Brand Noise

Good Technology Makes Good Pictures, Not Smiles

Why is a smile synonymous with a good picture? Sony has been banking on the connection with its new Cyber-Shot camera with its Smile Shutter technology. Yet reviews are less than favorable: “Smile shutter sounds appealing in theory…But it strikes me as a work in progress.”

My own favorite photos of my six-year-old daughter are when she’s at her most contemplative. Maybe they can fine-tune a camera for me with a Brood Button? This is a case of where technology is not keeping up. The smile thing as good photography is something that lives in the realm of boomers and silents.

Not such a provocative concept considering that the first successful picture was produced in June/July 1827 by Niépce required an exposure of eight hours. Who could have possibly smiled that long?  Things didn't get snappy until about a century later.

(photo: Sabine demonstrates that pain makes a great picture.)

Parent/Kid Sharing is About Fun

Check out this bit of kid/parental sharing. Can someone give me one compelling reason to act like an adult? The idea of play doesn’t stop when a Gen Xer or Yer becomes an adult, let alone a parent. Now it's about seeing the fun side of all things. Even when your house is being overrun by Littlest Pet Shop, as demonstrated by director Rebecca and her dad, the cameraman.

Consumers Crave Real Mobile Empowerment

The Wall Street Journal reports that American Express Co. is discontinuing its "Express Pay" fob that was touted as a convenience for consumers who didn't want to dig into their wallets for a credit card.

Let's face it. It's still a card. And you still have to dig in your wallet for it. And often if your charge is over $25, you still have to sign for it. So truly what changes about the behavior?

By now most early adopters are so past the concept of these fobs, that it's just plain gimmicky. The trouble is what they really need are cohesive mobile payment services, but we're only seeing a glimmer of that in the US. And where we think mobility is sublime, like in Japan, it's actually a rather pricey proposition and not so in step as we'd hope for.

That said, there are some steadfast mobile shopping services bubbling out there. Here are three: GoMobo, ShopText and S'lifter.

Earlier this year, we sent out video journalists in London, NYC and Tokyo to talk with our friends and colleagues who were using some aspect of m-commerce. These interviews appear in a 3-part mCommerce series produced by Tellabs. The series debuted at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Mobile Devices Fall Short in Bathe-ability

A survey released Tuesday showed that 41.2% of people in Japan have at least once taken their cell phones to the bathtub to make calls, type emails, listen to music or play games. The practice extends across all sexes and ages, although teenagers were the most likely to have bathed with their phones, according to the poll of 16,250 people carried out by video-game maker Sega.

Now why would this surprise anyone? Taking your phone, your music, your games into the bathroom is pretty much common human behavior. No one raises an eyebrow when you bring magazines in the bath or complete a crossword while soaking.

The problem is that the devices aren't ready to succumb to the perils of h2O. Ask my old Verizon. He sizzled for two days after my toddler proudly sent him swimming a few years back. He recovered but he was never the same.

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Toy Companies Phasing Out Nickel-Cadmium Batteries

Two of the largest U.S. toy companies, Toys "R" Us Inc. and Mattel Inc., said they will phase out nickel-cadmium batteries, a technology associated with widespread environmental contamination and health problems in China.

The move comes as toy makers are scrambling to rid their products of toxins, after a wave of recalls last year triggered panic about the safety of Chinese-made toys. The bans on cadmium batteries are a sign the industry's safety concerns are beginning to extend to workers in China, where the vast majority of the world's toys are made.

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Sports Gaming is being Redefined

Proving that respected sports involvement has gone beyond physical participation vs. the couch potato to a more cerebral holistic involvement that allows for real participation and is buoyed by technology:

As reported by AdAge, sports video gaming used to mean sitting around on couches frantically punching buttons on a controller -- with the only other minimal exertion being smack talk. Then came the Nintendo Wii. Suddenly, sports video gaming meant getting up off the couch to virtually play by actually jumping, running, swinging and pitching.

Now, Nintendo is tying its active game play to real-life sporting events. Its winter marketing plan includes a slate of baseball, golf and monster-truck sponsorships and events that put the Wii and DS in sports fans' hands.

