Carlos Domingo - Un poco de todo

Yesterday I notice how some people are using uploaded videos to YouTube to advertise sales of some products that are hard to find. My wife and I have heard about the new TMX Elmo and how it was the most sold toy this Xmas in the US. We wanted to see what the fuss was about so we did what it is becoming a habit every time you need some visual information, went to YouTube (for textual information, Google is still the choice). After a search for “tmx elmo”, (and click in one of the videos if you have not seen the new Tickle Me Elmo, it is hilarious) there were lots of hits and among the ones in the first results screen, you could already find 4 of them advertising something, one person was plainly selling Elmos and offering his email as contact, another was advertising an auction and the other two were pointing to sites with Elmo related merchandising. The next search screens also show other advertising related videos. How long is going to be before Google figures out the business model for YouTube and stops this?

In the meantime, enjoy this weird TMX Elmo related video.

CD

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To all my family, friends and anonymous readers, happy new year 2007!!!

I wish you next year will bring you a lot of good things. For me, 2006 was a year of change (country, job, etc.) and I expect 2006 to be a year of consolidation of these changes.

Also, remember that according to the Chinese calendar, we are entering the year of the pig, my year since I was born in 1971. According to the Chinese zodiac “people born in the Year of the Pig are chivalrous and gallant. Whatever they do, they do with all their strength. For Boar Year people, there is no left or right and there is no retreat. They have tremendous fortitude and great honesty. They don’t make many friends but they make them for life, and anyone having a Boar Year friend is  fortunate for they are extremely loyal. They don’t talk much but have a great thirst for knowledge. They study a great deal and are generally well informed. Boar people are quick tempered, yet they hate arguments and quarreling. They are kind to their loved ones. No matter how bad problems seem to be, Boar people try to work them out, honestly if sometimes impulsively. They are most compatible with Rabbits and Sheep.”

If you are a rabbit of a sheep let me know, just curiosity

CD

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After looking a lot around Tokyo, I managed to get a Sony PS3. I was actually undecided between a PS3 and a Wii. I wanted a PS3 to get a BluRay player and for the games but I was intrigued by the new Wii remote (check out this web site for some funny troubles with it) and the reviews about the new Nintendo console. Both were sold out every where in Tokyo (as it is the Nintendo DS Light here which is not sold out at all in Europe) but a bit of searching around Akihabara (all those years wandering around there have finally paid off) got me to a shop where they had few PS3 and I got two, one for me and one for Fujimoto-san, one of my friends here who was also desperately looking for a new console for this vacations.

So far, the impression is good, a very solid machine with spectacular graphics even though the games I have seen so far are just improved versions of games that existed, we certainly need to wait a bit till new games that exploit all the new power of the PS3 come out. As for the BluRay player, I got a movie to check it out and the quality is pretty good although in spite of supporting H.264 it is recorded in MPEG2 at 15Mbps (why???). My TV back in Spain has a higher resolution than the one I have here in Tokyo (1080p versus 720i) so the final test will come when I take it back there and check it with a larger TV. Finally, a word of advice, get yourself a TV with a HDMI connection, it makes a great difference compared with using a regular RCA connection and there is no point having a PS3 and a BluRay disc unless you have a TV that matches those specs and you can connect them properly.

CD

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The Bic Camera store in Yurakucho, Tokyo, had in display what they claim it to be the largest plasma display in the world, a 103 inches Panasonic  Viera television. Here you have a picture so you can see how large it is compared to the guy that was passing by. It was showing a Blu-Ray disc and the quality was surprinsingly good in spite of the large size although it is definitely not for Japanese style living rooms….

CD

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This is a very funny parody about sushi made by Japanese comediants Rahmens (responsibles also for the Japanese version of the Mac vs. PC Apple adds) . Unless you are a bit familiar with Japanese culture and sushi you might not grasp the irony in some of the comments but it is still fun to see and refreshing to see how Japanese, considered by most a very serious society, make fun of themselves.

CD

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He decidido hacer un post “a la Dave Winner” como homenaje a uno de los primeros bloggers recopilando una serie de posts típicos de fin de año (los mas visto, predicciones, etc.). Enjoy!!

Boing Boing  publica la lista de los 10 posts de su blog mas vistos en el 2006 (recordar que Boing Boing es uno de los blog mas visitados así que esta lista tiene especial relevancia). Mis favoritos, el de los mentos y la cocacola (buscar en YouTube que hay muchos mas videos y mas espectaculares) y el de Colbert metiendose con Bush en la cena de la Casa Blanca (el video estaba en YouTube en su momento, en trocitos de diez minutos y ahora ya no está pero ahora está disponible en Google Video entero y no tiene desperdicio).

Google publica su lista anual Zeitgeist y el hecho de que Bebo (una red social bastante desconocida) aparezca en primer lugar de las “Top Searches in 2006″  (mirar el link, lo pone así literalmente) por encima de MySpace o Metacafe (competidor de YouTube) levanta sospechas y hace que Google publique una aclaración diciendo que las “top searches” en realidad son “those searches that were very popular in 2006 but were not as popular in 2005″. No sería mas fácil no llamarlas “top searches” si no “top new searches” or ”top growing search terms”, etc. y dejar de confundir a la gente?  Desde luego, la última semana del año parece que no ha sido la mejor semana para Google…

La guerra por las predicciones para el 2007 ha empezado, de todas ellas me quedo con las de  Wired Magazine , no porque me las crea mas si no porque algunas de ellas son muy provocativas como la dimision de Semel, la derrota de Blu-Ray y la PS3 o un asesinato real provocado por una relación en Second Life.

Time Magazine te escoge a ti como la persona del año (la Web 2.0 en realidad tal y como acertó John Batelle en sus predicciones del año pasado) pero alguien del departamento de marketing no se entera y cuando entras a la página Web con esa noticia, te reciben con un anuncio que pone “You might not be the person of the year”  (copio la imagen del anuncio aquí abajo por si  la quitan).

Y como hoy es el 31 de Diciembre, aprovecho para desearos un feliz año nuevo y prospero 2007.

CD

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Looking around the Web for resources on innovation and creativity (I am giving a talk next week on that topic at a master course of Science and Information and Communication Technologies of the Telecomunication Faculty of the UPC) I came across this very funny but also thoughful and provoking speech of Ken Robinson, the author of “Out of our minds: learning to be creative”.

Best sentence in the whole video:

“If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will not do anything original”.

I believe that the fear of making mistakes is what makes most employees not innovative since everyone prefer to follow the crowd and not make mistakes (have you ever heard the sentence “you cannot be wrong by buying IBM?”).

I just ordered the book in Amazon right after seeing Sir Robinson talk in the video.

CD

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