We are all back and mostly recovered from Cannes and of course I just have to cover the technological side of the trip (you’ll read more about the people there this week :). This was my second trip ever traveling with an international cell phone and the first time expecting to have a working Internet connection. The first part worked out well; the second part, not so much.

PHONES
All five of us modified our iPhones to accept international SIM Cards, which allowed both calling and data. This was an improvement over last year, as the temporary cards I found in 2007 could only make calls. We could have used the AT&T international plan, but their prices were simply not competitive for the amount of usage we were expecting. Even with the french Sim cards, the international data rates are still outrageously expensive at $40/megabyte. I thought it would make sense to turn off automatic e-mail downloading, but in reality if you needed to get any e-mail it ended up pulling it all down anyways.

Google maps were useful in Cannes, especially for the Villa parties that were up in the hillsides. Texting was also great as we would often walk back from late-night parties typing in our locations to each other and managing to make it back to the room at around the same time.

One of the best parts of our phone experience was the most low-tech. Erika made each of us laminated cards with our phone numbers on one side and our schedules on the back. Whenever people asked for my number, I could pull out the card and read it to them.

INTERNET
Our Internet connection was a totally different story. We were planning on doing Internet demos in our room on Tuesday and Thursday and made our entire lodging decisions based on which apartment had a solid Internet connection. We found after many calls to the front office that our Internet connection in our apartment was not going to work. Apparently, the landlord forgot to pay the Internet bill and had the connection terminated, which would take 4 to 5 days to reinstate. Plus, Ramy installed software that came with the DSL modem to troubleshoot and the plugin managed to take down his laptop for the entire trip. No fun. We heard that many other people had unreliable connections, even at high-end hotels like the Carlton.

On one hand, it would be nice to be able to be away from an Internet connection for more than a few days without going into withdrawal. Unfortunately, we expected to do demos, coordinate events and post blog entries that required our connection being up. For me, the expectation to have excellent cell and Internet connections was the biggest change for me this year, definitely a far cry from wandering into an Internet Cafe to check email every few days. And with these changes, the world continues to shrink.

Regards,

Bill

The ‘boards Creative Workshop confirmed one thing. Advertising as we know it is officially over. Traditional advertising is dead. Toronto’s own, Steve Mykolyn and Jason McCann of TAXI, summed it up with an in depth analysis of the proclivity for Weird S*%t. However you may explain it, the industry is forging new paths.

I am going to take you down two paths that sparked my interest. The first being AKQA’s most impressive digital activity [their term, not mine] for Nike. “After six hugely successful years, Run London had earned a place in the hearts of 30-something occasional runners in London. This year Nike wanted to focus on a younger audience and put Nike+ at the heart of the campaign. AKQA’s answer was a brand new city attack. Supersonic invited London’s youth to prove their speed and to earn tickets for themselves and two mates to the ultimate 1K race and after party featuring two of London’s hottest underground favorites, Dizzee Rascal and The Enemy. (Creative Showcase. 2007)” AKQA Executive Creative Director, Lars Bastholm. Sounds like your standard 1K in a city? Not quite. The word ‘integrated’ took on a new meaning, and I finally get it. Integrated = experience. They took an annual event to whole new level. Speed. Night. Music. Music moves you. Literally. Nike+ technology allows information to be shared and experienced by not only the participants, but also all of London. Be the 50,016th fastest person in London. And let all of London know it. Genius.

The second thing is definitely the path less traveled. Merging architecture with advertising. President and Creative Director, Jakob Trollbäck, shared their venture into the realm of Environmental Design. Having conceptualized and produced content for one of the world’s largest high-resolution video walls, the project is more of an installation piece than it is advertising. The piece was commissioned by InterActive Corp. for their new Frank Gehry-designed headquarters as a means of building brand awareness for their primary businesses [Ask.com, Ticketmaster.com and Match.com]. The execution is both beautiful and smart, and the effect appeals to the subconscious in a seemingly unintentional way. Again, integration at its best.

I have to mention one last thing. A big thank you to ‘boards and the advisory committee for including VICE/VBS.TV/Virtue. And thank you to Virtue Founder, Spencer Baim, for answering what I feel is one of the most critical questions in advertising today: How To Stay Relevant. Everyone take note. For those of you who are not familiar with the brand, VICE is arguably the coolest identity in the world. [among other things, Spike Jonze is the Creative Director] I will let it speak for itself. Please check out

coming to select theaters in New York City and LA on May 23rd. This is but one project. I have included links below to learn more about the wonder that is VICE.

Learn More:

Some seriously tech savvy music lovers have discovered that if you listen to music on your Vista PC AND transfer files (upload or download), you will see a dramatic file transfer performance decrease - up to 90% on a fast network.

This does not affect Windows XP or lower. For an in-depth review, follow the link. http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2007/08/27/1833290.aspx

For everyone else, just take our word for it. As for Windows Vista, c’mon guys… you ADDED this in there. Microsoft’s response is here - http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=724

We’ve been hard at work making modifications to Wiredrive, which we are excited to start showing to clients soon. We wanted to share a little bit of our source of inspiration as we help artists migrate to a pure digital workflow.

Enjoy!

Several months ago, Microsoft dropped support for their Mac Media player and handed over the responsibilities to Flip4Mac . We on the bleeding edge of technology have found that Flip4Mac, which lets Windows Media Files play inside Quicktime, didn’t run on the new Intel Macs.

Well, now it does. Check out the 2.1 update and start watching your CNN videos again!