Influx Insights Tag Feed: apple

magazines on iPads will just be like GQ's latest iPhone app

Influx Insights — 2010-01-31T16:03:12Z

While Apple's iPad has been the subject of a lot of attention ranging, from ridicule and mixed reviews. The spin suggested the iPad would usher in a new era for those in the publishing business by creating another medium for consumers to experience print.

However, the promise suggested by Apple's demos and a number of flashy publisher initiatives is that this new experience is going to be better than a web site, and more satisfying than reading a newspaper or a magazine.

The dream being sold is how our magazines are going to be turned into immersive multimedia experiences (see the Sports Illustrated demo below) where the user takes a joyride through a stream of beautifully designed content and can dig deeper on topics and experience multimedia to their hearts content. While all these seems technically feasible, the big question is who are the publishers who can afford to develop this content on a daily, weekly or even a monthly basis?

It's easy to imagine a scenario where excitement drives the creation of great first iPad editions that succeed in seducing new subscribers into magazine franchises at significant premiums to current subscription rates. However this will not be sustainable because the economics won't map out and the result will be falling quality standards and subscriber discontent.

The other way of looking at this is through the application lens, where new entrants will come into the publishing space from a completely different direction.These new entrants might find better and more interesting ways of serving up content than the publishing incumbents.

It's likely magazines will never be able to afford to realize the "Sports Ilustrated" dream and instead be forced to fight it out in the App Store with hundreds of thousands of competitors.

The future for traditional publications on tablets has to be more "application like", than "issue like".

I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but I don't believe we are going to get the sizzle of the Sports Ilustrated demo, it's much more likely we will be looking at something like the latest GQ iPhone application.

Posted by Ed Cotton

Look!- HP also has a tablet

Influx Insights — 2010-01-26T11:08:23Z

While the tablet frenzy is reaching epic proportions and everyone seems to be looking at Apple, HP does not want to let it's efforts slip by unnoticed because it does have something interesting to say...it has a tablet and it's very cheap!

However, the company has a fun way of going about things, it's almost as if the brief was "How can we be as un-Apple as possible?" and they went and produced a YouTube film that is a snoozefest.

One would think given the attention around tablet computing, that they could find a more dynamic and imaginative way to tell their very interesting story.

Posted by Ed Cotton

faked euphoria- a microsoft store

Influx Insights — 2009-10-22T18:00:35Z

Exciting and euphoric are not two words I would use to describe for Microsoft.

The fact that this clearly staged euphoria was manufactured for public consumption, note the presence of TV cameras, is a sign that Microsoft means business. I guess If you can't beat them you have no choice, but to join them.

Clearly, Microsoft understands that Apple is onto something and believes it can succeed if it provides a facsimile experience at retail.

I understand how excitement could be faked at the opening for the media, but finding people who can demonstrate passion, excitement and charisma is not going to be easy.

There's something deeper at work in the Apple store, something than can expressed in store design and that's the thing Microsoft's going to have such a hard job copying.

Posted by Ed Cotton

apple and wells fargo don't respond to social media

Influx Insights — 2009-07-31T19:28:29Z

Tom Formeski's recent post about social media and brands is an interesting take on brands that don't really respond to negative responses on social media platforms.

Tom singles out Apple and Wells Fargo as examples of companies who don't really to respond to negative comments. He claims that because they face no repercussions for their inaction that this is a bad thing for the social media marketing mavens.

It's a complex subject and involves understanding how people relate to brands. Certainly, there's an impact to bad news and some consumers react, communicate vocally and exit from the brand. However, it's all about brands having strong "mental balance sheets", if people feel that overall the brand is doing a good job they will give the benefit of the doubt and allow it a few indiscretions.

I would argue that all brands need to be aware of the balance of the conversation by monitoring and evaluating it.

There's no doubt that brands like Dell needed a response when the conversation turned against them and they turned things around rapidly. Interestingly, Dell is a brand heavily invested in social media, but one that's yet to reap the rewards. This is because a turnaround is a long uphill battle involving product and category evolution.

Starbucks is another brand in the same postion. In a recent report by The Altimeter Group, Starbucks ranked as the no1 brand in social media, but as we all know, the brand is in something of a crisis.

