Why?

Well, let me tell you a story…

A couple of weeks ago, I happened to dive into my mailbox which is synchronized with several different mailboxes and adresses from different servers – amongst them is the mail adress for my other blog in Danish.

My blog’s inbox is rarely used and it’s not often I need to pay attention to it. But this particularly day I recieved a mail from the candy producer mentioned in the other blogpost about Facebook . Naturally I was curious and opened the mail. The candy company asked me if I was interested in participating as a food blogger on a special Facebook/retailer event the 12th of august 2011.

First I thought “Why do they ask me?” and more important – How did they find me and how did they pick me? Untill I recalled my loyal linking on their Facebook page every time I made something using their liquorice products. That way they already knew me, my blog and I.

By using bloggers as ”food entertainers” at the event, the company saves time AND money. The bloggers (including me) will be there as volunteers cooking and even if we’re not professional chefs, we are passionate about food. And that is what count most. Passion can lead you anywhere – into heaven even.
Why are we doing it without getting paid? Because it simply is immensely satisfying from a professional point of view to be noticed amongst all the food bloggers on the net and being chosen by this immensely cool candy company to be there – and show off your skillz in the kitchen

The lesson:
What Johan Bülow Liquorice company do, is simply to use the social media – aka Facebook – as their research channel. That Facebook page, my dears, are a continuous focus group with free marketing and product developement ideas. They even invite their Facebook fans to the factory once in a while to help them create new varieties of their candy. Now THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is a VERY VERY smart way to engage your users – in a straightforward, honest and sexy way, using the media in all the best ways.

And me… Well, what do you think I’m doing these days? Yup. Testing. Creating food. Combining tastes. Mixing liquorice with all types of food.

Did you know that liquorice is absolutely adorable combined with peaches? And did you know you can add raw liquorice powder to rhubarbs and experience something truly wonderful and sensational when you eat it? No?

Well, you should try it. Just once.

- That’s what developers of mobile content claim.

But that’s far from the truth if you ask me.

Still, they might have a point. ‘Cause in not so many years the internet – at least as we know it – might change completely. The social web is still a kind of new experience for several people, mostly elderly people. I mean, how often do you stumple upon your granny completely immersed in the screen, typing like a machine gun and chatting away on Facebook or Twitter? If you’ve experienced that kind of behavior from your relatives, I’d say you’re one in a million. Or at least one in a few hundred…

A lot of socalled ‘experts’ claim that in five years, the webpage is dead. Dead as a dodo and forever excluded from the new century. At that time most of the surfing will be on social webpages as Facebook, Twitter and God know whichever else online community/world. Google is launching their own computer with Google as the startup-screen. No Windows, no iOS. Just… Google it.

Sure, there might be a boom in the number of e.g. African or South American webpages, as things happens to go their natural course in the global economy – but generally speaking, most of us will have moved on to other pastures and marketing hunting areas…

With an insane amount of users on Facebook, where will customers go?

For my part, I go directly to Facebook and skip the company webpage. Why? Because I simply can’t care about the all-too-fancy ever-increasing company webpage/PR channel. *gag* From a professional point of view I watch these patterns taking place even if most people are not aware of it. But as a customer I reason like this: I don’t want to write and e-mail, ’cause I want my answer TODAY – not in a couple of days. Uh-uh. E-mail? So OO’es…

If you’re not on Facebook then forget it. If it’s too complicated to get in touch with you, well, boo hoo for you. Make the effort worth my time, answer my questions, solve my problems in a satisfactory way – and do it quick. As a reward you have gained a most loyal member of your brand community. Make me proud of my brand with great service, great response times – and do it conveniently on Facebook. Then I will share my “Likes” with MY community – and I have several friends… and several friends’ friends…

Personally, I happen to “Like” a certain candy page on Facebook. When I post something on the wall or pop a question – the reply is written by the owner himself or at least one of his co-funders. I like! This company acts in a loyal and community building way, and do not see Facebook as “just another service/marketing channel”. Nope, this company actually thinks that the fans are some of the most important people on the net (which – I must say – we probably are). He even asked for our help in putting our vote on his girlfriend’s shop in an online competition and thereby get a chance to win eatable prizes. Yum! (I might have gotten the last sentence a bit wrong, but please forgive my shabby English grammar )
Call it trickery, cunning marketing techniques or whatever – I like it. Therefore I am his loyal ambassador and will continue to be so because he brings me relevant content with a personal touch. What’s not to “LIKE” in that?

