Kellogg’s CornFakes

It’s being put about by their PR team that Kellogg’s are to individually laser etch each of their cornflakes with the company logo. Is it too much to suggest that this might not be absolutely true?

Kellogg’s conflakes laser etched

We’ve all become used to ever more sophisticated and cynical advertising from the food industry as companies have cottoned on to the fact that tinkering with loved brands or unexpectedly removing favourite chocolate bars from the shelves has a desirable viral marketing effect which they can respond to by ‘bringing back’ the product. I blame Coca-Cola. All this trickery means that we tend to view most of the releases and announcements that come from our PR friends with an even healthier dose of suspicion than even our former jaded paranoia.

So what to make of this jaunty little announcement from Kellogg’s yesterday? “Now you’ll always be able to tell your Corn Flakes from your corn fakes!”

The story is, apparently, that the company has new laser technology ready to toast the tiny logo onto a zillion little flakes a day: “We’ve established that it is possible to apply a logo or image onto food, now we need to see if there is a way of repeating it on large quantities of our cereal. We’re looking into it,” the company’s food technologist, Helen Lyons is reported as saying. When we phoned for confirmation we were told that she’s “on holiday at the moment”. Hmm.

Shortly before throwing her Blackberry to the wind and hotfooting it out of Kellogg’s HQ to pack her holiday suitcase, Ms Lyons told the Metro, Mail and Telegraph that “giving our golden flakes of corn an official stamp of approval could be the answer”. At last technology has made it possible to confound the makers of all those damned inferior flakes that would masquerade as Kellogg’s.

Presumably the technology isn’t that ready at all, given it hasn’t been used in the photograph above, which is, instead, ahem, digitally manipulated.

So what do we think ? is it an important development in food branding technology?

How about they try doing it with Rice Krispies 

10:10 vow to fight climate change in stores….

10:10 Environmental Campaign launch at the Turbine Gallery at Tate Modern.

B&Q, Microsoft and Pret a Manger have become the latest household names to join the 10:10 climate change campaign, joining 25,000 individuals, 1000 businesses and hundreds of schools, hospitals and other organisations.

The 10:10 campaign, which the we here at Bedroom London definitely support, involves pledging to cut carbon emissions by 10% during 2010.

On signing up, B&Q announced a suite of measures it will use to meet the 10:10 target. These include making its 331 stores greener with better insulation and lighting systems, and rolling out a larger fleet of double-decker delivery trucks.

Matt Sexton, the company’s director of social responsibility, said: “Regardless of whether you have a commercial property or are looking at your own home, the process for lowering its carbon footprint is virtually the same.

“To begin, that means insulating well and maximising natural light so you’re not paying for energy that’s simply being wasted.”

“We also clock up a lot of transport miles. We introduced 60 double-decker lorries this year – a move already saving us 4,800 miles a day. “

Since the launch of 10:10 last month, it has attracted a broad range of support, from Gordon Brown and the entire government and shadow cabinets, to business giants like Royal Mail and Aviva, and personalities including Sara Cox, Ian McEwan and Kevin McCloud.

We really are trying aren’t we – so lets keep it up!

2010 Blockbusters ….

So summer blockbuster season is over …. but whats going to be big in 2010 ???

Any of these …. let us know if you know something we don’t

Iron Man 2
Kick-Ass
The A Team
The Wolfman
Robin Hood
The Expendables
Inception
Tron: Legacy
Toy Story 3
Predators

Royal Mail loses Amazon contract

Amazon has ended its contract with Royal Mail to deliver parcels weighing more than 500 grams.
Royal Mail has lost a crucial contract with its second largest customer, the online retailer Amazon, as a wave of strikes threaten parcel deliveries in the busy pre-Christmas sales period.

The news comes on the eve of a national strike announcement by the Communication Workers Union that is likely to bring the simmering industrial dispute to the boil and further disrupt deliveries across the country.

But a backlog of undelivered mail has worried customers, particularly small businesses and internet retailers who argue that the unpredictable nature of the strikes has led to a collapse in reliability. The loss of this business will be a severe blow to Royal Mail, which was relying on the growth of online shopping to compensate for the decline of its letters business due to rising email use.

