'Cross The Breeze

Mustang hood spotted!

September 25, 2008 by Kris Hoet 5 Comments

I normally keep my Mustang stuff for that other blog, but this somehow fitted more on this one. If you have an interest in technology then you probably read a few tech blogs and just like me and a lot of other people see the excitement about cool new technology months before it gets released. Think about the iPhone, Android, Windows 7, … people start speculating about features and every miniscule change to a release date is big news. And wait until you get to see the first screenshots, or was that Photoshopped instead of the real deal? Who knows, but it keeps us all talking of course.

The last few weeks something similar happened (and is still ongoing) with the new 2010 Ford Mustang. The teaser website doesn’t really say much, apart from the fact that we still have to wait until Spring 09. But in these past few weeks, there have been spyshots of the new Mustang aka photos of a car that is partially covered and has a slight Dalmatian look and feel in many cases. But that happens to pretty much any car. In case of the Mustang – similar to what we’ve seen in the tech industry – every single piece of news around the new model is big news on all auto blogs. Take this “2010 Mustang hood spotted” for instance or the interior shots, … I didn’t keep track of everything but it always reminded me of what happens when let’s say people know Apple is working on an update of one of their products. Funny enough – and again similar – I’m not even sure if you’ll notice the difference with the ‘older’ Mustang to begin with.

Last but not least, with the 2010 Mustang also the Mustang badge changes:

“A stronger, more dynamic pony badge with defined edges and crisper forms in a subtly toned tinted-chrome finish will charge across the grilles of the V-6 and GT versions of the 2010 Mustang.”

Okay, that’s way cool and all but would you have noticed the difference if no-one had told you? Anyway, I will keep track of this news just like I do for what happens in technology, though there were some nice similarities here.

art, beta, design, gadgets, technology

2010, ford, iblogmustang, mustang, release, teaser

Innovation

September 23, 2008 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

“Don’t take a designer and tell them to build a bridge. Bring them to the canyon and see what they come up with. (Claudia Kotcha)”

Taken from the “We need change” presentation on Slideshare: “A loosely structured collection of quotes and references regarding the (mediocre) but promising state of market research”.

design, inspiration, marketing, quote, research

change, helgetenno, innovation, presentation, quotes, slideshare

Thank God

September 19, 2008 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

I really was only looking for a good reason to put one of these on my blog but thank God indeed :) For more hilarious ecards, click here.

fun

someecards

New Windows Live beta

September 18, 2008 by Kris Hoet 13 Comments

Yesterday ~~Microsoft~~ we released the beta version of the new Windows Live, generally referred to as Windows Live Wave 3. And just like I had told a few people already in the weeks and months before the release, I think this release looks really good. What you can get after downloading the beta is mainly a refresh to the downloadable applications, the other online services will be update later. You’ll notice one thing immediately after installing the apps and that is that it all looks much crispier, cleaner than before… and me like. These are the new updates I like most:

Windows Live Messenger

Let’s start with the most popular of all Windows Live applications, used by 300 million people worldwide. I have +400 contacts in my Messenger and it’s fair to say that I use this every single day. Being able to add contacts to a favorites list will help me find people faster (although the search bar on top is always pretty handy for that as well). And also the groups feature is useful for me to start instant conversations between a bunch of people working on the same project, both from inside as outside the company. Lastly the “What’s new” update is also a nice feature and like Joe Wilcox notices, one with tremendous potential:

“What’s New is nascent, but it has great potential unifying some of Microsoft’s disparate social networking services. The venue is appropriate. While IMing with your buddies, you see a stream of updates about what your other friends, family or coworkers are doing. I can just imagine the teen exchange when Tracey sees that Wendy and Frank are now an item while chatting with Janie. Oh the gossip. The broader potential is tremendous, if Microsoft chooses to capitalize on it. What’s New, or something like it, could inform what game Jack is playing on Xbox 360 right now, what song Mary is listening to in Zune 3.0 software or what TV shows Manny has scheduled to record today in Windows Media Center….”

Oh and one interesting new feature I’d almost forgotten: the ability to log in on more than one PC.

Windows Live Mail

Next to my Microsoft.com company email address which I read using Outlook, I have about 10 other email addresses. I know I could do with less, but they are my old Hotmail some new Live.com addresses I could snatch at the launch :), my Gmail… etc and since I use a separate email address for each blog, that adds up to 10.

Although you could add your Hotmail accounts also into Outlook by using the Outlook Connector, and you can obviously also add POP3 email to Outlook, I still prefer Windows Live Mail for all that. First of all it keeps my work email separated from all the other email, second it’s just hand to click on ‘Unread email’ and get all new email from across all accounts in one single view. I like that more than using email forwarding from one email to the other as using it like this I will still reply on email using the right account and not give up any other email account. Might sound silly to you, but that’s important to me.

