what browser dot org

Not sure how long this has been out there, but it’s the first time I have personally seen it.  Seems Google are really stepping up the game in several areas and have now, in an attempt to push their chrome browser that little bit harder, launched the site whatbrowser.org to educate you, the average user (yeah right! not if you’re reading this rubbish!), on what a browser is, which one you are using, and that *shock* you have a choice to use something else – presumably aimed at the average IE user.

Well, it’s a nice enough if simply site, and the attached youtube video does a good job as well, but to me it feels a bit like teaching granny to suck eggs – but then I seriously doubt me (or you!) are the intended audience.

Worth a look though.

Shame chrome isn’t listed as another browser for the mac yet still though!

Howard

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Still waiting for my invite but I am assured it’s on it’s way and they’re just batch delivering them – fingers crossed.

So, until it turns up and I can go over it with a fine toothed comb, here’s a video from who people who built it.

and it’s only 7 mins long!

Result

Howard

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Posted via email from howardscott’s posterous

Big thanks to Matt Alder as always for sending it my way.

Howard

very nice piece of motion graphics being used for the launch  which you can see below.

H

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I love the bloke at the end who comes in and says “Are you making a movie?”

Couldn’t have written it better!

Case in point – Sony’s new range of TVs have a user interface which will be very familiar to anyone with a PSP or PS3, and an ethernet plug right there in the back of the TV itself.

Connect them up, and using the XMB (as the interface is known) you can get content from Yahoo! right there on top of the TV image, or watch IPTV content from the likes of YouTube, CNN and so forth instead of anything being “broadcast”.

The name Sony like’s to call their people who work in this field (Convergineers) says it all.

Convergence isn’t something that’s “coming soon” any more.

It’s now.

Howard

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Brands have been on twitter for quite some time now, as well all know, some having good success, and others not doing it quite as well as they could, but what we’ve not fully seen are brands using it as a direct communications channel to clients in relation to a competiton or game, with differing end goals by the look of it.

Only last week, my attention was drawn to a competition being run by Asus computers, producers of the well loved EeePC series, for the launch of a new model they have created (known as the Asus SeaShell for reasons that I can’t fathom aside from it, like all laptops, looks a bit like a clamshell). For your chance to win one of these machines you simply had to follow the brand on twitter (@asusuk) and in turn, they would select a user at random, once a week, to be the lucky winner of the machine.  When I chose to follow them they had about 40 followers.  Now, they have 1472 – not massive by anyone’s measure, but not too shabby either.  All I can think of was that this was an attempt to grow their follower-base to hit the right kind of people who might, in turn, spread the word to others interested in netbooks and so on – so, actually, in terms of “hitting the right people” this is probably quite an interesting exercise for them.

So, one week later, and I come across an email from another technology company, Novatech, a tech and PC retailer which you might not have heard from (but for those of us tech-inclined on the south-coast of the UK trust me, they’re a god-send at times!)  Novatech are running a similar competittion to Asus, but it, for me, fails at the first hurdle due to the barrier to entry.

Again it’s to win a netbook (this time from MSI) and all you have to do is follow BOTH MSI and Novatech on twitter (@msitweets and @novatechltd) – so not one, but two – and then you have to tweet on your own profile that you’re following them, AND then…  you have to register on the novatech forum and post a link on that to your twitter page.

*PHEW*

got that?  couldn’t be simpler right?  erm… well, perhaps it could.  I think this is a bad example of how to use the channels around twitter for a promotion.

And finally, although by no means the last “brand” on twitter doing so, everyone’s favourite mockney chef, Jamie Oliver (@jamie_oliver), is running a regular competition each Friday called “Jamie’s Twitchen” (see what he did there?) where by he asks a question, and the first person from around the twitterverse to reply with the correct answer and the hashtag #jamiestwitchen wins a prize which changes each week.

This is, for me, a great example of how to use the channel in a positive, respectful way that actually makes use of the unique nature of twitter itself, rather than trying to make it into something it’s not intended to be for the sake of a few thousand email addresses you can bombard.

What I think these illustrates is a couple of things.

1) brands (large and small, world famous and not) are waking up to twitter as a very immediate here-and-now channel to run competitions in – and the power of communicating directly to your core audience and what that can give you.

2) sometimes, social media usage can be taken to far (not mentioning any names Novatech!) in your quest to grab user details and build up a pool of “followers” to spread the word to (less is often more)

Twitter is, as I pointed out to a senior client I work with via a linkedin conversation last night, simply another channel within which we can conduct digital marketing.  It’s not the answer to everything, but it’s emerging quite rapidly, that using twitter as part of a sales promotion strategy, or a games/comps strategy, really does seem to work – but as with everything, treat it with respect and don’t abuse the power it can give you.

Overall, I like this trend, I like that we, the users of twitter, are coming up with a plethora of new ways to work it.

It’s evolving!

Howard

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