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personal
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personal, Travel & Tourism
A Beautiful Vancouver Day
Communitywalk is an awesome website. You can build interactive maps and plot everything you want on it. So I used it today to document our walk around False Creek today.
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personal
Advanced Page-turning Technology
I found an email in my inbox with the following content:
The next generation of online digital brochures has been created by www.onlinetravelbrochures.com allowing both dial-up and broadband internet users to use advanced page-turning technology.ADVANCED PAGE-TURNING TECHNOLOGY. You have to be kidding me. Why do people keep thinking that putting a print brochure up online is a good idea? It’s always a bad idea, unless it’s intended use is to print it out on paper. The failure of all print-mirroring applications as a way to serve up content online was not depended the fact that there was no animated “page turning”. And it’s also not depended on download speed, there are plenty of reasons why serving content online in PDF form (or a gloried versions) is a bad idea.
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personal
An Inconvenient Truth
09.02.06 | Permalink | 2 Comments
We finally went to see An Inconvenient Truth today, the All Gore documentary/presentation about global warning. There wasn’t a lot of new information for me but it did provide me a powerful reminder of the state of the world and it’s future. And I’m encouraged. Encouraged because of the attention this is finally getting and the number of people who will be exposed to this information. Because only collectively we can do something about this. Maybe people will start basing their votes on important matters such as global warming instead of who’s allowed to marry whom, women’s rights to choose or what a religious leader tells them to do.
Now I’ve heard from people who’ve seen this movie that they don’t know what they can do. Well, Sheri and I been aware of this for a long time. We have been trying to live our lifes based on our believe that the earth can’t sustain the effect people have on the environment. We’re not activists (yet) and we can do a lot more then we do. But we do consider this in our life decisions and we are willing to make sacrifices. And it’s really not that hard. I think that if we can do this, more people can, so here are some examples:
We’re both vegetarians
In the western society I live in, it is not necessary to eat meat. The production of meat cost a lot more land and energy than it takes to grow vegetables and the way the meat industry is industrialized is unethical. Switching to become a vegetarian is very easy. There’s a wide variety of alternatives available.We don’t own a car
We both walk to work. We choose to live close to where we work to minimize our daily commute. We don’t own a car and try to walk, bike and take public transportation when we can. We do have access to a car through a car cooperation and we occasionally rent a car. We use it to go away from the city and to transport heavy things. As a side effect, we save a ton of money on gas, insurance, maintenance and has reduced our stress levels. The adjustment was surprisingly easy. If driving is not an option, you get creative pretty quickly.We will have one child maximum.
We don’t have children at the moment and if we do decide to start a family, we will only have one child. Earth is overpopulated. The math is simple. If every couple has less then 2 children on average, population will go down, and so will the demand on it’s resources.We live in a 600sq/ft (60M2) apartment.
Because that’s all we need. A living room, a kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom and a small den. That also means we can’t have a lot of stuff. So whenever we buy anything, it means that something else probably has to go. Perching is awesome, I love it. Our place is also super efficient for energy consumption. Our monthly electricity bill is a joke.I don’t intent to sound all high and mighty. This is just the way we live our life and we feel good about it. I know people that do a lot more. My sister for example volunteers for every environmental organization she can find, including going to high schools to educate children about environmental issues. And I respect her a lot for it.
So I’m encouraged and hopeful that enough people will clue in on time so we can turn these events around and make the world a place for many generations to come.
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Internet, personal
Agency.com’s Subway Pitch
It’s always interesting to find out what happened online and/or in the blogosphere when I come back from vacation. One of the first things I noticed was the commotion around the agency.com Subway pitch.
As part of a Request For Information from Subway, agency.com created a video and tried to demonstrate their online marketing abilities by demonstrating their viral marketing by posting the video and outtakes on YouTube. The blogosphere exploded immediately. In particular advertising related blogs. And the opinions weren’t pretty. Other advertising professionals are mostly commenting on the quality of creative, whether or not it is considered viral marketing, the looks and behaviour of the people included in the video and the language they use. “When we roll, we roll big” will probably become part of (at least agency) vocabulary and agency.com smartly put more oil on the fire by starting a blog called whenwerollwerollbig.com.
I happen to be somebody who works client-side so I’m going to weight in from my perspective. No, I didn’t like the video either when I saw it. It wasn’t funny, full of buzz words and some of the “big ideas” and meetings reminded me of bad episodes of “the Apprentice”. The comment about the salary of subway employees was offensive and should have been edited out. But beside the salary comment, none of all this matters. Results matter.