Most important addition to the new version (apart from that new look of course) is the Calendar. I think that will make quite a few people happy and therefore it’s good that is finally in there. My life sits in my Outlook calendar so I won’t use that part of Windows Live Mail that much. Still, especially when you have one or more Hotmail, but also when you just have more than one email account, you should check this out.

Windows Live Photo Gallery

I’m not a Pro photographer (although I wish I was) but that doesn’t mean I don’t take photos of course. There are over 6000 photos on my hard drive and I use this program to sort them all out. I think Windows Live Photo Gallery became part of Windows Live with Wave 2 and it was just what I needed to sort all this out. Unlike real professional photographers I don’t do much of retouching on my photos. Maybe a bit of contrast, cropping maybe but that’s mainly it. And that’s all in here, plus upload to Flickr so that was pretty much all I needed. I missed one Fix – and lucky for me that’s one of the only new things they added to this release: the ability to straighten a photo. I tend to take pictures that are slightly tilted to one side… it’s probably something to do with the camera :)

Most interesting new feature is probably the people tagging which uses some kind of facial recognition. Still playing with that one but I like how you can now use ‘descriptive tags’ and ‘people tags’ and especially that the program does some kind of face detection in your photos.

Hopefully developers will start creating the plug-ins needed to publish to other services (also new in this release) but Flickr is already in there and that’s why I use so again less important for me. A last nice addition (and probably as expected) is that you can start creating your Photosynths now right from Windows Live Photo Gallery as well.

Windows Live Writer

What can I say, it’s the best desktop blogging app out there and it’s improved a bit – like for adding Youtube video to your posts – but main differences with the older version here are that new, fresher, whiter look that comes with Wave 3. Nothing else, but who cares, it was pretty darn good already :)

Note 1: I haven’t used Windows Live Moviemaker nor Windows Live Family Safety yet (my kids aren’t allowed to use my pc basically) so can’t say much about these services for now.

Note 2: I wanted to use some home made screenshots instead of the official ones but believe it or not, I couldn’t find how to mask the names etc in a nice way. Somebody teach me how to use Paint.net please :)

beta, blogging, consumer, microsoft, news, signup, social media, software, technology, windows live

beta, gallery, hotmail, live, mail, messenger, microsoft, photo, windowslive, writer

Zune 3.0

September 18, 2008 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

Ever since I started using the 30G first generation Zune (yes that brown one) I’ve become quite fond of both the device and the software. And now you’ll probably say ‘sure, you work for Microsoft so that explains…’ etc. but I actually bought an iPod first (yes I already worked here). I’ve never been much of a fan of the navigation on the device, let alone of iTunes. Huge catalogue and all but I just don’t like it.

Yesterday the Zune team released the 3rd generation of the Zune and I updated both my 1ste generation 30G Zune as well as the 2nd edition 8G Zune, which is the one I use most. And I got to say, seriously. I think the Zune software is worth installing even if you don’t have a Zune. The visualization is very nice, and especially (which is new in this release) how you can go into the MixView which shows similar artists (similar music or influenced by, …) and other Zune users that listened to this music. A nice mixture between recommendations from the music engine underneath as well as the social… hence the ‘Welcome to the social’ slogan for the Zune. Here’s what Wired had to say about MixView’s recommendation engine:

“Microsoft showed us a sneak preview of the Zune 3.0 software it plans to release on Sept. 16 with the latest generation of Zune devices, and what we saw made iTunes’ simple Genius feature look like a blast from digital music’s past. While iTunes serves up a text list of recommended songs within your library and from the iTunes store, adding to the more basic recommendations its MiniStore feature used to make, Zune reinvented the recommendation concept by collapsing artists, albums and fans into the same recommendation engine, more accurately mirroring the way people think about music.”

There’s just one thing missing though and that is access to the Zune Marketplace. Since I live in Europe the only way for me to benefit from the all-you-can-eat monthly charge of $14.99 is to get a US credit card unfortunately. The new MixView makes me want that even more, since you obviously want to buy the music you’re discovering right away. So bring the Zune to Europe guys!

consumer, design, electronics, gadgets, microsoft, movies, music, news, social media, software, technology

genius, itunes, mixview, mp3, release, social, sofware, update, wired, zune

Building relationships

September 18, 2008 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

This is truly brilliant! Thanks Darryl for sharing, it’s probably the best take on brands building direct relationships with their customers ;) And I guess for all women who can relate to this… there’s always The Women of course.

