Most project management systems feel like slavery, especially the infamous MS Project, foisted upon the creative/marketing world by the tiranny of interactive firms who seem to be unable to communicate in anything but. Now don’t get me wrong, MS Project would be my tool of choice if I was making any kind of widget, building houses or any other endeavor that was suited to a linear schedule with har task dependencies. However, that is about as far from our industry as you can get.
Regardless of my essential antipathy to most project management systems, I have recently turned to a very sophisticated, multiuser, web deployed project management system called dotProject. The system is very flexible and lends itself to the creation of projects that can be fluid and managed by individual contributors via a dashboard that presents them with to do lists automatically generated form the projects entered into the system.
Though there is a relatively steep learning curve for those that have to manage projects, it is very easy to train individual contributors. It has all the functionality you would expect and includes Gantt charts, calendars and all the tools you would expect short of sophisticated resource levelling tools. Just make sure to run it on an open source OS, I recommend Ubuntu server. Check it out here
As part of my other life as a personal technology journalist, I have been carrying around the new Blackberry 8830 phone from Verizon, and I think I may be geting ready to give the boot to my old standby, the Treo 650.
The 8830 is the first RIM device I have used in quite a while and it is much slimmer and stylish than my current Treo, the carrier coverage easily beats Sprint (Though an equivalent voice and data plan from Verizon is more expensive) and it is easier to use than my Treo for day to day activities. For example, start typing on the main screen and the device figures out if the keystrokes map to a number or the name of one of your contacts and displays the choices. Contextual menus are never far away and there are no delays in moving from application to application. I thought I would miss the touchscreen, but the trackball proves to be a much better navigation experience than having to move your fingers up to the touchscreen.
The device runs on Verizon’s CDMA network in the US and roams to GSM networks in Europe. Now if only they offered the Pearl in a similar configuration, I think that I would be 100% sold…Check out a full video review I found on youtube:
I have a client that has increasingly been depending on web based presentations to reach larger audiences when pitching new business and meeting with clients that are in disparate geographic regions. They have been using Webex, with the usual multiplatform issues and setup problems and recently they hit a deadly snag: video sharing. The problem with video sharing is that it is increasingly difficult to be sure that people will have access to the same video format and playing the it with any degree of simultanaety and host control is an exercise in frustration.
I had looked at Adobe Breeze some time ago, but it was outrageously expensive. Now that it is Adobe Acrobat Connect, the pricing options have been expanded and there is even a Webex-style pay as you go option for a very reasonable US$0.32 per minute/per person which is competitive with the Webex “street price”. Some preliminary testing on my part shows a much nicer interface than Webex, done by designers not software engineers, easy sharing of files and desktops and sharing of flash video. But no need to take my word on it, they are ofering a free 15 day trial.
One of the first products that I have come across designed exclusively to take advantage of the built in capabilities of Windows Vista, it is a presentation system that separates the roles of presentation designer and presenter. It is being targeted explicitly at advertising/design firms and the major case study is Jet Blue and it’s agency. There is a long video available on their website here
The notion of separating the presentation design process and putting it in the hands of a professional is interesting and promises to finally liberate us from the usual PowerPoint bullet slide jail and cheesy clipart. I also like the ability to do an image search on the web to steal borrow graphics to snazz up your presentation, something I do all the time, as well as the non linear ‘flypaper'’ media/idea sorter. I do have a rough time imagining that ad agencies will embrace a Windows only product so intimately tied to the Vista internals that is unlikely to ever be ported to OSX.
Sign up for the beta when you visit. If you get to play with it, let me know what you think.
Though his Steveness got a lot of mileage out of the multitouch technology built into the iPhone, Perceptive Pixel is truly the way of the future, massive display, multitouch collaborative user interfaces, a brave new world straight out of Minority Report. Though this was shown at TED:
Jeff Han has set up a company to commercialize the technology.
ad:tech this week was all a-fluttery with web 2.0. Paul Lenzi, Director of Interactive/Creative Services at Modernista! in Boston, was kind enough to send us his impressions from the conference:
Many of the thoughts expressed below were thematic to this year’s show. Naming all speakers, panelists and moderators that contributed to my interpretations would be excessive. I credit the show organizers and presenters for a very informed few days and offer apologies in advance for using a few direct quotes without citing source.
To state the obvious: The common thread to the ad:tech 2006 NYC conference sessions was web 2.0 and social networking–no surprise. (It would be fair to mention that the viral case study of the year is the Diet Coke and Mentos “science guys”. And the media darling is certainly YouTube’s purchase by Google.) The question around the topic of social networking is: “is it real or a fad”? Is this the tipping point or Bubble Part Deux? (more…)
Virtual reality intrudes in real world advertising
Tuesday October 24, 2006, 10:47 am
Coca Cola has always been an innovator in advertising and this wonderfully postmodern ad based on the Grand Theft Auto series of console games notorious for its violence and general mayhem. It also helps to raise the irony meter that the latest incarnation, San Andreas, caused a firestorm of controversy when secret x-rated levels embedded in the game came to light.
When I was growing up in the late sixties/early seventies, the term generation gap was always front and center as the country was roiled by what seemed at times to be an incipient civil war across generational lines. The fact that we no longer hear the term bandied about on the press does not mean however that generational schisms have disappeared. Peer just for a minute into the world of a teenager, and you will see them floating in a technology bubble that would have been inconceivable to those of us old enough to have lived through Watergate. Between the cell phones, texting, pervasive access to the Internet and an ever expanding market for video games, you will also find a category of entertainment with the unwieldy moniker of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, MMORPG’s for short. They represent the most socially disruptive technology to have gained a solid foothold in the new millennium, they are already creating a vast generational gap, and they are going to impact your business directly.
Back in the golden days when the desktop was everything and networks were just beginning to make it out into the real world, Guy Kawasaki, then a hot shot marketer, embodied the term technical evangelist in the guise of Macintosh evangelist. This distinction between marketer (cool/tired) and evangelist (hot/wired) has been one of the central organizing principles at Apple. Even though they are a technology/computer company they really behave as a consumer goods company on meth. Mac is one of the only brands in the world that has transcended to become a cult but there is no reason that other companies can’t apply some of the lessons learned from Apple to their own marketing endeavors. (more…)
Consumer generated commercials on YouTube watched by advertising agencies
Wednesday August 16, 2006, 2:11 pm
CNET points out the positive and negatives of community generated advertising videos on YouTube. Agencies fear consumers taking over the brands image on the Internet as evidenced by the Volkswagen ‘terrorist’ video last year, on the other hand imitation is a sincere form of flattery and a cheap way to extend the brands’ reach.