And I recognize the results. The video has been watched over 80,000 times so far and everybody is talking about it. So they’ve successfully proven that they understand online marketing, viral or not. When I talk to my peers outside Tourism BC, the frustration I hear the most is “our agency doesn’t understand online marketing“, right before “our marketing department doesn’t understand the User Experience“. The two are related because the latter select the former. And for the record, I consider myself more fortunate then most of my peers. If Agency.com can produce this kind of reaction for this purpose, they might just be able do it for a consumer campaign as well. At least I would give them the benefit of the doubt for whatever the next step in the process is.
Here’s the video:
Update 8/25: Just found out Agency.com pulled out of the running. My guess is that a higher-up pulled the plug because of the negative backlash. We’ll never know what Subway thought of the whole thing.
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personal
Priorities
I’ve been on vacation the last two weeks with very limited Internet access. Coming back is always interesting for a variety of reasons. First of all, what blogs/media did I read first? What am I interested in the most? It’s interesting to learn about myself.
- The first thing I did when I got home was download the F1 race in Hungary because I read in the paper over there that it was one of the best races in years. So I watched it first thing this morning.
- Before I went to bed I watched some Daily Show videos. I was curious what Jon had to say about the conflict in the Middle East and the recent terror alert.
- The first blog I viewed were the Dilberts I missed
- The second blog I read were the latest entries for HelloBCBlogs.
- The first blog I read to get updates what happened online was the Adaptive Path blog.
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personal
On vacation to Ireland and testing trip journal websites
We’re on our way to Ireland. To make sure I’m still geeking out, I’m going to try to use a couple of travel journal websites while I’m there.
You can follow our trip on either:
I’ll detail my experiences with both websites on this blog here. And yes, I will have time left to drink plenty of Guinness, I promise.
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personal
World Cup
Well, the Fifa World Cup is over. The Dutch should have won but got robbed by the Portuguese diving team.
Some user-generated-content factoids. The best blog was by far the Guardian Life Match Blogs, featuring match commentary mixed with bone-dry English humour and reader emails. I managed to satisfy my craving for meaningless online exposure by having one of my comments I sent to the blogger mentioned during the final (69th minute).
The most dramatic moment of the game was when Zinedine Zidane was sent off with a red card. So I went to his Wikipedia entry moments after the game to find out how long it would take before his article would be updated. When I got there, the article was already updated. The power of User Generated Content.
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personal, tourism bc
More about Tokyo
06.12.06 | Permalink | 2 CommentsI’ve been back from Tokyo for about a week now but things have been very busy. I spend most of last week on Vancouver Island without a proper internet connection.
From the left, myself, Mayu, Yuka, Cindy (from Vancouver) and TomokoIt was very nice to meet our staff in Tokyo and our web contractor. They are doing a great job with out HelloBC.jp website. Especially their blog is very interesting. They invite people from the industry who visited BC to write an entry. The comments are used for consumers to ask questions and results in direct business if the blog was written by a tour operator.
Tokyo is a nice city and the food is amazing. My co-workers took me to this magic club (I think it’s called 8 o’clock) and it was really cool. I had a day to wonder around the city, take in all the sights and absorb some of the culture. They weather was hot and humid but further than that, I’m looking forward to go back.
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personal
The User Experience of hotel alarm clocks
06.11.06 | Permalink | 5 CommentsI travel a fair bit for work and one of the things that frustrate me are the hotel alarm clocks. They’re usually these big multifunctional radio/CD/alarm monsters with 100 buttons and switches. Getting up on time is the most important thing. The last thing you want to be is late on a business trip. And I don’t trust wake-up calls ever since a hotel messed it up. I always have to test the alarm-clock first and to be sure, I also set the alarm on my Blackberry.
So it was very nice to see the following device next to my bed in Tokyo. Very simple. The buttons on the left controlled all the lighting in my room. Three buttons to set the alarm; on/off and time up and down. Easy. Another light button on the right plus an airco on/off. Thank you Odakyu Hotel Century Southern Tower. -
personal
First Impressions in Tokyo
I arrived in Tokyo a few hours ago. I’m here all week to discuss the future of our successful Japanese website. It’s my first time here and I went straight from the Narita airport to my Hotel in the Shinjuku area so I have only been here for a short period of time. That doesn’t stop me from verifying some things I’ve been hearing about.
Everything is freakishly clean and there’s no garbage bin to be found.
Yes, it’s clean alright. I bought an apple at the airport (save bet as a vegetarian) and I couldn’t find a place to dispose it.
People line up in straight lines before the subway, even when it’s packed.
They sure do. They even line up exactly where the doors are going to be. Impressive.Subway stations are insanely big and busy
I’ve seen worse. But hey, I’m from Europe where people don’t line up.Everybody is texting non-stop
Pretty much. Or they’re reading.
The toiled doubles as a female masturbation device
Ehhhh, yes it does. Email me for details.
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William Bakker's Destination Marketing blog
William Bakker is Chief Strategist at Destination Think!. These are my personal thoughts.