Incidently, Dell ranks as No2 in the Altimeter study, suggesting that the most troubled brands are currently the most invested in social media.

Then there's Zappos who used social media probably to enhance its value, who recently sold to Amazon for for close to $900 million.

Social media engagement is no guarantee of instantaneous success and it doesn't replace the need for product and service excellence. At present, it's return on investment story seems undeveloped at best. We are the early stages of learning about this world, but within the next 24 months, companies will become much more strategic about goals and objectives setting for social media across divisions.

At present, as Tom suggests there's no penalty for brands with strong "mental balance sheets" not engaging in social media, as the field becomes more crowded and brands get to understand it better, this is not likely to remain a "truth" for much longer.

Posted by Ed Cotton

data as the ad

Influx Insights — 2009-06-22T10:28:20Z

Apple's "Wall of Applications" developed for its recent developer conference did more to demonstrate the breadth and scale of its applications than any single static ad ever could. It's a great example of the power of data as a compelling form of communication. In Apple's case, it's all about the scale of the information to signify the size of the ecosystem.

While most experts are thinking of data visualization as a tool to explain data internally to diverse audiences and to help them better understand what's going on, data could easily be a pure communication tool.

If used correctly, data visualization could help audiences to better understand brands, either in the representation of large scale global interactions or focused on a more local level.

For Coca-Cola, imagine data revealing the scale of consumption on a real time basis examined globally or down to a local level where you could connect with others in a community like way.

Taking it further, complex interactions could be highlighted and data meaning could be presented from detailed analysis.

When you think of brands as media companies, data is now one of the valuable assets in the arsenal of communication tools.

Posted by Ed Cotton

influx curated - additional speaker- alan dye- apple

Influx Insights — 2009-05-07T16:02:09Z

We are delighted to add Alan Dye to our Influx Curated (June 11th- San Francisco) speaker list. Alan is currently a Creative Director over at Apple and will be one of Chris Riley's guest speakers.

Alan's experience includes stints at Kate Spade, Ogilvy's B.I.G. and Landor.

Here's Debbie Millman interviewing Alan for Design Matters in January 2008.

Tickets for the event are $99 and can be found here along with more details about the event.

Posted by Ed Cotton

iphone-from frivolity to meaningful utility

Influx Insights — 2009-04-10T07:51:53Z

While most of the leading applications on Apple's 30,000 plus store are games, the company is keen to inform us that there's lots of meaningful things you can do with your iPhone.

This ad? (below) does a great job at highlighting all the recession-busting applications that you can get for your phone.

It's a nice example of a brand not only connecting with the current zeitgeist, but explaining how their products can provide real utility and benefits to help.

Via Down The Avenue.

Posted by Ed Cotton

dell's bolt-on design

Influx Insights — 2009-03-18T05:19:31Z

The once great Dell is trying to re-invent itself for a world that's radically changed since it first came into being. As the company shifted away from it's focus on the customer, the social network and the blog rose up to call them out, a resurgent Apple has re-defined computing, not just for a small niche, but for masses and computers themselves have shifted from desktops to laptops.

Dell is trying to cope with this radical change and makeover the brand to be more relevant.

Throughout its history, the company has hardly been a champion of design, it's simply not part of the DNA for the very functional, custom built, price driven brand.

It appears, design is also on the change list at Dell who are making some bold moves upmarket with the Adamo sub-brand.

Can this shift upmarket work for Dell?

It seems like a complete case of Apple envy and a bad rip off of Apple's Air laptop. However, one could argue that it's a start and Dell needs to do radical things like this to pull itself from the mire.

BTW- Are there any American industrial designers?

Posted by Ed Cotton

the lure of the challenge- the iphone dev team

Influx Insights — 2009-01-05T10:11:43Z

There's a great interview in Mobilecrunch with one of the members of the iPhone Dev Team.

This is not a unit inside Apple responsible for updating the phone software, quite the opposite; it's a team of unpaid renegades who are tearing up the phone and hacking it to pieces. These are a group of highly motivated, unpaid folks who just love the challenge.

Here are some of the key points I took out of the piece.

1. Real time transparent communication is key

The group use IRC and file serving technologies to make sure all team members are kept in the loop

2. Intelligent groups can self-organize

The group has no need for leaders, each person is smart enough to understand their role and find one that matches their expertise.