There’s only one thing bugging me: Right now I’m taking a course in HTML, webdesign and CSS… *LOL*

Vast lands just waiting to be discovered, people to interact with – or rip of riches – pick one yourself

What I’m talking about is the new video game MMO world called RIFT – an impressive multi layer world with lots of callbacks to a-certain-something-we-all-know more or less. Or even if we don’t know it – we know someone who’s playing it. WoW. World of Warcraft. Make love not warcraft and all that jazz.

RIFT is taking some of the great parts of WoW – the mapping, the quest building and the two factions fightning each other (just to mention a few) - and put it all into an oldschool – but new! – kind of setting from the EQII/LoTR/Warhammer days. A LOT has already been said about RIFT, about its playstyles, talent trees or something else from the very very immersive game. If you’re dying to know whatta f*** this game is about, you should watch this video – these guys have a great grasp of how to make a game review fun AND entertaining.

It’s obvious that RIFT is trying to catch some of the more hardcore players from WoW.

If you’ve been playing WoW for the past 5 years like me, you would agree that the game content and the world has been hugely improved. But – with more polishing and easy acces, you invite more people. Obviously that’s OK with Blizzard Entertainment – but I’m pretty sure that other and more hardcore players such as myself are getting pretty darn tired of little kids trying to play gods – and, when fails, go whining or sulking. The degree of bad behaviour in WoW has been increasing more and more these past two or three years, so obviously the more mature players have been looking for something else to occupy their minds.

Many ”old players” are right now buzzing about this new MMO. Because of the sceneplay and cinematography is rather “oldschool looking” older players will probably find themselves thinking oh, this reminds me of EQII without the annoying parts – cause that’s what Blizzard did: They took EQII and made the annoying-as-hell bits go away in a cloud of smoke. Poof!

Now we’re getting to the point, where I throw in the whole point of this blog post. Why are gamers so obsessed with new content? New games? Why do they throw away 100 Danish bucks every month to sit in front of the computer screen doing … yeah, that’s the question: What ARE they doing actually?

They’re acting like Christopher Columbus. That’s what they’re doing. The discovery of new  content (land), foreign people (players) and new ways of living (The look-like-EQII-but-with-a-new-touch-and-without-the-annoying-parts bit). Who does NOT want to be Christopher Columbus even on a ship with no women, veggies or water? These days – if not women – then at least the food comes in plenty, so no fuss at all. And as with all new communities people are being NICE to eachother. Well, mostly. If you’re not meeting the annoying people who’ve decided to try out the new hotspot on the MMO-market.

Sigh.

But – and unfortunately there is a big BUT here (no BUTTs here though ) when you plug in the camera in your computer, using the standard USB cable or whatever – the damn thing won’t work! No pictures are coming up on the screen, if your computer is even ABLE to locate the stupid camera on the list at all!

That kind of thing happened to me – twice – this week. This weekend I wanted to do a scan of some important papers on my (ok, admitted, rather old) Lexmark printer. The printer is not plugged in every day, I use it only for small tasks like that – once in a while. I mean – the amount of “Very Important Papers” in one’s life should be a bit limited right?

I can’t even remember how long since I last had it plugged in when I needed those papers to be scanned. And - just so you know it was my graduate exam papers. Pretty important stuff, eh? I plugged in the cable from the printer, waited a few seconds and started the printer’s software to scan. But – alas – the *beeeep* thing didn’t do a single thing! Everything was correctly set on the printer, every button on “Scan” rather than “Print” and so forth.

Nothing happened. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Nieto.
I was starting to get into a hysterical fit, cause not only did I NEED those fr… papers, I was about to forward them along with my application to a job. A very important job in one of the biggest banks in Denmark. The printer decided to commit suicide just there because… of what?
- Because either the printer had not been able to download the required application data for working with Windows Vista’s latest updates OR the damned thing was just too old. We tried downloading the latest driver (132 mb thank you very much Lexmark), throw in some magic touches in Window’s control panel and every-single-kind-of-thing both of us could think of. I mean – neither me or BF have problems with computers – but in this case we simply had to give up.
Need I say it was… infuriating?!

The next day I took my exam papers to my work to have them scanned there. Thank god for great workplaces!

…And that is really the point in this post: WHY does this sh… happen? Why do you HAVE to buy new stuff the whole time to secure the things can even get into a dialouge? What is it with that stupid format war??? How come it is so tough for the developers to make simple, easy products with simple interfaces and communication languages? And why – oh why – does Microsoft think it should just screw with all the bluidy drivers all the frea… time?

Sometimes you know… I’m not fond of it but… sometimes I can really understand the owners of MAC computers. I’m not very proud of it – but … I can really  understand them. Cut the crap Microsoft/Lexmark/HP/Olympus/whatever – and make it work! This *beep* is NOT getting you any more customers!!!

I’ve got it.

My new e-book reader. The new Kindle on the block.

And yes, thank you, it’s very nice. Very very VERY nice. Actually I succeeded in spending all the battery in just one single week because I was so damn happy about my new device that I couldn’t stop reading. According to Amazon the battery should last up to one month. I’ve had my Kindle for about a month – and already it has been in the charger four times or more.

Since I bought this funny little device, Amazon’s EBIT-balance has had one hell of a party on my account. ‘Cause I’ve had some mighty fine time with this device – much to my credit card’s regret. Or my bank advisor’s regret. Choose one yourself

In other words: Don’t buy this gadget if you don’t intent to use it.

Oh no. That came out wrong. I mean… Don’t spend money on this device unless you love to r… No, that was not what I was going to say. The point is though – it’s true. If you like to read – you should definetely buy this thing. You won’t get a better bargain for quite some time – that is if you don’t like to read your books on the ever popular iPad. I was offered the opportunity to buy my BF’s (used) iPad. But since the iPad just reminds me of (yet another) computer, I was not tempted at all. Spending 8 hours before a computer screen at work is quite enough, especially if you add the hours in front of the computer at home playing WoW or just blogging or surfing or… whatever.

Let’s throw in some basic facts:

The Kindle is only for Amazon’s customers – since it’s hooked up with your normal Amazon account. That is part of the reason why things are working so smooth on the Kindle: Amazon wants your money! So ofc – they make it easy peasy japaneseay to download and store books. You don’t even see the money running away from your bank deposit… You just click on “Buy” – and wham bam thank you mam! – the book or magazine is yours. The (small) Kindle comes with a 6″ screen (which is 1 inch bigger than the Sony E-reader and other) and you can buy the coolest leather cover EVER for it (ofc in 8 different colours) with built-in LED lamp which is quite cool whenever the light has gone missing. This little feature does not comes cheap – but its worth every one of the 59 dollar the price tag fleece your back. And doing it the Amazon way you are sure to get it within 3 or 4 working days. Nice treat

The Kindle also comes with free wi-fi and 3G network built-in (the 189 dollar model does that is) – so there’s no fussy business putting in SIM-cards or whatever as in the iPad 3G version. Amazon has paid one hell of a lump in every country worth mentioning to give its customers free acces to the internet on the go - all you gotta do is… nothing. Neat business. All in all the “we-take-care-of-you-so-you-don’t-have-to-do-anything”-attitude quite simply is what you would expect from the evergrowing Amazon.

There are already millions of tips, covers, skins and tools on the market to help Kindlers, but to be honest I haven’t used any of them – yet. Maybe in the future. Maybe never. One can never know.

I could continue on with several specs and tests and everything else you can read on Amazon’s webpage… instead I will let you discover it for yourselves. This post is for expressing my exitement about the best gadget I’ve ever invested in.

It’s not a computer.

It’s not a book.

It simply is – a Kindle.

You thought the polka dot days were finally over? Well, you thought wrong. Singing and dancing like a trueblood re-born Elvis is the new black. Goodbye financial crisis, goodbye anorectic-looking-skinny-jeans-wearing-sulking-teen-pop idols and HELLO kate-perry-polka-dot-skirt-wearing-style friend! After two years with financial crisis, millionaire bankruptcy and general mistrust and recession this subgenre way of life is offering the depressed souls of the world a joyful solace from all the bad news. We WANT to live again – but the global economy won’t let us. Well, Rockabilly to the rescue!

