Cocojambo

Morris Corporation - Brochure + Video for AMMA Conference

2011-05-26T17:46:00.000-07:00

Cocojambo recently developed a sales brochure and video presentation for Morris Corporation. The main focus was three major case studies where adverse conditions posed a threat against to Morris fulfilling their contracts. Cocojambo interview one of Morris' key personnel and using this extracted information ghost wrote the brochure which was accompanied with relevant images to portray the story of working in extreme conditions.

Visit Morris' Site here.
Australian Mines and Metals Assoc.

Chicko QCC Burleigh Classic.

2011-05-26T17:42:00.000-07:00

Chicko Queensland Championship Circuit Bus Shelter

2011-04-18T18:53:00.001-07:00

QR National Corporate Hospitality Invites

2011-04-18T18:46:00.001-07:00

We're famous!

2011-03-22T18:02:00.000-07:00

View our work for Absolute Tattoo on Desktop Mags site here.

Guvera TVC

2011-01-17T23:19:00.001-08:00

Cocojambo produced Guvera's first TVC which appeared on Channel Ten in Brisbane throughout December 2010.

Surfing Queensland - Chicko Queensland Championship Circuit Branding

2011-01-17T23:12:00.001-08:00

GOLD COAST BUSINESS NEWS TRAILBLAZER AWARD - CLAES LOBERG

2010-11-21T23:22:00.000-08:00

Claes Loberg - Guvera, Cocojambo and Absolute Tattoo

Claes Loberg is on the brink of something very special with Guvera – the music download channel with global prospects. Not many Gold Coast entrepreneurs get compared to Apple boss Steve Jobs.   But that’s exactly what happened when Guvera and Cocojambo CEO Claes Loberg appeared on the Fox Business channel in the US last month after Guvera was named in Billboard’s Top 10 start-ups.

Read full article here

Think Different

2010-10-05T19:04:00.000-07:00

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple after being fired (Apple stock trading around $4 share) he made a pitch, "Think Different"

Guvera Advertising Brochure

2010-09-28T16:47:00.000-07:00

Guvera Monster Children Advert & Sticker Insert

2010-09-28T16:37:00.000-07:00

Get your free stickers by emailing: stickers@guvera.com

Guvera - Home, Browse, Channels Redesign

2010-09-28T06:05:00.000-07:00

Guvera CEO Claes Loberg on Fox Business News

2010-09-28T05:48:00.000-07:00

Guvera Tech N9ne Tour News

2010-09-28T05:40:00.000-07:00

Guvera Tech N9ne Tour Bus

2010-09-28T05:32:00.000-07:00

Turn(table) Your Ashes Into Vinyl When You Die

2010-09-01T23:51:00.000-07:00

Music lovers can now be immortalised when they die by having their ashes baked into vinyl records to leave behind for loved ones.

A UK company called And Vinyly is offering people the chance to press their ashes in a vinyl recording of their own voice, their favourite tunes or their last will and testament.

How does it work? The process of setting human ashes into vinyl involves a very understanding pressing plant. Basically the ashes must be sprinkled onto the raw piece of vinyl (known as a “biscuit” or “puck”) before it is pressed by the plates. This means that when the plates exert their pressure on the vinyl in order to create the grooves, the ashes are pressed into the record.

And Vinyly also offers personalised RIV (Rest In Vinyl) artwork — so you can have your portrait painted by artist James Hague, using your ashes mixed into the paint.

Sounds awesome - you could pop it on at family functions.......

Soaked in Coke: Mexico sets 'Mentos Geyser' record

2010-08-31T16:24:00.000-07:00

One of the most popular viral videos ever made has new competition today after the world record for soda geysers was broken by 2,433 people in Mexico City, trouncing the previous Chinese holders by over 250 coke-drenched attendants.

Interactive Horror

2010-08-30T22:07:00.000-07:00

Most people hate it when someone’s cellphone starts ringing during a movie. But if you plan on watching Last Call, you might find yourself in the middle of all the action. Last call is an interactive horror film where the audience becomes part of the cast, through phone calls.

Experimental typographic orgy

2010-08-08T22:16:00.000-07:00

Flickermood 2.0 from Sebastian Lange on Vimeo.

2010-06-09T05:11:00.000-07:00

Cool House

2010-05-18T03:35:00.000-07:00

Watch the Intro video and then view the whole project through the stages here>>

Valued Brand Reading

2010-05-17T20:33:00.000-07:00

Various branding and brand strategies articles below worth reading.

http://issuu.com/interbrand/docs/interbrand_creating_value
http://issuu.com/interbrand/docs/bgb_2008_us_format
http://issuu.com/interbrand/docs/bgb2009_magazine_final
http://issuu.com/thestore/docs/brandz_report
http://issuu.com/rolandcrepeau/docs/brands_insocialmediareport08

Posted by Helen

no, no, no to bouncers.

2010-05-13T19:17:00.000-07:00

shopping trolley mechanic

2010-04-28T05:21:00.000-07:00

New Guvera Video

2010-04-27T16:49:00.000-07:00

A short movie explaining how Guvera works and the vision for the future of content distribution and advertising.

interactive brady bunch style clip

2010-04-27T05:15:00.000-07:00

Snowman

2010-04-20T16:03:00.001-07:00

Cool Skateboarding Animation

2010-04-07T18:03:00.000-07:00

Skateboardanimation from Tilles Singer on Vimeo.

Making of the True Blood intro

2010-03-17T02:27:00.000-07:00

Making of the True Blood intro by Digital Kitchen. They also made the Dexter intro which is very cool. http://www.d-kitchen.com

True Blood Intro - Making Of from Luigi Torre on Vimeo.

Cool clip

2010-03-16T21:02:00.000-07:00

Movie from Greg.

Guvera TV interviews

2010-03-15T20:40:00.000-07:00

Claes Loberg (Guvera CEO) being interviewed for A Current Affair. He will also appear on Today Tonight.

Lego short film

2010-03-07T21:17:00.000-08:00

OK GO

2010-03-05T23:21:00.000-08:00

Advertising = Entertainment

2010-03-02T15:41:00.001-08:00

Ads From The Good Old Days

2010-02-21T20:33:00.000-08:00

Guvera gets a write up in 'Wired'.

2010-02-19T21:05:00.000-08:00

Free, Ad-Supported Music … With a Twist | Epicenter | Wired.com

HEY GUVERA

2010-02-18T14:52:00.000-08:00

By Jason Oxenbridge

A $100 million Gold Coast company has developed a concept that is set to rock iTunes after sealing a deal with two of the world’s largest music labels. Universal Music and EMI are dancing to the tune of ad-supported music start up Guvera — an unlisted public company on the cusp of revolutionising the music industry.

Guvera Limited is a unique model for music distribution. It matches the audience with the advertiser and the music so that the consumer has non-confrontational access to music paid for by brands.