3. The group is unified by a core motivation

"The same interest that I had with tearing apart my Speak & Spell as a kid, then my Tandy CoCo, then my Atari ST. I want to see what is inside and see if I can make it better. If I find something cool I tell other people about it."

4. The core motivation has an additional edge

The attitude of the Apple brand to the way in which it restricts the way the phone is used.

"Apple places restrictions on what you can run on the device. They impose draconian restrictions on the type of application that you can run, they don’t allow applications to run in the background and they even restrict the applications by subject matter or if they compete with their own applications."

Posted by Ed Cotton

the evolution of music-from mtv to myspace

Influx Insights — 2008-11-08T18:35:52Z

MTV or Music Television built its brand celebrating the new art form of the early 80s, the music video. It gave the music industry just what it needed, the eyeballs of a young generation to promote its product which it made a buck a disc for.

Fast forward several decades to the emergence of MySpace as THE music brand and you see a radically different notion of the role of music. Music is given away and streamed, the value of this is to provide exposure and shared advertising revenue for bands and record companies. The money is not made in the music, but in the merchandise and concert ticket revenue.

As Techcrunch told us in October.

"But today the labels have all but given up on DRM, and users can now play virtually any song ever recorded on demand for free. MySpace has created the first ecosystem that has a shot of producing sustainable revenue streams for artists based on advertising, merchandise and concert sales.

If it works, the next step is the fall of per-stream fees and download fees. Instead labels will see music consumption for what it really is - free marketing. Labels will compete to encourage song downloads and streams to move those songs up the charts, attracting premium advertisers, merchandise sales and sold out concerts."

What's interesting to see here is the role music has played as a glue to generate revenue for media companies, but the context of that revenue generation has changed over time.

It seems that MTV has lost its way as a brand with television no longer being the dominant media of the youth generation, music video dying as a form and the network shifting focus away from music to regular television shows.

Apple became the next brand to exploit and dominate the music channel with iTunes and the iPod, but the software was always just there to sell the high margin hardware. iTunes has now being panned by the critics for not keeping up with the times and Apple has a few other heavyweight players including Nokia trying to take a big share of the hardware business.

Another player is MySpace, who came out of the gate in October with a relaunched music service that achieved incredible traction. Just a few DAYS after launch, the brand streamed one billion songs.

At the recent Web 2.0 conference there was all kinds of speculation about the potential for an MP3 player to be launched by MySpace.

However, this isn't really the game anymore.MySpace's core competence is all about community and from day one its community has been focused on music. This is something that can't easily be copied and Apple, Nokia and Sony will struggle to make this happen. The story here is not about an iPod rival from MySpace, but instead the arrival of MySpace as a formidable media player in the new world of music.

Posted by Ed Cotton

the power of analog in a digital world

Influx Insights — 2008-10-22T10:19:41Z

One thing I've been noticing recently with the iPhone, is how interested people are in adding very analog applications to their phones. Things that seem pretty mundane and basic and somewhat counter to the technological advances of our time. Many of the most successful applications simply take something solid and dependable from the real world and put it onto the phone- flashlights, pints of beer, flames from Zippos and clocks like the one you can see below.

A have a couple of thoughts on this.

1. It's almost as if we cherish these icons as perhaps relevant relics from the past and revel in the irony that we are installing them on an uber-sophisticated piece of technology. "Look what my iPhone can do"- and humanizing the technology.

2. There's value in show. Turning on an application and showing someone you have a lighter or a pint of beer has share and social value. They can be talked about and the obvious joke is that they aren't physical things or they have limited functionality compared to the real thing.

3. It's also about the emotive power of design in the physical world and our desire to hang on and keep a little bit of this. The first software for the iPhone had a calculator that was modeled on the original Braun, the latest version uses the classic HP scientific calculator, both are iconic and in the real world versions.

4. Perhaps if there's one weakness of the digital world, it's hard to experience the sense of "touch and "feel", these applications remind us of the power of the feeling we have in an analog world and an acknowledgment that it's something we are losing.

5. It also serves as a reminder to designers that perhaps the most powerful applications aren't so high tech, but instead ones that stir up emotions and feelings inside us- such as nostalgia.

