December 2007
Australia: keeping the Internet clean for kids... →
charlesfrith says:
I have deep misgivings about concealing the truth from children. I don’t believe its a binary solution to censorship, but children do learn the art of deception very quickly from adults in many areas. Sorry about the message below but this blog is censored in China. [Posted by 221.221.8.201 via http://algart.net/ww This is added while posting a message to avoid misuse....
Alternative headline tuesday (Hey there, Skippy) →
charlesfrith says:
Look. When the bloody hell are you gonna start skipping again?
Photodriving and Geotagging with the Nokia N82... →
charlesfrith says:
Lovely technology-in-action piece but a drive through the woods might have been a sweeter debut ;)
Supermobile made in china (MOBIZ) →
charlesfrith says:
I’ve been seeing these ads and wondering how truthful they are. Its interesting that the domestic brands are much more aggressive about toughness messages. Perhaps they are sensitive to this issue.
Merry jingle (Never get out of the boat) →
charlesfrith says:
Nice. I wasn’t aware of this one till just now :)
World's Biggest Bible Factory Opens In A... →
From dpa, via The China Post:
It is a country where people caught smuggling religious texts or organizing illicit services can face years in jail. Yet China is about to become home to the world’s biggest Bible factory, producing a staggering 1 million copies a month. The aircraft hangar-sized plant on an industrial park outside the eastern city of Nanjing will be capable of producing more...
2007 (Punk Planning) →
charlesfrith says:
No Doddsy. It was augmented me. Thank you Fiona. I am your biggest fan. Have a cracking night tonight and a terrific 2008. Also can you get your b/f to give me a quick call please?
Random retail (Punk Planning) →
charlesfrith says:
Its a fair cop Ravages. You’re right Canon make some awesome freaking cameras and I was taking a serious look at one today. But you can see my point. They make some great cameras but that isn’t the same as “delighting people always” shouldn’t it be “delighting some photographers sometimes”? They are not the only brand who so believe...
THRIFTY ... PROPERLY MARVELLOUS (Spinning around) →
charlesfrith says:
I’m glad you like the work. I think its an award winner that one.
Happy New Year (MediaBlog) →
charlesfrith says:
Wow. Thats very kind of you Daria and I also want to encourage you to keep on twittering as yours are some of the most interesting and provocative I’ve seen. I also loved that Monty Python quote you used some time back. I laughed for a few days over that one. Best for 2008 :)
Well that was fun year wasnt it (she sees red) →
charlesfrith says:
It was an amazing year Lauren and meeting you made me realise that I could have spent weeks hanging out with you and still not know a tenth of all the wonderful and admirable sides of your amazing abilities and personality without reading your blog or comments. Lets keep on motoring. We got work to do.
Top Ten Advertising Blogs →
Campaign magazine’s top ten advertising blogs.
Campaigns top ten advertising Blogs →
Branded Utility Or Something (The Business Model... →
charlesfrith says:
Agencies and clients are so obsessed with selling what are often product parity objects and services that they frequently don’t get that being useful is even more important than being interesting. Many don’t get how to be interesting and just want to interrupt content with sanitized messages that reflect corporate and brand egos rather than brand truths. This is...
apophenia: Pew on teen social media practices... →
charlesfrith says:
Good point John. Blogging dimensions are wide indeed and as this blog points out (or maybe I’m projecting) everything is contextual.
Photodriving and Geotagging with the Nokia N82 →
Instead of photowalking, I was photodriving using the Nokia N82. This basically means I was taking pictures while driving. With the addition of Shozu, all the pictures I took were also geotagged with the current location. What I get as a result are photos uploaded to Flickr show up as dots on a map where the pictures were taken from. If you connect the dots, you can slightly see the path taken....
Holiday Wire: ITunes Ovi Offer; Aussie Age Regs →
— A Nokia board member has been quotes as saying: “Apple can get into our portal [Ovi]. We even invite (Apple Inc chief executive) Steve Jobs to do so”, adding that Apple’s i-Tunes store would be an enrichment for Nokia’s customers. While that might be true, I suspect the offer was made under the strong assumption that Apple wouldn’t be taking it up any time...
Thrifty thinking (Punk Planning) →
charlesfrith says:
Its not just your views on ads Rob. Its the way you express them I value. Happy new year.
CCTV Olympic fiasco →
An Olympic marital dispute
It’s not only foreign human rights groups that are seizing upon the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing to promote their causes: Yesterday Friday December 28, China Central TV’s sports channel—CCTV 5—had a ceremony to celebrate its renaming as The Olympics Channel. The ceremony was disrupted by a marital dispute. As John Kennedy on Global Voices reports: ...
