Just returned from our 9 days honeymoon to Lago Maggiore, Italy.

It was amazing!! Beautiful landscape, magnificent view, some 400 pictures and videos weighing over 4 GB. It will take some time to sort everything out, and much like our NYC trip, there will be a ‘101 guide to Lago Maggiore’ post, soon.

In the meantime, couple of pictures, a teaser to what’s coming ahead. Enjoy!

The view from our room @ Hotel Astoria Stresa, Lake Maggiore, Italy

Our Mercedes-Benz SLK 200 - Thanks Hertz for the upgrade

Lago Maggiore, taken from Mottarone Mt.

I was very excited to hear the 2010 Emmy Winners, specifically Jim Parsons’ (Dr. Sheldon Cooper) win for The Big Bang Theory, Mad Men’s 3rd consecutive win for Best Drama and Modern Family’s double win, for Best Comedy and Best Supporting Actor. Well deserved!! Watch them.

Picture part of a photo gallery, by Rolling Stones, ‘Inside Mad-Men‘.

The Nokia Booklet 3G isn’t something’s you’d expect to see from the world’s largest cellular manufacturer, but times have changed.

Nokia is still #1 in terms of market-share, but its dominance isn’t as strong as it used to be, with Apple, Google, and Microsoft making industry-changing initiatives – and basically saying ‘we can play in multiple fields, not just our own’. Those initiative brought Google to the hardware market with the Nexus One, Microsoft to strengthen her investments in search and mobile and Apple with iPhone/iPad. The three screens (also as PDF) model also helped the cellular industry push forward, diminishing the boundary between software/IT/technology companies – everyone is doing everything now.

Nokia Booklet 3G

The Nokia Booklet 3G is Nokia’s first attempt to enter the PC ‘war-zone’, and the particularly hot netbook scene. Nokia is hoping its close ties with mobile operators will help push the Booklet 3G, making it an alternative to all the Asus/Lenovo/HP/Samsung/Dell netbooks out there. And after spending 2 weeks with it – Nokia has a winner in its hands.

The Booklet is beautiful, especially in the light blue I received (Black and White also available), and draw quite the attention. The clean design is also surprising, with neat, rounded lines, very Apple-like of Nokia. All ports are located on the right and left sides, leaving the front and back areas clear. The bottom keeps this theme, with just 2 clips to eject the battery – which means there’s no way to increase RAM.

Nokia Booklet 3G alongside Logitech Harmony One

Nokia booklet 3G comes with the usual specifications of the niche market, although I expected more power in the RAM and HD portions (1GB and 120GB, respectively). Even so, the Intel Atom Z530 running at 1.6GHz is doing a solid work with Windows 7 Starter, fast response, navigating multiple applications, wake-up from sleep and all. One of the best features in netbooks (and a major reason for buying mine) is the battery time. A year ago, 7-8 hours were considered amazing, now the numbers are reaching 10 and even 12 hours. Nokia Booklet 3G did a fine job in that area as well, giving solid 9 hours of intense work.

Lots of ports - USB 2.0 and HDMI

In terms of connectivity, the Booklet comes fully stocked, as expected from a world leader: 802.11 b/g/n wifi, BT 2.1 with EDR, built-in 3G modem (sim-card slot) for data only, and on-board GPS chip for use with OVi Maps service. The official specs also mentions motion sensor, but I couldn’t find how to enable/use it.

There’s plenty of data transfer options too: 3 USB 2.0, HDMI slot, SD Card reader, sim-card slot (data only), and a combined headphones+microphone socket, for Skype calls (integrated 1.3 Mega-pixel).

Eventually, it all boils down to pricing and plans. In Israel, netbooks are very popular, and in 2009 increased their market share over traditional laptops. Top 3 cellular providers all have plans that offer you a netbook+data package for 36 months at $10/month, a lucrative proposition, especially for students or for families with kids, as a 2nd or 3rd laptop.

Nokia did a fine work on its first non-cellphone device. With Nokia World 2010 just around the corner, I’m looking forward to see how Nokia is planning on building-up the lineup, with various OS options (MeeGo perhaps), and respond to the touch phenomena that’s overwhelming the western world.

The Coca-Cola Village is an Israeli summer tradition.

Every year, in July-August, thousands of kids in their summer break attend ‘The Village’, a 5-day camp, organized by Coca-Cola Israel, with fun activities, pool, social games and Coca Cola drinks of course. This year, e-dologic, the interactive agency working with Coca-Cola Israel, has developed a very cool solution for connecting the offline world with the online – facebook.

The real life life button - coca-cola village

Each kid upon entering the village received an RFID bracelet, with his/her facebook profile saved, securely, in that chip. In turn, the kid was able to ‘Like’ each activity he/she performed at the village, showing up on their facebook profile as a 15sec video, outlining the activity, which was pre-recorded.

The ‘Real life facebook like button’ was a huge success (Hebrew), with tens of thousands #LIKES, for a total of under 1,000 participants! Facebook sent over Mark Cowan, VP Operationsת Europe, to visit the village and experience ‘The Like Machine‘ first-hand, after Mark Zukerberg heard about it at Cannes Lions by Enon Landenberg, e-dologic CEO.