Clock via Core 77

Posted by Ed Cotton

it's all about the product

Influx Insights — 2008-09-20T11:49:00Z

Good piece in Wired about the rags to riches success of some of the developers of iPhone applications.

One quote stands out from the rest about the level playing field where there's no marketing involved and it's all about the quality of the application and building word of mouth momentum from there..

"You can come up with a generic idea, but implement it properly and you really are going to stand out," Sarner said in a phone interview. "Basically everybody's on the same level once they submit an iPhone app. Unlike traditional marketing, there's no ad campaign: A user just sees what he sees in the iPhone store, and the applications kind of have to sell themselves to some extent."

Austin Sarner- Design by Knife- CEO

Posted by Ed Cotton

apple is no google

Influx Insights — 2008-09-19T20:25:35Z

Steve Rubel has written an interesting post comparing the transparency of Google with the cold, firm and closed approach of Apple.

He uses some great examples that show how the brands communicate online with their users and it clearly shows that Apple is from a very different era and hasn't quite grasped this whole 2.0 thing.

However, I don't really think this matters for Apple and don't believe it really impacts the brand.

Apple has always been about selling something shiny, new and enticing. Something you pay top dollar for and show off proudly to all around you. It sells the ultimate gadget and things that are truly magical.

On the other Google, doesn't sell anything, it's a free service, but it needs its users to keep coming back to it to view the pages that contain its valuable ads. It has to do everything it can to keep these people happy and content. Charmed in the knowledge that Google is the best "free" thing in their lives.

Apple could benefit from opening up, but let's face it, this is not the company's style. It's a one man autocracy and until he decides to open the floodgates and let everyone inside out and visa versa this isn't going to happen. I believe the lack of openness works in the brand's favor. It keeps things mysterious and interesting, you never quite know what they are up to next and it would a shame if they did anything to give that away.

As long as Apple keeps making products that amaze us, it can get away without opening up.

It doesn't have to do a Dell, until it becomes like Dell.

Apple sells us a dream and the more it becomes like real life, the less interesting it becomes.

Transparency is not for them...

Posted by Ed Cotton

apple scales up fast

Influx Insights — 2008-07-03T18:43:16Z

Historically, we are used to thinking of Apple as a niche player, it still is in many ways, but its new businesses appear to be scaling pretty fast.

Movies

According to Variety, Apple's move into the movie business appears to be working quite well.

"Studio execs said that iTunes movie sales and rentals -- which the computer company said tops 50,000 daily -- dominate the small but closely watched digital movie biz. Apple is now on track to sell or rent 18.25 million movies a year, or triple the number of last year, before it inked deals with all major studios for new-release rentals and sales."

Phones

Apple placed an order with Samsung for 50 million NAND flash chips. It's basically taken over Samsung's production. The order is so big, Samsung is asking its other customers to wait. A fascinating development when you consider that Samsung also wants to play in the phone wars, but here it is helping a foe with a critical component.

Posted by Ed Cotton

barclays bank gets a redesign inspired by apple and the science museum

Influx Insights — 2008-06-29T21:49:57Z

Interesting article in the London Times about Barclays and its approach to branch re-design. It picks out Apple stores, The Science Museum and obviously, Tesco, as being inspirations for the project.

"At the beginning of last year, Ms Oppenheimer poached Helen Dodd, a retail design expert, from Tesco.

Ms Dodd, who has spent 20 years working out how to attract customers to shops and keep them there, trooped 250 Barclays customers and staff through the Northampton warehouse to test the new layout and technology.

Nothing was sacred, not even the good old British queue with the black tape barriers. The new Manchester branch is experimenting with a ying-yang-shaped queue, broken up by waist-height pillars housing computer games. The branch's space-age information desk is pure Apple store, while, according to Ms Dodd: “We're trialling a lot of different queueing methodologies - people do PhDs on this stuff.”

The childrens' play area is inspired by the Science Museum. There is no glass separating tellers from customers, to stop people from raising their voices, something that Ms Dodd believes makes banking more stressful.