Thrifty Thinking →
I’ve been meaning to post this utterly brilliant piece since I saw it first in Milan at the global creative review I talked about over here. The creative person on this work is Brendan Donnelly and I think he got his casting better than one could really wish for in terms of acting. Now my opinion on this ad doesn’t really count until Famous Rob has given his view, because nobody...
where’s brendan? (The good stuff) →
charlesfrith says:
Ah. That’ll be the ad below the comments!
No more sauce on the side, please (Planning Blog) →
charlesfrith says:
Interesting that you mention the pharmaceutical industry. Before I joined JWT I did some consultancy for a big pharma company and I realised that the left arm wasn’t talking to the right so I proposed corporate blogging. Now one small point with all the JWT blogs. Its not much fun if I can’t leave a link to my own blog is it? Happy new year. 2008 should be even...
Beijing smog (Punk Planning) →
charlesfrith says:
Hey mate. Yes it was a bit of a marathon that last smog spell. Though I’m sure it began to lift in the afternoon because I remember thinking it was so heavy for so long and then it magically disappeared. Like the sun burnt it off - which is impossible because its below zero at the moment. Its difficult to figure out all the dynamics but I cant see it being maxed out at...
47 Million Bloggers in China: CNNIC (Ogilvy China... →
charlesfrith says:
Its a daunting figure isn’t it. Although it’s fair to say that not all blogs are the same for influence, content or engagement. I’d love to know where the top 10000 blogs are within that that 80ish million blogs. Is there a Chinese version of Technorati?
2007 →
Its drawing towards the end of the year now and what a year its been - I’ll never forget 2007 AD because it came fully loaded with really good people, terrific connections, quality conversation and deeply interesting times - I can’t say that about every year. There have been a few turkeys. All the people I went out of my way to meet this year were not coincidentally digitally...
Review of the Year - Part 2 (the-ad-pit) →
charlesfrith says:
Too kind my man. I may have said this before but Penguins are the last resort of the advertising scoundrel. I’d like to nominate myself for ad scoundrel of the year too ;)
I could make more money as a call girl... →
charlesfrith says:
I like these posts and if people are missing the self deprecation thats understandable. Google Branded Utility or Marketing as doing if you haven’t come across these powerful ideas quite yet though. Worth a look if the call girl looks attractive more frequently.
1969 →
1969 was an ace year. There was Woodstock, Apollo 11 and man first walking on the moon. The first Boing 747 and Concorde flight, test tube fertilisation of human eggs, The Beatles last gig on Apple Records rooftop, John & Yoko conducting their Bed-In, the Stonewall Riots, and the introduction of the ATM as well as the opening of the Beijing Subway, the mass anti Vietnam War demonstrations...
Beijing Smog →
Beijing was immersed in smog for a marathon three or so days till this afternoon, and I thought I’d take a picture of how it looked compared with a clear day earlier in the month that I blogged about over here. There’s a lot of schandenfreude in the Western Press over (well over anything Chinese actually) the smog in Beijing in the run up to the Olympics, along with less helpful...
T-Mobile collects over 20,000 handsets for... →
(TP) T-Mobile Czech Republic has announced that its customers have returned more than 20,000 used handsets……(read more)
Random Retail →
I’ve talked about the China Adidas ‘Impossible is nothing’ stuff before over here, and Rob raised a really good point about the work not being representational of the international spirit of the Olympic games which is bang on. I haven’t seen one mention of another country mentioned in any of the communications for this international event. I think the onus is on the...
Will new regulations send the Chinese vid sharing... →
I’m back in action folks, and fortunately not too much China tech/marketing news has slipped by in my absence–or so I’d like to believe.
But this could be big news, and definitely something to watch in the coming months. The Marbridge newsletter today has an intriguing little piece citing Xinhuanet–still looking for the original story–saying that the Ministry of Information Industries (MII)...
幸せ (cellar door) →
charlesfrith says:
You look like you are about to start a fight. Are you sure the Japanese trend scout wasn’t trying to pacify you ;) Have a great 2008 Johanna :)
Review of the Year! - Part One (the-ad-pit) →
charlesfrith says:
I think I enjoy reading your reviews of ads more then any publication or indeed other blogger. Just to add a comment (because you know I said Gorilla was an ace commercial from the git go) I watched the Carling commercial again and I think it stands higher than before with little touches like the logo at the end. Owning friendship is more important than “make the logo...
おしゃれSNAP＿エル・ガール・オンライン →
Hutong life (Punk Planning) →
charlesfrith says:
Its brilliant isn’t it Andrea? On the subject, I was reading about an African tribe where food is eaten in private and craps were taken together. I’m not sure a person can say they’ve lived until as my Aussie friends would say we’ve ‘snapped one off’ together ;)
539 million mobile users in China →
According to a report by the Ministry of Information Industry on 24th December 2007, by the end of November, China had added 78.3 million mobile users for 2007 averaging 7.1 million new mobile users each month for the entire year.