Major record labels like it too. Soon after licensing its content to Vevo, Guvera signed off with Universal Music in the US and EMI Music granted US-focused content rights to the company.
The sponsor-supported Guvera (guvera.com) wants brands to pay for downloads — the latest experiment in a challenging and highly experimental ad-based terrain.

The inventor behind the Guvera model and CEO of Guvera Claes Loberg, says it’s a win-win model.

“One of our missions is to make music free for people worldwide, while still paying the artists and the labels that create and distribute it,” he says.

Executive vice president of business development and business affairs at Universal Music (whose artists include Elton John, Lady Gaga, 50 Cent and The Killers) in the US David Ring, says the concept makes perfect sense in that the Guvera service will strengthen the connection between artists and fans.

For the full story and exclusive interview with Guvera CEO Claes Loberg, be sure to get a copy of Gold Coast Business News, now available in more than 450 newsagencies.

Grateful Dead A Great Band, A Better Brand (via brandchannel)

2010-02-18T03:24:00.000-08:00

Coca-Cola. Apple. Nike. All case studies in branding superpower. Add to that list... the Grateful Dead. Yes, the band.

In the March 2010 issue of The Atlantic magazine, author Joshua Green puts together a commendable argument for the why the Grateful Dead was more a well-managed brand than a doped-up, roving band of musical nomads.

The article, "Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead," explains that giving away a product for free creates greater brand loyalty and demand than trying to make it an exclusive commodity. It further posits that when the University of California at Santa Cruz "Grateful Dead Archive" is opened "the biggest beneficiaries may prove to be business scholars and management theorists, who are discovering that the Dead were visionary geniuses in the way they created 'customer value,' promoted social networking, and did strategic business planning."

Read Brand channel blog here
Read 'The Atlantic' article here

Kulula Airplane Rebrand - flying 101

2010-02-03T20:12:00.000-08:00

South Africa’s Kulula airlines recently received the rebranding treatment from their in house creative team when they applied this 101 guide to the various parts of the airplane. Now every traveler can even learn where the black box is.

See more:
http://www.psfk.com/2010/02/kulula-airplane-rebranding.html

Behind Pepsi's Choice to Skip This Year's Super Bowl

2010-02-03T14:28:00.000-08:00

Behind Pepsi's Choice to Skip This Year's Super Bowl For advertisers, it's never easy to sit out the Super Bowl. Sure, the spots are pricey — between $2.5 million and $3 million for this year's game, which will be played this coming Sunday. But the 100-million strong audience, which includes a slew of people tuning in solely to dissect the commercials, almost guarantees instant brand buzz. No one knows this better than Pepsi, which has produced some memorable Super Bowl spots: a sweltering Cindy Crawford sipping on a Pepsi while a couple of adolescent boys admire the can, Britney Spears gyrating for the camera, those stupid dancing bears. In fact, Pepsi has been advertising on the Super Bowl for 23 consecutive years. So why is the company skipping this year's big game, leaving the airwaves to its salivating rival, Coke, which will air two different spots, including one starring the incredibly popular characters from The Simpsons?

2010-02-02T18:52:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Virgin unveiled the latest addition to Richard Branson's luxury fleet on Friday: an underwater plane that will fly riders into the depths of the Caribbean Sea.

Guests on Necker Island, a retreat in the British Virgin Islands, will be able to dive underwater in a submarine dubbed the Necker Nymph for $25,000 a week. But that's only after shelling out around $300,000 for a one-week stay on Necker, the private island owned by billionaire and Virgin Group chairman Richard Branson.

Beginning on Feb. 20, two riders and a pilot will be able to take the plunge from land, or from a boat. The underwater plane uses the downward pressure on its wings to fly through the water for up to two hours at a time, while an open cockpit will give riders a 360-degree view.

A statement released Friday by Virgin Limited Edition, the luxury arm of Virgin Hotels, described the Nymph's launch like a plane's takeoff. "Gliding on the water's surface like an aeroplane on a runway, one of the three pilots will operate the joystick to smoothly dive down."

Vacationers will be able to fly the Necker Nymph while chartering the Necker Belle, Branson's 105-foot yacht, or the submarine can be launched from shore. Necker Belle is rented out to guests for $88,000 a week, bringing the full Necker Island experience to more than $400,000 per week.

Vintage Calendars

2010-02-02T15:59:00.000-08:00

Cool Vintage Calendars for various brands. The 1958 Mitsubishi Chemical Industries calendar has a modern feel - proving good simple design never goes out of fashion.

See more: http://grainedit.com/2010/01/25/vintage-calendars/

Guvera Limited Launches Beta In Australia With Huge Success, Revs Up For 2010 US Launch -- NEW YORK, Feb. 1 /PRNewswire/ --

2010-02-01T23:55:00.000-08:00

Guvera Limited Launches Beta In Australia With Huge Success, Revs Up For 2010 US Launch -- NEW YORK, Feb. 1 /PRNewswire/ --

Guvera Images

2010-01-29T14:04:00.000-08:00

Photos of Guvera leadership Claes Loberg CEO, Dan Thompson Head of Content and Finbar O'Hanlon CTO.

From left to right: Claes Loberg, Dan Thompson & Finbar O'Hanlon

Doco - Inside Great Magazines

2010-01-28T22:29:00.000-08:00

Part 2 of a series.
Watch here on iview>>

Music Posters

2010-01-27T02:57:00.001-08:00

Vodafone Head Office - Portugal

2010-01-27T02:02:00.000-08:00

Click here to read more>>

Rolling Stone Awards in Acciocation with Guvera

2010-01-26T22:12:00.000-08:00

Guvera recently sponsored the 1st Annual Rolling Stone Awards at the Oxford Arts Factory in Sydney. Cocojambo looked after all the promotions & signage including: huge silk banners, vinyl lettering, guitar picks, stickers and M16 bullet USBs.

Here's some images of some signage and celebs that attended the event.

Celebrity images from news.com.au:
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/multimedia/gallery-e6frflvi-1225822334506?page=1

Google Nexus Viral

2010-01-21T22:01:00.000-08:00

There’s no denying that Apple’s iPhone has a huge headstart on Google’s new Nexus One phone. But with uber cool promos like this one, it won’t be long before all the cool kids will be brandishing a ‘ninja phone’.

Apart from the obvious stop-motion awesomeness created by the freakishly talented Canadian visual artist Patrick Boivin, the most admirable thing about this promo is the way it completely ignores the iPhone. You might recall the Droid ad from last year that did anything but.

Well played, Google.

2010-01-19T03:10:00.000-08:00

The 100 essential websites

Here we go again … our latest list of the 100 best websites sees short attention spans, the rise of Twitter, more browser wars and celebrity gossip sites setting the news agenda

Read more here >>

Amazing sand artist

2010-01-13T18:50:00.000-08:00

Classic album covers issued as stamps

2010-01-06T21:16:00.000-08:00

A series of classic album covers including Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells and Parklife by Blur have been issued as a set of stamps by the Royal Mail.