Curves are used to make customers feel “warmer”, while the glass frontage will make women more inclined to enter. “At the moment, they don't feel welcomed into branches,” Ms Dodd said. Concierges, dressed in uniforms by the designer Jeff Banks, will issue customers with tickets telling them how long they must wait and even if they would be served more quickly if they went to another branch.

Getting the right doormat was key - customers like dry feet, so Ms Dodd found a mat that dried wet soles within four steps. The Manchester branch operates to the same timetable as other retailers, with late night and weekend opening."

Posted by Ed Cotton

gates is beating jobs

Influx Insights — 2008-05-20T22:36:01Z

Given the cult of cool around Apple's leader Steve Jobs, it might have been safe to presume that he is leading the search war with bitter rival Bill Gates of Microsoft.

According to Google that doesn't appear to be the case and despite Apple continuing to grab the headlines, Microsoft's Gates is a more popular search term. Despite Bill's semi-retirement he still has iconic status.

Perhaps, Microsoft needs to remember this!

Posted by Ed Cotton

retail experience: nokia vs. apple

Influx Insights — 2008-04-09T20:35:02Z

John Dodds over at Make Marketing History has a nice post about the differences between Nokia and Apple in their retail experience.

He compares two stores in Oxford St, London and concludes;

The Nokia store is a gallery.
The Apple store is alive.
The Nokia store staff are tech sellers.
The Apple store staff are tech users.
The Nokia store is a place where you browse.
The Apple store is a place where you use.
The Nokia store is about surface.
The Apple store is about corporate DNA

In essence, it's clear that Apple has a brand and Nokia doesn't. This was fine for Nokia when they had the mobile world to themselves, but it looks like they need some serious brand work to prevent Apple from taking some major share in this space.

Posted by Ed Cotton

apple cult- the movie

Influx Insights — 2008-01-26T00:02:52Z

There's a new documentary all about the cult that surrounds the Apple brand.

Posted by Ed Cotton

thinking about the electronics we consume

Influx Insights — 2008-01-13T13:02:40Z

The other day, Piers at PSFK posted an angry editorial about CES.

"Another year, another electronics and gadgets conference that is out of whack with modern concerns around sustainability and the planet. The C.E.S. is an arrogant refusal to admit to the problems the electronics industry has created in terms of material waste, poisonous polution, energy waste and over-consumption."

He is not alone, today's New York Times Magazine has a great piece by Jon Mooallem called "The Afterlife of Cellphones".

The piece explores the world of cellphone recycling and tries to understand why we need to constantly upgrade our phones. Reading the article forces you to think again about waste.

Jon concludes;

"Even the most idealistic visions of how e-waste should be recycled and reused take for granted that consumers and businesses will never reconsider why we are buying and discarding so many of those products, so quickly, in the first place. If the rush of castoffs isn’t likely to stop, we need to clear a proper path for it, considering all the inevitable compromises and costs along the way and delivering those products to as consequenceless a place as possible."

Most companies seem pre-occupied with creating "lust' for their objects that ensures continued market share and admiration.

While on the surface, this doesn't appear to be a responsible attitude, it reflects the realities of the marketplace.

Consumer electronics are the new fashion, so much so, that they are taking share from the fashion business and it's one of the reasons the US sports shoe business is so soft right now.

The presentation below is from the design team at Nokia and it does a fantastic job at explaining how the company creates lust objects. It's all insights and needs driven, but it does nothing to bring sustainability into the mix.

| View | Upload your own

This is a battle about hearts, minds and marketing.

With Macworld coming up this week, Apple and Steve Jobs are masters in the creation and marketing of lust objects, they do it so well.

Governments aren't going to force the issue, pressure groups like Greenpeace have limited voice, change is going to need to come from the market.

If companies want sustainability to be considered, they are going to need to do as good a job as Apple in making it sexy.

On the positive side, it appears to be easier than ever for new brands to enter the consumer electronics space, just look at flat panel TVs for that.

Could here will be a new electronics brand with real sustainability built into its DNA that emerges in the next couple of years?

Could, somewhat ironically, that brand come from China?

Posted by Ed Cotton

brand hacking- ikea and beyond

Influx Insights — 2007-11-08T06:56:11Z

One of the more colorful aspects of the 2.0 world of blogs and unbridled consumer creativity is finding the occasion when a random individual picks on a brand, creates a space to play with it and stretches it above and beyond the original attentions of its owners.

