The above brilliant promo clip for a new epic BBC programme called SuperPower was done by RKCR/Y&R.

BBC’s SuperPower is a season of programmes starting today that will be investigating how the internet affects lives and has become the catalyst for a fundamental change in societies around the world.

There is a huge amount of interactive content available for the programme, the main site brings it all together, but they have also been actively starting conversations on Twitter and Facebook, even giving anyone the opportunity  to ask questions to some of the Digital Giants of the industry like Eric Schmidt, Jimmy Wales and Steve Ballmer.

If you’re interested in the digital world this is one not to miss. For an overview of the series just watch the clip below. God bless the BBC.

Incredible video showing the state of the Internet, animated by Jesse Thomas. The video was made by Jesse Thomas and Pingdom.com, a website monitoring service. The clip shows some fascinating internet stats for 2009-2010. For more info go to royal.pingdom.com or to email them get in contact with info@pingdom.com

Last week a post I did on Kulula’s new aircraft livery caused a traffic jam on my site after being linked to by BoingBoing (one of the world most popular blogs). Luckily I happen to know Kulula’s fantastic advertising & PR agency (King James & Atmosphere of Cape Town), I quickly contacted them and they kindly made up a fun banner to place next to the post in the sidebar of this site. So far the post has been viewed well over 150,000 times on my site alone and counting, and although all my analytics tools failed when the main traffic hit I can see that Kulula had thousands of click throughs to their site, not bad free global exposure.

Today I received the official press release and it looks like more fun paint jobs are being done for their new Boeing 737-800’s, read below to find out more and click on the pictures to enlarge;

“kulula’s latest plane design has been a worldwide hit after being seen by plane-spotters en-route to South Africa. Photos of the new livery dubbed “Flying 101” have since been viewed by millions having appeared on some of the world’s leading blogs, spurring a frenzy of online comments. All this before it even touched down in South Africa.

The design covers the planes exterior in a tongue-in-cheek guide to the various parts of the planes interior, such as the “Mile-high initiation chamber”. The plane is just one of a fleet expansion of eight state-of-the-art Boeing 737-800s (each with a unique livery). As these planes will be replacing the 737-400’s currently used in kulula’s fleet, South Africans can look forward to spotting the new 800’s during this year.

“The “Flying 101” was conceptualised and designed by kulula’s in-house design department. This branding idea is a result of our 2010 strategy to demystify air travel for our fans,” comments Nadine Damen, kulula Marketing Manager.

“Initially spotted by plane-spotters across the globe, our “Flying 101” plane has become famous on the world wide web before touching South African soil,” continues Damen. “We’ve been amazed by the number of blogs that have posted “Flying 101” images as well as the large number of people talking about the new branding on Twitter.”

The first Boeing, branded with the “Flying 101,” landed in Johannesburg on Monday, 8th February 2010 and will start operating from 13th February 2010.  The second Boeing is currently undergoing its transformation and will appear to kulula fans much like an oversized container box, with the words “this way up” printed on its side, is scheduled to start operating on the 8th February 2010.”

This has to be the best road safety PSA I have ever seen. The spot was made by the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership to encourage people to put on their seatbelt while driving. Normally road safety ad’s in the UK and across the world are designed to shock, and generally contain some pretty gruesome footage. The above spot does the opposite, it’s beautifully filmed and uses love to get the point across. If only all PSA’s were made this way. The people behind the campaign have even used graffiti artists to turn local sites in Brighton previously littered with unsightly tags, into large scale public place artworks to support the campaign, showing the web address and logo. For more info go to http://www.sussexsaferroads.gov.uk/

