Enjoying vacation in the sun spending some time reading about the latest global financial developments. In my point of view, the markets are recovering surprisingly fast from the Greek turmoil from last week and it seems the bulls are back on the street once again.

But for how long? Personally, I am quite pessimistic about the global economy considering how slow the recovery has been in the US recently and the tendency among leading politicians in the US and in Europe to keep kicking the national debt cans down the road.

With media focus entirely on Greece, it should be pointed out that the problems are far from over in the other PIIGS countries. In the case of Spain and Italy, the sizes of the economies and the potential domino effects defaults on national debt would have in these countries are enourmous compared to Greece.

The really big worry though in terms of sheer potential economic impact is of course the US. Although section 4 of the 14th amendment possibly could save the imminent debt ceiling scare, just having to refer to interpretation of a clause in a document written over 140 years ago in order to save the pressing situation, does not give credit to politicians in the US.

Overall then? Just how bad is the situation right now? Well, continuing on the “documentaries worth watching” track from my blog post on Chernobyl, I can strongly recommend spending some time on this one:

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Today, it´s 25 years ago since the worst nuclear power plant accident in world history occurred in Chernobyl, Ukraine. The worst accident so far, I should add as the jury is still out on Fukushima Dai-Ichi, Japan. Like Chernobyl, the latter is now also upgraded to a 7 on the INES scale.

As I have strong memories from my childhood from the events of Chernobyl and the 25 year date was coming up, I have spent some evenings the last couple of weeks checking out several documentaries about what actually happened back in 1986.

As always with documentaries, you learn a lot of new things about a phenomena or event, but what really sent chills down my spine was when I learned that there was in fact a 5-10% risk of a second, much bigger explosion: An explosion that could have been equivalent to a 3-5 megaton atomic bomb rendering Europe uninhabitable…

See for youselves (from 31:50 and appr. 5 minutes onwards in the following clip):

As always if you are interested in a certain topic, Youtube is a great source for finding documentaries and here are a couple of other documentaries I can recommend if you are interested in Chernobyl:

This one, is broken down into 6 parts and details what happened on the plant right before the explosion. Unfortunately, it has Russian subtitles for the dialogue between the workers at the plant, but it´s still definitely worth it even if you like I cannot understand a word of Russian.

Here is another really interesting and well-filmed piece (but with a totally different angle), covering the animal life in the forbidden zone and how it has developed after the accident.

Last, but definitely not least, “Chernobyl Heart” won the Best Documentary Short Subject award at the 2004 Academy Awards and shows the true human cost of nuclear energy.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Twitter read on the iPad with Flipboard is similar to reading a personalized magazine.

In the ongoing search for the ultimate tablet reading experience, Flipboard has received a lot of press since launching a few days ago. Backed up by an euphoric Robert Scoble, interest for the new iPad app even became too high in the first couple of days resulting in some obvious scalability and reliability problems as more and more reviews surfaced of the new app.

So, is this the tablet reader app we have been waiting for and is it a true game changer?

Well, it´s not the “does it all” HTML5 web app I think will ultimately win on a more mature market and it is apparent that Flipboard (at least for the moment) has a very strong Apple focus with a proprietary app as a top priority which is a pity. In my personal opinion, Flipboard also focuses on a too reactive, “read only” narrow integration with social networks Twitter and Facebook rather than takes a position as a more interactive/read and write tool which I personally would have liked to see in this kind of application.

Where it shines however, is in the reading experience. Actually, it shines so well here that in spite of all the other flaws, this makes it a magnificent application still. Reading Twitter and Facebook as a real-time, personalized, social magazine with a very intuitive user interface is indeed a joy and quite far from the boring and sterile “all content is equal” column interfaces of Tweetdeck, Seesmic, Hootsuite, etc. we have become used to.

The caching of web pages in the background for “Read on Web” is also a smart feature making the web connection seem more seamless with the app itself. However, the respect for copyright of the original content provider does not seem to be implemented in the technical solution right now but hopefully Flipboard will change this to use public RSS-feeds of sources instead.

