I'm off to the Electric Picnic today

It's going to be quite an adventure... train to Birkenhead, overnight ferry to Dublin, pick up the hire car and drive to Stradbally, set up tent and enjoy the fun for 3 days and nights. Then back up to Dublin on Monday, overnight ferry and train back to London.

The good news about the ferry is that we (me, Sarah, Sophie and Deirdre) have a cabin which includes an evening meal and breakfast so at least we'll start the break with a good meal and a proper rest.

It does mean of course that there will be no blogging for a few days. Rest assured, I'll catch up on my return with tales of bands and late nights and shonky tents and beer and craic, oh and a bit of mobile marketing thrown in.

Did you know there was a Ringtone Society

"No?", me neither until today. The Ringtone Society is "an international platform that aims to liberate the world of musically banal ringtones" It invites composers and musicians from around the world to join them in creating ringtones and inviting the general public to acquire and use as many as we like. They also place 'audio tags' in the public environment thus putting avant garde culture back in the public domain.

The society started in Holland but is heading down under and teaming up with the Melbourne International Arts Festival to launch the society on to a global stage. As part of the festival, composers, artists and musicians have been asked to enter their ringtones (not limited to music, can be sound effects or spoken word), which will then become part of the global ringtone library. In addition, festival-goers can attend a series of ringtone concerts and experience live recordings of original ringtones by Australian and Festival guest composers.

There is a small fee Aus$1.50 or Euro 0.90 to download the ringtones to your mobile phone if you have an Australian or Dutch phone of which a percentage goes to the original artist. Payments provided by Mobile Money, which coincidentally, has 2 offices - one in Holland and one in Australia ;)

Words of Wisdom from Dr Seuss

Quote of the day from my google home page:

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

Dr Seuss, illustrator and author 1904 to 1991

Coca Cola embraces mobile marketing in Japan

I saw this web page (it's in Japanese) and I figured it was showing how to pay for soft drinks with your mobile phone. So to double check, I asked my friend, Jan from W2forum, to translate it for me to make sure I'd got it right. I've got some screenshots here too.

It seems I did. There are two ways to pay - either oyster-card stylee with a 'wallet phone' which is pre-installed. Or if you have a less fancy phone, then you need to download an application you can charge up with credit and then you buy a drinks coupon. This displays as a QR code on your phone's screen. You then hold it up to the reader on the machine and you buy your drink.

Jan then adds that it has a rather interesting loyalty point scheme which he was just writing about in a report which I can share here.

"Coca Cola uses the mobile phone as a loyalty point system for their Cmode mobile-enabled drinks vending machines in Japan. consumers can use NFC (near field communication) or a QR code generated by an application installed on their phone to purchase drinks at Cmode vending machines. For each purchase, consumers earn loyalty points which are stored on their mobile phone. As the number of loyalty points increases, the consumer's loyalty ranking 'levels up' and the number of loyalty points earned per drink purchased also increases. Consumers can redeem loyalty points as free drinks at a vending machine, or on digital content such as screensavers and wallpapers at the Coca Cola mobile site. To use the loyalty scheme, consumers must first register to become a member of "Club Cmode". Club Cmode provides Coca Cola with the opportunity to interact with their consumers as well as promote new products and sell mobile content."

Gapingvoid hits the right note

Go see more of Hugh's stuff at gapingvoid.com.
The picture above is one of Hugh's designs for Stormhoek wine labels.

Play the Guitar? Got a mobile phone?

then you need the Yamaha Musician's Companion as written about here. It's an essential tool which includes a chord reference with over 1100 chord fingerings and even plays each note. There's also a metronome to keep the beat whether your instrument is the recorder or the double bass. There's a beat finder enabling users to determine the tempo of a song and a pitch pipe to allow you to tune your instrument to reference a standard pitch.

You can read more about the software here and also buy it at http://www.yamaha-wireless.com. The site is viewable from your PC or your mobile phone.

All this for USD 9.99. Sounds like a bargain to me.