Social Media, Digital Marketing & PR Agency

Apple fans start queuing for iPad2 33 hours ahead of release. Photo credit: Tim Ferguson/silicon.com

This week is truly Apple-tastic, with shedloads of news about and from Apple Mac, kicking off with the story that despite the Apple Mac iPad 2 not actually being on sale until tomorrow morning, the first customer arrived outside the Apple Store in Regent’s Street on Friday morning to begin waiting, 33 hours early. This is completely understandable because it’s gorgeous and sexy and it’s going to cost less than ipad 1, which is marvellous!

In other Apple news this week, an app that was available for free from the Apple iTunes Store and claimed to offer guidance on “how to cure homosexuality” has been removed after thousands of complaints. It was created by a religious group which teaches “freedom from homosexuality through prayer and practicing conversion therapy”.

Elsewhere in what might evolve into a Battle of the Titans, Apple are suing Amazon over Amazon’s plans to use the name Appstore, pointing out that it is far too similar to it’s own App Store, which begs the question does Amazon think that they are invincible in the online space (and it’ll be interesting to see if they actually are) and can do as they wish, or did no one check first….? Interestingly Apple are trying to Trademark the name and Microsoft have asked officials to block trademark attempts. Pull up a ringside seat, this could be one helluva battle…

Talking about apps, BlackBerry (RIM) have banned two apps that allowed drunk drivers to plan a route to avoiding police check points, as well as speed traps, enforcement cameras and other road hazards, after complaints from four US senators. Apple have yet to respond apparently.

Elsewhere online, MySpace’s dive down the popularity rankings has speeded up even further with the loss of 10 million users in a month, Google are launching a new magazine and the procedures committee in the Houses of Commons has ruled that MPs should be allowed to use gadgets such as  Smartphones and iPads during parliamentary debates provided they are on silent and “used in a way that does not impair decorum” and should be able to use Twitter in the Commons. Hear hear, we say!

The recently acquired Huffington Post is to launch an English version, and, perhaps most bizarrely this week, classical label Decca to make recording of royal couple’s marriage vows, to be called iVows, on iTunes straight after the wedding and are predicting it’ll top the download charts… really…?! Sorry, but one is not convinced…

Have a great weekend x

Tokyo tweets sky rocketed after Quake

Well it’s Friday again (where did that week go?!) and here is our quick spin around the highlights of the digital world.

This week has been a Facebook kinda-week with their continued domination of the Social Media world. They have added movie watching to the raft of the services that you can now access using Facebook credits. This has led some to predict that Facebook will move into banking in the coming years and that they will take over  the world (or something like that). In fact, Business Insider has said as much, and predicts that Facebook will become a major player  in a lot of industries, including media delivery, OS software, telecom, payments, and more, which means that they will be going head-to-head with  almost everyone in tech, including Apple, Google, Amazon, and Netflix to mention but a few. We watch with interest.

However, some are not content to sit idly. Central Saint Martins (CSM) has teamed up with US design consultancy Method along with £20m of private investors money to bring the brightest ideas from its students to market and potentially find “the next Facebook, Google or Apple” in the UK. They intend to bring 20 projects to market every year and hope that amongst that lot there will be a diamond or two to set the world alight.

And before we leave Facebook, we were delighted to see this story appear today, that they are finally going to take a more strident approach to bullying. About time we say.

Barely a week goes by without some sexy new product being launched or previewed and this week is no exception, with an alleged sighting in China of a prototype iPhone 5 which will feature a 64 GB flash memory, among other things.

Hopefully the iPhone 5 will fix a lot of issues that cropped up with the 4, mainly being that it’s not actually a very good phone! And it would appear that our love affair with the iPhone is waning a little with the latest comScore data showing that Android phones have overtaken Blackberry and iPhone for the first time. Although, there are predictions that Apple will be bringing out a cheaper iPhone model to compete in the Android space – so many toys, so little time.

And on the subject of mobile phones, we were delighted to read that scientists have made a made a major breakthrough on power in mobiles and laptops and that the new technology will be 100 times more efficient than before, so we will only need to charge devices every few months. Fantastic!

We were going to finish up on this story which is brilliantly funny about the strange text conversations we can end up having thanks for autocorrect.

However, overnight the largest earthquake ever to hit Japan triggered a Tsunami that engulfed north-eastern Japan, and for all our fun with technology and social media, it is always worth reminding ourselves how it is increasingly becoming a vital communications lifeline in extreme circumstances. Reports are that mobiles and the internet were working even when landlines were knocked out, and Twitter quickly swung in to emergence response and less than an hour after the quake the number of tweets coming from Tokyo were topping 1,200 per minute, according to Tweet-o-Meter.

Have a safe weekend.

Every week is a busy one in the digital world, but this week has seen an enormous number of really big stories.

Steve Jobs made a lovely surprise appearance from sick leave to launch the iPad 2 and what a stunner it is. Just as the iPad has revolutionised many aspects of personal computing in the last year, the iPad 2 seems to continue, or even accelerate the trend. Amazing.

Of course, we all caught a first peek of the new iPad 2 when Rupert Murdoch had a pre-production model when he launched The Daily, the iPad only newspaper from News Corporation. Mr Murdoch has hit the headlines again this week with Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, clearing the way for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation to take over BskyB. We watch events with interest…

Facebook has also announced a really radical change to its comment system. In essence, this will mean that when someone shares content from a publication onto Facebook, comments can be shared back onto the original publication. Facebook is really opening up the sharing capability of information in this way and this has massive implications for digital marketing.

But interestingly, it comes at the same time that the ASA gets sweeping new powers under the CAP code, which now means that any digital content on social media or websites comes under regulatory powers. We are working with the IPM (Institute of Promotional Marketing) to promote awareness of these changes, while at the same time people are being encouraged to share content around the internet, probably unaware of the penalties that can be incurred for spreading incorrect information. As always, it goes back to the quality of the original content - some things never change, eh?!

During the last few weeks a lot of us have spent a lot more time than usual watching TV to see the extraordinary events unfolding across the Middle East. Social media has been playing a crucial role in these historic changes, both for the people carrying out the revolutions and those of us catching up on our computers and mobile phones. This is a great piece of research which charts the role that social media is playing. For our part, we are great fans of @ITwitius, the lovely Tim Marshall of Sky (there’s that name again) who has been doing sterling work keeping us up-to-date with his usual mix of insight, bravery and humour.

And to round off the this week of ‘big stories’, we couldn’t resist mentioning the lovely Charlie Sheen who has been keeping us entertained with his rants on TV and radio, and has now turned to Twitter to keep the flow of information coming. In just 25 hours and 17 minutes, @ CharlieSheen managed to add 1 million followers and the Guinness Book of Records community manager Dan Barrett says the agency “just researched and approved” the record this morning. And if Charlie isn’t to your taste, you could always look at the newly launched website for William and Kate’s wedding. The choice, as always, is yours.

Have a fab weekend all –after all this excitement, we’re off to lie in a darkened room.