Mission Bay Jazz Festival - a musical feast

Live music well played is good for the heart n' soul. Few things in life can top it. Add in some fresh air by the beach, a full-moonlit beach and an outdoor bar with Mt. Rangitoto as the backdrop - and it all sounds dreamy.

That's exactly what Auckland's annual Mission Bay Jazz Festival is about. For $10 a pop, you can see 14 bands playing live - at the same spot.

My first time at the fest and I was half-expecting just jazz by the bay. Happily, I discovered some cool rock bands incl. two awesome ones:

The Recliner Rockers - true to their name, they belted out hard bluesy rock tracks. A seasoned bunch of performers, these guys are a class act!

Want to have a listen? Check out the videos.

The Flaming Mudcats - if blues is your thing, here it is. These talented pros are on top of their game. Wait till the harmonica meets the guitar!

Feel like some vintage blues?

Revista Época : One week means a lot

Here's a classic commercial from back in 2000. It features a soundtrack way ahead of its times.

The 3-minute commercial was produced by W/Brasil Publicidade in Sao Paulo, for Revista Época - a weekly news magazine. It was awarded the Grand Clio for commercials at the 42nd annual Clio Awards in Miami.

And the Nobel Peace Prize goes to...

Guess who (rather what's) among the contenders for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010? The Internet = a weapon of mass construction. I heart that.

The most powerful social interface known to man being put to the good of mankind. To my mind, that's the smartest use of technology to date.


Power to the people. Love & Peace.

Can your feature-rich cellphone do this?

Here's a hilarious commercial for Sprint. Always cracks me up. Just goes to show, sometimes silly funny just works. Have a look. Have a good one:)

The Power of Co-Creation - cool eye candy

Another awesome Sony vid for Sony Ericsson. Good Sf/x. Have fun. N'joy.

Happiness just happens!

Horoscopes... with a humungous pinch of salt

Noticed how, of late, people have become pros at prediction. Everyone's got 20-20 vision of the future and knows exactly what's going to happen.

That said, I reckon astrologers have mastered the art of random prediction. Ok! Ok! It's not all random. They have their moon-sky charts, vague intergalactic numbers and some astro-gunk on planetary angles.

Random or not, I think there's a funny side to horoscopes. Like all else in life, never take them too seriously.

Here's some highly unscientific stuff I made up that made it to the shelves. Instructions: To be taken with a massive pinch of salt. It's Ok if you vomit.

Ur horoscope  for today: U will double-click on a picture to read it. 

Then download & save it, says ur big fat Uranus.

Guess what? It's all going your way today. You... lucky you!

Even ur Pluto says the exact same thing as above. Jolly good heavens! 

Q - Why do ads go viral? A - Ask Evian.

Viral marketing is the cheapest and probably most effective form of marketing today. It involves content so contagious, it catches on and gets shared rapidly across online communities. Call it a social ripple effect.

Q - So why does some content (be it an ad, movie clip, song video, news story) go viral while some does not? That's a biggie and if you find the answer, let me know. Here's my A - If content is king, data is king-maker.

Media experts go to great lengths to ensure the ads go viral, at times adopting techniques like seeding. To seed an ad is to strategically plant content when & where the target prospect (a person most likely to spread the virus, pass it on, infect others) will receive it.

Q - But how does one identify a target prospect?
A - Relevant, accurate and scientifically sorted data.

Q - And just how does one acquire such quality data?
A - Ask Google Analytics, Dataminers, Media Researchers. Or Evian:)



The highly contagious Evian Waterboy



The very infectious Evian Roller-babies


Here's a list of the Top 10 viral ads (all 10 are winners!) from back in 2007, when viral marketing was just about taking off. Although the list is dated, it's enjoyable all the same & even has all the YouTube links. Enjoy!

News Dots - Interactive News Mapping

Came across a cool social networking tool the other day.

News Dots - an interactive news map based on the premise that all news stories around the globe are linked, if not directly then through another.

Can't help wondering, could this be the new model of how we consume our news? In these times of live video streaming and breaking news as they happen, I tend to agree. It sure seems a viable alternative to me.

Click here to check out the interactive tool and learn about the back-end tech that makes News Dots work.

______________________AND NOW_______________________

Here's a smart application of the social networking concept i.e. localisation on a commercial basis: Worth Talking Over from Monteith's beer of NZ.

They constructed an interactive map of all the red-hot-newsy topics of conversation (or Trending Topics, as Twitter calls it) and linked them together to give an indication of what's getting New Zealanders buzzing.

The brewers figured once they got them Kiwis chatting about the talk of the town, they'd talk it over a chilled beer (Monteith's, of course) for company. Definitely an idea worth talking over. I'll say cheers to that!