Using Google Trends to Predict Oscar Winners

Google have released this nifty web app that attempts to predict who will win at the Oscars using Google trends. I'm going to try it out, put a bit of money on it and hopefully get rich!!

Google One Pass

Google have launched One Pass, a new online payment system for publishers. One Pass will allow people to buy subscriptions to online publications across a range of platforms using the one login. The video above is rather vague and doesn't really reveal a huge amount of practical information or screenshots of the product.

What it means for publishers and brands selling published content on the web is that people may be more encouraged to spend money if it is simplified to this one universal payment system - instead of remembering a tonne of passwords they'll only have to remember the one.

Quora: A New Player in the World of Social Media?

Quora has been receiving a lot of online and offline media coverage recently. So this weekend I sat down to explore the product, read some articles and find out what the hype is all about.


What is Quora?

Quora is a question and answer service, similar in ways to yahoo answers: you post a question and it is answered by real people through a login or facebook connect.

Okay, this sounds like yahoo answers with an open graph feature, how is it different? I googled my question and found this thread on Quora: How is Quora different to X? A bit of a worrying start in my opinion. Surely the conversation around a new product such as this should revolve around how it can be used, not what it is?

As I continued to read I discovered this article by Saneel Radia over on BBH Labs. Where as I am still on the fence regarding Quora, he most definitely is not:

"To clarify, it’s not that I don’t like Quora. It’s that I hate it and want it wiped off the face of the earth."

He makes a very valid point regarding the "How is Quora different to X?" conversation I mentioned earlier:

"OK, so maybe #Twitter was a trending topic on Twitter the first 6 months. But those conversations were focused primarily on usage and innovation with the platform. The Quora self-referential conversations are literally people scratching their heads looking for value. There’s no better sign that the emperor has no clothes people."

His article has sparked quite a heated debate in the comments section. 

On the other side of the fence The Telegraph claims that Quora will be bigger than Twitter and is full of praise for the product:

"Twitter was fun for the few, but Quora will be useful to the many. It's is the place to go for on-demand answers to specific questions from people who know what they're talking about. That's something no search engine - or existing social network - comes close to. Monetisation strategies present themselves readily, where they did not - and still do not - in the microblogging platform's case."

Quora is still in it's infancy and it will be interesting see when all the hype dies down whether it will stick, or suffer a similar fate to Google Wave. For now I'm going to sit back, watch and reserve a definite personal opinion until later (it's a very comfortable fence).

Google NGram

Launched a few days ago by Google, Google NGram Viewer lets you trace the usage of a word during the last 5 centuries by searching how many times it has appeared in books written over that time span. The data comes from Google's extensive and growing Google Books store.

The graph above shows the use of for our very own company name: Publicis. 1811 - 1812 seems to have been it's peek.

The project is a brilliant example of how data can be used creatively to return interesting, useful, and relevant information in an entertaining and strangely addictive way.

Try it out here.

Google Says "Thank You"

AKQA, PostPanic and Rehabstudio have created this thank you from Google to all of it's 1 million AdWords clients worldwide. Each film is customised to display the viewers company name, making 1 million unique films.

As Creative Review describes it:
 
"Rehabstudio created a system that personalised each film, inserting the individual name of each advertiser into the action. AdWords then sent an email to all its customers globally, inviting them to view their bespoke film via a YouTube channel."

It's an interesting to see how digital can be used to turn the "traditional" medium of the mass-market TV ad into something unique and personal.

Google Nexus and NFC

The "recommended by Google" sticker uses NFC (Near Field Communications) technology on google's Nexus phone to interact directly with a google image with a NFC chip inserted. The technology allows anyone with the Nexus phone to touch their phone against any image that's NFC enabled, and download or view interactive content.

Between this technology and google goggles, interaction between the online and offline worlds through mobile phones are strengthening rapidly, and in very interesting ways.

More info here on Hotpot blog.

Track Your Flush

There's a lot of interesting work cropping up using geolocation. This interesting piece of work for Domestos by Lean Mean Fighting Machine takes a different spin on location tracking by letting you track your flush. Using google maps, Flushtracker tracks your poo's progress through your local sewage system and, as it takes several hours to reach it's destination, it sends you regular email updates as it goes.

As much fun as it is to track your poo, it is for a serious cause. World Toilet Day aims to bring awareness to the fact that many people in the developing world have no access to toilets and correct sewage systems.

Google Goggles and Advertising

Google goggles has been around for a while now, but the technology was somewhat imperfect. They seemed to have been working hard on it though and this week, Google launched the video above which shows how they've has teamed up with some big brands to explore the possibilities of how the technology can be used for advertising. It's a similar technology to a QR code but thankfully doesn't rely on the codes graphic aesthetic. With google goggles now available to iPhone and Android it's definitely something all of us in advertising should to keep an eye on.

Is 2011 The Year Of TV And The Internet?

When the mobile phone met the Internet it changed it forever, this year it seems as if our TV's are going to get a similar treatment. All of the major players are beginning to deliver services for the TV: YouTube, Vimeo, Apple, and Google; and when these companies get involved, you know there's something major on the horizon.

