Google Set to Make Gmail Social With Status Update Features
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It’s been a busy and productive Autumn at Global Beach. We have had several good new business wins including some really interesting customer experience consultancy for Canon, a new global redesign and content management system for a British company called Pacific Direct and a design consultancy piece of work for a pureplay online PR business called PressLoft.
The recruitment of an experienced new Project Manager and a Business Development Manager has allowed me to concentrate on delivering the numbers we had forecast for the year and with our year end coming up in January we are looking to be slightly ahead of forecast which we can all be proud of.
I delivered our vision for 2010 at the last Board meeting which was received well. We will continue to concentrate on the areas that have been our core competencies this year, business planning & analytics, great creative and technical competence of which more later…
speakTECH inc and Global Beach Group (UK) announce a strategic alliance to provide end-2-end digital marketing, eCRM, and design and build web services. Having worked closely together over the past 12 months, Global Beach will merge their Irvine based team into speakTECH’s Orange County Office with immediate effect to provide a fully integrated range of digital services to speakTECH’s growing client base.
Aaron Sloman, President and CEO of speakTECH said he was excited to continue speakTECH’s Creative and Digital Agency Services expansion, “I am excited about the prospect of bringing in-house some very capable people who’s expertise and experience will be extremely valuable to speakTECH’s clients”.
Global Beach Inc Managing Partner, Matt Passey will take on a senior management role within speakTECH and will lead a number of their key client accounts.
Clive Jackson, Founder and CEO of Global Beach Group commented “this is the right move for Matt and the team, he is an extremely capable guy and I am grateful for his diligent and professional management of our US business over the past 7 years. I know he will enjoy working with Aaron and wish them all the very best “.
Just a quick post from the train using my newly configured Sony Vaio P (the tiny Sony netbook) running Windows 7.
Peter bought this earlier in the year but didn’t get on with it because it was just too slow to do anything useful on. He’s now upgraded to a macbook air (it’s a hard at the top isn’t it!) so I thought I’d have a play around with this.
The initial idea was to stick Ubuntu on it as a few others have done and after some messing about with USB keys (this thing’s got no optical drive) we configured a PXE boot server and got it to boot from the network and install Ubuntu – result!
Well, more of a no score draw really… Initially the display doesn’t run at the almost impossible to see 1600 x 768 so you have to do some play\ing around as detailed by Richard Walker on his blog. Once that’s all up and running it’s ok but the display is painfully slow and video’s are just unwatchable. Not so much of a problem in itself but combined with the fact that suspend/resume and the HSPDA/GPRS modem don’t play ball meant that Ubuntu was for the bin.
I was tempted to try OS X but apart from the fact it’s not legal, I suspect lots of pain and a result which is no better than Ubuntu (and probably worse).
So, back to Windows it was. A word of warning here: Do not suspend the machine halfway through the ‘recovery’ process! Obvious really, but after waiting 2 hours for it to complete I wanted to go home! The result was a machine that booted into Vista, displayed a message that system configuration couldn’t complete and then restarted. Booting to safe mode didn’t solve the problem either.
Anyway, to cut a long story shorter, some more playing around with PXE and the WAIK resulted in a network boot server that wouldn’t quite install Windows and a 4GB USB key that wouldn’t format anymore (sorry Peter). Trying to make a bootable USB key with the Win 7 ISO should be easy but for some reason it just wasn’t.
Then on Wednesday there appeared on my desk something that looked like it had been made in a shed 10 years ago from components bought in Maplin. In actual fact it was an external USB optical drive, dusted off from the ‘archive’ of our CTO. 2 minutes later and I’m installing Windows 7 and we’re cooking with gas.
Well almost. You have to do a fair amount of hacking around to get everything to work as detailed in this great windows 7 install guide and I had to download a different WAN card driver from option but so far so good. I’ve got a vodafone SIM in the slot and it all ‘just works’.
It’s not rocket fast but it’s still a pretty impressive device, I’m now on the tube and literally put it in my pocket for the walk between the mainline and the underground, it’s that small. If only Apple would make something similar my life would be complete!
Next stop, install some real software, configure my Macbook for VNC so I can leave it in the office and remote into it from this, oh and swap the hard drive for an SSD – that should speed things up a bit.