Other well-known record sleeves to have been made into first class stamps include Pink Floyd's Division Bell.

The design on each of the 10 stamps shows a vinyl record coming out of its recognisable album cover.

The Post Office said the issues had transformed each record sleeve into "miniature works of art".

Julietta Edgar, Royal Mail's head of special stamps, said: "This issue celebrates this unique art form and some of its greatest examples."

Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, who helped design the cover for the band's album IV - now transformed into a postage stamp - helped launch the new issues in London.

Page spoke about IV's cover, which features an old man weighed down by a bundle of sticks.

"Almost 40 years after the album came out, nobody knows the old man who featured on the cover, nor the artist who painted him.

"That sort of sums up what we wanted to achieve with the album cover, which has remained both anonymous and enigmatic at the same time," he said.

The album did not mention the band's name on the cover.

The Rolling Stones' 1969 album Let It Bleed, meanwhile, features a cake on the cover which was baked by a then unknown Delia Smith.

Great Showreel

2010-01-05T16:32:00.000-08:00

North Kingdom Showreel 2009 from Designchapel on Vimeo.

North Kingdom have released their 2009 showreel and it’s enough to make any digital agency weep. It features some of the most amazing digital projects that have won the biggest awards over the last few years with campaigns like the Coke Zero Game, Adidas Teamgiest, GE Smart Grid / Augmented Reality, Mentos Kiss Fight, Get The Glass Game, The Vodafone Journey, Toyota’s 3D Innovation World, Disney and sooo many more… enjoy it!

Cool Coke Can

2009-12-17T16:20:00.000-08:00

"A convex logo substitutes colorfully sprayed can. Naked can help to reduce air and water pollution occurred in its coloring process. It also reduces energy and effort to separate toxic color paint from aluminum in recycling process. Huge amount of energy and paint required to manufacture colored cans will be saved. Instead of toxic paint, manufacturers process aluminum with a pressing machine that indicates brand identity on surface."

Shaolin Shares

2009-12-17T16:15:00.000-08:00

The ancient Shaolin temple - famous for its fighting kung-fu monks - will soon be a part of the stock market.

The government body responsible for the 1,500-year-old temple's tourism will be part of a joint-venture to sell shares in Hong Kong or China.

The share sale could raise up to 1bn yuan ($146.4m).

The deal calls for China Travel Service to invest 100m yuan towards a venture under the Shaolin name that will handle services such as ticket sales.

The deal would also include the cable car, cinemas, hotels and tourist bus services in Dengfeng, in the Chinese province of Henan, where the temple is based.

The temple's abbot, Shi Yongxin, took over in the 1990s and has aggressively promoted the Shaolin brand, acting as executive producer in martial arts films based on the temple and upgrading temple facilities for tourists.

$300 film gets $30m backing from Hollywood

2009-12-17T16:02:00.000-08:00

A producer from Uruguay who uploaded a short film to YouTube in November 2009 has been offered a $30m (£18.6m) contract to make a Hollywood film.

The movie will be sponsored by director Sam Raimi, whose credits include the Spiderman and Evil Dead films.

Fede Alvarez's short film "Ataque de Panico!" (Panic Attack!) featured giant robots invading and destroying Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay.

It is 4 mins 48 seconds long and was made on a budget of $300 (£186).

So far it has had more than 1.5 million views on YouTube.

"I uploaded (Panic Attack!) on a Thursday and on Monday my inbox was totally full of e-mails from Hollywood studios," he told the BBC's Latin American service BBC Mundo.

"It was amazing, we were all shocked."

The movie Mr Alvarez has been asked to produce is a sci-fi film to be shot in Uruguay and Argentina. He says he intends to start from scratch and develop a new story for the project.

"If some director from some country can achieve this just uploading a video to YouTube, it obviously means that anyone could do it," he added.

YouTube recently revealed the most watched videos of 2009. Britain's Got Talent star Susan Boyle topped the chart with more than 120 million views worldwide of her debut on the show.

The Top 50 Facebook Brand Pages In 2009

2009-12-03T07:30:00.000-08:00

Top 50 Facebook Pages 2009

View more documents from Willis Wee.

Aggregated content. It’s been getting big in 2009, but I’m pretty sure that in 2010 aggregated content, you know… The top 10’s, 50’s, 100’s, ranking systems, rating systems and the like will become a dominating part of the social sphere’s daily intake of content.

So, if there was even an aggregated “top” list to be on, you would probably want it to be on the Top 50 Facebook Brand Pages List that The Big Money has just released. It lists the Top 50 Facebook Brand Pages of 2009 and show how many fan’s each brand has, the type of content that’s on the page and why it’s cool.

The Big Money used a bunch of various metrics to calculate the list by including fan numbers, page growth, frequency of updates, creativity as determined their judges and fan engagement.

Brand Butlers

2009-11-26T23:51:00.000-08:00

http://trendwatching.com/trends/generationg/#brandbutlers

10 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2010

2009-11-26T23:49:00.001-08:00

http://trendwatching.com/briefing/

Judging the top 10 Internet moments of the decade

2009-11-26T03:29:00.000-08:00

Webby Awards rundown of the decade in chronological order:

* Craigslist moving outside San Francisco in 2000 to revamp the whole notion of classified ads, striking fear in the hearts of newspapers everywhere.
* The launch of Google AdWords in 2000, opening up a new world of advertising for businesses both large and small.
* The start of Wikipedia in 2001 showing off the Internet's ability to let online strangers collaborate, leading to more than 14 million articles in 271 different languages.
* The takedown of Napster in 2001, triggering a revolution in the way we now grab our music and videos.
* Google's IPO in 2004, creating a massive, dominant, and far-reaching force on the Internet.
* The online video revolution in 2006 triggered by beefy bandwidth, cheap camcorders, and YouTube, flooding cyberspace with an array of professional and not-so-professional videos.
* The expansion of Facebook and the debut of Twitter in 2006, creating a fresh way for us to interact and communicate with friends and family.
* The launch of the iPhone in 2007, helping us hop onto the Internet anywhere, anytime through a cell phone.
* The U.S. presidential campaign in 2008 tapping into the Internet with videos like "Obama Girl," social networking use among voters, and online fundraising.
* The Iranian election protesters in 2009 using Twitter to spread their word, a movement that prompted the U.S. State Department to ask Twitter to keep the site up and running.

That's a pretty good list, but of course it immediately started us thinking about the influential Internet-related moments and developments from 2000 to 2009 that got short shrift or that got left off entirely.

Our list, in no particular order:

* The debut and growth of Firefox: The first browser to challenge the IE monopoly, Firefox now holds a 25 percent market share, paving the way for other players like Google Chrome.
* The arrival of blogging: Started as simple online diaries, blogs have grown to become a valid and valued source of news, opinion, and information. As a corollary, there's the rise of RSS, which lets the latest information come to us instead of our having to go out and find it.
* The surge in broadband: The availability of DSL, cable, satellite, and now Fios put a nail in the coffin for dial-up access, letting us download files in seconds, watch each other on webcams, and stream high-res videos.
* The allure of torrents: Whether used for legal or illegal file sharing, technologies like BitTorrent let us share and download all types of content across the Web from movies and TV shows to software. And speaking of movies and TV--the popularity of sites like Hulu and Netflix demonstrated that you no longer need a costly cable TV subscription to indulge your viewing inclinations.
* The reinvention of the telephone. On the one hand, there were VoIP services such as Skype, which saved us from expensive long-distance bills. On the other was 3G technology and mobile broadband, which let us jump into cyberspace from our phones, Netbooks, and a host of other portable gadgets.
* The rise of home workers: Thanks to the Internet, you can now run a full-fledged business or work for your employer without having to leave the house. There's also online education--with many accredited schools now online, today you can attend college or graduate school and get a full degree from your own computer.
* The ascent of Salesforce and cloud computing: With the success of cloud-computing providers like Salesforce, companies can now run much of their business online without the hassle of maintaining their own internal resources.
* The looming menace of cyberwarfare: On the downside, the Internet showed signs of becoming a new virtual battleground between countries, as in the purported cyberattacks against Estonia and Georgia.
* The lessons of the dot-com crash: The decade was barely under way when that bubble burst hard; wildly inflated stocks were tanking and Wall Street was reeling, frenetically hyped Web companies were imploding, and our retirement plans took a beating. That seem so long ago now, what with the current miserable state of the economy, post-housing bubble crash.

Courtesy of Cnet.

Can you feel the Force? Adidas to Launch a Star Wars Collection

2009-11-25T17:55:00.000-08:00

So are you a fan of the dark side? Or maybe you veer towards those goody-goody rebels? Well now you can let your feet show where you allegiances lie as Adidas Originals are launching a collection of Star Wars-themed trainers.

Planned for release in the 2010 Spring/Summer season - and in select stores from January - this collection should keep the uber-nerd/geek lord in your family very happy indeed.

The Adidas Star Wars collection fuses iconic Star Wars characters and scenes and includes themes based on Stormtroopers, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Yoda and some totally retro sparkly silver lightsaber battle/Han Solo ones which we can't really figure out at all. There's even a clothing range too.

Smashing news

2009-11-24T05:11:00.000-08:00

Engineers operating the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have smashed together proton beams in the machine for the very first time.

The collisions came after researchers circulated two beams simultaneously in the LHC's 27km-long tunnel earlier on Monday.

The LHC is smashing together beams of protons to shed light on the cosmos.

Operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), the LHC is the world's largest machine and will create similar conditions to those present moments after the Big Bang.

Scientists will search for signs of the Higgs boson, a sub-atomic particle that is crucial to our current understanding of physics.

Although it is predicted to exist, scientists have not yet detected it.

Housed in a tunnel 100m beneath the Franco-Swiss border, the LHC uses some 1,200 "superconducting" magnets to bend proton beams in opposite directions around the tunnel at close to the speed of light.

At allotted points around the "ring", the proton beams cross, smashing into one another with enormous energy.

Large "detector" machines located at these crossing points will scour the wreckage of the collisions for discoveries that could roll back the frontiers of knowledge.

Look forward to some resulting changes in the theories that have preceded us.

Objectified

2009-11-24T03:25:00.000-08:00

Objectified is a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the designers who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability.

Through vérité footage and in-depth conversations, the film documents the creative processes of some of the world’s most influential product designers, and looks at how the things they make impact our lives. What can we learn about who we are, and who we want to be, from the objects with which we surround ourselves?

objectifiedfilm.com

Cocojambo Rebranding Slush Puppie

2009-11-23T21:35:00.000-08:00

See article: http://www.goldcoastbusinessnews.com.au/process/myviews/gcbn_article.html?articleId=1887

Sanctuary Cove

2009-11-21T19:45:00.000-08:00

Our newest client Sanctuary Cove has engaged Cocojambo to produce a new creative direction to showcase the destination and reconnect with consumers.

Guvera Press Release - Nov 18

2009-11-18T15:58:00.000-08:00

Universal Music Group (UMG) Partners With Guvera Limited for 2010 Launch of Guvera.com

Guvera Offers Advertisers Powerful Ways to Engage Consumers Via Branded Music Channels With Free and Legal Downloads

NEW YORK, Nov. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Universal Music Group (UMG), the world's leading music company, and Guvera Limited, announced today an agreement which will allow www.guvera.com to offer consumers free, legal downloads from UMG's market-leading roster of chart-topping musical artists. Through this partnership, Guvera further solidifies its presence in the US in anticipation of its official consumer launch in February, 2010.

Founded in Australia in 2008, Guvera offers consumers 100% free music downloads paid for by brands. Guvera's technology also makes it possible for brands and advertisers to target broad or very specific consumer segments in a non intrusive way, showcasing particular aspects of a brand's personality with relevant music genres in their branded music channels.

Consumers currently can pre-register at Guvera.com where they will complete profiles with demographic and geographic information. Brands will fill out similar profiles and Guvera's patented algorithms will then match these consumer profiles and preferences with a brand's personality. Consumers can search for any song, artist or musical genre they desire and will be directed towards relevant brand channels providing these tracks or groupings of tracks. For example, a 25 year old female consumer who searches for pop music and mentions that surfing and wakeboarding are among her passions will be directed to music channels presented by brands with similar sensibilities. Brands will pay a fee when their targeted consumers download music, and companies such as Universal Music Group will, in turn, receive a percentage of that fee per download to distribute back to their artists and/or labels.

Claes Loberg, the inventor behind the Guvera model and CEO of Guvera Limited, commented, "One of our missions is to make music free for people worldwide, while still paying the artists and the labels that create and distribute it. With Guvera, every brand can offer engaging content to their target consumers without disrupting them with ads and can use their channel to represent music that relates to the brands' personality." He added, "I am excited to announce our content deal with Universal Music Group, which has been a pioneer in championing new digital business models, as well as a steadfast advocate for artists in seeking fair compensation for the use of their music online."

"We are delighted to partner with Guvera, whose service will only strengthen the connection between artists and fans," stated David Ring, Executive Vice President of Business Development & Business Affairs for eLabs, UMG's new media and technologies division. "Universal Music is committed to cultivating legitimate online entertainment by offering our consumers even more ways to enjoy the musical experience where they want, how they want and in the manner of their choosing."

About Universal Music Group

Universal Music Group is the world's leading music company with wholly owned record operations or licensees in 77 countries. Its businesses also include Universal Music Publishing Group, the industry's leading global music publishing operation.