         Sony Ericsson very kindly lent me their new Entertainment Unlimited branded phone called the Aino over the festive season and so I thought I would finally share with you my thoughts on it. To make things simple I have broken it down into my likes and dislikes. Likes: Firstly the Aino has a fab 3” hi-res touch screen, when the slider is closed the touch screen works very well allowing you to easily browse pictures, music, movies or radio. The keyboard and user interface are up the usual easy and logical to use Sony Ericsson standards. The phone also comes with a nice built in 8GB  Micro SD card, great Bluetooth headphones (great speakerphone too) and a very neat charging dock. It was also very easy to connect up to my laptop and sync all the contacts as well as working great as a mobile modem (wireless or wired took only a few minutes to set up). I didn’t get a chance to try out the Playstation 3 remote play feature, I’m more of an Xbox chap, but this feature allows you to stream music and films stored on your PS3 wirelessly to your Aino anywhere in the world !. Finally the Aino is also remarkably durable, after a couple of months heavy use it doesn’t even have a scratch on it.  Dislikes: The only slight problem with this phone is that the touch screen is for some reason deactivated when you slide out the keypad. Every person I showed it to tried to use the touch screen to navigate from around the menu, including me the first time. I guess once you know though you soon forget about it, but still think its a bit odd. The only other problem was when I first had the phone the software was very buggy, however after a week I updated it and now it’s been behaving nicely. Overall: A great phone if you want to get a touch screen / number keypad smart cellphone. The camera works well (see pics above) and as an entertainment unlimited phone I can honestly say its lives up to its name. More apps are constantly being released and the phone comes pre-loaded with facebook, Google maps and a nice selection of games. For full stats see below: Aino Touch Phone Specs

• 3 inch widescreen 16:9 touch screen and slide out Keypad
• 8.1 megapixel camera with Photo flash and intuitive touch focus, Video VGA 25fps
• Bluetooth™ stereo A2DP portable headphones included with docking base for phone/headphones
• 55MB Phone memory and 8GB MicroSD memory card included
• Remote Play for PLAYSTATION®3, Exchange ActiveSync®
• A-GPS with Google Maps™
• 3G HSDPA, Wi-Fi, (Quad-band GPRS/EDGE and tri-band HSDPA)
• Talk Time: 13 hours, Standby time: 380 hours
• Dimensions: 104 x 50 x 15.5 mm, Weight: 134.0g
• PlayNow™ arena and Track id, Built in Step Counter and GPS tracker
• DLNA Certified™ (connect wirelessly to other electronic devices via Wi-Fi. i.e: See your photos on your TV)
• Media Go: Transfer your files from PC to phone wirelessly & automatically when docked (using Wi-Fi)

Happy New Year and hope you all had a fabulous Christmas. Have been off on holiday for a few weeks so apologise for the lack of regular posts. 2010 looks set to be an exiting one in the digital marketing realm, budgets are on the up and are predicted to rise by over 12% in the Digital sector alone.

To help get things off to a good start for the year I thought I would share with you 21 great social media tracking tools available to use for free. The list comes from friends at McCann, London. Some of them are more helpful than others, and even if you’re not interested in tracking campaigns and brands great fun can still be had from sites like http://www.whatdoestheinternetthink.net (Try typing in Hitler!).

Wishing you all a wonderful 2010 and thanks for helping to make this site the success it is.

