Henry Phish

On the heels of the GM Volt and all of the renewable energy articles I ran across an article for the worlds Best Looking Solar Gadget Charger. I’m not sure I could muster up the strength to call it the best ever, but it is kind of a cool thing to look at…probably charges my IPod pretty well too.

Anyway, take a look, it’s kind of fun.

I read on Reuters that Best Buy is filing for a patent in Russia for both it’s Future Shop and Best Buy brands.

For those not in the know, Future Shop is an electronics retail company in Canada that borrowed the idea of using non-commission sales people from the Best Buy stores of the 90’s and has since gone on to become very successful…subsequently being bought out by Best Buy as of March 2001.

With it’s store in Hong Kong as a test market, and it’s majority interest in Jiangsu Five Star Appliance Co., Ltd, we’ve seen that Best Buy, like Walmart and Home Depot before them, have their eyes set on the emerging foreign market. Russia, it seems, is next on the list.

Looking back at what the Russian Federation been through with the fall of communism, the splitting up of the provinces, their rectification, their political struggles in the last few years, terrorism, it’s very definitely a country going through a lot of cultural growth. And with cultural growth and democracy comes the realization that people will want to express that. Often through consumerism.

I remember when Communism fell in the Soviet Union and McDonalds moved into the country. People lined up around the block for the taste of an American staple: a hamburger. At the time, the burger cost almost a weeks salary for the average Soviet, but the experience was something they required in order to break out of their old ways of thinking and bridge into the modern world. Now, after 17 years, and the turmoil of years of political strife behind them, it’s not surprising to see Best Buy touting the country as the next big road marker on their path to success.

With it’s Best Buy and Future Shop brands firmly in tow, it should be interesting to see what they do with their patents in the next year or so. Also, I want to know how much the Russians will pay for a plasma TV. Probably a lot more than me.

Best Buy in Russia

According to CNET, Bloomberg news outlet mistakenly published an obituary for the still very much alive Apple Inc CEO Steve Jobs. After having a bout with cancer nearly a decade ago and having appeared ill at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2008 the notice was most likely at the tip of some editors tongue anyway when they accidentally pushed the publish key. Still, the article made me think about how important Steve Jobs has been to several key industries in his lifetime. Everything from the original Apple computer to the writing of the NextStep operating system, to IPod and ITunes, the IPhone, IMovie and Final Cut Pro, Pixar.

The man might as well have been Alexander Grahm Bell himself for all the influence he’s had on todays culture, especially in the past few years.

Per the obituary:

He “helped make personal computers as easy to use as telephones, changed the way animated films are made, persuaded consumers to tune into digital music, and refashioned the mobile phone.”

The obituary itself made me feel a little sad, but is a good reminder how single individuals can help to shape our culture in profound ways.

Good to hear you’re still alive Steve.

Bloomberg mistakenly publishes Steve Jobs obituary

Here’s a neat ad depicting how Google Earth is expected to look by the year 2020. I have no doubt it will probably look a lot better than this…and will obviously work on my phone with my GPS.

Lets face it, DC has always had a knack for under developing it’s properties, with the only significant DC movie franchises coming out of Warner Bros in the past three decades being Batman and Superman two or three times over.

As it is, with DC now stating it’s intent to copy the successful Marvel model of establishing a stable of single character movies and building to a larger platform such as the Avengers or Justice League movies, I’m hoping to see a little bit more from Warner Bros than their previous attempts.

The only real limitation to their progress is likely to be the separation existing between the Warner Bros studio devision and DC comics. Without a strong leader calling the shots up front, like Avi Arid did in the beginning of the Marvel Studio days, these movies flounder, and we get a lot of he said she said from DC about things they’d like to do but never will.

The problem with DC is that it they have always drawn their characters a little to iconicly for mainstream film; they are near instantly recognizable but almost a little too larger than life. Superman for instance had no discernible weaknesses before writers developed kryptonite. Marvel, on the other hand, has always capitalized on working class heros such as Spiderman, X-Men, and Wolverine; characters that people can, on some level, identify with…and they just happen to have super powers.

The latter is easier to capitalize on in movie format, while the former seems to work better in animation…where Warner Bros excels…and where some level of surreality is expected.

