Blog of Ronnestam

Business Week posted a great article on the 10 commandments of webdesign.

The list is short but well thought thru.

1. Thou shalt not abuse Flash.
2. Thou shalt not hide content.
3. Thou shalt not clutter.
4. Thou shalt not overuse glassy reflections.
5. Thou shalt not name your Web 2.0 company with an unnecessary surplus or dearth of vowels.
6. Thou shalt worship at the altar of typography.
7. Thou shalt create immersive experiences.
8. Thou shalt be social.
9. Thou shalt embrace proven technologies.
10. Thou shalt make content king.

Got it trough CSS Mania. Go here to read the full article on Business Weeks website.

Lively is this new place where you can create your own avatar and pretty much do what you do in Second Life. What’s different is that you can watch YouTube clips on virtual TVs and share your own photos. Another different is that you join different rooms rather than one world. This means people (or brands) can build rooms rather than buildnings or objects like in Second Life.

The one big difference I see that probably can trigger a younger generation is the styling of the animal avatars and rooms. They’re more in style with the ‘Kung Fu Panda’ than some old virtual 3D dummy. I like that.

Will it be popular? Hell if I knew, they haven’t launched it for Mac OSX yet, so I haven’t had the time to try it out. But, ReadWriteWeb has got a report that is worth reading.

It’s a quite impressive number. 8,002,530 people all over the world helped Mozilla in setting the Guinness World Record that they officially achieved the record for the “largest number of software downloads in 24 hours”. 

Firefox now has over 180 million users in more than 230 countries! Congratulations from one of your users.

(PR tip - of course, when they make an image for people to download it’s sized for blogs, not newspapers)

Read on Last100 that Nokia announced that they will buy Symbian.

That’s all I have to say about that.

Some companies get it, some don’t but now at least it’s easier for you to do something about it.

Dell hosts this fantastic site called Ideastorm where they invite everyone to be involved in their products and services development. The site allows anyone of us to post ideas, then the community (including you) can have a say if an idea should be promoted or not. The management (yes, the real management) then evaluate the ideas from Ideastorm every month and on top of that even give feedback which ideas the might develop.

This qoute from last weeks evaluation meeting illustrates the power of the community:

“This has been a busy couple of weeks!  We had almost 250 ideas submitted and more than 225 new IdeaStorm users in the past two weeks.  It’s great to see Dave (davnmc) and Petzy again in StormRoom and badblood back on the site!  A special welcome to a few new IdeaStormers natakuc4, idangold and inkslug!”

So how can you get going with your company?

That’s where Kindling comes in.

Kindling is this new Web 2.0 service where every company (even yours) out there can do exactly what Dell is doing.

Straight from their own site: Kindling is a place where companies, organizations, and small groups can share and collaborate. Kindling cultivates ideas from the ground up and believes that everyone in a group has something valuable to say, from the interns to the CEO. 

So if you’re one of those people sitting on a management level thinking: Wow, this collaboration, social media, community, consumer involvement, interaction…thing seems fantastic, but it’s to much of a hassle to get going - get your but over to Kindling, request an Invitation and start now!

Today it’s Midsummer evé in Sweden. This means all Swedes go to the country side, collect flowers all day and drink all night. To round it up we all end up in the grass with someone and make love until the morning comes.

Eh, or as Wikipedia explains it:

Midsummer may simply refer to the period of time centered upon the summer solstice, but more often refers to specific European celebrations that accompany the actual solstice, or that take place 24 June and the preceding evening. European midsummer-related holidays, traditions and celebrations, which are pre-Christian in origin and have been tried to be Christianised as celebrations of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist as “Saint John’s Day” festivals, are particularly important in Northern Europe.

Anyway. Happy Midsummer to all of you! I’m of to the country side and I’ll collec….eh…sorry.

(I’m also of to vacation, meaning there might be fewer blog posts the next couple of weeks)

We talk a lot about how logotypes, advertising, products, packaging, tone of voice, TV commercials, websites etc etc etc communicates the brand. But usually, the more business-oriented the purpose, the stiffer the creative executions. That’s why I just love to see infographics like these.

How would the infographics look in your annual report next time if you were true to your brand?

As usually when you find something nice and it’s an image, you find it at FFFFound.

Nothing impresses me like a company that has found out exactly what they should do to build their brand and then sticks to the formula.

