Nike+ better

Ok. I spent a lot of money on Nike kit recently. Partly for research, partly for brown-nosing, partly because I like it. The best piece of kit I find is the Nike+ sportsband. I love the way technology makes my running gear better. I love that it lets me plot my runs, map them, keep track of them, share them with my friends back in Milan and see who is fattest and slowest. So you thought there was no room to innovate in running shoes? wrong!

But there are some limitations I think.

About a month ago I put down a little training program in order to run from zero to 5k comfortably in one month. The screenshots below show my progress:





The following thoughts spring to mind:

1. I am painfully rubbish. Although I am running quite regularly (green bars) I am behind on my program (blue bars). That's my problem I guess.
   
2. But hey: I am actually doing quite a lot of cycling. Last week I rode 225k and didn't run. (yeah ... I am on a 4 months holiday)
   
3. Hey. I am also swimming regularly. Yesterday 2k. Normally about 6-8k/week.
4. I am sure there are a lot of people who run, cycle and swim. Not just triatletes, but also normal people who try to get/keep fit like me.
   

So I am thinking that it would be great to have a sort of Triathlon Nike+ that

1. Does exactly what Nike+ does for running
2. Integrates with my bike computer, to let me plot my cycling workout and share it with others online
3. Works for swimming, for example by helping me keep count of how many lanes I swim (I tend to forget), my speed, etc ... and lets me sink all the above online.
   

... would be great

Blocked YouTube/2

A few days back I commented on an Economist article. I wanted to know more about how internet censorship works. Nick left a very nice comment to that post. So nice I thought it should be an entry in its own right. Still, it leaves me with a desire to understand how censorship works in the west.

Thanks Nick, good luck at LBS next year.
--
(guest writer: Nick)

I'm a US/UK citizen living in China (actually, I'll be starting my MBA at LBS this August...)

Anyway, I thought I'd share a little about the whole government censorship thingy. Living here in China, I'm subjected to it a lot and have to resort to various tricks to get around it.

Sites that are permanently blocked here (and no matter what tricks I try to get around the censor, I can't):

The US Democratic or Republican Party's webpages. Absolutely impossible to get to. Also, BBC News. No way, no how, I cannot read it.

CNN.com surprisingly almost always works, however when certain stories about China or democracy in the US are posted, the links are broken.

This past week with the riots in Tibet and the protesters that were shot, the central government has tightened restrictions more that usual. Two months ago a law was passed here that said any website showing streaming video had to be government controlled or owned, essentially shutting down YouTube and Chinese versions of it. This ban however had yet to be implimented... until this week. The government wants to make sure that there is not way that anyone living in Tibet can send photos or video out to the rest of the world (foreign media is banned from Tibet and Xinjiang Provinces due to "unrest"). There are some protest groups that if I were even to google their names, the government would take immediate note of my IP address and I would not be surprised if I had a knock at my door in the middle of the night from some special police. I'd be wary of even typing them here because I don't know what their ability is to read blog comments automatically.

Blogger's publishing tool is not banned here, but most of the time the actual blogs are. I have to use a tool called Anonymouse.org in order to view your blog or even my own.

You were wondering about the mechanism they use...

There are 4 levels.

Beijing central government has a list of banned sites. This is where the US political parties pages are blocked. Because Beijing is doing it, you'd have to have some serious hacking skills to get around it.

Next down, Provinces. Each capital city has an office dedicated to "cleaning" up the content of the internet before it reaches the masses. They have staff who search the internet all day long. If they find a webpage with "objectionable" content, they simply put it on the black list and anyone in China that tries to access it will not be able to (and will have their IP address noted by authories).

Then we come down to the city level. Same as the Provincial level. What the people in the city can see on the internet is up to a few people sitting in a office somewhere in the city. One week blogger and other blog sites may be blocked. The next week, one of the filter administrator's sons starts a blog so Daddy unblocks blogger for one week. Its arbitrary.

Then it comes down to a district level. I live 15km away from my office, but I can view different things in my house (different district). The powers that be in the district where I work will often block hotmail... as they have the power to read all email sent within China, if they read something that doesn't match the Communist Party lines, they will just shut down the email system for a week.

At each of the levels above, a select few have control over what millions of people are able to access. They can even control the content on Chinese forums and message boards. If a Chinese student writes something pro-democracy, their posting will be taken down within seconds and they will receive a warning. If they do it again, it is VERY likely that they will have a surprise visit in the middle of the night and be carried off to the police station were they may be kept for a few days.

I love this country... I love living here, I love the people, I love the food... but in order to live here and maintain your sanity you have to ignore the oppression by the government. If I thought about it as much as I have to write this comment to you, I'd spend my waking hours being furious on behalf of the Chinese populace.