Customers of eBay have already been particularly vociferous, claiming the strikes are causing damage to small businesses that suffer negative feedback and lose their online reliability ratings.

Amazon.co.uk has cancelled its long-term contract to use the Royal Mail for parcels over 500 grams and will use a rival service, Home Delivery Network (HDN), which also delivers for Tesco and Argos.

Two years ago Royal Mail lost a smaller Amazon contract worth £8m to deliver second class parcels during the last national strike, but fought hard to win the business back, claiming improved industrial relations. Losing the new, bigger contract will exacerbate the operator’s financial woes, which lay behind its need to cut staff, but more worryingly sends a dangerous signal to other suppliers about Amazon’s faith in the network during the crisis.

Royal Mail declined to comment.

Coca-Cola ads …. banned

Coca-Cola’s banned ads for its Glaceau Vitamin Water range

A series of ads for Coca-Cola’s Glaceau Vitamin Water range have been banned for making misleading health and nutrition claims, in part because the drinks are sugar-laden.

Coca-Cola, which made the very high-profile $4.1bn acquisition of Glaceau in 2007 to boost its nutritional product range, ran a series of three poster ads for different drinks in the range.

One poster, for the Power-C drink, ran with the line “More muscles than Brussels” with text including “Popeye had it easy …”; another had the headline “Keep perky when you are feeling murky” with a reference to using the drink to ward off illness and use work sick days to “just, erm, not go in”. A third poster made references to the benefits of vitamins and avoiding a trip to “the doctor’s waiting room”.

The Advertising Standards Authority received three complaints, which argued that the ads misleadingly implied that vitamins in the drinks conferred health benefits and made them equivalent, or even superior to, vegetables – and that the drinks made people resistant to illness. Two of the complainants argued that the advertising positioned the drinks as healthy when in fact they contained high levels of sugar.

Coke said the ads were “humorous and irreverent” and that the the products could actually be described as “low calorie” according to EU nutrition and health claims regulations.

The ASA upheld all the complaints against the three ads. The watchdog said Coca-Cola had not provided evidence to support the various claims made in the ads and had breached the advertising code.

It ruled the company should not run them again.

The ASA also said the drinks could not be considered to be “healthy” because each 500ml bottle contained 26% of the recommended daily allowance of sugar.

“Because we considered the ads made claims that were likely to be understood as referring to the nutritional and health benefits of the drinks, it was likely that, in conjunction with these claims, readers would infer that the range of drinks were ‘healthy’,” said the ASA. “Because the drinks contained a significant proportion of a consumer’s RDA for sugar we concluded the ads were likely to mislead.”

So many sugar riddled drinks out there … should we not just be chowing down on some good fruit and Veg and getting the water down us ?

Im sure that would be cost effective also ! Your thoughts please …

six-figure not enough for ITV to show match … greedy ?

Rights holder Kentaro turned down a six-figure sum from ITV to show the highlights of the England World Cup qualifier against Ukraine on a terrestrial station.

Broadcast understands that the deal would have allowed the commercial broadcaster to show the highlights of the match following The X Factor this Saturday, but the offer was refused.

The amount requested for the highlights package by Kentaro was deemed “commercially unviable” according to an ITV source.

The stand-off means that people who want to see the game will have to pay between £4.99 and £12 to watch it online.

The away game will not be shown in pubs although it will be screened in some Odeon cinemas.

ITV has not ruled out acquiring the highlights after the match, but because the result will not affect England’s chances of playing in the World Cup next year, the source said it was “unlikely”.

If that was to happen, it would mirror last year’s deal where ITV showed highlights to an England game shown only on Setanta the following night.

So is this what the future holds ?

TV always on out computers … ? sitting watching our lap tops ?

Let us know your thoughts …

is this the new LOST …?

Flashforward, the high-concept US drama series, has become the fastest-selling Disney series of all time, and broadcasters around the world are showing it as quickly as possible in a bid to beat piracy.