See the screenshot above to get a feel for how a Twitter feed looks like in Flipboard or, even better if you have an iPad and can go for the full experience, download and try the free app because it really shows what can be done with the user interface of the iPad.

Waiting for another great application in this field, I noticed Feedly will be ready for the iPad in September/October. Hopefully, that one will be worth the wait.

What reader applications out there do you think one should keep an extra eye on and what are your opinions of Flipboard?

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

It struck me today how fast the Apple vs. Google rivalry has progressed when reading this article in BusinessWeek today on rumours of Apple dropping Google in favour of Bing as the default search engine on the iPhone.

From being close collaborators on apps for iPhone with Google just a few years back, Apple apparently are considering another “deal with the devil” Microsoft, – a company that more and more looks like a runner up and a thing of the past behind the two frontline companies in the IT race.

Worth remembering, is that only a few months has passed since Eric Schmidt stepped down from the Apple Board of Directors which is something I commented on Twitter a few weeks before it happened:

@tongstromberg July 10th, 2009

@tongstromberg July 28th, 2009

@tongstromberg August 3rd, 2009

Things can indeed go fast in this business and the competitive landscape changes day by day.

Although I was right on Schmidt, there is a tweet I think I might have to regret though due to today´s and other recent moves from Google:

@tongstromberg August 9th, 2009

With the official news of the rumoured Apple tablet most likely just a week away, Bing instead of Google as Apple´s default search engine on the iPhone could have so much larger screen proportions for Google than is apparent right now…

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Two full trading days on Nasdaq have now passed since Google released their highly unanticipated China news and I thought I would comment on it from a relative stock valuation perspective as I find the market reaction quite interesting in addition to the news in itself.

Much has been said about the communicated Google decision already, so I will not repeat too much of the background other than linking to the original Google China news source where you can find several relevant links to other news sources commenting this. Apparently, the Google apology to Chinese authors for copyright infringement a few days ago was preparing way for this big announcement, and celebrating Chinese innovations at Google.cn today most probably is intended to fulfil a similar purpose afterwards.

As for the Swedish media reaction, I must say I have been surprised to see quite balanced responses overall.  Both from those I know are either extremely positive or extremely negative about Google as a company. In general, most Swedish media commentary have been strongly favouring the Google decision from a business ethics point of view. But at the same time, I have not seen any serious questioning of the underlying business rationale for Google´s communication or intentions by this move which I find strange.

That said, no, I don´t fully believe in the Google ”don’t be evil” public stance and that only business ethics are behind a decision like this. Absolutely not because I don´t like the ”don’t be evil” idea as such (it´s a great ambition, indeed), but because I don´t believe any public company of Google´s size are able to keep up to such standards and ambitions long-term as they very often are negative for short-term profit maximization. Short-term profit maximization is what the market primarily are focused on and this tend to be reflected in individual managers´ KPIs as well and it does not go hand in hand with an ambition of ”don’t be evil” all the time unfortunately.

That said about the background, here is a snapshot of Baidu (BIDU) versus Google (GOOG). Both companies are traded on Nasdaq:

Strong positive market reaction for Baidu, hardly any negative reaction at all for Google two trading days after Google China news.

As you can see, the market reaction has been very strong and positive for Baidu, the local Chinese search compatitor to Google, but not at all that negative for Google which is very surprising to me:

Why? Well, although one can argue that China search revenues for Google today are very small (Google do not disclose exact numbers, qualified guesses I recall having seen are in the ~ 500 million dollar/year range), China is already the biggest country in the world in terms of web usage. Above all, it still has a huge untapped potential for the future with millions more consumers coming to the web.

However, China represents so much more than potential search revenues for Google and although many Western media seem to think it is “up to Google” what to do now in China, Chinese are known culturally for being long-term, concerned about face and and seeking confidence. Chinese are also very sensitive to this kind of open, definite and aggressive typical “American” stance that Google has taken in public communication on this issue.

