Steve Ellis : Random

Can you spot the eight iconic World Cup moments in our video?

Steve — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:19:00 GMT

Here's something to occupy the barren hours before kick off.

The creative team tell me there are a magnificent eight moments of iconic World Cup history recreated in the video we knocked up for our Mobile Keepy Uppy game.

Can you find them?

BTW - we passed 10,000 downloads at the weekend.

Tags: Mobile, World Cup, Keep Uppy World Cup, Metia Labs, World Cup of Time Wasting

Nifty. Latest score from Mobile Keepy Uppy World Cup: 6000+ downloads, 2000+ video views

Steve — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:34:00 GMT

As England switches off from work and switches on the telly for tonight's match, here's a latest score from World Cup Keepy Uppy.

In just one week the 'patently silly football juggling game for mobile phone users' aka Mobile Keepy Uppy has been downloaded an astounding 6,330 times (that's 5,201 times from our site and 1,129 times from Freeware PocketPC).

Which is one download every 90 seconds since it went live. Don't you wish that was Emile Heskey's goals to seconds on the pitch ratio?

And the dodgy video has been viewed 2,200 times on YouTube.

Tags: Mobile, World Cup, Keep Uppy World Cup, Metia Labs, World Cup of Time Wasting

Mobile Keepy Uppy latest score - four star review and 800+ downloads

Steve — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:16:00 GMT

Quick update on our Mobile Keepy Uppy game.

Seems there are a few people out there with time on their hands.

The game is featured here on the Freeware Pocket PC site, and elsewhere on Mobile TopSoft amongst others.

On the Freeware site it has over 800 downloads so far, gets four stars out of five in reviews and has some great feedback.

A few people comment it doesn't work on their phone - which is a shame all round, we agree, but we were pretty upfront about the limited number of phones, HTC mostly, which can run the game.

Here are our favourite comments so far:

"excellent game...good graphics and sound effects...great response to g sensor"

"Nice little app for killing time. My kids will love it. I like how you can see the shadow of the ball as it's coming down. Good job"

Tags: Mobile, World Cup, Keep Uppy World Cup, Metia Labs, World Cup of Time Wasting

Guess who wins the Mobile Keepy Uppy World Cup?

Steve — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 08:27:00 GMT

It all seemed plausible enough at the time.

The chaps in Metia Labs said: "We really want to explore the uses for accelerometers in mobile phones, maybe look at the use of physics engines too. Perhaps some kind of a game would be a good vehicle to see how we could use different physical senses to shape a mobile experience."

A week later and this noble intent morphed into a virtual version of football's Keepy Uppy played on mobile phones.

Pretty soon after that and we are having the Mobile Keepy Uppy World Cup in our London office. It is all explained here and you can download the game too.

For the record, however improbable it sounds, England won.

Tags: Mobile, World Cup, Keep Uppy World Cup, Metia Labs, World Cup of Time Wasting

New toy: Google Street Views

Steve — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:05:00 GMT

After a couple of days of MIX09 inspired love for Microsoft, I have also to give credit to Google for getting Street Views out to market. This is Metia's London office view.

Eerily quiet though for the heart of Covent Garden. If they had dropped us a mail, we'd have given them a wave.

Like many new toys, not actually sure I'll need to come back to it that often. Shame the housing market died, great for that purpose.

If you want to go and twiddle with the perspective 'live' then go here, the embedded link didn't like the blog.

The Age of Stupid debuts with People's Premiere

Steve — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:30:00 GMT

My friend Dave Hampton - aka the Carbon Coach - nudged me to highlight the premiere of The Age of Stupid, a film designed to get audiences to re-consider their personal self justifying defences around the issue of climate change.

Ever the cynic, normally I smell a rat when Dave sends me green spam (sorry, eco educational links) but whether it's because the film is made by a credible team, seems to have got decent reviews, or probably it's simply that anything with Pete Postlethwaite in it is always worth the ticket, it seems worth a plug.