So… grab a can of DAX wax, put on a polka dot or two and turn up the volume of the newest addition to your music collection… the Jime. Just remember to have fun, enjoy life and put your worries aside. You look absolutely ravishing in red m’dear

If you are dying to spend a few grands on great sound – and I mean REALLY GREAT sound – this is the place you surely don’t want to miss . Apart from the B&O Stores you will not find any other retailer in the Danish gadget-business where they know quite as much about hi-fi, tv’s and tv-related gadgets. This is the only place – so far – where you can buy the neat Sonos soundsystem, DALI, NAD, B&W and Denon brands. But great sound does not come cheap: Be prepared to place a very large amount of your hard earned money on the desk when you leave the store. But hey – let me congrats you on your new speakers. You’ve probably spent half the day in the store, listening to several speaker systems just to find the RIGHT model which fits both your mood, your living room – and your wallet

Today I was just curiously strolling around the shop, admiring the B&W Zeppelin and Scandyna Jubilee speakers, when I saw the headphone shelf. Let me point out:  B&W has just launched an awesomesauce pair of headphones with stunning features – but the pricetag will probably reduce you to a weeping dog. These thingies is for seriously audiophile people. Well, almost, ’cause you could also buy Grado GS1000, but I don’t think you want to ruin your bank account, so let’s just leave it for now.

Among all the high-end headphones from Bose, Denon and B&W, I met these small pairs of headphones, Sennheiser PX100. I tried their big sister, PX200, and she wasnt nearly as good. Having had the privilege to wear Jabra Bizz 2400 for both Skyping and music, I was rather dissapointed with the cheap leather details on PX200. Not to mention the lousy sound compared to PX100. Now Sennheiser is probably a high end brand on the consumer market for headphones. But ofc – with Grado, AKG and Beyerdynamic on the market too, one would certainly question whether Sennheiser is such a high profile quality brand. But today I can confirm that – sometimes - they actually know what they are doing. Compared to the Sennheiser HD205 with closed earcups the sound in PX100 is both more clearsounding and has just as much “umph” factor. Impressive in such a small gadget, which is even foldable and has its own cassette for when not in use. I’ve been wearing this little device for almost two hours now and the very light design sure does wonders for a smallish girl skull. Very nice if you like me enjoy extensive music sessions and gaming.

Thumbs up, Sennheiser!

4 out of 5 stars

I noted two interesting things in this video. The first thing is that GG’s are not exactly a sought after specimen in other women’s worlds. To be honest – the majority of women can’t make themselves care a fig about farming quests or heroic badges in the world’s hottest MMO these years. If they are nice to you, they change the subject. If they don’t like you, they just look at you like you were talking Russian with a Persian accent.

Number two: To democrazise the game industry and get more of the girls’ attention, we need more women in the business.

Let’s start with the first. Because the first thesis is – in my opinion – a seriously important thing to remember if you want to be a succes in the GG industry – or just basically attract the women’s attention.

Girls will be girls and boys will be boys – no doubt about that. Let the boys have their Bioshock, Star Craft and zombie games all to themselves – well, unless you can dress up your zombie and have a good laugh all the while you eat people on your way. My question for the game developers and publishers is this: What do girls – and women – do all through the day?

…

Girls like to talk. And bond. They strengthen their connections and engage in networking activities throughout the day. You thought all your girlfriend’s chit-chatter with the girlfriends on the phone about where to go shopping or when to buy that fab mascara was just nonsense? Not at all. Your girl is showing off one of her best assets: She is building and strengthening her relationships through talking. And yup… talking is what a lot of girls do best. A lot of the time. They read, they talk, they shop, they go clubbing. They are networking. The networking-thingy is an important thing to remember for the publishers if they are serious about attracting girls as customers. Girls love to network and exchange information. Basic knowledge but appearently sooo hard to implement for the more serious games.

So basically you gotta give them something to talk about. If your game fails to do that – well, see ya and goodbye! Do NOT make pink game remotes and purple Xbox’s. It’s NOT working! It’s just a pathetic way of saying “Here is a toy in your favorite colour - would you like to play Prince of Persia now?” (You can almost hear the audience’s common gasp of outrage)… so… here’s the deal: The reason to why Facebook games are growing faster than you can say “Wow beta Cataclysm” is this: The fun-and-Facebook games allows you a little time off from work while staying in touch with your network. It creates a space where you can meet noncommitedly while you are pursuing the next cow, cat or jewel on the market. So the publisher needs to be here - at the end of this communicating line. Get two girls’ attention and you will not need any further marketing. Well.. if you have patience of course. Which a lot of publishers is sorely lacking, I’m afraid.

