BonBon Kakku is not the first company to apply crowdsourcing to fabrics. They MAY be the first finnish company to do it but I know of at least one other and I’m sure there are more
But Naked & Angry seems to be moving a bit slow in adding both new designs and valuable user generated content. This is where BonBon Kakku does a great job.
Designers submitting there work get to choose one of five templates to present their designs. I like that they offer five options AND that they keep the submitted content visually cohesive by using only these templates. Fluevog posts design submissions in seemingly any format which works for them but would be visually confusing with fabric.
I bought my 8GB iPhone on the first day they where made available. I hadn’t intended to be one of “the first” crowd but when we showed up at the Apple store in San Francisco around 11am there was NO LINE.
No line to enter the store
No line at the Genius Bar that was converted into an iPhone distribution station
And only a five minute line to pay
So I found myself calling my friends at Apple Online Store office (who where popping champaigne) letting them know that I had said phone in-hand.
Well, this time around it’s different… the line, that is.
I’ve been tracking the twitter comments relating to the queue throughout the day and was nearly out the door to meet Rob and getz our neue fones when I saw this:
So we cancelled our rendezvous and I removed my “the first” honorary button from my messenger bag.
More than a hundred years before Pat Buchanan talked up a “culture war” over where gay men put their pee-pees, Otto von Bismarck started a real Kulturkampf with the Catholic Church in the new German Empire. In both cases, it was about who got to decide what was cool, and in both cases, it wasn’t the people themselves. In the popkulturkampf going on in the coming age of ubiquitous technology, the people are choosing, and they aren’t lining up for Windows Mobile phones in San Bruno.
10 million iPhones in 2008 is a done deal today.
The occassional frustrations of working at Timbuk2 come rushing back to me when I think of the product volume opportunity they are missing by spending their time dorking around with Dell and have yet to offer an iPhone-specific accessory case. But who could have predicted such response to a single form factor? doh!
“As with participation in most forms of social media, Twitter requires your executive to have an authentic voice. “If you’re on Twitter, just make sure you are passionate about it and showing your true personality,” says Hsieh. “Don’t think of Twitter as a place to put your marketing messages; use Twitter the way you would use it even if you weren’t CEO.”
Met up with Lisa and Richard at the Moo offices in London to talk about the People Powered group. A few ideas got tossed around but the biggest request was for more time in the day. Moo is on fire: planning their annual summer bash in London, just launched their business cards, and Richard is leading a panel discussion at Web 2.0 in NYC.
They took me to the Hoxton Square Bar & Grill for a beer nearby- reminds me a lot of South Park in SF. Matt Biddulph joined us for a beer at the pub and I got to tell him my “I heart Dopplr” story.
Nice (and brief) commentary by Mike Schaffner on how businesses can easily put web 2.0 tools to use:
RSS can be used to push order-status information directly to a customer’s company intranet.
Have employees use a MySpace or Facebook-type site to introduce themselves to the company. These can also be a resource to help employees find a potential car-pool mate, someone with a background in product design or specific experience on a product you are thinking about launching.
Twitter and FriendFeed as communication and collaboration tools. Imagine someone putting out a Twitter message (a “tweet”) that says, “I’m updating the marketing plan, does anyone have any info on X?” rather than sending out an e-mail that gets lost in everyone’s inbox. The tweet may have a wider reach and generate a better response. And when your research project is done, share it via FriendFeed.
Instant Messaging for quick conversations that don’t get buried in the inbox or use up valuable storage space on the e-mail server (though some IM tools allow you to save the conversation in your e-mail system if you want or need to keep it.)
Wikis and blogs can be used for training and collaboration on large projects.
Mashups can bring together production and operations data from a variety of sources, allowing a production manager to get a good overview of her operations.
YouTube-style videos can be used for training or distributing important messages, such as the CEO announcing a new product launch or Joe, the IT help desk guy, receiving an award.
I can personally attest to the many benefits of implementing web-based project wikis like Basecamp including transparency, ease of collaboration with in-house and traveling staff and consultants. We also use Backpack to interface and collaborate with consumer product testers with great success.
The Social Media Press Release is an evolved approach to preparing press releases characterized by a multimedial and facts-oriented approach. The typical social media press release integrates video clips, bookmarks, citations, blog posts, multiple links and resources allowing the news editor to pick and select individual info items that may best serve his interest, editorial style and audience.
Robin Good compiles a goldmine of resources that can; help bring your press release current, leverage all the great web tools that are available today, convince you that traditional press releases are not only out-of-date but also inherently, and offensively, top-down in the communication structure.
Good offer’s up eight reasons why traditional press releases do not work:
top-down, one-way
one-voice that’s no-one voice
full of marketing hype - not credible
poor in verifiable facts
presented poorly in text-only format
lacking punch and immediate value for the reader
only one focus - the company being talked about
untargeted - written in a generic style
Todd Defren posted the template pictured above in the update (v1.5) blog post.
Timbuk2 ships the vast majority of their direct to consumer orders in plastic bags. The bags themselves have some post consumer recycle material but it’s still packaging that would normally head straight to the landfill.
I love packaging that makes someone pause before they toss it into the trash (or recycle) bin. Apple does an amazing job and I have a closet full of beautiful black boxes to prove it.
At Timbuk2, I was constantly brainstorming ways that packaging could evolve in it’s reused to something different entirely. My greatest success was the idea to print a bicycle map onto the plastic shipping bag to create a waterproof bike map.
We focused on San Francisco bike maps first and initially paid for licensing with Rufus Graphics’ Bicycle and Walking map. By the time our second run of shipping bags was due we had developed our very own San Francisco and Chicago bicycle map with a local cartography firm. This alleviated license fee’s and more importantly, we where able to add points of interest and pub recommendations from our staff, local retailers, and friends of Timbuk2 like Threadless.
Here are a few pictures of the map bag (and popsicle bag that preceded it) that consumers have posted to Flickr:
