Paul Armstrong (@munkyfonkey)

I was going to start this off with the obligatory “I’m sorry for not blogging for a while…” paragraph but I am a firm believer in blogging when you a) want to and b) when you have something to say. Suffice to say, I’ve been busy beavering away with the team at Mindshare, away [see left] and just generally thinking about where everything is going.

I decided to get away from London for a while – one can only take so much rioting – and went to Paris.  I rode, I walked, I did the tourist thing but generally I people watched like never before.  I just stopped.  I observed how people interacted with the technology and world around them. From tourists to residents, young and old. I just grabbed the iPad, added some dark glasses, un Coke Light and observed.  My gawking was shameless. From the tourists taking holiday photos with their phones rather than a digital camera, the mum using her smartphone to pacify a child at a table, the QR code tour of the Latin district,  to an old couple asking a pair of young people for directions -

Read more

I penned an article for PaidContent about the changing face of media in 2011 and beyond.

“The brutal truth, rightly or wrongly is this: consuming news remains laborious and a significant time/space commitment, whatever your age or situation.”

Read more

2011 will be all about controlled curation
- Aggregation = good. Curation? Better. The signs are all there – Flipboard, Pulse, tablet uptake, Facebook groups, aggregators getting editors. Whilst content remains key to success, the advent of product placement and ‘must-see’ ads (do they really exist?), content that is edgy or useful will remain popular. Ads that do not ‘add’ will remain irrelevant and unloved. ‘Know me’ or ‘no me’ remains in play but those that see success will have done it in an uncreepy way. Read more

Facebook has gotten its hair did… again.  And in usual fashion it’s doing pretty good job of saying what the changes are (‘60 minutes’ slot was a nice touch).  Good blog post and help page but still nothing feels… warm (although the tour is pretty good and [gasp] it’s opt-in for once – although I am reading it will eventually steamroll fully in 2011).  Here are some immediate changes that affect you, oh and if you want to see it in the flesh change your profile here (just click on the green button top right).

Read more

Brett Wilson is Co-Founder/CEO of Tubemogul “a video advertising and analytics platform that connects advertisers with highly targeted audiences”. I first found out about Tubemogul a couple of years ago when I worked in Los Angeles at MySpace Video – cracking platform that anyone can use. Part free product and part paid service they are extremely useful and are really expanding and diversifying (including doing the rounds and opening offices in Europe).  I snaged 5 minutes with Brett to see what’s in it for PRO’s and communicators. Read more

Whether you are impressed, scared, ambivalent or it passed you by entirely, you can’t deny Facebook’s vision and ambitious nature recently.

Short story : Facebook announced a series of changes to it’s ‘messaging’ offering: now the goal is ubiquitous messaging that others have been messing about with for years.  It’s definitely NOT email (!)… but you get a new @facebook.com email address… Not to undersell it however, make no mistake this is a big deal.  Oh and it’s not Google Wave although I can see why people are saying it is – it’s basically chat with email and SMS added in.  Oh and it’s all opt-in.  Nice…. right?

Read more