A great example of this is Ikeahacker; a blog devoted to “playing” with Ikea’s flat pack furniture, in ways that don’t appear on the official list of instructions.

It’s the furniture equivalent of voiding your car warranty by installing nitro tanks. While many of this efforts is playful and come out of an endearing relationship with the brand, others might be of the “Fight Club” variety, all cynical and full of spite.

This type of attack was unleashed recently with this film that apparently exposes the contradictory motivations of consumer goods giant Unilever.

While Madison Avenue maybe cooling on the consumer-created trend, with the fabulous exception of the newish Apple’s iPod Touch spot (see below-original upload first- agency-consumer co-produced version-second), people are still going to do this stuff, regardless of whether you pay them, entice them and brands are just going to have to live with the consequences. The genie is out of the bottle, live with it.

Posted by Ed Cotton

how big was the iphone launch?

Influx Insights — 2007-11-06T08:42:33Z

Although it's hard to gauge the real sales numbers for the iPhone, people are talking about 1.2-1.4 million, I thought it would be interestng to look at the "noise" the launch generated and compare it to other cultural events.

The tool I have used is Google Trends which looks at data for search volumes. This isn't the same as column inches or minutes of news time, but it's still an interesting barometer.

It's clear that the iPhone may have generated more "noise" than any other brand in recent years. It's peak is comprable with that of the Superbowl (the most watched event in the US) and nearly double that of the Oscars.

It's pretty remarkable that a single product can create that level of interest and hardly surprising that Time Magazine continued to fuel the noise by naming it Invention of the Year.

Obviously, all this noise is only good if it can be translated into sales.

As an interesting sidenote, I also plotted the trajectory of Facebook, which appears to be slowly creeping up to the iPhone frenzy noise level, no wonder Google is scared.

Posted by Ed Cotton

are stores just bigger ads?

Influx Insights — 2007-10-14T12:42:18Z

Borders Books and Music, one of the largest bookstore chains in the country is trying to find new sources of revenue by bringing new experiences to its stores.

These experiences include: mixing and burning CDs, creating photo books, building family trees, all at computer stations, the store is also retailing some electronic iPod related products.

They are testing the idea in 12 stores around the country. On paper it seems to make strategic sense, in reality, having visited one of the 12 stores, it's harder to understand and its a good example of the problem with the retail experience these days.

There's an old fashioned notion in the minds of consumers that stores are working hard on their behalf to create a nice "edited' experience, of course, we know that this experience is fast becoming advertising based, with stores charging slotting fees and pay to play models for brands.

You can see this in the new Borders experience; it feels like a physical version of a catalog where companies have paid to be there. Part of the problem is that the chain has taken a lot of its inspiration from Apple and the emerging iPod economy, but it can't provide an Apple-like in-store environment to pull the vision off.

Clearly, the senior management at Borders have a challenge on their hands, they can't offer the breadth and selection of online players, or even some of the big box electronics retailers, not can they provide an Apple experience, but they also appear to want to generate additional revenue from suppliers.

I don't just want to pick on Borders, because retail is rapidly shifting from an edited to an advertised experience. The consumer is oblivious to what's going on behind the scenes, which is fine, until it starts to impact their experience and in the long-term, that could have serious implications for retailers.

Posted by Ed Cotton

apple hails al gore, but is there more to come?

Influx Insights — 2007-10-13T19:32:55Z

Apple's website is now celebratating the Nobel Prize success of its board member Al Gore.

Could this be the prelude to something more?

Apple products with less packaging and greater energy efficiency?

or

A line-up of Gore edition solar powered iPod Shuffles?

Tip from Ben@Noisy Decent Graphics

Posted by Ed Cotton

nokia plays offense

Influx Insights — 2007-08-31T09:27:00Z

Nokia dominates the global handset market- in Q2 2007 the company sold 100 million phones and holds over 35% of the global market.

However, it’s been something of a sleeping giant, it hasn’t had the coolest products or image that Apple possesses, but could that be about to change?