Therefore, I personally think risks are very high the Chinese door is closing on Google now rather than Google having a choice about how to take their business in China further. I simply can´t see this going in any other direction given how Google have chosen to play their cards regarding this issue communication wise. In my view, this potentially concerns all China related business Google are involved in and comprises everything from Android for Chinese mobiles to the hardware collaboration with HTC on Nexus One.

Discounting lost “scrap value” future cash flows for just search in China which is what the market reaction is indicating, is therefore hardly enough as I see it.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

A classic Lego mini-figure chasing a wheel

Since childhood, I have had a strong passion for Lego. I grew up with it and built everything from my own designs to all the suggested models provided with instructions for each box. Actually, one of my strongest memories from childhood, is from my 7th birthday when I got the 8860 Auto Chassi. Boy, was I happy.

Lego is a very interesting company for many reasons and to my happiness I found this excellent article about the Lego company, it´s history and strategic direction under CEO Jorgen Vig Knudstorp. It´s a long article, but a great read and I strongly recommend checking it out. Especially, if you like me have a strong personal relation to these plastic bricks.

The article also mentions the new Lego Universe project – a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) that Lego has worked on for several years and which will take the Lego experience to a digital world.

I attended New Media Days in Copenhagen a few months ago, and there Henrik Taudorf Lorensen, VP Lego Digital, gave an interesting presentation of the project and Lego´s digital strategies. In short, the following is what Lego Universe is all about according to a recent Lego press release:

With a creative and building focus, LEGO Universe invites players to explore, battle, make friends, and flex their imaginations with the brick in a vibrant online world. Developed by The LEGO Group and NetDevil, LEGO Universe is a family-friendly online game, appropriate for players aged eight and above.  The LEGO brick lies at the center of the experience, and several levels of building are available, from simple gameplay-oriented challenges all the way up to sophisticated brick-by-brick building.

LEGO Universe is expected to launch during the second half of 2010. Another sign of Lego taking digital media seriously, is the following iPhone application.

Everywhere, focus seems to be on the basic Lego brick and maximizing the combined Lego building experience offline and online. Lego being smart to utilize the strengths of both a real world and a virtual, fantasy world and the synergies between them, I am hopeful not only my daughter but also her children if she has any, will be able to enjoy Lego several decades into the future.

Finally, from the daily mail article: Did you know that Lego produces 306 million tyres every year making it the world´s largets tyre manufacturer?

Edit: Just found an article in Gizmodo with some more details about the Lego Universe MMOG. Here´s an excellent part from Gizmodo that really makes me excited about this:

The best bit is the promise that you’ll be able to take digital creations you make in the game and make a custom set, complete with constructions, in meatspace. Lego will figure out which pieces are necessary to build your masterpiece, give you a price list, and ship you a custom box with everything inside. It won’t be available at launch, but it is coming soon.

A great exemple of online/offline synergy!

Edit 2: Lots of discussion going on about Lego Universe after CES. Found an interesting brick over at Destructoid which I thought was worth sharing:

The possibilities from this alone was enough to get me excited, but then they showed me the programming language. Wow. With some very smart and focused basic programming tools, you’ll be able to take your creations and make them interactive. Say you had a castle with a door and you wanted it to open on approach. You could use a visual editing mode that features pre-programmed behavior blocks to do this. Or anything else. I saw examples complex enough to have one action send a trigger to another function. The possibilities seem endless. If you were the creative kid growing up, you’ll definitely want to give this feature a spin.

Imagine being a kid getting this fun introduction to programming! When I grew up, programming BASIC on an ABC80 was what was available…

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Yesterday I tried out a marketing tool for Twitter I found via Media Culpa called TweetBrand.

Although I think Twitter advertising is something one should be extremely careful about for the same reasons Social Mallard lists, I think TweetBrand does this in a pretty clever way, not necessarily intrusive at all using the source parameter, – a Twitter feature which is always used for “application advertising” in tweets anyway.

Whether you like it or not, what the source parameter does, is that it displays the name of the application you are using to tweet. The default Twitter.com application uses “web” (not hyperlinked) but if you are using a third-party application (which you probably do), it displays the name of the application, e.g.  “TweetDeck“, “Seesmic” or “HootSuite“. The URL-shortener service Bit.ly is also using this feature if you tweet directly from the graphical user interface.