Andy Kinsella has written a short and useful post on his blog discussing the new and upcoming TV / internet offerings. Here are some of the links from his post:

YouTube Leanback – http://www.youtube.com/leanback
Vimeo Couchmode – http://vimeo.com/couchmode
YouView – http://www.youview.com/
Boxee – http://www.boxee.tv/
Apple TV – http://www.apple.com/appletv/
Google TV – http://www.google.com/tv

This is obviously a very exciting opportunity for brands, and it certainly throws into question the validity and relevance of the 30 second TV spot. Very exciting times for those in advertising.    

Goollery

Continuing on the google theme from my previous post, Goollery is a gallery (see what they did there) of great work created with google's platforms. This includes some amazing google map mash-ups, amazing interactive youtube videos and this gmail specific keyboard called the Gboard.

Google's Creative Internet Presentation

Collected by google labs, here is a large resource (119 to be exact) of creative projects on the web. Some you will recognise and some you won't, but it's well worth taking the time to look through and get inspired.

Inverse Google and Serendipity

Search for something using Inframutt and it will send you to the last result in google instead of the first. It may seem like a bit of a gimick, but I think the creators could be onto something here.


With google we search for what we're looking for and therefore only get results that directly correspond to our search. Whilst in most cases this is useful, for creative thinking you could argue that it stifles lateral thinking.

In his book "Where Good Ideas Come From", Steven Johnson talks about the power of serendipitous discovery and how it benefits creating unique, lateral and innovative ideas. He uses the example of browsing the shelves of the library pre-internet in search of information: Whilst you might go in with the intention of finding a particular book on a particular subject an attractive spine, or an interesting title might distract you along the way. You pick up this book instead and stumble upon a piece of information, or a different way of looking at a problem that ultimately inspires a more creative solution to your problem.


By sending you to the last page of your search for say the word "dog", Inframutt might send you to a page that has a more lateral connection to the word than you would ever have discovered on the first few pages of google. This therefore promotes a more serendipitous approach to using and discovering  the plethora of information available on the web.

Gmail Priority Inbox

Google is rolling out a new feature today called Gmail Priority Inbox. It priorities your mail based on which mail you read and reply to the the most. If it gets it wrong you can just indicate that the message is more or less important than it predicted.


In my ongoing war against email this is going to be very useful. I haven't got it yet so don't worry if it hasn't appeared on your gmail just yet. Look out for the “New! Priority Inbox”in the top right hand corner.

Google TV

Google TV is here. It looks great and it looks useful. But what does it mean for the 30 second TV ad?

"Making Ideas Happen"

Yesterday I finished Making Ideas Happen a book by the founder of the Behance network, Scott Belsky. As the title states it's somewhat of a users manual for us creative people who struggle with turning our ideas into reality.

It arrived at my desk last Friday after been held up for several days by a certain volcano I'm not even going to attempt to spell. The next morning myself and Eve grabbed our respective literature and headed down to the local coffee shop for a long day of reading and drinking. Skip to several hours and to many lattes later and I'm already halfway through the book.

In his introduction Scott uses the famous Edison quote: "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." to explain how most of the worlds greatest ideas never happen. We're more focused on inspiration than we are perspiration. The creative mind is effectively addicted to coming up with new ideas. When we reach the "project plateau" we satisfy our craving for a new idea by moving on and abandoning the previous one. We need to adopt a method that takes us through the perspiration in short manageable steps and keeps our wandering minds interested right up to the completion of the project.

The method suggested by the book is the Action Method. It was developed by talking to many leaders of the creative world including Bob Greenberg, Creative Director and founder of R/GA and Ji Lee, creative director of Google. You begin by turning everything in your life into a project. Each project is then broken down into "Action Steps"; short, manageable and executionable notes that nudge us along the path towards a projects completion. They are captured daily or hourly depending on the project and they act as a creative to-do list. Have a look at the action method site for a full break-down of how the system works.

This week I used the Action Method for the first time. It's to early to tell it's affect on my work but it did give me a sense of progress and purpose I've never really had. I've made more progress on personal projects than ever before, this post has been proactively written all week in the downtime between projects, and work is suspiciously less stressful. This may well be down to coincidence or a honeymoon period but what matters for now is, it's working.

I'd recommend the book to anyone working in the creative industry. If people like Bob Greenberg and Ji Lee subscribe to a method of organisation maybe the only way to realise your full potential is by doing so also.

Next up The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda.

Google Goggles

Back in December I wrote a short piece about Google Goggles, Google's visual search engine for Android phones. The software has just been upgraded to include a translation tool that can recognise a language from a photograph and translate it. The languages supported so far are English, French, Italian, German and Spanish with plans to extend it in the future. So the confusion of foreign menus or roadsigns could become a thing of the past.

via Telegraph.co.uk

Google TV Ads

I'm not to sure how long Google's Tv Ads have been in existence, but if you work in advertising like me, you might want to watch this. By pressing this harmless looking button Slate created a 30 sec Tv ad, that appeared on a national network, reached an audience of 1.2 million, and cost them $1300. No agency, no producers, no media buyers were involved in the process.

Again if you work in advertising you need to watch this.