In the last week or so, Nokia has gone on the offensive and launched:

1.Ovi- a new web portal for mobile social networking

2. An iPhone clone set for launch early in 2008.

With the combination of aggressive copycat tactics- (clone phones and retail stores) and a new cooler image, Nokia could easily extend its category dominance.

All it needs is better advertising.

Posted by Ed Cotton

influx insights for your iphone

Influx Insights — 2007-07-20T10:55:16Z

Obviously, Influx has been tracking Apple's sales trends like everyone else, but with an estimated 700,000 iPhones sold in the first weekend, we felt we had to respond.

We know there's a big correlation between Influx Insights readership and iPhone ownership.

We've responded by making Influx Insights, iPhone ready. So those of you who splashed out on one of the decade's fanciest gadgets will be able to enjoy all the Influx goodness on your brand new toy.

No need for special urls, just type http://www.influxinsights.com into your iPhone and it will format automatically.

Don't ask me how it's done, but a huge thank you to our tech wizards, Joseph Piro and Josh Brewer for making it happen.

Posted by Ed Cotton

why can't anthroplogists lead companies to an iphone?

Influx Insights — 2007-07-12T01:29:18Z

Nokia and Microsoft now have armies of anthroplogists scouring the globe for insight into how people communicate and use technology.

"As an ethnographer for Microsoft, Donna Flynn uses her training as a Ph.D. in archeology to analyze how ordinary folks from London to Beijing make daily use of their cellphones.

She feeds results of her field studies to two dozen designers, engineers and strategists toiling in an unusual research lab on the Microsoft campus. Awkwardly dubbed the Mobile and Embedded Devices Experience design center, or MEDX, it is where Microsoft plots strategies to sell souped-up cellphones that act a lot like PCs."

USA Today

Despite all the collective wisdom and intelligence of these armies,they haven't inspired their designers to create anything as captivating as Apple's iPhone.

Is it because they are looking at what is, rather than imagining what could be?

Posted by Ed Cotton

hijacking apple's primetime

Influx Insights — 2007-06-30T17:48:13Z

The millions of dollars of free airtime and cult like fans contributed to a perfect opportunity for causes and individuals to hijack Apple's primetime.

Some examples:

Hats off to Johnny and the crew at Anomaly- they lined up in NYC for phones to auction for charity

Robert Scoble proved himself to be the geek’s CNN

Technology analysts left their cubes for the first time in months to try and get attention by capturing and sharing the news

Steve Wozniak reminded people there was once another Steve at Apple

The Today show considered the story important enough for an advertorial, wanted to be noticed for it, but sadly they couldn’t get that right.

Posted by Ed Cotton

where are the iphone crowds?

Influx Insights — 2007-06-28T23:06:20Z

"So far, the throngs of iPhone-demanding humanity beating on the glass shells of Apple Stores across the globe haven't materialized -- at least not here in Apple's backyard. At this point, the line consists of about one woman, four gentlemen, and three clowns."

Via Engadget

Posted by Ed Cotton

apple builds its itunes brand

Influx Insights — 2007-07-15T16:41:48Z

There’s no doubting the functional power of iTunes software, but it plays second fiddle to the more powerful and dominant iPod.

Now it looks as if Apple would like to beef up the iTunes brand a little more.

No 9 on Influx's prediction list for 2007 is happening

In the UK, Apple worked with the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) to create the iTunes Music Festival. The festival takes place during the month of July at the ICA where bands and artists will play to an intimate crowd of 350 people. Acts lined up for this include; Ash, Athlete, Groove Armada, Imogen Heap.

Not surprisingly, there’s some nice integration with the iTunes brand, as all the concerts will be recorded and be available for sale on the site.

You can’t buy tickets, you can only win them in a prize draw, so Apple gets to capture lots of nice data.

Posted by Ed Cotton

brand experience: apple's personal trainers

Influx Insights — 2007-05-12T16:30:48Z

A couple of days ago, Influx discussed the potential for brands and retailers to add experiences to their offering.

In the piece we incorrectly classified Apple as a pure brand retailer with no brand experience elements. We are wrong most of the stores have classes and group training. Which adds an educational experience element to retail. Apple also has its One 2 One Personal Training program which allows people to get personal training in a range of skills from photography to web development.

For just $99 a year, it's a great deal and a clever way for Apple to enhance its relationship with its customers.