Right. Summer break over. Went to a very slick presentation from Google yesterday afternoon. The amount of user data they have is quite scary. It’s no wonder they are…
I am currently trialing the web browser Flock. First impressions are good. Here is some blurb on it…
Open Source Social Media Browser
If you are a social media hound you probably have Flock, a web browser full of extensions and other tools for interacting on the web. Flock is an open source web browser built on the same Mozilla architecture that Firefox is built on so many of Flock’s features should be familiar, like tab-based browsing and the ability to add extensions. However, there are a number of cool new features that appeal to the social networking crowd.
http://www.flock.com
As summer school holidays are approaching, May bank holidays have come and gone and with the amount of “out of office – on holiday” emails I am getting you would expect things to slow down a little over Summer. Unfortunately (well fortunately) – which ever way you look at it, not here at Global Beach.
In the last week we have launched 2 new websites and 1 new application for one of our most active clients Terrence Higgins Trust.
THIVK (www.thinkHIV.co.uk) – Our new website for gay men which busts a few myths and points out some solutions for HIV and testing. Including a full clinic finder offering the facility to narrow results dependent on your needs.
Mambo (www.mambo.org.uk)- Mambo has been developed by THT, it’s the healthier lifestyle magazine for Africans. Global Beach has helped to move the Mambo community online – our new website with blogs, sexual health information, and Aunty Fola. And soon to be added a Professionals area designed to help professionals who work with African communities.
Online Counseling (http://www.tht.org.uk/howwecanhelpyou/needhelpnow/onlinecounselling/) – Initially funded for a pilot period by the Department of Health for gay and bi-sexual men, online counselling service is now open to everyone. It gives you the chance to explore whatever is concerning you, from relationships problems to your sex life. The counselling takes place in a number of ways through email and instant messaging (chat).
I am quite excited about just how much we have got going on with all our clients… but on the flip side I reckon I will be more than ready for my holiday at the end of August!
In 1978 viewing figures for the Morecombe and Wise Christmas show on ITV were in the region of 28 million people. Around the same time Nescafe launched an advertising campaign involving the Gold Blend couple which at its peak attracted more than 30 million viewers.
The connection is obvious. Three decades ago the most popular television programmes could attract almost half the nation. Vast numbers of people where on the same frequency. All an advertiser needed to do was position their product in between shows like Morecombe and Wise or soap operas like Coronation Street, and they had a totally captive audience.
By contrast, nowadays, in the modern home very few people are listening or watching the same thing. There are no longer two or three television stations, there are hundreds available via satellite. And countless radio stations. A recent survey carried out by JupiterResearch found that online users are now spending about 14 hours a week, on average – the same amount of time that they spend watching TV – surfing the internet.
By their nature web users are far less passive than the average television viewer. They spend time networking with friends, swapping information and sharing views. They comment on blogs and upload videos and photos. They are busy doing research, downloading music and checking out weird and wonderful facts.
Collaboration and participation are the buzzwords of today. As described in the book Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams: “Blogs, wikis, chat rooms, search engines, advertising auctions, peer-to-peer downloading, and personal broadcasting represent new ways to entertain, communicate, and transact. In each instance the traditionally passive buyers of editorial and advertising take active, participatory roles in value creation. Some of these grassroots innovations pose dire threats to existing business models.”
Our job at Global Beach is to be like a new generation advertising agency creating communication strategies that respond to and reflect modern tastes.
The worst bit. Waiting for a decision. As my wife said to me this morning it is like asking someone out. All that nervous anticipation with a touch of dread.
I feel we did a good pitch and managed to get a sense of us across well. We all came out liking them a lot and wanting to work with them. If I could cross my toes I would!
Apparently I, like Web 2.0, am old school and past it. So say my designers. Apparently we should now be talking about the coming internet.
Really? I thought it was about using the best tools for any job. Whether these happen to be a Blog that allows a company or individual to express opinions, a website to sell or tell people something, a forum that allows people to interact or some careful pre-planning that allows a site and it’s content to be found easily by search engines is not important. What is important is using the right combination of tools for the job. Intelligent Interaction.
And while I’m ranting let’s not forget children (designers) that Social Media isn’t a new phenomenon. Oh no. Interactive forums have been around for years. Facebook etc. just put a pretty face on them.
Check out our Triumph Pitch site if you don’t believe me and take some time to browse the many forums. Old school. Yes please…