Universal Music Group's record labels include A&M/Octone, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Disa, Emarcy, Fonovisa, Interscope Geffen A&M Records, Island Def Jam Music Group, Lost Highway Records, Machete Music, MCA Nashville, Mercury Nashville, Mercury Records, Polydor Records, Universal Motown Republic Group, Universal Music Latino, Universal Records South and Verve Music Group as well as a multitude of record labels owned or distributed by its record company subsidiaries around the world. The Universal Music Group owns the most extensive catalog of music in the industry, which includes the last 100 years of the world's most popular artists and their recordings. UMG's catalog is marketed through two distinct divisions, Universal Music Enterprises (in the U.S.) and Universal Strategic Marketing (outside the U.S.). Universal Music Group also includes eLabs, its new media and technologies division; Bravado, its merchandising company; Twenty-First Artists, its full service management division; and Helter Skelter, its live music agency.

Universal Music Group is a unit of Vivendi, a global media and communications company.

About Guvera Limited

Guvera Limited is a music and content download system designed in Australia, founded in 2008. Guvera provides a way for content owners such as artists and record labels to generate revenue from their music, making it readily available and 100% free and legal to consumers. Content is paid for by advertisers looking to target consumers in a revolutionary way with branded channels. The company's consumer facing website is www.guvera.com. Visit www.guveralimited.com for a presentation for advertisers and agencies.

SOURCE Universal Music Group

Guvera Office

2009-11-16T20:46:00.001-08:00

Guvera's Robina office designed by Cocojambo

Coolest business card ever

2009-11-12T12:13:00.001-08:00

Coolest business card ever

Posted using ShareThis

Rickrolling iPhone

2009-11-09T05:51:00.000-08:00

Well, this hacker has quite the sense of humor.

Reports started spreading this weekend that iPhone users in Australia had been falling victim to "ikee," a worm that replaces default wallpaper with a picture of Rick Astley, the British pop singer whose song "Never Gonna Give You Up" has gained eternal infamy thanks to the mainstreaming of the "Rickrolling" prank craze. The photo is accompanied by the message "ikee is never gonna give you up," and it's apparently quite difficult to remove. According to security firm Sophos, this is the first worm detected that targets the iPhone.

The vulnerability is pretty specific: the phones must be jailbroken in order to be affected, and it appears to spread by searching an infected phone's contacts to find other jailbroken-phone users who have installed the Unix software SSH (secure shell) but haven't yet changed their passwords from Apple's default root password, "alpine."

Sophos says that it has not heard of any occurrences of the worm outside Australia, and that while it doesn't appear to do anything worse than irritate and embarrass affected users, that it highlights the vulnerabilities that jailbroken phones face.

Man sells T-shirt ad space for $90K

2009-11-05T23:27:00.000-08:00

A T-SHIRT a day has kept unemployment at bay for an American man who is making about US$83,000 ($90,000) a year by selling advertising space on his torso.

Jason Sadler, 26, a former marketing professional from Florida, founded his own company, www.iwearyourshirt.com, in 2008 with the idea to wear a T-shirt supplied by any company and then use social media tools to promote the firm.

For his human billboard service, Mr Sadler charges the "face value" of the day so January 1 costs $1, while December 31 costs $365.

Mr Sadler said this may not sound like a lot but it adds up to $66,795 a year if he sells out every day, which he did this year.

He also sells monthly sponsorships for $1500, adding another $18,000 to his income.

"I walk around, take photos, wear the shirt all day," he told Reuters.

"I blog about those photos, I put 'em up on Twitter, I change my Facebook profile ... and then I do a Youtube video.

"I made about $83,000 this year."

The average US wage is about $615 a week or about $32,000 a year, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Mr Sadler has already begun filling his 2010 calendar so, in true entrepreneurial fashion, he is expanding services by hiring another individual to wear a shirt a day on the west coast of the United States - and is doubling his price.

Xerox develops silver ink for wearable or throwaway electronics

2009-11-04T15:15:00.000-08:00

Xerox researchers have invented a kind of ink that can conduct electricity and be used to put electronic circuits on top of plastics, film, and textiles. That means in the coming years we’ll be able to wear or bend our electronics. You could even print out your electronic gadget on plastic sheets, as if you were printing a document.

Silicon chips have long been too expensive or heavy to use in devices that are extremely lightweight. The Xerox team solved this fundamental problem with lighter materials, and it plans to sell the new materials to other businesses that could make wearable electronics.

With plastics, you can unroll a sheet and then deposit electronic circuitry on top of it, building it up layer after layer. It helps to have conductive ink. That is, you need something that contains metal but that you can print with or spray on. The Xerox team created what they call a “silver bullet.” It’s a silver ink that melts at 140 degrees celsius.

Normally, metals melt at 1,000 degrees or so. But plastic itself melts at 150 degrees. So an ink laid on top of plastic can’t melt at a higher temperature or it will melt the plastic, said Paul Smith, lab manager at Xerox Research Toronto, Canada.

“This opens a whole new world for electronics,” said Angele Boyd, an analyst at IDC. “With printable electronics, the future of electronics will include plastics and fabric. The Xerox technology opens up opportunities for lower cost applications in traditional electronics and for new applications around plastics and fabric.”

The applications include plastic circuits could be used to build plastic electronic book readers, such as one being built by Plastic Logic, that are flexible enough to bend and can withstand damage. They would also be very lightweight. The plastic circuits could be used to weave a computer into your clothing or make intelligent boxes for pills that could tell you whether they’ve been tampered with during shipping.

Scientists have dreamed of this for a long time, and Xerox has been researching it since 2001. Hewlett-Packard has also been working on plastic electronics for a decade. Xerox says it has now been able to fabricate cheap and lightweight components that are necessary to print circuits on plastic: a semiconductor, a conductor and a dielectric element.

The fabrication plants for these kinds of plastic chips will be cool. The circuits can be printed by printers, just like a document, without the need for an elaborate clean room as is used in current chip factories. Xerox has research samples available now and is in discussions with manufacturers who could use the plastic electronics.

Beyond the applications we’ve mentioned already, Xerox says the printed plastic circuits could be used in low-cost radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, light and flexible signs, sensors, solar cells and novelty fashions.

Microsoft Data Centre Unvielled

2009-11-03T00:34:00.000-08:00

On the outside, Microsoft's massive new data center resembles the other buildings in the industrial area.

It's what's inside those trailers, though, that is the key to Microsoft's cloud-computing efforts. Each of the shipping containers in the Chicago data center houses anywhere from 1,800 to 2,500 servers, each of which can be serving up e-mail, managing instant messages, or running applications for Microsoft's soon-to-be-launched cloud-based operating system--Windows Azure.

"I think, I'm not 100 percent sure, but I think this could be the largest data center in the world," said Arne Josefsberg, general manager of infrastructure services for Microsoft's data center operations.

The center has 30 megawatts of capacity.

The software maker also won't say exactly which services are running in each facility, but the many Bing posters inside the upstairs server rooms in Chicago offer a pretty good indication of what is going on there.