Forget Second Life. Forget Twinity. The reason to why these things ran out in the sand is because of lacking gameplay. In Second Life you could spend a lotta money a-k-a a fortune to look absolutely fab. Then you could… chat  with other people. The fun about ”Where do you live and how old are you, sugar?” quick became tired around the edges, long before Linden Lab stopped displaying number of profiles online. Not to mention too much world and too few online inhabitants which meant a lot of running around the cyberstreets like a dumb blonde caught in a bad movie.

Casual games like Wii Sports, Bejeweled and Farmville is the new black. If you want your score of the revenue, note that more than half the population of casual gamers are G-I-R-L-S and W-O-M-E-N.

These players are typical at work when they log in at Facebook to have a little fun and a chit-chat. The main focus is to be entertained and diversed from a hectic or boring job. What Facebook has done is creating a smallish “personal space” which can help you recharge your energy through a great laugh and a goal to fullfill in order to win the Great Goat of the Year.

In other words: Create a space where girls will be immersed by working the social skills, solving puzzles and invite their friends to join. You should soon start counting the money in the pot… its getting bigger.  May I congratz you on your new office with a lake view???

For example: Some weeks ago, a newsflash in tv reported that the Austrian ‘King of schlagers’, Hansi Hintersehr, was making elder people all over Europe go crazy. Being stuck in the middle of the 80′es with a german poodle frizz and a too-much-self-tan-dude skin colour he makes women from 50-? go crazy.

Another example:
In some companies today it’s not enough if you can only speak English. The mindset seems to be something like ‘Everyone can speak a decent English these days… What other languages are you fluent in? And these days a lot of people comes up short with an answer because …they are not fluent in a awful lot of other languages. Thanks to the globalization and wide spread internet use, English has been genuinely adopted in the Danish society. Add to this that many a youngster skip the german language classes in schools you end up with a generation who’s knowledge of the language of one of the most important trading partners for Denmark equals zero…-ish.

Of course you will always be able to get along in the business world if you know a bit of English. But if you want to impress your boss AND your business associates… Well, maybe you might want to pay attention to this: Yes, the german language is a bit stiff and leaves you with the feeling that you are spitting out squares which is not very nice. But if you look a bit closer than the cheap points a waiter in Greece or Italy scores by greeting you in your own language – you will probably agree that it’s very nice to meet  another person who is actually trying to make a good impression. It might be a cheap trick – but hey, it works. Because you can’t say that they don’t make an effort – and that is all it takes. Make that effort. Impress your boss. Be nice. It’ll make your mom proud – and your business associates happy

That in itself should not be a statement to raise an eyebrow. Except perhaps when you take into acount that I live in Denmark, where this newest of Apple babies has not yet been launched.
That means that getting your hands on one is a process that requires fiddling with Ebay or throwing stupid amounts of money at people that have imported them from the US.

I chose the lazy option, paying around 1300$ for a 32gb wi-fi model.
A steep premium from the original US retail price.

What makes people like me pay these extreme prices or spend hours on the net hunting auctions and worrying about customs?

I am in no way an Apple fan boy. Until two weeks ago I had never owned a single Apple product, yet something about the Ipad just instantly appealed to me.
My infatuation probably started back with the release of the 3g Iphone. A simple and elegant looking product with an interface that seemed very futuristic. Ever since I saw an Iphone I have been wanting to get one, yet for some reason this desire has not been strong enough to actual make me buy one.
It was still just a phone and the extra bells and whistles seemed somewhat wasted in such a small device that I would never really use when at home.

The Ipad offers all these extra bells and whistles but on a device large enough to be used as a primary screen in your home.
I already have a netbook that serves as our “living room computer” used for quixkly looking up things on the web or making that Facebook upqdate.
But the netbook is still a computer with all the drawbacks that brings with boot up time, shortish battery life anf getting quite warm after a little while.
The ipad is the solution to these problems for me. It is simply a cut down laptop with all the essential parts in there (except maybe Flash) wrapped in an incredibly user friendly package.
The brilliance of the Ipad is not a 10 meter long feature list.
It is not great despite all the things it lacks but because of the things it lacks.
Giving you just what you need in a minimalistic and sleek wrapping is what I think is a concept that only Apple has grasped in the computer industry.

Also you can play Plants vs zombies on it… Which is just good fun.

Will my newfound Ipad love last or is this just a spring crush?
Ipad or Ifad, I’m living in the Star Trek world of tomorrow with my little tablet and that’s enough for me