Sony have recently launched the above campaign to show off the capabilities of their new Intel Core i powered Vaio Z and F series laptops. Sony have taken a team of eight high school students to help design, build and launch a high power rocket using Vaio laptops. The campaign is from 180 L.A and is being called the  Rocket Project.The students are currently on an accelerated course in rocketry by Tom Atchison, Director of the Association of Rocket Mavericks, and aim to launch a 25-foot projectile weighing over 500 pounds in April at Black Rock Desert in Nevada. To follow the campaign go to http://sonyrocketproject.com

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

Probably the most anticipated phone from Sony Ericsson for years has been the new Xperia X10, and now it has a baby brother and sister in the form of the X10 Mini and X10 Mini Pro. The only differences between the two are that the Pro has a slide out qwerty keypad, is slightly larger, and is available in Black and red rather than all the other colours for the regular mini shown below. First hands on tests show this phone is fast and pretty much good to go (click here for a hands on test video). These two touch screen Android phones feature Sony Ericsson’s new signature application Timescape™ which brings all communication together in one place so users can see at a glance text messages, missed calls, and Facebook™ and Twitter updates, without having to open lots of different applications.  The interactive music player also uses an “infinite button” to pull together all music content from the music store and YouTube™ – a smart way to search for new tracks from a favourite artist. The phones will be available for release in the second quarter of this year. Personally I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these. If they live up to the hype the X10 range will be the phones that secure Sony Ericsson’s future as one of the world’s top handset manufacturers.   Main Specs:

• Android 1.6 operating system, with 600MHz Qualcomm MSM7227 processor
• 5mp camera.
• 4 Custom corner shortcut keys
• 2.5-inch QVGA touchscreen
• WiFi, Bluetooth (A2DP),
• Micro USB connector and 3.5mm headphone jack
• Sony Ericsson Timescape™, Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync®,
• A-GPS, Android Market™, Google Talk™, Google Voice Search™
• 128mb built in memory, 2GB microSD™ memory card inc in box

For the full Sony Ericsson press release click here 

Apple just released all the details of their new tablet computer called the iPad. The short of it is its a 9.7 inch LED multi-touch screen computer, great for browsing, email, photos, video, music, games and eBooks. The iPad can run all the existing iPhone apps full screen and apps are being developed as we speak for its launch (Estimated 1st April in USA for WiFi version and 1st May for 3G version).

The iPad 3G is unlocked to any network and includes a deal in the USA for unlimited web use for $29.99 (offers are expected to be arranged for other countries in the future). Battery life is 10 hours and the iPad comes complete with built in speakers and mic as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack and 3 USB sockets.

Prices are as follows:

iPad

16GB

32GB

64GB

WiFi

$499

$599

$699

3G

$629

$729

$829

For pictures look below (click to zoom in). For full specs visit http://www.apple.com/ipad

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.

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.

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.

UK creative magazine Distill have just made their latest edition available to buy on the iPhone app store. From the video above this has to be the best adaptation of a print mag to iPhone conversion I have ever seen (Grated there have not been many). The iPhone app work was done by a London digital agency called Ustwo. I bought the app to try it out and I must say  navigation is very simple, text easy to read, and pictures are easy to scroll and zoom around as you would expect from the iPhone / iPod touch.

Why more main stream publications haven’t figured out / done this yet boggles my mind. There is huge market for digital versions of their magazines, especially on products like the iPhone and even the new android phones. Screen sizes seems to be about right now and file sizes don’t need to be huge, the Distill mag is pretty extensive and is only 40mb (and costs £2.99).

Distill magazine is a UK creative magazine featuring the “The finest fashion and art photography in the world”, the content for the mag is selected by an Editorial Board consisting of the likes of John Galliano, Donatella Versace, Manolo Blahnik, Matthew Williamson, Giles Deacon and many more.

To download the Distill iPhone edition click here

This is literally out of this world. Toshiba’s agency in London, Grey, collaborated with The Mill to film the world’s highest commercial, shot 98,000 feet above Nevada’s Black Rock desert.

To make this possible they attached a high altitude helium balloon to a biodegradable chair, fitted the balloon with a rig complete with 8 Toshiba HD IK-HR1S camcorders and 4 GPS units to tack the position and altitude of the Chair, then in the middle of the desert they let it fly. The balsa wood chair and rig flew to 98,268 feet before the balloon burst and the chair tumbled back to earth at max speeds of a little over mach 1 !

The tag line is great; “Armchair viewing, redefined”, and the commercial also fits in well with Toshiba’s core slogan “Leading innovation”. The ad was made to help publicise the new Regza-LCD-TV range. Click here to see the making of the ad video.
Stats

• The chair is made of biodegradable balsa wood at a cost of about £2,500.
• The balloon was launched from the Black Rock desert in Nevada.
• The chair took 83 minutes to reach the lofty altitude and fell back to earth in just 24 minutes.
• The temperature dropped to minus 90 degrees at 52,037 feet.
• Four different GPS systems were attached to the rig to accurately record its height.
• The ad was shot by cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos, who also worked on Mamma Mia!

Last week I was kindly invited to a Nokia roundtable event called “The way we live next 3.0”. The event was held at the new One & Only hotel in Cape Town and Nokia invited Missing Linking entrepreneur and legend Richard Mulholland to be the guest speaker. He shared his vision on the latest trends in the mobile space and where he sees these trends going in the future. The short of it was that mobile phones/devices will eventually replace computers and that for companies and leaders to be successful they will have to heed Alvin Toffler’s wise words: “The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” The other speaker was Nokia’s product marketing manager Patrick Henchie who talked about Nokia’s vision of what the future (see video above) and how mobility might evolve. Nokia also introduced us to some future products and let us have a play;

• N900: This is the first Nokia phone to run on the open source OS Maemo. Its basically a 3.5” touch screen phone with slide out keyboard. My brief impression was its a step in the right direction but still not an iPhone (and a bit fat). For the specs PDF click here.
• X6 touch phone: I didn’t get to play with this for too long but it was my favourite product on show. Its a 3.5” capacitive touch screen phone. It runs Nokia’s symbian OS and it just worked great. Also when you get the phone you get access to unlimited free music downloads from the Nokia Ovi Store (For the phone only but still is a great bonus and the phone has 32GB internal memory).
• Nokia Booklet 3G: This new Nokia laptop is pretty exiting, its made from a single piece of machined aluminium and feels great. It has shortcuts to the Ovi store and maps built in, as well as an integrated 3G HSPA modem. The machine runs Windows 7, has a 10.1” screen and has an incredible battery life of up to 12 hours. After a little play I thought it was very sluggish, but then I turned off the power saving mode and it worked fine. Great bit of kit if you travel lots and want to use it to access cloud services and do some light work on the go. For the specs PDF click here.

Overall the event was a great initiative and I liked the way they made the sessions intimate with only about 15 influential journalists, developers and bloggers invited, it gave us the chance to interact very easily with the speakers and products. On another note thanks to Olga from Nokia South Africa for inviting me even though she knew I’m a Sony Ericsson fan !