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 

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.

Chanel , not all pearls no more!

Lily Allen burst through a trapdoor on to a catwalk in the Paris Grand Palais and began singing her hit Not Fair.

Models parading the new collection around a reconstruction of the Hameau de la Reine, Marie Antoinette’s play farm at Versailles, will perhaps go down in fashion history as the moment when Chanel finally shook off any vestiges of a fusty, tweed-and-pearls image.

For all the dark glasses and affected enigma, designer Karl Lagerfeld is every bit as much a showman as Prince, today’s front row guest of honour.

The fashion industry now is about entertainment as well as product, and Lagerfeld delights in this.

With Allen’s appearance providing the theatrical element of surprise, and a finale of three models faux-romping in a bale of hay ramping up the staged sauciness, today’s Chanel show had more in common with an episode of Strictly Come Dancing than with the sober in-house fashion parades from the days of Mademoiselle Coco Chanel herself.

The rustic theme may turn out to be one of next summer’s key trends, however. Lagerfeld is not alone in proposing barn dance chic at Paris fashion week, with Stefano Pilati at Yves Saint Laurent referencing haute-peasant looks from the YSL archive at his show yesterday evening. In particular, clogs – the dominant shoe of both the Chanel and Celine collections – may be set for a comeback.

Allen, looking scrumptious in gold and black Chanel sequins, did rather too good a job of proving that Chanel does not only suit twiglet-shaped models, casting the catwalk models in their costumey milkmaid get-ups and heavy wooden clogs into stark relief.

The models, who had clearly been instructed to “do sexy” for the cameras, looked thoroughly unconvinced by their outfits as they mugged and pouted.

All exciting stuff for Chanel … keep it up!

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 …

Spotify is going offline …. but in a good way

Spotify is going offline. Not in a bad way, but in a potentially profitable way.

From today, “premium” subscribers to the music streaming service will be able to select their playlists and set them to be ‘Available offline’. According to Spotify, “Those playlists will then be synced to the computer so you can listen to your favorite tunes even if your internet connection goes down or if you’re at summer house with no connection at all.”

The interesting question that we haven’t been able to determine but which will doubtless be investigated in great detail by Spotify premium-owning geeks around Europe is: do the songs have any digital rights management (DRM) attached?

Spotify streams in the patent-free Ogg Vorbis format, but it actually caches what you’ve listened to (on a Mac, for example, you’ll find the songs you’ve listened to or might be about to listened to in an strange format in your home folder at /Library/Caches/com.spotify.client/Storage/.

As much as anything, it’s a neat way to avoid having to pay streaming bills (though not of course music publishing charges) if you keep listening to the same songs.

Unclear – but it’s not clear if those files actually have DRM too. Clearly, the app does something else to the files so that it can read them but others can’t. In that sense, the obfuscation amounts to a sort of rights management: Spotify can read them, but others can’t. But it’s not the way you usually think of them.

The question now is whether this will mean more people will sign up for Premium ??

The last time there was a public declaration it was that something like 2% of users have gone for it – though the introduction more recently of the iPhone version may mean that’s moved up. But – Spotify on your desktop machine? What’s the point? Don’t you always have your songs with you if you want them, on a digital music player? It seems like an oddly retrograde step, to encourage people to use computers to store songs again.

Nevertheless, if it grabs you, you can also now pay for your premium subscription.

Spotify has specified that you can store up to 3,333 songs on up to three devices including your phone. You have to have the latest version of Spotify, and may need to log out and in again to see it. Premium only, of course.

So – will that make you more likely to pay for the privilege ?

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!

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Twitter’s worth = $1 Billion

Twitter, the fashionable microblogging service that we all know and love – Here are bedroom we are tweeting away with the best of them.

Twitter has become virtual Marmite thanks to its love-it-or-hate-it status. That is unlikely to change with the news that it’s about to close another round of funding – perhaps as much as $50m.

The story, which was broken by Techcrunch earlier, has now been supported by a number of other reports suggesting that CEO Ev Williams has confirmed the deal to staff and that the money is just around the corner.

Who’s behind the investment? Nobody seems to be sure,  investors are said to include Insight Venture Partners, a New York venture capital firm, T. Rowe Price, the mutual fund company, and the current Twitter backers Spark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners.

But it would value Twitter at around $1bn – significantly more than the $500m that Facebook offered earlier this year. And while that might seem like a ludicrous sum for a service which still has no revenue of note, presumably the company’s investors believe they can sell it on for a significantly higher sum and make some cash on the deal.

Twitter does not necessarily need the capital. It previously raised $55 million and says it has only spent $25 million of that cash.

But the company has big plans to expand the service from its roughly 50 million current users and to ultimately catch up to Facebook — which recently reached 300 million members.

Both of these companies believe they can one day reach a billion users around the world — nearly the entire current population of the Internet. The extra cash, this person said, will help the company keep up with demand and build out the service.

Social Media services to take over the world … we better watch this space.

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http://twitter.com/bedroomlondon