Ferrari theme park opens

2009-11-02T21:52:00.000-08:00

This remarkable six-pronged red building is Ferrari World, the maker's first theme park and a sight sure to have would-be owners giddy with supercar-based excitement.

Set to open in Abu Dhabi, Ferrari describes it as 'an intense multi-sensory experience and a must-visit for enthusiasts, fans and families'. Its design is apparently inspired by the side profile of the Ferrari GT body, but in case you're thinking this is just a puffed up Ferrari showroom, think again: Ferrari World will host some of the most thrilling rides this side of Disney World.

Appropriately, the site will boast the world's fastest rollercoaster when its doors open in early 2010, which will hit speeds in excess of 124mph. There's also a 'G-force experience' that goes through the roof and back down again, a journey 'into the heart of a Ferrari 599 engine', and a racing school for young drivers.

It will become the world's largest indoor theme park when it opens, with over one million square feet of floor space containing two restaurants and, of course, a massive Ferrari shop, claimed to be 'a retail experience that celebrates Ferrari's rich heritage in a way never seen before.'

Bondi flashmob stunt

2009-11-01T21:42:00.000-08:00

While the idea – and indeed the execution – may not have been entirely original, video footage of a dancing flashmob on Bondi Beach on Friday afternoon is close to going viral.

flies for advertising

2009-10-29T15:33:00.001-07:00

Alexey Titarenko - Photographer

2009-10-28T00:11:00.000-07:00

Really cool long exposure images of Russian commuters http://www.alexeytitarenko.com/city17.html

Trouble in paradise as Mauritius rebrands

2009-10-27T15:45:00.000-07:00

The Mauritian tourist board has replaced its old strapline (’Mauritius – Unforgettable experience’) with a new one: ‘Mauritius – C’est un plaisir’. The new branding, apparently designed to reflect the island’s French cultural influence, has been greeted locally with “perplexity and scepticism”, according to journalist Bhishmadev Seebaluck.

There is incredulity at the cost. The slogan was dreamt up by London-based marketing agency Acanchi for a reported 31m Mauritian rupees (£625,000). That works out at almost £50,000 per letter.

Apparently Fiona Gilmore, a director at Acanchi, appeared on Mauritian TV to defend the branding. She said that the actual slogan was just 5pc of the entire marketing campaign, or “the tip of the branding iceberg,” said Mr Seebaluck.

Sean Carey, an anthropologist who writes extensively about Mauritius, said that ‘C’est un plaisir’ is “weak and bland” and “too slippery and ambiguous” to be effective.

But how does the Mauritius tagline compare with other countries’? A quick trot around the internet shows that Mauritius does not have a monopoly on meaningless straplines.

There are two distinct camps in the tourism slogan arena. The most common uses a two-word structure, prefixing the country with a simple adjective or verb; Amazing Thailand, Enjoy England, Incredible India, Magical Kenya. These words appear to be totally interchangeable. I very much doubt, for example, that visitor numbers to India and Kenya would collapse if it was India that was Magical and Kenya that was Incredible.

Then there is the ‘pithy phrase’ camp; Brazil – Sensational!, Seychelles – Another world, Germany - Simply inspiring, The Kingdom of Swaziland - A royal experience, Hawaii – The islands of Aloha, and (an oldie) Australia – So where the bloody hell are you? Again, largely meaningless.

Some countries try too hard to be clever. New Zealand’s new wink-wink-nudge-nudge slogan is ‘Go all the way’, which is a clear attempt to sex up one of the world’s more staid countries.

Others are unintentionally hilarious. I am sure that the Colombian tourism ministry did not see the double meaning when it settled on ‘Columbia – The only risk is wanting to stay’.

Bearing all this in mind, Mauritius’s little French slogan doesn’t seem so bad.

Droid

2009-10-20T05:10:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting way to launch what Google, Motorola & Verizon are hoping to be the iPhone Killer. A home made animation (with an ‘ok’ sound track) that crosses off all the standard things most people want in a phone before ending with a weird digital static transition & web address.

It takes you to a registration page with no more information. Yet, this video has cranked up more than 600,000 views on YouTube since it’s launch 3 days ago. The Verizon seeders are doing an amazing job! And it’s even got me interested to see what’s coming. It’s been rumored for a while, but this is the first material to come out for the phone.
c/o Aden Hepburn

Red Bull concept to get more fans on their facebook page

2009-10-20T03:18:00.000-07:00

Wireless Electricity

2009-10-19T00:19:00.001-07:00

Ray Ban Viral Vid

2009-10-15T15:16:00.000-07:00

A viral video by Ray Ban, I assume it's to show off their new colours for the Wayfarer range. Cool idea!

Afterlife Billboards

2009-10-13T17:36:00.000-07:00

Here's an example of a way to get in the face of consumers.

Blow Me.

2009-10-13T07:06:00.000-07:00

Today businessman and inventor James Dyson unveils his latest product – a bladeless fan that will definitely change the ventilation and air-conditioning experience on your home.

As you can see in the picture above, the fan looks nothing close to your regular desk fan. The Dyson fan has a “loop” attached to a cylinder unlike the conventional rotating blades which means there’s no need for a grill and it’s safe and simple to use and clean.

The Dyson Air Multiplier™ fan works very differently to conventional fans. It uses Air Multiplier™ technology to draw in air and amplify it 15 times. With no blades or grille, it’s safe, easy to clean and doesn’t cause unpleasant buffeting.

The fan works by using a brushless motor (housed in the base) and unlike conventional fans, the air speed can be precisely adjusted with a dimmer-switch control rather than the traditional two or three-speed settings.

“I’ve always been disappointed by fans. Their spinning blades chop up the airflow, causing annoying buffeting,” said James Dyson.

“They’re hard to clean. And children always want to poke their fingers through the grille. So we’ve developed a new type of fan that doesn’t use blades.”

Because the motor is in the base, you can rotate the fan up to 90 degrees. It is also very sturdy because it’s made of acrylontride butadiene styrene, the thing they put into shock-absorbing items, like helmets and car bumpers.

The Dyson Air Multiplier fan starts at UK£199.99 and is available for preorder at dyson.co.uk.

RIO Olympic Bid Video

2009-10-11T17:24:00.000-07:00

In case you havn’t already seen it, I thought I’d post up the official Rio 2016 Olympic Bid Video. It’s beautifully shot, isn’t over the top and to me, really showcases the every day lifestyle that I’d think Rio was all about. In fact, the footage kind of reminds me of Australia’s lifestyle in a lot of ways… On the official website, they recorded over 5.8 million supporter votes for the games, which to me, seemed well underdone for an Olympic bid? But congratulations to Rio for the win!

Long exposures of bugs under a street light.

2009-10-04T00:54:00.001-07:00

flight patterns from Charlie McCarthy on Vimeo.

COMBO: Collaborative Stop Motion Animation

2009-10-02T00:25:00.000-07:00

COMBO a collaborative animation by Blu and David Ellis (2 times loop) from blu on Vimeo.