If I wanted to try and justify this post, The Age of Stupid has a nice crowdsourcing angle in how it raised finance, seems to come with the full suite of social media groundswell tools, and is launching itself through a series of 64 People's Premiere's at cinema's around the UK on Sunday 15th March this coming weekend. So, for social media scientists, it will be interesting to see what momentum it generates at, and after, launch.

Dave is speaking at the Maidenhead premiere, which is sold out (doubtless because of his public speaking skills), should you be there, give him a big round of applause.

The good news about marketing budgets

Steve — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 05:46:00 GMT

In this post Ben McConnell finds the good news in the bad news about marketing budgets.

We agree with Ben. Certainly the areas of our business that are very relevant to the problems faced by our customers: virtual events to get around travel freezes; customer reference programs to sustain sales revenues; and just about everything we do that is measurable in building and growing customer and partner communities, are still arousing interest from marketers dealing with budget cuts.

This is my third recession. We started a business in each of the last two recessions, they are both still running, both still successful. So I agree with Ben, there is opportunity in this kind of turmoil.

A recession tends to flush old models and practices far more rapidly down the toilet than ever happens in periods of economic stability.

In my experience the key is having the flexibility and adaptability to change what you do and how you do it; to respond to the new environment immediately and to be relevant to the needs of your customer.

If you are unwilling or unable to adapt you'll soon find your business up to its ears in toilet duck and fast navigating the U-bend.

Gene Hunt just called me a dozy faced pansy

Steve — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:56:00 GMT

That's it I'm retiring from social media. It doesn't get any better than this.

Out of the blue, Gene Hunt (fictional Life on Mars detective from the 70s) starts to follow me on Twitter.

Better than that even, he really is following me on Twitter because he gets in touch with some tasty retro abuse.

All of which made me laugh out loud.

It also made me wonder what other fictional characters - or perhaps real, but long since dead characters - are out there living on in Twitterland?

Is there anyone else I need to know of? (Twitter's search feature was broken when I tried to look so no help there).

Oliver Reed might be entertaining. Peter Cook perhaps. Dorothy Parker wittier. Surely, you'd just need to load all the one liners into a bot and press start? Actually we just made a bot for a client that automatically answered frequently asked questions...

Tags: Twitter, Gene Hunt, Life on Mars, Oliver Reed, Dorothy Parker

PS - Gene's not as hard as he makes out, he wanted to kiss and make up in an email sent afterwards

UPDATE: seems I'm collecting the whole cast Chris Skelton, Annie Cartwright and Party Seven icon, Ray Carling

2008 Seattle Offsite aka PubCrawl 08

Steve — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 20:59:00 GMT

Here's the agenda for our 2008 Seattle Offsite. Doesn't look like there'll be too much PPT then.

Nice job Kathleen.

Spin free nation. Say it like it is.

Steve — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:22:00 GMT

Seeing any Government representative being blunt about their motivation is refreshing.

Apparently, the Chinese stuck a photogenic nine year old girl in front of the huge TV audience for the Olympics opening ceremony, lip syncing to the voice of a different seven year old girl, who had a perfect voice but didn't look as 'flawless'.

How did the organizing official justify such an act?

"After several tests, we decided to put Lin Miaoke on the live picture, while using Yang Peiyi's voice," he told the radio station.
"The reason for this is that we must put our country's interest first," he added.

No spin there then.

My Olympics prediction: couch potato nation to trump swimmers, runners and jumpers

Steve — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:01:00 GMT

My colleague John was underwhelmed by the science underpinning my Euro 2008 prediction: Germany (least TVs per household in Europe) to win, following no UK teams even qualifying (UK has most TVs per household in Europe). But it's August...

Obviously at Euro 2008 Germany fell at the final hurdle, but that still doesn't undermine confidence in my couch potato theory of UK sport.

With the Olympics fast approaching my next trivial prediction is... the majority of the UK's medals will come in couch potato sports - ie those that are done either sitting down (rowing, cycling, sailing, equestrianism), standing very, very still (archery) or even, best of all, lying down (some types of shooting).

Actually, I think I could be onto something here.