Update on privacy: in a related post (Hebrew) by Jonathan Klinger, it was suggested that the RFID tag stores the username and password details of each participant, thus making it easy to steal the credentials using a simple RFID reader (or in the event of lost/stolen tag). I double-checked with e-dologic the info I had: The RFID tag only stores a unique id number, worthless on its own. When a participant moves his hand near the RFID reader in the village, the on-site server (protected both physically and virtually) receives the participant location and unique id number, to match against its own DB. Every cycle (Coca-Cola Village has 5-7 cycles, each one 3 days) the DB is formatted, for security reasons. On top of that, participants pay a 15US$ fee to receive the RFID tag, refundable upon return of the tag.

The Real Life LIKE Butoon – Case Study – Coca-Cola Village:

Following the phenomenal success of Old Spice ‘Response’ campaign, it was only a matter of time until we’ll start seeing some numbers. As with any marketing activity, it’s all about generating sales, and I believe Old Spice met their target. Obviously the buzz generated by the campaign is priceless, and will be taught in business/marketing courses for years to come.

But enough talking, time to listen: Old Spice Social Media Marketing Campaign Case Study, by W+K (Old Spice’s agency). Enjoy!

Over the past 2 months at Inkod-Hypera I learned a lot about the importance of user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) in the process of making web (or mobile) products. First off, those 2 expressions are not the same, in fact, UX govern UI (in web-lingo: UX is the parent, UI is the child). Secondly, user experience (UX) is based on social and cultural trends whereas user interface (UI) is more based on technology – multi-touch, touch, mouse, command-line, speech, etc. The direct result of the latter is that user experience is both subjective in nature and dynamic, because it relates to an individual’s performance, feelings and thoughts about the system – that can change, over a period of time.

Google.com in 1999

Over at Inkod-Hypera we developed a proven methodology that puts great emphasis on UX, before Photoshop is even launched. We do product concept, benchmarking, usability testing, user interface planning (mockups/wireframes), functional specification and only then – guiding our in-house studio for the design aspect. During my time here, I’ve met with dozens of customers, 3rd party vendors, entrepreneurs, ad agencies, and more to get a feeling of how they perceive the field of UX and design. Unfortunately, especially with start-ups and 1st time entrepreneurs – the focus is still on the what, instead of the why/who/how.

Met this week a good friend, developer since the age of 12, ex-CTO, co-founder of 2 start-ups and CEO of a 3rd one, that told me ‘UX is the new semi-God‘. Not CTO, not the code, not the product (what) – but the business (why/who/how). And he said it took him 2 years to realize that, and outsource the work to an expert. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing the code in PHP, Java, .Net, or Rubi – the software will work. But if you haven’t figured out the user (who), the problem that needs solving (why), and the right way to solve it (how) – that’s not good.

I’m not saying ‘Hire us’, this is not a sales pitch (ok, ok –  half sales-pitch). I do say ‘work with experts‘ – you have developers, right? Hire UX experts, or outsource the work.

Google.com in 2010

As the internet evolves, and mobile becomes a larger aspect of our lives, I hope people will pay more attention to user experience, and understand its importance from day 1, not launch + day 1.

Had an interesting discussion this week at Globes event with Ahuvah, a very wise and internet-savvy friend, about foursquare. She asked me – Why? A simple question, complicated answer. Once, not so long ago, people were asking the same WH-question about Twitter, and look were we are now.

But back to me. I check-in at places of interest, usually business-oriented – meaning if I’m at a the Finance District of Tel Aviv, or the Hi-Tech district – where I’m more likely to meet people. But so far, as Ahuvah was clever to ask, those check-ins resulted in fewer random meetings than I expected. So again, Why? I guess convenience has something to do with it, meaning a proper application – Gravity. I’ve previewed Gravity before, saying it’s the main reason for my increased use of foursquare – a flick of the navbar, and I’m Here! Nevertheless, I believe foursquare is much more than just a contest for who’s got more Mayorships. It’s a valuable database of knowledge about people habitts – and knowledge is power. Much like twitter that crossed the chasm, foursquare too needs the same things: celebrity, business, media coverage.

Club Seat - 1st Israeli foursquare-based campaign

Celebrity we have (not many though), media coverage still lagging, but now we have a business. Seat become the 1st business in Israel (Hebrew) to use foursquare in a digital campaign (Hebrew, again), Club Seat, along with 3 known clubs in Tel Aviv – Gazoz, Galina, and Sublet. People are encouraged to create an account in foursqaure, download the app of their choice and visit the clubs. The campaign is three-fold:

• The club that receives the most entries by August 30th (end of summer break) is crowned ‘Best Club in Town’;
• Top 20 people with the  highest number of check-ins at any of the 3 clubs will receive concert tickets;
• The mayor of each club will receive a plane ticket (round trip I hope)

Personally I was hoping the 1st business will originate from the restaurant/cafe/bar industry, much like Starbucks is doing in the US, or FT.com’s deal to attract youngsters in London. Seat, along with Grey Interactive, have taken a leap into un-charted waters in Israeli advertising, as foursquare is still in early-early adopter stage here. Facebook has transformed the digital space in Israel – more than 3 million people connected (about 60% of internet-connected homes), #2 fastest growing country in the Middle East (7%, monthly), top 10 countries in terms of average time spent (globally!), and more. No campaign is complete here without a facebook presence. Twitter and foursquare are still considered ‘geek-only territory‘, although twitter is gaining momentum in celebrities and media.