539 million mobile users is not an easy figure to comprehend as its a figure much larger than the population of most countries. With 40% mobile penetration, China...
41 Chinese Companies Are Changing The World →
Boston Consulting Group just came out with a report entitled, “The 2008 BCG 100 New Global Challengers: How Top Companies from Rapidly Developing Economies Are Changing the World” [pdf]. Written by Marcos Aguiar, Arindam Bhattacharya, Laurent de Vitton, Jim Hemerling, David C. Michael, Harold L. Sirkin, Kevin Waddell, Bernd Waltermann, Kim Wee Koh, the report identifies “100...
China grants farmers subsidy to buy TV, mobile... →
charlesfrith says:
On Dec 24, 1:08 am, rst0wxyz <rst0w…@yahoo.com> wrote: > China grants farmers subsidy to buy TV,mobilephones > Reuters - Sunday, December 23 > > China, the world’s largest producer and exporter of household > appliances, exported half its production, Zenng said. > (aizhu.c…@reuters.com; Reuters...
China grants farmers subsidy to buy TV, mobile... →
Gamble your life away in ZT Online →
ZT Online (征途) is a popular Chinese-made massively-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) run by Giant Interactive. Despite offering games that are free to play, its third-quarter earnings beat out competitors Netease and Shanda. The game is the brainchild of Shi Yuzhu (史玉柱), an entrepreneur who struck it rich marketing a vitamin tonic called Naobaijin (you may recall the TV ads featuring...
Hutong Life →
One of the quintessential yet rapidly disappearing Beijing ways of life is the hutong. The hutong is the traditional architectural and communal structure for this style of living and stretches back centuries. Communal living in this style does however often present some harder realities. There are a terrific series of posts on Beijing hutongs including lots of photography over at Beijing...
Recombinant Christmas Culture →
Across Asia the desire to get into the Western tradition of Christmas spirit is quite notable. There are variations from country to country. Thailand as a Buddhist country or Indonesia as an practioners of Islam for instance don’t celebrate the day itself. Thus Santa Claus (mashed up with Minnie Mouse above) are ubiquitous right across the continent at this time of the year, but often...
How To: Crop Movies for Full Screen Instead of... →
It makes me jealous that the iPhone can fill the screen to play movies, while my Nokia N95 8GB and other Nseries phones can’t. Until they add this feature, here’s a workaround to view movies full screen. It requires cropping some pixels off the sides of the movie. I’ll share a math formula, so I hope your algebra and calculator skills are still fresh.
Fullscreen Versus Widescreen on the Nokia...
China: Outraged Students Crushing Car →
Sohu forum posted a witness report on a mass incident at Nankai University at Christmas Eve: A car crashed with a bicycle in the university campus, the car owner demanded compensation and threaten the students by implying that she had ‘background’. Her brother came beat up a student. Students around were outraged and crushed the car and turned it upside down (zh).
Yachts Are Newest Status Symbol of China's... →
From VOA News:
For boat manufacturers, the yachting market of the future is China, where luxury sailing yachts and motorboats are becoming the ultimate accessory of the super-rich. New marinas are being developed, and the government is promoting sailing ahead of next year’s Olympics. Claudia Blume reports from VOA’s Asia News Center in Hong Kong. It is a beautiful, sunny day at Hong...
Group: China Gets Tough on Texting - AP →
From AP via CNN.com:
A Beijing city regulation clamping down on people who send text messages that “spread rumors” or “endanger public security” is a threat to freedom of expression, a watchdog group said Monday. China Human Rights Defenders, an international network of activists and rights monitoring groups, said the recent regulation on text messages “raises...
Internet youth china (Punk Planning) →
charlesfrith says:
Hey Proxikid. Great link. I like. Reminded me of this youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeDDpyoGAMY Lauren. You wouldn’t believe the conceited arseholes that advertising hires. I met one last week. She was too global or local depending on the information, to really take in information I was trying to share. Its not like I didn’t try right? Something in the...
Google Talk And Windows Live Messenger 9 Get... →
charlesfrith says:
This is long overdue. There are still opportunities to have a relationship with the user outside of the cooperative framework.
Internet Youth China →
I’ve been taking a look around Beijing and as part of that exploration visiting random internet cafes and enjoying the luxury of being able to observe the customers. It’s pure gold getting to know what they are using their computer terminal for, how they behave and what is their internet life through free observation. As a nomadic planner, I’ve always done this in internet cafes...