Check it out.

advertising, ageofconversation, branding, consumer, fun, influence, movies, pr, social media, video

marketing, megryan, movie, relationships, viral, women

Adopting change

September 16, 2008 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

A few weeks ago, Louis Gray posted a good article on the five stages of early adopter behavior, find the graph about the five steps below.

Although not literally mentioned the graph shows an important ‘early adopter’ characteristic that we underestimate all to often: the need for change. The last few years, with the rise of web2.0 etc it seems like all you need to become successful is connect with early adopters and allow them to spread the word, eventually resulting in everybody using your product/service. Now you won’t hear me say this approach is not important but there’s a rather big disconnect between early adopters and the mass out there and that’s related to this need for change.

I consider myself an early adopter, I want change. It’s like when you’ve signed up to something new and after you get used to it, you’re slowly looking out for something else, that excitement to try something new again… hoping it will surprise you with some nifty innovations. That said, most of the people around me aren’t like that at all. They aren’t early adopters in the technology space, and more important they don’t like their tech to change at all. And there’s nothing we can do to change that, just don’t forget that when you want your service to spread beyond the early adopter sphere you will need more than just buzz. You’ll need a reason for change, and a pretty darn good one.

beta, blogging, consumer, influence, signup, technology

adopter, discovery, engagement, influence, migration, promotion, technology

The Kaiser Mix

September 9, 2008 by Kris Hoet 2 Comments

I recently got into Blip.fm quite a bit, it’s an interesting way to get some good music while at work for instance. My buddy Marcus got into it even a lot more and he’s now setting something up to take this Twitter for music just a bit further.

On October 9th he’s going to be live blipping from a bar in Munich. This means The Kaiser and the people he follows will be mixing it up that night in Munich and for all people (like me) that can’t be there that night, we can follow it live on Blip.fm (of course) but also on a live stream that is set up for this. Check it all out here – bring it on Kaiser!

PS: Just don’t let Marcus touch any of them drinks, that looks like a really bad idea.

PS 2: Blip.fm – are you listening? Maybe a good idea to show up, and blip some buzz around.

beta, blogging, media, music

blip, dj, fun, mix, munich, music, thekaiser

Famous Jaffe

September 9, 2008 by Kris Hoet 2 Comments

Last Friday I was invited by Famous to come to their annual BBQ at the Africa Museum in Brussels. They also had arranged for Joseph Jaffe to come and talk about The Conversation to the audience of marketers and advertisers. I had wanted to see Jaffe present again as last (and first) time I saw him was in November 2005 and it was good. Given the post about that presentation was only the second one I had ever written on a blog, it’s fair to say it was part of the reason that I got into blogging to begin with (just like reading “Naked Conversations” was another one). Another reason why I was interested to go was because it would be a good opportunity to finally meet face to face, after several conversations online.

And just like in 2005, Jaffe never seems to disappoint as a presenter. Reading his books always leave me somewhere in the middle, I like them because they’re well written but most of the content is not new to me so that makes them less interesting. But then again, I don’t belong to the core target audience for these books either. The marketers and advertisers invited by Famous do belong to that audience though and I really hope they will read the book. Since everyone received a free copy that shouldn’t be too much of a challenge :)

One of the slides that interested me most was the one above about “The Conversational Marketing Construct”. I thought it was an interesting exercise on defining the innovation process, and something we ought to use to check on our own progress with Bring The Love Back.

Overall, very good presentation and glad to finally meet Joseph in person. There were a lot of good statements being made during the presentation but since Clo captured most of them in her Twitter stream, I suggest you check that one out. My favorites:

… And this is my social security number and my bank account. Since you’re all marketing professionals I know you’ll be too lazy to use the data to get into contact with me anyway” (when showing his AMEX, bank account, etc details on his ‘who’s Jaffe’ slide)

Or this one…

It’s not enough to get your foot in the door. Consumers are now so powerful they would break it. They would have to ask you in.

ageofconversation, belgium, books, conference, inspiration, marketing, media, presentation, quote, social media

advertising, africa, agency, conversation, famous, jaffejuice, josephjaffe, marketing, museum, presentation

Your friends always with you

September 8, 2008 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

My marketing colleagues in The Netherlands just launched a new campaign to promote the mobile version of Windows Live Messenger… and I like it a lot. The site is in Dutch so might be a bit hard to understand but you should still go take a look. Click “Geluid aan” (aka Sound on) on the main page and then choose between in browser of full screen play. Once you’ve done all that you get introduced to Mike chatting on mobile Messenger from the metro station. All of this is visualized pretty nifty, but what’s especially nice to it is that you can change between the 4 people participating (by clicking on their names in the status bar, botton left of the screen) while the story continues. Just go and check it out for yourself, kudos to Monique and the team.