I don’t drive a BMW but I must say these guys from Germany are not far from making me into a customer.

  Their brand has been closely connected with innovation for some years now. I first noted the positioning when they associated themselves with the artist Theo Jansen, maker of Kinetic Sculptures back in 2006. Since then I’ve seen tons of great stuff making BMW = Innovation.

This new concept car called Gina is amazing. BMW here I come!

404 made me go wow!

I pointed my browser towards Twingly when I landed on an Error 500: Internal server error page. Once there I was greeted by this beautiful error message.

It’s funny how a little bit of humor makes you wanna come back…even though the service actually didn’t work. This is something many of the old companies definitely can learn from.

ps. What the heck does “G” stand for? Google?

Right now people all over the world tune into Eurocup 08 in Switzerland/Austria. I live in Sweden, so TV4 and Canal+ are the channels of my choice since they are the ones holding the rights to the show. They paid a shitload of money for it.

This will not be the case in Eurocup 2012 when the event is held in Poland. Then I’ll turn into Socialtelevision.com where the TV is a result of Social Broadcasting edited live online by it’s users for it’s users.

Let me tell you about Social Television

The community

I guess you’ve seen that Apple launched their new 3G iPhone the other day.  The new phone got GPS, Video-camera, 3G connection and a browser that follows web-standards.

  Imagine now that we launch a site called Socialtelevision.com (or YouTube Live) that let’s any signed up user upload video streams, much like the ones we see on YahooLive or Bambuser for that matter. On the site, users can now sign up as plain users, producers, broadcasters, editors or commentators. When an event comes up,  say Eurocup 2012’, basically users express their interest to become part of the broadcasting of the event and take on different roles.

Kick off the game

It’s match day. On the stands 247 SocialTV users turn on their iPhones and connect to socialtelevision.com. On the site, 19 pro editors collaborate by social voting to decide how the broadcasting of the event will be edited. Through the built in GPS, it’s easy to understand which camera can cover what. A free kick is coming up and users positioned behind the goal all get the order “close up on Zlatan Ibrahimovic”.

  By using the dynamic circle tool integrated with Google Map, the editor in lead (by voting) draws a circle around the left corner of the field and sends out the order “focus on corner kicker” This results in another 24 cameras covering the kicker.

  Through the integrated motion sensor the editor automatically get the most stabile shot of the situations (if he doesn’t override it). The cameramen on site get Kudos (rating) depending on how much their specific coverage of the event is used. 

Access to all areas

90 minutes later the whistle blows and the first ever Live SocialTV event is a fact. Aware of his most loyal fans, Zlatan avoids the “paying” media crowd and approaches the side of the field.

  36 SocialTV “cameramen” cover the interview performed by a SocialTV journalist who has received a Titanum Status on socialtelevision.com. The questions asked by millions online and decided upon by social voting are delivered in his right ear. The interview ends after Zlatan draws his autograph on the iPhone, the touch screen senses the pressure and the result is a unique date-stamped autograph with information about Zlatan’s pulse among other things.

Just like ordinary TV but different

At home, me and my family eat up the last snacks on the table. My youngest daughter (almost 5 year old in 2012) is eager to show her friends Zlatans “time-stamped autograph”.

  Next week Disney On Ice turns up in Stockholm, and she is already signed up to cover the story. Her best friend will cover the back stage scene where Poh, Tiger and the rest of the crew hangs out.

The old generation…

In boardrooms of TV networks all over the world, directors asks themselves…what are we gonna make money on now? (or maybe they are the founders of SocialTV…but that would have to call for some innovative digital thinking, something they still lack)

The end

Is there such a thing as Social Television? No. But I truly believe that there will be within the next couple of years and it will change the business of broadcasting rights forever. Social TV will change all kinds of events there are.

Feel free to steal the idea and challenge the dinosaurs.

Today I am: happy about iPhone 3G, working on signing people up, had Japanese Gyoza for lunch and talked to Björn.

Björn, is a good friend of mine who tipped me about a YouTube video that outlines what Social Media is all about in a very pedagogic way. I liked it, so I blogged it.

If you’re Swedish another Björn made me happy yesterday. Björn Falkevik published a Video in Swedish the other day on a similar subject. Once you are done with the one above, go ahead and look at this one.