The programme, in which an unexplained event makes people around the world see into their future after blacking out for two minutes, has premiered in Britain on Channel Five, in Australia and even been dubbed into Russian within days of its US premiere.

“Even before Mipcom begins we have sold it to 100 territories, already making it the fastest-selling series in our history,” said Disney Media Networks president global distribution Ben Pyne on the opening day of TV trade festival MIPCOM.

He said persuading other networks to premiere the programme quickly was part of a new policy.

“This helps to reduce piracy but also allows bigger-than-life global marketing campaigns and get shows into audiences homes sooner.”

On Friday, eight days after its US premiere, the Russian version of Flashforward, known as Remembering What Will Be, was first shown.

In the UK, the programme aired on Five four days after US network ABC premiered it. Its second episode airs tonight.

Previously television companies would send tapes across the world to promote shows – but now that could be done over the internet, with broadcast quality clips that could be adapted for local use.

So watch this space … and let us know what you think ….

Turner prize time again ….

A filthy, unmade bed. A shark pickled in formaldehyde. Some lights going on and off.

These are just a few of the past Turner Prize hopefuls which have prompted screaming tabloid headlines and public derision alike.

The time for the latest exhibition of contemporary artists’ work vying for the prestigious £25,000 prize has arrived again at Tate Britain.

As someone who has only seen the show once and didnt really understand it much then i think that now is the time to visit the gallery with wide, child-like eyes and a fresh perspective.

Richard Wright, has created a painting on one of the gallery walls using the painstaking, age-old fresco techniques of the old masters – drawing a cartoon, tracing it on the wall, then painting over it and finally gilding it.

Roger Hiorns has displayed, as a sculpture, the dust that constitutes the physical remains of a passenger jet engine, simply sprinkled in shades of grey over the floor of one of Tate Britain’s galleries. “The engine has been dematerialised,” says Tate curator Helen Little. “We are prompted to reconsider our faith in technology, and to think about the entropy of all things: all objects are, in the end, dust.”

Lucy Skaer – the second Scotland-based name on the shortlist, reflecting the strength of the visual arts north of the border – has brought with her an entire sperm whale skull, loaned from the National Museums of Scotland, and then largely hidden it behind screens so that it is only just glimpsed by visitors. According to curator Lizzie Carey-Thomas, it is a process of slowing down the act of looking and the viewer’s moment of perception, so that “the eye oscillates between the detail and the recognition of the form; she draws us into an encounter with the image.”

Enrico David, who has created a bizarre cast of sculptural characters who sit on a stage, waiting – somewhat aggressively – to be sized up by visitors. A construction worker bares his backside; Kenneth Williams appears, somewhat incongruously; and strange, egg-shaped papier-mache men line up to be scrutinised “with a sense of antagonistic resignation,” according to Carey-Thomas.

The winner, who will be awarded £25,000, is announced on 7 December 2009.

Worth a look – would love to hear what you all think about it …

Tweetie 2 for iPhone

Users of Tweetie, the popular Twitter client for both Mac and iPhone, have reasons to be excited….. a new version of the iPhone app, Tweetie 2 (aptly codenamed “Bigbird”), is confirmed to be on the way.

In a preview of the new version, Scott Kleinberg of ChicagoNow detailed his experiences with beta builds of the upcoming release. From the screenshots provided, it’s clear that several interface improvements have been made, including a quick menu that provides easy access to several new features while posting a tweet. Other improvements include the ability to send video tweets, persistent session handling that restores the app to its previous state, conversation threading, draft management, and geotagging.

While Scott’s review suggests that the changes and improvements make Tweetie 2 feel like a whole new app, Tweetie developer Loren Brichter indicates that it really is — it’s a complete rewrite from the original app. In addition to the major features, the new version also boasts integration with several 3rd party services, and a host of configuration options, from new gesture options to custom Twitter API settings.
Of course, not everyone will be happy with the update. There is already a stir among beta testers over the app’s use of pinstripe backgrounds on the profile and single tweet views. Also, there is the issue of cost: Tweetie 2 will set you back £5, as it is being offered as a new app instead of a free upgrade to existing users. When it comes to upgrades, most desktop applications follow a pattern where minor updates (such as upgrading from version 1.0 to 1.1 or 1.1.2 — often refered to as “point releases”) are provided free of charge, and major updates (from version 1.0 to 2.0) usually require the user to purchase the new version of the software.

