group popped up on Facebook targeting the mobile networks: UK mobile operators: cut Twitter a decent deal on SMS charges. The group was mentioned in a number of online blogs and new sites including the Online Journalism Blog which goes so far as to dub its call to action the “Facebook campaign to sort it out”. Facebook campaign? Is Facebook launching a campaign? No, but the group (who is ‘related’ to “Chavs who play their music off their mobiles in public should be shot”) is certainly benefitting from its association to Facebook. Of course Facebook isn’t really associated with the group - just hosting it. But why is it getting so much media converage?

When wedding list service Wrapit teetered on the brink of administration a few weeks ago more than a thousand disgruntled customers joined one of 3 groups set up for them to “share their grievances and discuss ways to get their money/gifts” back from the (now insolvent) company. One group with almost 800 users used the site to organise a protest march. Under 30 people marched. Unsurprisingly, people are much happier to put their name to a cause than to march for it. This is not new to online petitions where often staggering numbers of signatures are achieved. What is interesting though is that whereas online petitions previously didn’t get too much media converage, it seems that any story about a group of upset powerless individuals is now accompanied by a note about an associated Facebook group. Moreover, Facebook is the campaign headquarters for many of these - the place where campaigns are born. Does Facebook hold any liability for these campaigns? Doubtful. What interests me is that whereas the site used to be a place for friends to come together and surreptitiously keep an eye on ex-partners, now it also seems to be a media tool used to leverage opinions and get yourself heard. It’s just another advantage of having over 90 million people in one place. Whatever next?

What’s interesting to me is not just the content of the video - which is revealing in its own way - but the way that consumers are increasingly challenging and distrusting advertising.

And how easily they can spread the message.

Even the comments on the YouTube page are mostly in favour of Apple, but based on the fact that, ‘It’s advertising, dude, of course it’s fake.’

Jobs told the WSJ today that the App Store could harvest “at least $360m a year” for Apple. Even though the iPhone market is made up predominantly of early adopters and Apple fanatics, once they’ve gorged themselves on Apps there is still the remaining 60% of the Smartphone market in the US to tap and even greater bounties to be ploughed overseas. Jobs even suggested one day the App Store could be worth $1billion. Hyperbole aside, the store will be turning over healthy figures. Not bad for a store that gives away so many products for free. And not bad considering the apps are still relatively primitive. Wonder whether we’ll see some brands getting involved now…

[WSJ via Wired]

Tive already pointed out (link), brands have not exactly fallen over themselves to launch iPhone apps.

I intended this to be a review of the top five, but by the time you discount media owners like the New York Times and online brands like Facebook and Google, there are only five branded apps, one of which is terrible (find out which below).

That’s pretty poor when you consider that there are now 1,386 apps in the store.

1. Talking Phrasebooks (Last Minute)

By far the most actually useful branded app. Not the most comprehensive phrasebook going, but the fact that it also talks the phrases is a great boon to unconfident linguists. You could say this wasn’t a brand application as it looks like Last Minute just sponsored it, but still, a great experience.

2. iPint (Carling)

The original and probably the most talked about. We met the guys behind this last week from Illusion Labs http://www.illusionlabs.se/ They are a couple of bright young Scandinavians who are suddenly being offered big moolah for their three-man start-up company on the back of this very neat application. Have a virtual iPint on them.

3. BA Flights (British Airways)

A very solid offering, giving you flight times, searchable by number, airport and date/time. Not much of a brand experience. Still, at least it works.

4. Chanel

This did catch me by surprise. The first fashion house into this space. It looks nice, demoing the latest Chanel season in photographs and a quick summary video. There are also store locators with click-to-call functionality (although they listed their Heathrow stores under ‘Hounslow’ - not quite the glamorous location they were intending, I’m sure.) However, it felt somewhat underwhelming especially as the news has not been updated for 3 weeks. More for the trade than for consumers.

And the worst offering? That clearly goes to…

5. The Dark Knight - Hahaha (Batman)

Allows you to take a photo, stick some Dark Knight-related gumph over the top and email it to someone. Fiddly, difficult to use, prone to crashing and generally underwhelming. Very poor.

In movie terms Bond is still one of the biggest brands around, especially with the 2006 re-invention of Casino Royale staring Daniel Craig.

Even so, these days it seems you can’t make a movie without some product placement … so do we really care what phone Bond is using in his latest movie?

Sony thinks we do, hence the recent announcement that James will be calling his nemisis on the limited edition titanium silver C902 Cyber-shot.

The promotion goes one step further with several pieces of unique Bond related content coming pre installed on the phone.

I guess time will tell how successful these types of promotion really are … maybe next time we will see the premier of a Bond film on a mobile device near you.

Imitation they say, is the sincerest form of flattery. But what do you do when a young upstart starts copying your brand … and worse still … seems to be doing a pretty good job of it?

First a quick history lesson … YouTube appeared on the Internet around Feb 2006 … and we loved it! From fluffy kittens to clips from our favourite tv shows.

But success is a fickle lady and soon after the mighty Google came along and snaffled up our YouTube heroes. Not in itself a bad thing … but along with the mighty Google came the mighty lawyers.

… ‘and lo’ they said ‘thou shall not host material without the owners permission’ … and so it came to pass that all the things we loved YouTube for … disappeared!

Cue RuTube … Russia’s answer to all this madness … and guess what … they don’t care about crazy things like usage rights (allegedly ).

What’s even more amazing is that early this year they were valued at $15 million!