Animoto

I am testing this animoto.com thingy. It lets you create animated slideshows with music and nice transitions. Simple to use. I like. Thanks Gianni for finding it.

blocked youtube (the economist)

Bit of a shitty article on the economist. Interesting but incomplete: http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displayStory.cfm?story_id=10754988&subjectID=348963&fsrc=nwl

here the integral text:
WHAT you see—or rather, what you don't see—on the internet may be determined by your government. The attitude of officialdom varies when it comes to filtering content of a social nature. In many places agreements are set with service providers to block nasty stuff such as child pornography. In a few countries intervention is stronger, up to the level of pervasive censorship. This week Pakistan's block on YouTube accidentally caused an international outage for that website. Iran and Saudi Arabia have also prevented their citizens from accessing the video-sharing site.

That's it. I would be intrigued to know more about it. For example: what kind of content is blocked in th UK? in Europe? in the US? why? who blocks it? how?

help needed folks!

I've been asked to go an present my big-picture-plan-to-save-the-world in an interview:

"So, we’d like Fran to come and talk to us about the different roles that the web can perform for brands or organisations, and the role he feels they perform in the customer journey. They could as equally be examples that are doing a bad job and what a better approach might have been".

I have a few thoughts, but I'd like to hear your opinions, dear readers (if anyone is reading). The comment box is below ... we've got 12 hours to prepare. Feel free to chip in.

please someone tell me what he is saying!!!

I am literally rolling on the floor laughing, and I don't know what he is saying!!!!

you just have to love the internet ...

... especially when you stumble across people like this guy. No idea what the hell he is saying, nor why there is stuff hanging off his right nostril. But he's just priceless.

good luck waxwave!

A few months back I had the pleasure of meeting a super clever, super nice LBS alumna, who took some of her time to share the tales of her post-LBS experience with me, and to provide advice. Today I learn her project is about to launch: www.waxwawe.com

"Waxwave is a new social venture. Our unique online fundraising product energises people to promote their favourite causes and helps charities promote themselves on the web in an entirely new way. For charities it means they get an innovative way to increase awareness and collect funds cost-effectively. For ordinary people, it means they get to have a bit of fun while telling the world what they believe in".

I guess it is still to early to understand quite how it will work, but if you look at their website you get the gist of it. Best of luck!

exciting

When someone rises to the challenges brought by the digital media and is able to come up with a simple, well thought through, no-bullshit, relevant solution.

I have posted about Pleon's work before, but here is an update, and a PDF file explaining exactly how it works. I am sure in 10 years from now, if they market it smartly, we will speak of Gianni and his crew as the guys who reinvented PR. Kudos.

shallow post about a fundamental issue in branding and the digital age

My respect for this guy is growing, although I am sure he doesn't need it.

He wrote an article in last week's campaign magazine which I think illustrates a very interesting point about advertising and branding in this 'digital age'. (and for the love of God, I can not find the article anywhere online).

In short, it is about two Unilever brands, Axe and Dove, which stand for two radically opposite concepts of beauty. Axe stands for seduction (i.e. the more you spray, the more you'll get laid), Dove stands for real beauty (i.e. real beauty is within, and every woman is beautiful).

The point made in the article is that consumers are beginning to raise legitimate questions about Unilever's integrity, as a parent company. Thanks to the internet they are able to voice their question: where does Unilever stand in terms of beauty?

For me, the interesting thought is that whilst agencies and brand owners are trying to figure out how to exploit the digital medium from an advertising perspective, consumers are one step ahead, and they are using the digital technology to ask more fundamental questions about branding and business models. How will Unilever react?

--
UPDATE 01/11: Russell kindly posted the article in comments: http://russelldavies.typepad.com/advertising_practitioner/2007/10/dove-lynx-incon.html have a read.

internet well done

Several years spent working in a variety of digital agencies.
The recurring debate has always been around how the internet will fundamentally change the way we consume information, entertainment and the way we relate to each other, and how companies need to find new ways to relate to their audiences.

An interesting idea, but to be honest, whilst a lot of people are good at asking the question, very few are able to provide a credible answer.

So you imagine my surprise when I went back to look at what my first agency - Pleon: a PR group - are doing these days, and I found that not only they are approaching the question in a very interesting way ... but also they are, I think, very close to providing a credible answer.

Well done Pleon.

you have to love this

Now, perhaps this isn't the newest thing around, but I just downloaded the google maps application to my Nokia phone, and it is amazing! so easy to use, I guess I will never get lost again on my bike in the middle of the english countryside. Only I feel bad that my life is gradually being owned by big brother Google. Can someone please wake up and be as cool? (or maybe should I?)