Anyway, with several thousand characters on their roster, including well known characters such as The Flash, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern, DC and Warner Bros have the resources to be successful in the future. It’s just a matter of putting it all together.

Warner Bros. Confirms Superman Reboot (yet another)

With the announcement that T-Mobile is the first phone to offer a mobile phone powered by the Google Android software, it begs the question, what is the future of Google?

In the last few years, Google has pushed further and further into not only the realms of the popular internet but into the realm of brick and mortar companies as well. Sites such as Google Earth, Google Book Search, and acquisitions such as Youtube and Google Finance show Google as a significant force in media, while software additions such as Android and their numerous investment activities such as financing geothermal energy research continue to demonstrate them as a forward thinking company that is just beginning to stretch out into the world.

In paraphrase of their founder, first we’ll figure out how to do it, then we’ll figure out how to make the money.

Google has made huge strides in creating innovative methods for content distribution, and with the advent of Google Android, the company has taken this innovation to the streets. While Microsoft and Apple remain significant competitors, the content Google provides puts them in a serious advantage position. As I’ve said before, people demand to be less constrained by physical limitations such as computers, and the Android software is a good step toward obtaining this goal for their customers.

For a brief history of the rise of Google, check out the video below:

I saw a couple of articles the other day on the creation of two new Solar Plants in California, which is interesting to me since the plants are being created by Pacific Gas and Electric, which uses photovolaic cells developed by SunPower, which is itself partially owned by Cypress Semiconductor, which is in turn a Minnesota based company. It’s an interesting connection that makes me wish I owned one of these companies, since the power industry is turning out to be big business…if it wasn’t already.

For more info, check out:

New Solar Plants in California

Cypress Soars on Solar Power Deal

Jeff discovered an article on CNET using the heat absorbed by asphalt roads and parking lots to create electricity and heat nearby buildings. Pipes are run under the ground, and water running through the pipes wisks away the heat. The asphalt is cooled in the process reducing heat pollution (heat island phenomenon). It’s already been used in Switzerland.

According to the study:

“The significance of this concept lies in the fact that the massive installed base of parking lots and roadways creates a low-cost solar collector an order of magnitude more productive than traditional solar cells. The significantly high surface area can offset the expected lower efficiency (compared to traditional solar cells) by several orders of magnitude, and hence result in significantly lower cost per unit of power produced,”

Tapping the hot asphalt jungle for energy

So continuing with the article I wrote the other week on Subways current marketing philosophy, I was thinking I might elaborate on a thought I’ve been having over the summer: viral marketing rules.

What Subway really needs is to get back into peoples psyches again, and viral marketing could be a real groundswell movement.

There’s a real niche with the college and twenties demographic that really responds to viral marketing. With a mature brand such as Subway, people already know your product, what you want to sell them is a lifestyle choice; this type of ad campaign is great for that. Much as McDonalds has done with catchy jingles and their family values ads, Subway could do with hip and trendy online videos, websites, and interactive media.

Check out this ad for cell phone popping popcorn on youtube as a prime example:

The ad itself has been seen by millions of viewers and has garnered a lot of media attention. A good viral marketing campaign could really capture peoples imagination, and bring them back to conscience thought about a brand that has begun to stale…no pun intended.

So what is the cell phone popping popcorn ad selling? Cellular gadgets, and I need one!

While I was surfing the net I came across an article about the differences between Googles search engine and other major search engines such as Yahoo or Microsoft. Nearly everyone is familiar with the Google superiority difference in their searching algorithm, but the take of this blog author was a bit different, that being: Google doesn’t want you.

The basic gist of the article is that while most other major search engines trap you at their site through countless clicks, Google simply takes you to your destination and leaves you.

That being said, sites such as this one and others use Google Adsense and Google Adwords to bring dollars to their site, so Google never really goes very far. If anything, Google has simply given more power to their content providers to drive their advertising for them, and it’s this sense of ownership…and honestly greed…that really gives Google that edge.

Google encourages people to use their service by being the best at what they do, and we in turn use their advertising because we expect like results.

When it comes down to it, Google is just the biggest and best independent publisher of them all, and as much content as Yahoo and Microsoft can create by themselves, it’s the individual content providers that matter more in the big picture; to them, perception is everything.