Here are some screenshots of me tweeting with Twitter.com (“from web”), HootSuite (“from HootSuite”) and Bit.ly (“from bit.ly”) just to examplify:

Tweet from Twitter.com

Tweet from HootSuite application

Tweet from bit.ly

As this text string is always included in a tweet, but not as a part of the important 140 characters, it´s an interesting extra communication channel with link possibility via Twitter which is exactly what TweetBrand has understood.

Although the application as such and the instructions for how to set this up clearly appears a bit “amateurish”, it works and I could set this up tweeting “from Lars Tong Strömberg” with a link (Twitter.com nofollow though) to this blog. Pretty neat!

Lars Tong Strömberg as source parameter with hyperlink

Any message and landing page could be used for this according to TweetBrand although I haven´t tested e.g. how long display text string could be accepted using this.

So, it “works” overall in my opinion from a practical point of view and as an acceptable form av advertising tweets. Any drawbacks then practically? There are two worth noting: First off, the application as such for tweeting is not up to decent standard. I.e. it cannot compare with any of the major twitter third-party applications listed above for anything except this particular feature. This leads me to con number two: As the application is not up to standard for anything else, I haven´t found a way to utilize this other than by preparing the tweet in some other app, only to copy/paste and send my tweets from TweetBrand.

Cumbersome…

Does it “work” from an advertising efficiency point of view? Well, I don´t have any data but apart from the cumbersome part of copy/pasting which I haven´t found a way around, it is a “free extra” for a tweeting advertiser as the main 140 characters are not affected. I think this is definitely value adding as it provides a way for the reader to quickly find more relevant information from the sender without being overly distracted in the main message.

Probably we will see this either as a free (or more probably) a “pro” feature of the established applications soon. At least I would make sure to include this possibility for a small extra “pro fee” immediately if I were them.

Edit: Lots of comments on TweetBrand now apparently. I am not using any affiliate links for it (and never will for a product, brand or application I review). Just for the record…

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Save space and trees with an e-reader instead

Sometimes it strikes me how totally different views people have about the ongoing digital revolution and how fast and fundamentally it will change our media consumption.

Today I really had one of those moments reading first a post in Galleycat with some very strange predictions by Richard Curtis´ on book publishing 10 years in the future contrasted by an, in my view, a lot more enlightened piece by Chris Dixon building on Clayton M. Christensen´s theories on disruptive technologies.

As pointed out by Chris, disruptive technologies tend to be dismissed as toys at first and the potential of the new technology to fundamentally provide change is not comprehended. This is exactly what is happening in the media industry right now.

To me working with digital media for a traditional magazine publisher, there is no doubt magazines will be consumed digitally in the future. It´s not a question of “if“, it´s a matter of “when“. It´s definitely not going to take 50 years, 8-10 years for books and 10 to 15 years for glossy magazines is a reasonable guess for me and Steve Ballmer is even more optimistic. By then all the laggards in the technology adoption lifecycle will have no choice anymore. There will basically be no commercially available new books or magazines left, only for collectors in marginal circulation for very high prices. The printed media business as we know it today, by then has transformed completely in the same way as for example the music industry has gone from physical LPs, to CDs to be completely digitally distributed.

As the book industry is even less dependent on high resolution images versus glossy magazines and this revolution is already well underway for book reading, Curtis´ viewpoints surprises me even more. It´s happening now, right in front of us! Although I personally still don´t find Amazon´s Kindle replacing a physical book, many people apparently think it does.

Within a year or two, these tablets will be in color, bendable and be a lot thinner and lighter. The development of the screens and screen technology is at the heart of this change and what makes this so interesting, is not whether the gadget is called tablet, e-reader, laptop or smartphone, but how consumer behaviour is changing. Consumer behavior is changing right now for books and within a few years, the same will definitely happen for magazines.