With the nation's youth addicted to Nintendo Wii, Lord Coe and his cronies should start lobbying hard to help increase the medal haul in 2012. If BMX can become an Olympic sport, the Wii should have no trouble.

Tags: Nintendo Wii, Olympics, Lord Coe

Where were you 20 years ago?

Steve — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:46:00 GMT

Metia is twenty years old tomorrow - Friday 25th July - as you'd imagine, everyone at the various Metia offices around the world will be celebrating with a glass of champagne or two.

If you too want to wallow in nostalgia for 1988, I can recommend:

Wikipedia's listing for 1988 - there's a nice timeline - Wimbledon won the FA Cup, so it was an auspicious year for plucky outsiders
the I Love 1988 site from the BBC (it features the Ninja Turtles, Bros and the launch of Richard & Judy's Good Morning breakfast TV show, just to remind you what a cultural highspot 1988 was).
or choose a track from the BBC's 1988 Jukebox (Yazz and The Only Way is Up probably best fits how Clare and I were feeling at the time)

Short and sweet is always best, so a brief word of thanks to all of the 200 or so, talented people whose endeavours make the business what it is today, and thanks also to all those who helped us along the way, whether as a customer, an employee, or just a friend of the business, of whom there have been many. Thanks all.

Well, I know exactly where I was this day twenty years ago - plotting world domination in a Cafe off Carnaby Street, just Clare, myself, a mobile phone and a lot of optimism - but where were you?

Tags: Metia, Write Image

PS - I have no idea who the people in that photo are ;-)

Why the home nations aren't at Euro 2008, and why Germany will probably win it.

Steve — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:18:00 GMT

It's in the data.

I mentioned before some research work our client LG Electronics had undertaken investigating Europe's TV viewing habits ahead of the upcoming summer of sport.

One data point caught my eye. UK citizens own the most TVs per household of any of the 12 European nations surveyed at 2.72 per household (level with Italy). Whereas Germans own the least TVs per household at 1.85 per household.

So, while Britons keep fit exercising our remote control fingers and watching football on TV, the Germans are busy outside playing it (practising penalties, no doubt).

And, yes, I did wait till after the final whistle before pressing post.

Ronaldo: he shoots, he scores, he looks good on TV

Steve — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:48:00 GMT

Another reason to be jealous of Cristiano Ronaldo - as if the salary, the medals and all the awards weren't enough - now its official, your girlfriend probably fancies him.

According to 12,000 European women, Ronaldo is the hottest property in world football, and they weren't referring to his potential transfer to Real Madrid.

How can I justify this post as work?

Well, our client LG Electronics undertook the research to understand what is motivating us Europeans to stay tuned in to the summer of sport ahead of us. And clearly, at least some women viewers, have a very different rationale to justify that new super sharp HD TV purchase.

Sometimes in PR, the idea, the timing and the news angle all fall into place. And sometimes all those things happen when you are aiming at a big, broad audience that spills out far beyond tech media into the consumer mainstream.

This was one of those moments for our consumer tech team. Thanks to great work by LG's country PR teams and local agencies there is coverage from Lisbon to Auckland.

Now back to pitching server virtualization as sexy.

Steve Ellis : Random

Can you spot the eight iconic World Cup moments in our video?

Nifty. Latest score from Mobile Keepy Uppy World Cup: 6000+ downloads, 2000+ video views

Mobile Keepy Uppy latest score - four star review and 800+ downloads

Guess who wins the Mobile Keepy Uppy World Cup?

Recent posts worth reading on Conversation Managers; MIX10; B2B leads; and Internet of Things

New toy: Google Street Views

The Age of Stupid debuts with People's Premiere

The good news about marketing budgets

Gene Hunt just called me a dozy faced pansy

2008 Seattle Offsite aka PubCrawl 08

Spin free nation. Say it like it is.

My Olympics prediction: couch potato nation to trump swimmers, runners and jumpers

Where were you 20 years ago?

Why the home nations aren't at Euro 2008, and why Germany will probably win it.

Ronaldo: he shoots, he scores, he looks good on TV