TRACTA :: 4eyes

Welcome back!  After an absence enforced by “technical issues”, I’m stoked to be back bringing you the latest internet news, digital developments and advertising awesomeness.

I’ve got a bit of catching up to do, so this post is all about developments.  What’s happening in the online world?

Limewire has lost a court case and been found guilty of facilitating copyright infringement.  What a surprise!  The upshot of this may be the closure of the site.  That would no doubt lead to a new file-sharing site taking prominence until it faces legal action.  And, unless the music (and movie and TV and gaming) industries can work out some technological fix to completely prevent copying and file-sharing, that’s how things will stay.

TVNZ continues to develop its commercial-free channels on Freeview/Sky platforms. On 1 June the Heartland channel launches on Sky only (they’ve run out of Freeview channels to use).  It will be running a mix of old and not-so-old NZ-made dramas, documentary series and nostalgia.  Lots of Gary McCormick and Marcus Lush, by the looks of it.

Taking a more cerebral direction is TVNZ-7, which has recently formed a partnership with the Royal Society of NZ to bring us a series “designed to excite and inform with great stories of science and technology in contemporary New Zealand”.

Meanwhile over at TV3, they are slowly catching up!  This month they launch a new Video on Demand service, promising more content (most of their top programmes) and a better viewing experience.  Here’s hoping the programme selection interface is more engaging than the interface they have now!

In social media news, Air New Zealand has reinforced its dedication to social media with a quirky PR response to a “critical” editorial piece in The Listener magazine.  The piece was released through social media (and, no doubt, emails to media organisations), with a guaranteed distribution to nearly 20,000 “likers” on their Facebook page and over 13,000 Twitter “followers”.

Finally (well… nearly finally… at least finally before the stuff that comes below), I got an email from Metservice.com – NZ’s most popular weather site and 7th most popular site overall – announcing some new things.  Most interesting is the fact they are launching a mobile site (mobile internet is slowly gaining traction).  But also check out the creative they’ve done with EECA, incorporating live weather stats into banner ads.  Unfortunately it’s not live any more, but it shows the potential for incorporating live data into advertising creative.

Have a lovely week and just for fun…

Headline of the week

Bravest client of 2009 (32nd John Caples International Awards)

Most awesomest thing ever (this one is a bit noisy, but fun!)

Cheers,

Here we go again!  More mad news and interesting insights derived from the wonderful world of the web.

I’m going to call this post the TOP 5 at 5.  Because it’s 5pm.  And I have 5 news items.

Number 1: TVNZ OnDemand has a new, bigger, better viewer.  See it here.

Number 2: Dominion Post have a new layout.  See what the editor, and readers, have to say here.

Number 3: Farmers want broadband!!

Number 4: Free MySkyHD for Vodafone customers! Cross-media deals anyone?

Number 5: Google’s next big thing… the Google Phone.  Next… Google jeans, Google cars, Google ice cream?

But I won’t leave it at that!  You know you hang out for the fun bits at the end of these posts!

Here’s a little game from Seek (the recruitment website).  You can upload your own (or someone else’s) photo and shoot yourself (or that someone else) from a cannon!  Would you like to know who I have shot out of the cannon so far?

That’s all.  Have a good one!

Welcome back to what I hope will be more regular contributions to Four Eyes.  That’s Iain’s Interesting Internet Information.  Hope it’s interesting for you!

Online stats – advertising and social media

Latest research from UK – online adspend more than TV @ 23.5% of total ad spend!!

Twitter tweets are 40% pointless babble (no surprise), 37% conversational and about 9% useful (according to US research)

Facebook NZ traffic and stats.  Did you know Facebook gets more NZ traffic than TradeMe?  Or that you can target advertising by gender, age, location, interests, relationship status, what they’re fans of… and more?!?

New Sites and Stuff

YahooXtra to launch new online shopping portal, incorporated into its site.  Partnering with Hubsta, can they do better than Telecom’s Ferret?

Described as “NZ’s first internet TV network”, Zild.co.nz features 7 local and 14 international TV channels available streaming and on demand

Did you know that NZ On Air is also making its catalogue available online?  At NZOnScreen.co.nz, the most popular request is “A Haunting We Will Go” from 1980

This is cool:  Coca Cola’s new vending machines that can dispense up to 100 different drink flavours.  And they’re doing cool things with it, like telling people through their mobile phones where the nearest one is.

This (free) startup website aggregates comments and activity about a brand, making everything about it really really “Public”.

Fails

Heard about the new Vegemite, iSnack 2.0?  They ran a competition and picked this name, and the initial reaction was not good (to say the least).  This article reviews all of the negative comment happening.

Well, that made Vegemite take notice (or was it a stunt all along?!?).  Another competition, for a new new name, to launch soon!

And here’s another example of misuse of Facebook.  Have you ever had to tell someone “You’re NOT my mother”?

Have a lovely weekend everyone!