Photo: The 'Nintendo Fan Network' allows fans to get stats, player info, watch extra videos, order food and drinks and interact with each other during games.

Microsoft Stays Out Of The Ring, Smart Move

Microsoft will not launch a product that competes directly with Apple's iPhone, Chairman Bill Gates said in an interview with Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. On the other hand, Verizon hasn't been shy about pitting its Voyager against the iPhone, with a direct mail campaign claiming the Voyager as "the phone everyone wants." Why keep going there?

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Tools To Energize a Writer

Talk about cultural affinities. Consider this POV in the NY Times where a writer declares her farewell to Microsoft Word. Kudos to those who think ahead of what someone just might need. Used to be that choice meant reverting to a typewriter or pen and Moleskine. Not true anymore.

"Goodbye to Word’s prim rulers, its officious yardsticks, its self-serious formatting toolbar with cryptic abbreviations (ComicSansMS?)...Our redeemer is Scrivener."

Scrivener is the independently produced word-processing program of the aspiring novelist Keith Blount, a Londoner who taught himself code and graphic design and marketing, just to create a software that jibes with the way writers think--encouraging note-taking and outlining and restructuring.

To create art, you need peace and quiet. Not only does Scrivener save like a maniac so you needn’t bother, you also get to drop the curtain on life’s prosaic demands with a feature that makes its users swoon: full screen.

Our personal favorite feature: Mac OS X only (not compatible with Windows). Now how do you like how that feels?

Then, there's also the WriteRoom, the ultimate spartan writing utopia. With WriteRoom, you don’t compose on anything so confining as paper or its facsimile. Instead, you rocket out into the unknown, into profound solitude, and every word of yours becomes the kind of outer-space skywriting that opens “Star Wars.” Black screen. Green letters. (Beautiful!)

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Reinvented Keyboard Gives Musicians Visual Control

Electronic musicians like Norman Fairbanks have a new ax to wield: the Tenori-on. Meaning "sound in your palm" in Japanese, the eight-inch-square instrument lets would-be techno artists make beats and sequences by sliding and tapping their fingers around the touch-sensitive surface—kind of like finger painting.

Matrixes of LED buttons cover the front and back surfaces and light up as you touch them, so you can visualize the music while you're composing. If your buddy or bandmate also has a Tenori-on, you can connect the instruments for synchronized jam sessions.

Yamaha is test-launching the Tenori-on in the UK at tenori-on.co.uk for about $1,200.

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Model of the Future: Collaborative Existence

In 2006, a conversation started on CIO Insight in answer to the question of "Am I a bad parent if encourage my child's musical pursuits rather than encourage a technical education?" Posts flooded in flaming about on both sides of the issue: Music=starving artist. Tech=guaranteed income. This made us here at scenarioDNA wonder: Is the issue truly that cut and dry anymore? We don't think so.

Take our own world of planning. Here the best lessons learned come from a wide breadth of disciplines. But Wired Magazine brought it all home however in this latest article:

Video Games Live is a 135-minute showcase of music from arcade, computer, and console titles, arranged for and performed by a 66-piece orchestra and a 16-person choir. Its creator and emcee is Tommy Tallarico. When he was 10, he'd use his Commodore 64 to splice together his favorite sound effects and then invite friends to come by and watch him play air guitar over the tracks. As an adult, he has written scores for games like Advent Rising and Earthworm Jim, and today he hosts The Electric Playground on G4 TV, a cable network devoted to gaming.

Videogame music first invaded US concert halls in 2004, when Jason Michael Paul, founder of Play!, brought Dear Friends, a program of music from the Final Fantasy catalog, to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

To date, these venues are more fun than profitable. But the collaboration that is thriving among these worlds mixing pop culture with art with things people love breeds a model for success. Our hope is that someday no one will have to make the choice between what they love vs. what makes them a living—however modest. Already no one from Gen X and beyond is willing to sacrifice design for cost. Why would they sacrifice their careers?