Club Seat was only launched this week, so the stats are obviously low (Gazoz 9 check-ins, Galina 3 check-ins, and Sublet 4 check-ins), but it will be interesting to see how this pilot evolves and what impact will it have on the advertising industry. Stay tuned.

I’ll start with the bottomline of this post (aka The Title): Where can I buy Old Spice?

In a marketing space, driven by numbers, ROI and sales graphs, I imagine the Old Spice (twitter/facebook/youtube) finance people will be interested to know they’ve gained at least 1 new customer. Me. It doesn’t matter how it smells, will I like it or not, who uses it, how much it costs – really, I just want one, to be like Isaiah Mustafa (aka Old Spice guy/dude/man). So, where can I get Old Spice in Israel? Don’t know, will find out. A friend visiting Israel already said he’ll bring me his – thanks Dovid!

Plenty of words have been written about Old Spice campaign, as the 2nd phase broke previous records and defined new rules for brands’ engagement in social media (aka digital marketing). I will link to three posts by marketing professionals I trust – Lior Zoref (Digital Marketing Consultant, ex VP Marketing for Microsoft Israel; post in Hebrew), Lisa Barone (Chief Branding Officer at Outspoken Media), and Hillel Fuld (Tech blogger, marketer, twitterer, writer). All three, specifically Lisa and Hillel, have analyzed Old Spice campaign, and produced a must-read list for marketers.

The tweet that started it all

And BTW – don’t forget to create a personalized voicemail and download the screensaver, wallpaper or ringtone. It is truly, as I wrote in a comment to Lisa Barone’s post, a campaign that will be taught in business schools for years to come. Enough talk, let’s watch some videos. More (about 120 of them) are available on Old Spice Youtube channel.

Looking forward to the Globes event on Monday, hear what influence this campaign will have on the lectures and the theme of the event.

UPDATE: How the Old Spice videos are being made (ReadWriteWeb)

Original video – The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

Old Spice 2nd Phase – Questions

Re: @jsbeals | Old Spice – Marriage Proposal

Re: Gay Kawasaki | Old Spice

Re: @Orli | Old Spice

Re: GQ | Old Spice

Re: @GizModo | Old Spice

Re: @TheEllenShow | Old Spice

Re: Lisa Barone | Old Spice – $$$

Re: @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher) | Old Spice

Re: 12755JDH | Old Spice – probably a robot

Re: Everyone | Old Spice – The End

I came across this story a while back and faved it for later, which is now. Innovation is defined as a change in the thought process for doing something or “new stuff that is made useful” (from Wikipedia). The following example focuses on the change in the thought process of a company’s CEO, and the actions he’s taking to keep his company in the lead.

Netflix Strategy - The Future

Reed Hastings, Netflix Co-founder and CEO, uploaded a presentation last month, called Netflix Business Opportunity (RSS readers click here). In the 40-slide deck, Reed quickly reviews Netflix performances to date and shifts to the future – threats and opportunities, and what his company must do in order to continue the growth and lead the market.

Netflix - The Future

In a candid inside look into his own company, Reed is saying ‘Our main revenue stream is dying, we need to find and cultivate a new one’. That’s not an easy statement to read, yet alone write, for a CEO. The DVD-by-Mail service will grow for 3 more years, but streaming will eventually replace it. If Netflix wishes to grow, it must focus on ‘a single segment of the streaming market, where we can gain and maintain leadership’.

Netflix segment - to lead and maintain leadership

How Netflix intends to gain and maintain leadership? By Democratizing Innovation, meaning leveraging the company’s assets – its customers and employees. Reed explains the threats to the company’s new strategy (Pay-Per-View, Piracy, Cable/Sat/DVRs, Direct/Online/Free, etc), but also how to compete with them – providing superior customer service, improving subscribers’ satisfaction, creating amazing user experience, and keeping subscribers raving about Netflix (among others).

Democratizing Innovation

The complete deck is embedded here, definitely worth the reading time. I know that once Netflix launch in Israel (expanding international begins 2010) – they have my vote, and subscription.

With its lack of Flash support in the iPad (and iPhone), Apple has opened a new front with Adobe in web and mobile design/development ‘wars‘.

I saw this infographic at Konigi blog, definitely worth the re-post: it describes the major features enabled by HTML5 that we need to be aware of – Canvas (1), video elements (2), geolocation (3), and offline storage (4). The graph also shows current and future support in web browsers: Chrome 5.0 is best (86%), followed by Safari 4.0 (79%) and Firefox 3.6 (77%). Those out there still using Microsoft’s browser, IE 8.0 is only at 26%. Click the image for full size (1200 x 1312).

HTML5 Inforgraphic