The perfect way to round out the week on Cocojambo!

The Fame festival attracts some of the words best street artists throughout the summer in Grottaglie, Italy. This year BLU and David Ellis (acclaimed street art animators) got together to create this amazing piece of stop motion animation called Combo. (via ViralBlog, c/o DigitalBuzzBlog)

Woods named sport's first billionaire

2009-10-01T23:58:00.000-07:00

Tiger Woods has broken through the billion-dollar earnings barrier, Forbes magazine says.

Tiger Woods has become the first sportsman to break through the billion-dollar earnings barrier, Forbes magazine reported on Thursday.

The 33-year-old American, who has won 14 majors, reached the latest landmark of his career when he won a $US10 million ($A11.32 million) bonus for his FedEx Cup victory last weekend.

According to the magazine's calculations, Woods went into the 2009 season on $US895 million ($A1.01 billion) which included prize money, endorsements, appearance fees as well as money earned through his golf course design business.

Even before picking up his end of season bonus, Woods had earned $US10.5 million ($A11.88 million) on the USPGA Tour this year, winning six titles.

Woods has been the top-earning sportsman since 2002 when he took over from former Formula One world champion Michael Schumacher.

His most lucrative commercial deal is with Nike and brings him over $US30 million ($A33.95 million) a year.

Forbes estimated that retired NBA star Michael Jordan will be the next sportsman to earn a billion dollars.

Jordan amassed around $US800 million ($A905.39 million) in his playing career and continues to make $US45 million ($A50.93 million) a year thanks mainly to a deal with Nike.

Adidas and Puma end 60-year feud

2009-09-17T17:39:00.000-07:00

Adidas and Puma end 60-year feud
Adi and Rudolf Dassler

The two brothers never resolved their feud

The German sportswear companies Puma and Adidas are to end a feud started 60 years ago by their founding brothers.

Adi and Rudolf Dassler started making sports shoes together in their mother's wash-room in the 1920s.

They fell out during World War II, probably over political differences, and founded firms on either side of a river in southern Germany.

On Monday 21 September, employees of both companies will shake hands and then play a football match.

It is a big deal in the cobblestoned Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach, where two of the world's largest sportswear companies are based.

First joint activities

When the brothers set up their separate companies in 1948 the town was also split, with residents loyal to one or other of the only major employers.

In a joint release, the two companies said they were making up to support the Peace One Day organisation, which has its annual non-violence day on Monday.

They say that the events will be the first joint activities held by the two companies since the brothers left their shared firm in 1948.

Neither group is now controlled by the descendants of its founding families, although Rudolf's grandson Frank Dassler raised some eyebrows in the town by working for both Puma and Adidas.

Since 2007, Puma has been majority-owned by PPR, the French luxury goods maker that also owns Gucci.

Adidas Group is much more widely-owned, with no individual shareholder having more than 5%.

A Long Song

2009-09-13T06:25:00.000-07:00

Longplayer – The Longest Musical Composition

Today saw a group of musicians take over the performance of Longplayer, a thousand year long musical composition that began on the 31st of December 1999 and will continue without repetition until the end of 2999, when its cycle will be complete and the piece will begin again.

Longplayer was composed by musician and computer scientist Jem Finer to be played on singing bowls, a traditional standing bell from Tibet, and can be performed by humans or machines.

Jem Finer is best known as a founding member of The Pogues (think Fairytale of New York, the best Christmas song ever) but has also won awards for his innovative cutting edge musical compositions.

Among his recent works are Score for Hole in the Ground, where hidden percussive instruments are played by an underground waterfall; Landscope, which detected storms on Jupiter, and The Centre of the Universe, a spiral tower that generated music from the cosmos.

At present Longplayer is being streamed live over the internet and is being performed by computer, but just for today 26 musicians will take over the performance for 1000 minutes at The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm Road in London.

Because the piece is ultimately intended to play across several centuries a special trust has been formed to ensure that it continue without interruption, and will appoint a never ending series of caretakers to preserve the music in whatever form the future makes necessary.

In this way, the composer hopes that Longplayer will evolve as a social organism and flow organically through various mediums during the next thousand years.

Talented 3 piece.

2009-09-10T20:52:00.000-07:00

Them Crooked Vultures To Tour Australia

Them Crooked Vultures is Dave Grohl (Nirvana/Foo Fighters), Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin).

More at undercover.com.au

Hands on with the Spotify iPhone app

2009-09-10T20:42:00.000-07:00

It is one of the most hotly anticipated apps yet to appear on the iPhone.

From today, Spotify – the digital music application credited by some for finally luring listeners away from online piracy – can sit alongside iTunes on Apple’s mobile, as well as on phones running Google’s Android software.

On the PC, Spotify allows its users to listen to any of its millions of tracks for free, supported by advertising. On a mobile, users must upgrade to its premium subscription, which costs £9.99 a month or £119.88 a year (and also provides ad-free listening on the PC).

The achievement in bringing Spotify to the mobile is not just technical. It has negotiated wireless rights to its entire library (no mean feat) and even allows users to store some songs for “offline” listening, in spite of fears that Apple would prevent it from doing so for fear of competition with iTunes. For Spotify, the mobile app is a crucial tool in selling subscriptions to its millions of free users.

I’ve been playing with the Spotify application on my 3G iPhone after downloading it from the App Store this morning and in general the experience has been good – but perhaps not a complete replacement for iTunes.

Connected to the O2 3G network in central London, the first song I searched for was an early B-side from Britpop band Suede (just to stretch the catalogue a bit). Finding the song was simple – you can search by track, album or artist – and you simply tap the title to start it playing. In a nice touch, more results automatically load as you scroll down the list.

After a brief moment, the song started playing, paused 5 seconds in, then played for another 24 seconds before another little break. After that the track played judder-free for the remaining minutes. The music plays at roughly the same bitrate (a measure of sound quality) as the standard desktop player, around 160 kbps, although premium subscribers get up to 320 kbps on the PC. On my home wifi network, which runs at around 6 mbps, the experience was smoother.

Listening to tracks offline – in an aeroplane, for instance, or on the London Underground – is one of the features that makes Spotify stand out over other music apps. But this requires a little preparation before departure. First you set up a playlist or two, which is possible on the iPhone itself but easier on Spotify’s desktop software. Because you use the same login details, these then automatically appear on the mobile version. You can “cache” a maximum of 3,333 tracks on the phone, if its memory can take that many.

Downloading them to the iPhone requires a wifi connection. It took me about 5 minutes to sync two dozen tracks, so a whole flight’s worth would take some advance planning.

Caching works to a limited extent when out of wifi range. As I was descending the escalator down underground to the Tube platform, Blur kept playing in my headphones for a short while after my mobile connection had disappeared. After it cut out, I was able to rewind to the beginning of the song and listen to most of it again.