Chris

1. Collecta – http://www.collecta.com/
Enter a word/phrase to see live mentions of the search term captured from blog posts, articles, updates (eg. Twitter, Jaiku, Identica), photos (eg. Flickr, TwitPic, yFrog), and videos (eg. YouTube, Ustream). Entered terms are saved and live mentions can be viewed for each. Click on any entry to view more detail within the same screen.
2. CrowdEye- http://www.crowdeye.com/
Enter a word/phrase to view information gathered from Twitter sorted into various groups (includes option to filter within the word/phrase). 1. Graph: trend in volume of tweets containing the word/phrase (last 12 hours, 1 day, 2 days, 3 days) 2. Popular Links: most popular links to pages containing the word/phrase. 3. Tweets: most recent tweets containing the word/phrase 4. Word Cloud: showing most associated words to the word/phrase. 5. Top Hash Tags 6. Top Words.
3. Twitter Spectrum – http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterSpectrum/TwitterSpectrum.html
Enter two words/phrases to compare Twitter word clouds for each – one coloured red and the other blue – including overlapping words. See which brand is achieving larger numbers of tweets for which word associations and how brands differ in what people say about them.
4. Happn.in – http://www.happn.in/
Enter a word/phrase to see popular phrases that include the word/phrase used on Twitter within 20 miles of major cities around the world.
5. Spezify – http://www.spezify.com/
Enter a word/phrase to see images (photos and text) captured from web pages containing the word/phrase. Images are shown on a timeline – click and hold the mouse to drag the images timeline left or right or up or down. Click on an image to zoom in, view the source URL, and then click the link to visit the page containing the word/phrase.
6. Quarkbase- http://www.quarkbase.com/
Enter a website URL to view a wide variety of information about the site/brand/company under the following headings: Introduction (various info about the brand/company), Social Popularity (number of links to the site, popular pages, top feeds) Traffic (volume graph, volume by country, reach graph, page views graph), People (eg. key company staff), Spotlight (links to URL/brand/company in Twitter, Blogs, News, Get Satisfaction), Company (address, headquarters, employees etc.)
7. BlogPulse – http://www.blogpulse.com/
Enter a word/phrase or a URL to view blog comments containing the word/phrase/URL for any date range over the last 6 months. View volume trend graph comparing up to three words/phrases/URLs. Click anywhere on the volume lines to see the blog entries for that word/phrase/URL at that point in time. Track conversations
8. Adonomics – http://adonomics.com/
Enter up to three Facebook applications to view user volume and sale valuation trend graphs over varying time periods.
9. Twitratr- http://twitrratr.com/
Enter a word/phrase to view recent tweets containing the word/phrase grouped into positive, neutral, and negative columns, with a count and % for each sentiment column.
10. Twitter StreamGraphs – http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterStreamGraphs/view.php
Enter a word/phrase to view a ‘data visualisation’ graph of the last 1,000 tweets containing the word/phrase showing usage over time for the words most highly associated with the word/phrase. The graph is a timeline, showing relative volume over time of associated words.
11. Twitseeker – http://twitseeker.com/
Enter a word/phrase to see a list of people ranked by the number of times they have posted tweets containing the word/phrase. Use to identify “alpha” tweeters for a brand/company.
12. What Does The Internet Think – http://www.whatdoestheinternetthink.net
Enter a word/phrase to view a negative/positive/don’t care graph of content across Google, Yahoo! and Bing.
13. Social Mention – http://socialmention.com/
Enter a word/phrase to see a) recent content (from various social media sources) that includes the word/phrase b) measures of ’strength’, ’sentiment’, ‘passion’, and ‘reach’ c) automated sentiment graph showing positive, neutral and negative volumes (click to see positive/negative content) d) top 10 keywords associated with word/phrase (click to view content for each) e) top 10 users (click to view) f) top hashtags (click to view) g) top sources (click to view). View content for varying periods up to the last month. Sort content by date or by source. View content from blogs, microblogs, bookmarks, comments, events, images, news, video, audio. Advanced search option. Use “Preferences” option to search in a specific language (most languages are available). Receive emails alerts of latest social media results containing word/phrase.
14. Twist – http://twist.flaptor.com/
Enter multiple words/phrases to compare volume lines of tweets containing the words/phrases for the last 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days. View current tweets for each word/phrase or click anywhere on the volume lines to see the tweets for that word/phrase at that point in time.
15. Twendz – http://twendz.waggeneredstrom.com/
Enter a word/phrase to see a) up to 70 of the most recent tweets containing the word/phrase b) automated sentiment graphs showing positive, neutral and negative % of tweets overall and for top five topics (click on graphs to see positive/negative tweets). c) a word cloud showing which words are most associated with the entered word/phrase.
16. HowSociable – http://www.howsociable.com/
Enter a word/phrase to see a “visibility score” and the number of times the word/phrase appears in various social media sites including: Technorati, Facebook Groups, Facebook Events, Twitter, Photobucket, MySpace, YouTube Videos, YouTube Channels, Google Blogs, Ning, Upcoming Events, Flickr, Google Images, Bebo, Vimeo, Delicious, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, Magnolia, Google Pages. Click on each to view results. Enter email address to receive a monthly email with latest visibility score results for the word/phrase.
17. Topsy – http://topsy.com/
Groups Twitter conversations based on an entered word/phrase, ranking conversations based on topics that are most associated with the word/phrase. Click on topics to view all tweets within that topic. Possible to view topic ranks by most recent hour, day, week, month, all. Separate ranking of Twitter authors who are using the word/phrase (click to see their tweets).
18. Monitter – http://monitter.com/
Enter up to three words/phrases (eg. three brands) and Monitter starts live streaming of tweets that include the words/phrases. Can limit tracking to a particular area/city.
19. Twitscoop – http://www.twitscoop.com/
Click on the “Search” option at the top of the page. Enter a word/phrase to see live streaming of tweets containing the word/phrase. Click on “Graph” (beside the search box) to view a graph of the volume of tweets containing the word/phrase within the last 6 hours, 1 day or 3 days.
20. SiteVolume – http://www.sitevolume.com/
Enter up to five words/phrases to compare total volumes for each word/phrase in five social media sites: Digg, Myspace, Youtube, Flickr, Twitter
21. Keotag – http://www.keotag.com
Enter a word/phrase and then select from a long list of social media sources (eg. Twitter etc.) to see recent posts for that word/phrase within selected social media source. View photos from Flickr relating to the word/phrase.

