Following up on Mike’s previous post about Google Buzz, I totally get the furor about it. The service definitely needs work, and Google has definitely made a whole lot of big mistakes.

But hey, it’s new. That’s the downside of a service being released by such a huge, publicly visible company. Twitter and Facebook were NOT famous when they were released. They weren’t globally famous for years after they were founded. They had plenty of time to make changes, fixes, and tweaks based on quiet user feedback. Google Buzz had the disadvantage of going very public, very quickly. It wasn’t finished. And it got slammed. Now I wonder whether Google will have enough time to fix it and realize its potential before it gets laughed out of existence.

I think it would be nice if Buzz went back to beta. Google definitely needs more time to tweak it, and they need a setting to get real constructive criticism instead of media snarking. I still think the service has a lot of potential. I like Pete Cashmore’s take on it. If you insist on using an analogy to define Buzz, try this one. Think of Facebook as the local bar, where you go to hang out with your friends, play some games, and just shoot the breeze. Think of Twitter as the village square where you get all the news and have public conversations. It’s a public forum. Then you have Buzz, which SHOULD eventually become a place to focus detailed conversations on IDEAS. Not news, not people, not “what are you doing” or those awesome photos you took on your trip to Cabo this spring, man. It’s a platform to talk about content and have major brainstorming sessions about concepts and projects.

If Facebook is the local bar and Twitter is the town square, Google Buzz (I hope) will be the local college campus.

I’ve said before that I like Google Wave as a productivity tool–an easy way to keep work projects neat, tidy, and collaborative at the office. I don’t find much utility for connecting with friends about random things. It’s a business thing, and I like it that way. I think Buzz will end up being sort of similar in market, although I hope more concept-oriented and less business-y.

If it lasts that long.

Alright, I’ve had my winter vacation, I’ve seen the movie, and I’ve finished the game. I liked the movie a whole bunch. A WHOLE BUNCH. Lots of fun, witty banter, and all the things one would hope for in a collaboration between Robert Downey Jr. and, well, anybody. Mark Strong was also enjoyably lugubrious and Rachel McAdams was cute.

The ending of the game? Not so much. The answer to the last code was guessable from the trailers and the reward was a video response from Inspector Lestrade hinting that Scotland Yard would be calling on Holmes and Watson in the future for help with the mysterious Prof. Moriarty. Rumor has it that Brad Pitt might be taking on the chalk-dusted jacket, but I would rather see Colin Farrell.

So, to sum up: fun game, great movie, slightly lame ending. All with impeccable production values.

And not one deerstalker in sight (thankfully).

***DISCLAIMER: Let me just say, before I get into the actual post, that I love Sherlock Holmes. And mysteries requiring deductive reasoning. And witty banter. And steampunk. But most of all, I LUURRRVE Robert Downey Jr. So beware of fangirlishness popping up in this post.***

We at Nostrum have been fiddling around with augmented reality stuff for a while now, and as part of that, I’ve been researching film promotions. Now, as I warned above, I was already excited for Guy Ritchie’s upcoming reboot of Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, and the delightfully lugubrious Mark Strong. So when Robert (Nostrum’s Robert, not Iron Man Robert) asked me to check out a promotional game for the film, I was happy to oblige and immediately hopped over to 221b.sh. I landed on a nicely designed page depicting a nice darkly luminous Dickensian-looking London…and a ridiculously long load time. The long load time, combined with the huge “Facebook Connect” button, led me to believe that the game was going to be some lame Facebook game where you get two choices: 1. run away or 2. “fight.” And by fight, they mean hit a button and get a message that says “you just fought and won 20 gold coins!”

I was therefore quite pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be a real, participatory game. It’s kind of like the scavenger hunt games that were set up leading up to The Dark Knight, and apparently, for Iron Man 2 (why didn’t I hear about that one??), except the evidence is all in one place. You get assigned a case by Scotland Yard and then put together the evidence to solve it. And here’s the kicker–you need two people to play (ideally). One plays as Holmes and the other plays as Watson, and they each get different evidence and have to consult in order to solve the mystery. Of course, you can play both ends yourself if you’re like me and don’t feel like waiting for somebody else to figure it out. It has all the usual stuff, like automatic status updates and so forth to spread the word, but it’s not a Facebook game.

The mechanics of the game itself are well-done, except that they load too slowly. You watch a video from Scotland Yard or a victim setting up the mystery, and then you read police reports, newspaper clippings, mysterious letters, and so forth, to piece together what’s going on. Then you do some more creative things like chasing down burglars, breaking into buildings, exploring hideouts, and interrogating witnesses. It incorporates strategy games, timed games, hidden object games, and logic games all in one, which is what makes it more fun (and way more participatory) than your average Facebook game. Plus it hints at the premise underlying the plot of the film without giving anything away or relying on teasers like Sherlock Holmes wallpaper or AIM icons (which nobody cares about). In short, it’s fun, it’s intriguing, and it’s well-done.

And it’s ongoing until the film comes out on Christmas Day. There’s a new chapter every Monday. Ok, Holmes, now go find your Watson and get sleuthing.

Alright, I think I managed to avoid too much fangirl blather. What do you say?

