http://freebeer.com.au Business development, marketing advice, virtual worlds, social software, second life Sun, 20 Jul 2008 07:30:22 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Google have this philosophy of putting products into beta early in the development phase and ironing out the problems as they go. It's not going to work with Lively in the virtual world/game space. People are not going to come back. Ask the owners of Second Life. They lose 9/10 ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/07/14/lively-is-a-complete-disaster/ Pictured: Me in Lively, streaming Lisa Nova's Twitter Whore video into my room, Twittery. Lively is described as Google's answer to Second Life. It's not. Second Life is a virtual world; Lively is chat software with 3D avatars. It's browser-based, as opposed to Second Life, which operates with separate software, ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/07/10/lively-and-vivaty/ IBM and Second Life have announced the ability to teleport from Second Life into Open Sim grids (an open source version of Second Life). They describe this as a first; well, my business partner Loki Clifton and others have been doing that stuff for six months. The big guys may ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/07/10/nice-breakthrough-im-writing-you-off/ The ABC are advertising their Local Radio stations on the teev. Fair enough. The ad features snatches of audio from a range of different programs and a fairly static visual background. It's dreadfully unappealing. When you watch television, and this will come as a shock to most of you, your brain ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/07/08/advertising-radio-on-tv/ “Each morning, the Maori people of New Zealand, which is part of Australia, rise at dawn, cook some eggs, put on their grass skirts and go out to the fields to make 42 below vodka." It's the start of a pretty cute 42 Below vodka advertisement that was banned on ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/07/04/what-does-banned-mean/ ABC Chief Kim Dalton has just outlined the White Picket Fence view of media policy, calling for enforced quotas of Australian broadband content. Gee, wouldn't the Internet be great if it were just like television? No. One of the main reasons for the growth of the Internet is its phenomenal diversity ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/06/26/quaint-thinking-mr-dalton/ The resignation of Foster's CEO Trevor O'Hoy, previously their CFO, was accompanied by an admission that the company paid too much for Southcorp wines. The rise of the Australian dollar was also mentioned. But I believe the company's woes have more to do with a lack of dynamism in wine ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/06/16/fosters-the-failure-was-marketing/ Just because you can create a virtual world like Second Life on a mobile phone platform doesn't mean it's a good idea. Lamity is a new virtual world on a mobile phone platform. It's built on Google's Open Source software, Android. Lamity is about to launch in Japan, the world's most ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/05/24/just-because-u-can-doesnt-mean-u-should/ The ABC has always been Amateur Hour on grooming. Its station promotions are the other weakness; sickly imitations of the commercial networks' urgent demands for attention. I'm not suggesting they get better at copying commercial style promotions. Quite the reverse. The problem is an unwillingness to experiment with alternative advertising ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/04/27/bad-hair-day-on-radio-national/ Well that's convenient. My home town Perth has won the right to host the inaugural World Blog Awards, narrowly beating Seville, Manchester and Kansas City (a long fourth). These will be held on Sunday 31st August, 2008 at a venue to be announced. More details as they come to hand. http://freebeer.com.au/2008/04/17/world-blog-awards/