Thought I would share two great must reads with you today. The first is a study commissioned by the Wall Street Journal on the 2010 global ad spend. The basics are that there will be a small rise in spending but magazines and radio spends will see a small drop. The winners are; digital spends (+11.6%), TV (+2%), and Outdoor (+2.1%). Lucky I do digital work then.

The second must read is the latest Contagious report of 2009. The report lists the most talked-about trends and technologies to have influenced global marketing over the past 12 months, its a pretty essential read if you want to know what works and what doesn’t.

To download it either click the image above or Click here.

Google recently released this presentation showing 87 digital campaigns and creative ideas that they think have stood out for 2009. Most of the examples make use of the YouTube or Google Maps API but all are pretty good examples of how to WIN.

Had a great catch up coffee session in Soho yesterday with all round gentleman & legend Steve Clayton from Microsoft. After our meeting Steve suggested while I was in the area to check out the Lazarides Art gallery. If you like Banksy you will love the gallery and the other works on display here, check out the slide show above for a look, and if your in London just go visit them on Greek Street.

The wonderful people at LimelightPR just sent me a fantastic new new augmented reality iphone application from Acrossair for Stella Artois called “Le Bar Guide”. The app works similar to Layar, using your iPhone’s GPS, camera, accelerometer and magnetometer to pick up where you are, and which direction you are looking at, allowing you to see through your camera screen the exact location / distance of bars nearby. You can then click on the venue for more info and directions using Google maps, you can also filter the bars shown by atmosphere type, ratings etc.  When you are at a listed bar you can also leave messages under that venue name for other users, rate it, or send the details to friends. The app even allows you to easily find and call taxis in your area ! Look at the video above to see the app in action, I especially like the way you can point your phone towards the ground and see arrowed directions to the nearest bars on the ground. At the moment the application is being launched for free initially to the US market, but there is a comprehensive global roll out planned in the New Year – with the UK top of the list. Great to see Stella taking the initiative and pushing the boundaries. At present the app is not live but it will be later today so will pop up the link as soon as its available.

Advertising agency Forsman and Bodenfors created a brilliant campaign for IKEA using Facebook picture tagging to help promote a new store in the Swedish town of Malmo. The store didn’t have a huge budget so the agency created a Facebook profile for the store manager, Gordon Gustavsson, and over a two-week period they uploaded images of IKEA showrooms to his Facebook photo album. They then put the word out that the first person to tag their name to a product in the pictures, won it. Thousands of people started tagging themselves in the showroom pictures trying to win anything from beds to vases. The campaign spread like wild fire via users profile pages, news feed and links. The end result was huge organic awareness of IKEA and its store, as well as humanising the brand by having Gordon Gustavsson, the store manager updating content and replying to questions regularly.

Recently we have been seeing a ton of innovation in the print media to digital media conversion arena. This latest wonder is from The New York Times and comes in the form of a PC or Mac compatible reader. The Times reader 2.0 uses Adobe AIR and allows you to read a full digital edition of the NY Times just like a real newspaper but with the advantage of video content and more. The programme updates automatically and delivers the entire day’s Times in seconds, so you can carry it wherever you go. If you’re a subscriber the digital edition is free, or you can get just the digital version for $3.45 per week. There is currently a free scaled down edition available too, to try it out for yourself just click here.