I came across this post on Slashdot and it just really pissed me off. Reverb Communications’ idea of good social media practice is to hire a team of interns to spam the iTunes store with fake positive reviews of its clients’ apps. Be prepared, because I’m going to rant a little…

THIS is EXACTLY why people get suspicious of marketers using social media! Consumers are afraid of companies co-opting what was meant to be an authentic, altruistic community for mercenary ends. By contrast, they don’t mind if companies (like Threadless and Zappos) use social space to have real conversations and provide real, useful content…so why is it so hard for companies to understand that, to make the best of the social space, you need to participate in good faith?

/rant.

Seriously, when you (the reader) find out a company employs tactics like that, does it make you reluctant to purchase from them, or is it just me?

I freely admit I don’t golf. I don’t watch golf. I don’t even play miniature, putt-putt golf (unless it’s somebody’s birthday).

I know NOTHING about golf, except that old guys like to dress up in what would ordinarily be considered embarrassing clothes and spend hours chasing a teeny-tiny ball around with a metal stick. And most of that I learned from Robin Williams (warning–NSFW language).

But I do know social media. And the PGA Tour gets it.

For the pga.com coverage of the PGA Championships, they’re using the Justin.tv/UStream model of streaming coverage combined with live chat. You can sign in using your Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace credentials and chat with other viewers. You can chat with everyone watching, or just your friends on whatever social network you signed in with. I realize it’s not a new or complicated idea, but it’s just nice to see it popping up in such an Old Boys’ Club as golf. This is the group that most people see as LEAST involved with social media and the new communications forms popping up on the web, and yet they understand that being able to watch the matches and talk about it with other fans is the ultimate goal here.  For that, the PGA gets serious brownie points. Pompom hats aside.

So the question for other sports (and any other traditional media-based business), if a bunch of old guys in plaid pants and fuzzy hats get it, why don’t you?

Check out what “5″ Gum is doing on the technology front.

Who would of thought gum, AR, and electronic music would all meet in the middle.  So many options for this type of technology IF you have the right audience to serve your message to.

Thoughts?

I came across this video from programmer James Alliban who is selling his services through showcasing ARG technologies.  The second I saw it, uses for clients came flying out of me faster than a twitter stream seconds after an international incident: Personalized messages for specific promotions; Virtual recaps of sales calls, Up Sells; Call Reminders; Previews to new launches….the list goes on and on.

Anyway…Just wanted to share this and see if you had any other suggestions or ideas as to how this could be used for businesses?

The SekaiCamera app is all about function and bringing the user experience to life in both the real and virtual worlds.

This was prototyped at TechCrunch’s Top 50 Conference a few months back and from what was written, it was the talk of the conference. You can see the actual presentation that was done here.

Anyway, we came across this execution in our research and just thought it was so amazing.  Plus, the team here just started rattling off potential uses and ideas around this app.  Honestly the possibilities are endless!

But we see one major obstacle to overcome: Tagging.

As noted across countless blogs and by industry insiders, this will be crucial in facilitating mass adoption of these types of technologies.  If we don’t have a “Dewey Decimal” system of sorts for tagging we all will get lost in the virtual shuffle.

z4

Can you guess what we’re working on?
Another find that we wanted to share with everyone: BMW’s UK Z4’s online launch collateral.

This “campaign” is sick to say the least. It integrates on and offline campaign elements to highlight the goal of selling the car and customizing it to a user’s preference. Plus, there is a very nice tie into the arts as well.

This IS the next level of advertising and we wanted to share some of our finds with our people.

ps this is all Shawn…shout out to our nyc crew!

As we here at nostrum, inc. continue to investigate and research new and emerging technologies, we like to share some of our findings with our friends.

Augmented Reality Apps are out in full effect now and are becoming more and more mainstream (at least to us geeks). This recent addtion to the app arsenal is one of the best uses yet for it.

Check this out and let us know what you think. And if you have any other finds, please share; we love this stuff…

Just came across our desks today…

Nike has innovated again!  This time with Lance Armstrong and the Tour De France.  The two entities have teamed up with the development of Chalkbot - a robot messaging system of sorts.  This robot lets users send 4o character long messages, texts, emails or tweets to a server and then relayed to the Chalkbot.  Then throughout the course of the Tour, the messages are PAINTED (yes painted) on the streets that the cyclists travel on!

According to our friends at vanskengroups blog “culturebuzz” The Chalkbot was developed by Deeplocal and StandardRobot for the Nike Livestrong campaign, created together with Lance Armstrong in support of the brand’s cancer foundation.
It allows fans to disseminate their messages of hope and encouragement, as well as joining the fight against cancer.
Simon Prestidge UK Marketing Director at Nike was quoted as saying: “We don’t do advertising any more. […] We need to become part of people’s lives and digital allows us to do that.” We’re sure you get it, the cause is laudable and the concept is truly innovative.

So visit wearyellow.com and/or text LIVESTRONG followed by your message to 36453 to participate in this very innovative campaign.

Here are a couple that we feel add value to a user as opposed to having an app for an app sake….

Runpee.com - This is a cool app that lets users know the best time to skip out of the theater to make a quick bathroom break so that you don’t miss anything important

Mizpee.com - This site (and mobile app) links users up with bathrooms in major cities.

Trapster.com - This one helps people find speed traps and navigate around those pesky hiding places cops are known to frequent.

Jott.com - turn your blackberry or iphone into a virtual assistant by allowing Jott to transpose your Voice Mails into text.

Pandora.com - Arguable the best streaming radio site on the web can be made portable.

All of these apps are available for an iphone or blackberry.
We’re not prejudice here…Choose your tool wisely and there are answers somewhere….