With iPhone apps, however, Apple does not provide a system to allow developers to do this. Developers can release upgrades and bug fixes as free updates to their applications, but if they invest a lot of time into a major update to their app, they have to submit it as a new, different version of the application rather than an upgrade to the old version, and there is no option to allow users who have perviously purchased the original app to receive a discount on the new version. So users are faced with having to pay full price for the upgrade, which in this case, is another £5

In my opinion, this is not an unreasonable amount to pay for a major upgrade to an already great application, but there are users who feel they shouldn’t have to pay for the upgrade. My advice to them? If you can’t spare £5 for the amount of time and effort that was put into making a decent, feature-rich upgrade, don’t bother using it. Stick with the original Tweetie or find another app that you’re willing to pay for.

So, controversy aside, Tweetie 2 looks very promising. The latest beta build that was provided to developers is expected to be the final build, and if things go well, we should see it hit the App Store in the coming weeks. An update to the desktop version of Tweetie is also in the works, and will probably surface after the iPhone app is released.

What do you think of the new version? Will you be upgrading when it’s released? Let us know in the comments!

information overload or addiction ?

Paul Hemp has written an essay outlining his concern over the unsettling side effects of our 24-hour, 21st century lives, and specifically the amount of information, emails and facts we are bombarded with.

He writes:

“The flood of information that swamps me daily seems to produce more pain than gain. And it’s not just the incoming tidal wave of email messages and RSS feeds that causes me grief.

It’s also the vast ocean of information I feel compelled to go out and explore in order to keep up in my job.”

In case you got sidetracked and didn’t get a chance to read the rest either so here are the cold, hard facts:

• A study found that once workers were interrupted by an email it took on average 24 minutes to return to the suspended task.

• 2,300 employees judged nearly one third of the emails they receive to be unnecessary, but spend two hours a day processing them.

• Research reported that the IQ scores of people distracted by email and phone calls fell from their normal level by an average of 10 points – twice the decline recorded for those smoking marijuana.

How we get anything done is a miracle.

Before your attention wanders elsewhere, please confess the tendencies you have noticed in yourself that may be symptoms of this very modern malady. Can you remember the last time you finished reading a novel ???

Hemp recommends limiting emails to five sentences, or setting virtual break times to force yourself to step away from the desk, as possible remedies.

But how do you stop yourself from completely drowning now the information floodgates are well and truly open?

Paul Hemp has written an essay outlining his concern over the unsettling side effects of our 24-hour, 21st century lives, and specifically the amount of information, emails and facts we are bombarded with.

He writes:

“The flood of information that swamps me daily seems to produce more pain than gain. And it’s not just the incoming tidal wave of email messages and RSS feeds that causes me grief.

It’s also the vast ocean of information I feel compelled to go out and explore in order to keep up in my job.”

In case you got sidetracked and didn’t get a chance to read the rest either so here are the cold, hard facts:

• A study found that once workers were interrupted by an email it took on average 24 minutes to return to the suspended task.

• 2,300 employees judged nearly one third of the emails they receive to be unnecessary, but spend two hours a day processing them.

• Research reported that the IQ scores of people distracted by email and phone calls fell from their normal level by an average of 10 points – twice the decline recorded for those smoking marijuana.

How we get anything done is a miracle.

Before your attention wanders elsewhere, please confess the tendencies you have noticed in yourself that may be symptoms of this very modern malady. Can you remember the last time you finished reading a novel ???

Hemp recommends limiting emails to five sentences, or setting virtual break times to force yourself to step away from the desk, as possible remedies.

But how do you stop yourself from completely drowning now the information floodgates are well and truly open?