Out of habit while on the Tube, I closed the Spotify app to read emails on the iPhone – and the music stopped. With the iPhone’s own player, the music would keep playing but the device doesn’t allow other applications to keep playing in the background. Spotify at least helps to ease the frustration of this by picking up where I left off when I reopen the app.

Back above ground, the search bar becomes green to indicate that the mobile network is available (although I couldn’t search again without restarting the app). The 3G experience has been pretty faultless after that early wobble. However, listening via O2’s 2.5G Edge network was not so successful, with juddering every few seconds, which could be a problem for those outside urban areas.

The Spotify app’s biggest limitation could be its impact on battery life. Just a couple of hours’ listening this morning used up a third of my iPhone’s charge, although most of that was over-the-air streaming; cached music would presumably be less power-hungry.

Some users have complained on Twitter that the app intermittently closes itself, but that hasn’t dented enthusiasm for the service, which is among the most-discussed topics on the micro-blogging service.

On Twitter, Spotify’s product chief said that a BlackBerry app is on its to-do list and other mobile platforms will follow, including Symbian S60, which could see it competing with Nokia’s Comes with Music service too.

On first impressions, Spotify is a worthy addition to the mobile-toting music fan’s toolkit. Whether it can help justify Spotify’s $250m valuation, however, is another matter.

Apple allows Rhapsody music streams on iPhone

2009-09-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

Apple allows Rhapsody music streams on iPhone
September 10, 2009 7:53pmby Joseph Menn

Apple has approved RealNetworks’ Rhaspsody music-streaming service for the iPhone, once again opening its doors to an iTunes competitor. The decision announced Thursday comes a week after Apple, now the world’s top music retailer, blessed an iPhone application by music service Spotify, which for now will work only in Europe.

The ad-free Rhapsody service costs $15 per month and includes 8m songs andRhapsody-programmed playlists. It only works when the phone, or an iPod Touch, is connected to the internet via 3G or WiFi.

Unlike the Spotify application, Rhapsody’s includes links to the iTunes store, which is helpful to Apple. A free app already available, from Pandora, requires listening to some unsought tracks similar to those a user selects.

Once quite critical of subscription music offerings, Apple has been more open-minded of late. The approvals may have something to do with scrutiny from the likes of the US Federal Communications Commission, which is investigating smartphone tie-ups with telecom carriers in general and Apple’s recent rejection of a voice application by Google in particular.

Meanwhile, the update to iTunes released yesterday once again blocks Palm’s Pre devices from syncing with iTunes playlists. Clearly some limits to Apple’s openness remain.

Check out more blogs like this

McTrademark

2009-09-08T01:58:00.001-07:00

McCurry wins row with McDonald's

McCurry's owners say they now plan to open new branches

The American fast-food giant McDonald's has lost an eight-year legal battle to prevent a Malaysian restaurant calling itself McCurry.

McDonald's argued that the use of the "Mc" prefix infringed its trademark.

But the Federal Court in Kuala Lumpur ruled that there was no evidence to show McCurry was trying to pass itself off as part of the McDonald's empire.

The owner of McCurry insists its "Mc" prefix is an abbreviation for Malaysian Chicken Curry.

Long process

McDonald's, which has more than 180 outlets in Malaysia, first sued the McCurry restaurant in 2001.

McDonald's has more than 180 outlets in Malaysia

A High Court ruled in favour of the international chain in 2006, but then McCurry took the case to the Court of Appeal, which overturned the ruling.

McDonald's then went down its final legal avenue, taking the case to the Federal Court.

But chief judge Arifin Zakaria said on Tuesday that the three-member panel had unanimously dismissed the application.

"We feel great that this eight-year legal battle is finally over," McCurry owner P Suppiah told reporters.

"We can now go ahead with whatever we plan to do such as opening new branches," he said.

McCurry opened for business in Kuala Lumpur in 1999, and serves Indian dishes, including fish head curry and breads including tandoori naan.

Lawyers for McDonald's told the Associated Press news agency that the company accepted the judgement.

Che - Image and Article

2009-09-01T16:49:00.000-07:00

It may well be the most reproduced photograph in history, its meaning diluted and appropriated to the point where it has almost become meaningless. We’re talking of course about "Guerilla Heroico", the image of Che Guevara taken by fashion photographer turned documenter of the revolution Alberto Korda.

Article here>>
Gallery here>>

Guvera Presentation

2009-08-26T02:43:00.001-07:00

Cocojambo's Claes Loberg and Kevin Rowlands presenting 'Guvera' at a recent investment seminar.

Profit by Design

2009-08-22T20:14:00.000-07:00

Want to grow faster and make bigger profits? Employ a designer.

... 9% use design as styling, 15% use design as a process to improve efficiencies in bringing products and services to market, while 4% use design to lead to innovation, strategically integrating design into all stages of their innovation processes.

Read the full BRW article by Kosmas Smyrnios here.

iPhone Apps are the new norm.

2009-08-20T17:01:00.000-07:00

http://mogeneration.com/

Giving it Back

2009-08-20T16:10:00.001-07:00

"Put-pockets" giving back to the community

Yahoo!7 Finance and Reuters

Visitors to London always have to be on the look out for pickpockets, but now there's another, more positive phenomenon on the loose - putpockets.

Aware that people are suffering in the economic crisis, 20 former pickpockets have turned over a new leaf and are now trawling London's tourist sites slipping money back into unsuspecting pockets.

Anything from 5 pounds (A$10) to 20 pound (A$40) notes are being surreptitiously deposited in unguarded pockets or open handbags, along with a small card that explains where the dough came from.

The unique initiative has been in action since July 1st this year across locations in London, including Leicester Square, Oxford Circus, Covent Garden, Westminster, Trafalgar Square and the South Bank.

Signs have also been posted in those areas, advising the public that there may be a few extra pounds in their possession when they arrive home because of it.

The initiative, which runs until the end of August in London before being rolled out countrywide, is being funded by a broadband provider, TalkTalk, which says it wants to brighten up people's lives in unusual ways.

Mark Schmid of TalkTalk said: "Britons have become very sceptical of companies giving money away - so we have turned to Put-Pocketing to give something back. Whilst unconventional, we don't think anyone is going to mind finding a crisp 20 pound note in their pocket."

"It feels good to give something back for a change - and Britons certainly need it in the current economic climate," said Chris Fitch, a former pickpocket who now heads TalkTalk's putpocketing initiative.

"Every time I put money back in someone's pocket, I feel less guilty about the fact I spent many years taking it out."

London's police have been briefed about the plan, which will see at least 100,000 pounds (A$200,000) given away.

SPA Southside Shoot

2009-08-17T20:58:00.000-07:00

Cocojambo's Art Director Scott Wynn doing his
thing this morning in an area commonly
known as 'Southside'.

Consuming Kids Doco

2009-08-16T20:22:00.000-07:00

Interesting documentary about the depth of marketing for consumer products. 10 Days left.

View doco here