Does anyone know the Russian for fluffy kittens?

A couple of interesting internet videos caught my eye this week.

The social bookmarking site Delicious got a web 2.0 face lift. ‘Somebody’ created a slightly suggestive viral video for Guinness and a tiny out of focus video set the web alight with the promise of Tron2.

Delicious - social bookmarking face lift …

Guinness - denies viral sauce …

Tron 2 - web goes wild for blurry vid …

Tron2 Pirate Trailer - Watch today’s top amazing videos here

In case Tron2 link is broken try …

I remember the first time I saw a Tiny URL address (in a computer magazine) and being a little puzzled by it. As the genius of the idea slowly sank in I started wondering why no one else had come up with this before.

A few years down the line and it seems like everyone else did have the same idea … now there’s several sites offering the same or similar services … all competing for the ‘Tiny’ crown. So who’s top of the tiny charts?

Just in case you have no idea what I’m talking about I thought i’d let http://www.tiny.cc/ explain it themselves …

Simplify links to your website. Mask an affiliate link. Create personal or unique addresses using a keyword. Tiny.cc turns a ridiculously long URL into a tiny URL… short, meaningful and permanent.

Thanks guys … now let’s have a look at a list of URL shorteners …

tiny.cc - still the original and the best?

snipurl.com - err snippetty snip snip apparently

qurl.com - making long urls shorter … well done!

bit.ly - a nice clean, fresh approach.

A few others worth a look …

http://notlong.com/

http://elfurl.com/

http://metamark.net/

Rushes Soho Shorts Festival 2008 - 29th July 2008 @ The Apple Store, Regent Street.

animation
In the latest from our guest bloggers, Sarah Barclay shares her notes on - The Future Of Animation.

The Apple Store was host to a live panel discussion about ‘The Future of Animation’. Led by James Mulligan of Shooting People, the global independent film makers network, and with guests from Rushes, Do Tank Productions and Nexus Productions.

The consensus seems to be … that traditional animation is far from dead!

Although the discussion began by suggesting the baton of premier animation had been passed from ink and paint to 3D with the amalgamation of Disney Pixar the panellists are in fact finding that the latest trend is for a combination of techniques creating a new hybrid form of work.

Chris O’Reilly from Nexus Productions feels that there is currently a deep sense of traditional animation and that the best 3D animators come from a 2D/traditional background. ‘It gives them a genuine sense of how to animate’. The feeling was that the resurrection of older techniques such as stop frame, 2D or claymation combined with new 3D techniques had allowed for a huge variety and high quality of film.

Here are some examples of current work using both old and new:

Carolina Melis which uses a combination of 2D and 3D elements in this ad for NSPCC:

Johnny Kelly, Royal College of Art student and winner of the Jerwood Prize for Moving Image for Procrastination:

Smith and Foulkes use ink and paint background with 3D in this Tim Burtonesque new film due for release in September:

Smith and Foulkes again with this Grand Theft Auto parody for Coke:

When discussing the realism of characters in animation Alec East of Do Tank Studios mentioned ‘if you want super real you can create it to fool people. Programmers and biologists are working together using physics to create characters with a nervous system that automatically and naturally react to the environment meaning we can reduce the actual amount of animation. For example if we throw a character into the air like a virtual stuntman he will instinctively fall down.

The panel however felt that this type of ‘super real’ animation is not desired by the public. They talked about Japanese Robotosists who through the evolution of robots becoming more human like managed to turn the public opinion from desire to complete dislike.

O’Reilly: ‘When characters are too human like is freaks people out. In theory it’s like a reaction to corpses. They look real but the life is gone’.

East: ‘There is a gap to be bridged. The technology is here but no one wants it. Just get real actors. Unless they die half way through filming i.e Batman.

The panel felt in fact that the commercial success and appeal of films such as the latest Disney Pixar, Wall E, rely on high quality techniques to make them look dirty or grainy. The flexibility of this adds and extra quality and a tangibility but ultimately it comes down to the style and aesthetic that of an individual. It is audience appetite that is the driving force.

As far as animation audiences are concerned the subject of interactivity and engagement seems to be leading the way.

Alec East talked about a project using percussion to create live animation. ‘Sancho Plan uses a series of animation projected onto a big screen which is triggered by music. The sounds are sent through a mini base system and the hierarchy or the order of the sounds complete the effects. This is something that we have developed for art galleries and online communities as well as live at concerts and festivals such as Big Chill.

The animation is plugged into and triggered by the real world’.

http://thesanchoplan.com/liveperformance.html

Finally, when asked about the future of animation and whether we were at risk of losing traditional techniques the panel were split …

O’Reilly: ‘These skills are a dying art. They are not being taught in schools any more and traditional techniques are being replaced and usurped.’

East: ‘But there are only so many shepherds you need! What I mean by that is as skills become redundant as other forms evolve. It is the people who make the transition early that lead the way.

‘O’Reilly: ‘When you think about it the transformation of peoples tastes is hugely exciting. Think about the diet of people during the 40s when they were freaked out by garlic. Now we are at a point where the visual diet is very sophisticated.

People now want garlic AND chilli in their food. Animation has exploded into a huge range of techniques.

There is a quote I like. I can’t remember who said it but it goes …

‘The future is here, it’s just not very evenly distributed yet.’

Links to explore …

http://www.nexuslondon.com/main.html
http://www.rushes.co.uk/#
http://suckmypixel.com/
http://www.dotankstudios.com/
http://shootingpeople.org/account/auth.php