With the above background, it really surprises me to read the predictions from Curtis:

1. First and foremost I predict that the size and price of Espresso print on demand will come down to the point where POD kiosks will be installed in non-bookstores like supermarkets, libraries, pharmacies and the like.

Once again, let me point out that he predicts what will happen with the book market 10 years from now… Consumers wanting to print books in shops?? Why on earth do that 10 years from now when you can download books already today to e-readers or other digital devices many consumers already find good enough to read on? In just the coming 1- 2 years, we will have e-readers in color on the market. Possibly bendable. The prototypes are already here. Curtis continues with something even more crazy:

5. Sales volume of printed books will rise as a reaction to screen-reading sets in. Many now enamored of e-books will return to print.

This prediction is totally stunning. Again, physical, printed books is the prediction from Curtis. 10 years from now and motivated as a “reaction” to screen-reading. Even if that nostagia would indeed set in among some consumers in 10 years, how many traditional book stores offering printed books will still be in business? Even if I for some strange reason would like to get across new music on audio cassettes today, where would I be able to find it? How much would it cost?

This digital revolution will transform the media landscape completely and many of the old traditional publishers will not even understand what happened until it´s too late.

(picture by Julie70)

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Ivory soap bar

Chris Brogan writes today about how social media and building relationships can help sales.

First off, I think Chris is correct about nisch fast-moving consumer brands, especially those with a strong local connection, having a very interesting opportunity with social media. Definitely.

However, soap, detergents, hard-surface cleaners, etc. are not engaging products in themselves and social media do not scale well for non-engaging, mass market products with very large and broad target groups. For the bigger brands in these product categories I therefore think it is important to emphasize that social media can only be a complement to more large-scale media and part of a much broader media strategy.

Don´t get me wrong, I love social media and the importance of building strong relationships with consumer ambassadors in the core target group, but this is “icing on the media cake” for a bigger advertiser of these products who need to reach and influence those who, – unlike Chris, finds soap and tire brands too boring and non-engaging to connect with via social media.

Building brand awareness and top of mind can be accomplished large scale and to a sufficient level for these products with great ROI using a backbone of more traditional media channels. Having worked for one of these FMCG giants, I also know from personal experience how extremely thoroughly all media investments are measured, benchmarked and evaluated by these companies so there is no guesswork involved in these decisions and I hardly think social media opportunities are neglected.

Second, I reacted on the following section comparing media costs from Chris:

If you’re Glynne Soaps, you can’t pay for full spread magazine ads and soap operas. You can spend time on social platforms meeting people, talking to them about their stuff (and not just soap). Maybe you don’t pick up the ad campaign for a while, but that would be at an inflection point.

Here I think it is important to point out that spending time on social media is in fact a cost and probably a higher one than you think. One of the most common financial mistakes is to not measure personnel time costs and have proper time management follow-up. Yes, spending time on social media can be very useful, but the time spent represents an opportunity cost and needs to be taken into account. This is true for all companies, large and small.

If you start measuring or at least estimate the time spent on social media, costs for full spread magazine ads might not seem as expensive anymore in comparison… Once again, I don´t think Chris is wrong about the potential of social media, but the costs needs to be taken into account also for this media choice and just because you can spend time on building relationships via these channels for your brand, does not mean it is necessarily cheap in comparison to other opportunities.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Twingly offers some interesting predictions for the real-time web in 2010 in their company blog today.

Agreeing on all of them, I think Facebook are in a quite amazing strategic position to build a search position through the “lens of friends“ I touched upon in a post a few days ago. Not only does Facebook have access to a vast source of real-time content, adding the “lens of friends” settings Facebook users have built in makes it a one-two punch.

Hopefully, Twingly are correct also on Twitter clients like TweetDeck and Seesmic opening up for external plugin developers. As their own success is based on Twitter´s API I find it a bit strange this has not happened to a greater extent already. HootSuite for example, have chosen not to open up for bit.ly URL-shortening which is something many users including myself have found quite irritating…

Given how crowded the Twitter client application area is starting to become though, opening up more for external developers to speed up development and gaining market share becomes a natural step.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.