The only thing more satisfying than having a client telling you that you’re doing a good job is when they're telling the press that you’re doing a good job. For those of you with limited Norwegian here’s a translation of the article:

Meeting young people 'face to face' - Stavanger Aftenblad 16/8/07

The Culture Card is struggling with a bad reputation.
Very few people have got one, even fewer actually use it.
Tove Hervik at KK is determined to change this trend.

We need to engage with young people where they like to spend their time, and that is increasingly online, she says.

She has hired The Originals in London to help develop and implement a new digital strategy. A mobile internet site and a Facebook group have both recently been created for Kulturkortet.

'Smart stuff' confirms young Christina Cheng who advices Hervik.

The Norwegian Ministry of culture, in a drive to get young people more involved in cultural activities have introduced a scheme offering discounted entrance to art galleries, concerts, theatre, cinema and football matches.

At the heart of the service is a localised events calendar - we took this and turned it into a mobile internet site, so now Kulturkortet is not just a great money saving scheme, it’s also a useful resource for everyone.

To make the user experience richer we’ve added streaming audio and video clips, and a range of downloadable items. Later this summer we’ll be integrating the site with Facebook to better connect Kulturkortet with peoples social lives.

The site is currently being promoted by an SMS to 25,000 students.

If you’d like to see the real thing visit kulturkortet.mobi on your mobile.

Once again we had the opportunity to work with our friends at Image Semantics - this time on their new mobile messaging proposition. We were involved in the project from a very early stage developing the brand name, visual identity, and the finished the user interface.

The project was built by Airsource in Brew so there were a lot of ways to add visual feedback into the design. This meant the finished product was a lot more dynamic, responsive and fun for users.

The design challenge was to develop a strong graphical idea that could be applied to each interface elements, so that even when the logo was not displayed on the small screen of a mobile phone it would still be unmistakeably Zippi.

Zippi is currently being rolled out to 70 million US customers – and if you’d like to have a look at the project for yourself click here.

ShortCuts gets you the object you desire with the minimum amount of clicks.

Instead of using a clever algorithm to scan every piece of mobile content, ShortCuts simply delivers a relevant series of jump-off points, in the form of brands we all know and love. The rationale being that the best people to give you a list of books for sale is probably Amazon rather than Google.

We see ShortCuts being managed with a web interface, and as a way of generating revenue brand owners would be charged a cost per click.

Once again any venture capitalists or developers wishing to team up on this project should contact The Originals by clicking here.

After attending a fascinating lecture on the current state of mobile search we took a stab at the problem ourselves.

Ideally your mobile would anticipate and answer your questions automatically. A favourites/query list from Delicious or Google Zeitgeist would go some way towards achieving this but for more in-depth queries some kind of application would be needed.

We decided that as entering text is a pain we would rule out using any search fields – one thing that everybody was in agreement about last night. From art college we also knew that seven is the maximum number of pieces of information that could easily be remembered at a glance.

SELECT 7 was born.

Using a series of menus containing no more than seven items, in just seven clicks you can find 823,543 separate pieces of content. These menus would become smarter using pattern recognition, free tagging, feeds from Google/Delicious or any combination of these.

Any venture capitalists looking to get into mobile search should contact The Originals by clicking here.

Traditionally small companies have always come up against the same old marketing problem; how to get a lot of attention with a small budget.

Thanks to the evolution of the internet, all you need these days is a strong idea and you’ll get noticed.

For the cost of a few of their own bulbs we recommend Unwins try this one out. Hire two locals with a van to plant the appropriate bulbs on the Cerne Abbas Giant, wait three months, and voila!

Like everyone we’re very excited about the new Apple iPhone.

From what we saw in the presentation the phone certainly is a great looking object, and as with the iPod the user interface guys have done a great job too.

However, one ugly bug we noticed was the boring old text based phone book. A great alternative would be to take a completely visual approach.

After all when was the last time you heard some say "I’m really good with names, just rubbish at remembering faces".

With two brands as strong as Nike & Apple some type of collaboration was inevitable. No surprises then when last summer we saw the launch of the rather super Nike + trainers. Wirelessly they transmit your footsteps to your i-pod recording the progress of each run, helping to optimise your training.

We’ve come up with another sweet Nike, Apple mashup. What about hooking up your Nike Triax watch (it monitors your heart rate) to your i-pod? Now as you start to ease off on a run the music tempo picks up and you’ll hear a little “Eye of the Tiger”, push it too far and you’re back to Enya.

Bring this into your morning commute and you have an i-pod that will generate a different playlist after you’ve had a double espresso. I don’t know about you, but I’ll certainly be queuing up outside the Apple store to get hold of one of those.

When searching for a local tradesman in the Yellow pages you’ll always run into the problem of having too many results. Inevitably you’ll start off at ABC plumbing and work your way through the list.

Online the situation isn’t any better. Just as in the phone book you have a huge list of plumbers, but this time you also have a links to their website, making the job of finding the right person even more time consuming.

118118.com have introduced a customer rating system. However, as the person giving the rating is completely anonymous, and the rating is moderated by the business owner, it doesn’t mean much.

Better then to get an independent authority to do the job. In our example (above) we’ve used Corgi. There are hundreds of trade bodies like this who could help consumers make more informed choices.

So now when our plumber books his advert in Yell.com he’ll also send a request to Corgi. If he has indeed passed his monthly exam, the logo placement will be authorised. And when we next search for a local plumber we’ll be better able to determine who’s right for the job.

Probably the most compelling reason for switching off Bluetooth on your mobile phone is to avoid Bluetooth posters, especially if you have to pass one every day on your way to work. They have become the high street equivalent of internet spam – unwelcome, and a drag to deal with.

What a shame.

Aside from file transfers Bluetooth has two big things going for it. The unique device ID, and what we’re interested in here, a signal strength that varies depending on your distance from the poster.

With a simple piece of software you can capture this signal strength and do something useful with it – like playing Pong. Think about the interaction between people and posters in large public spaces and you’ll see there’s massive potential for having fun with this technology.

Hard to believe but apparently we’re still in the grips of a hosepipe ban. A permanent reminder sitting in your garden shed (next to your hosepipe) might prove to be a better advert for water saving than a rash of posters.

We’ve calculated that one 48 sheet for one month in a half decent location could buy about 833 units. And for once we are in no doubt that the medium is indeed the err… message.

*£2,500 / **£3 = 833 units

*www.viacom-outdoor.co.uk
**www.tradekey.com

The news that Sony lawyers have successfully closed down video game importer Lik-Sang will no doubt come as a blow to every video game enthusiast. Lik-Sang has always been like having a bunch of friends in Japan, whose sole purpose was to seek out cool stuff for you.

You’ve got to wonder how many hundreds of thousands of pounds Sony spends each year developing relationships with early adopters and members of the gaming community. It seems obvious that they should have regarded Lik-Sang and its customers as a resource, not as a threat.

I guess I’ll just have to put this incident behind me, be patient, and form an orderly queue outside Argos.

The big question is how long before a brand comes up with something as useful?

1. Shazam

(Dial 2580)

The music identification service we all wish we'd come up with.

2. Yellow Arrows
(yellowarrow.net)
NY art project, with heaps of possible applications.

3. Google Maps
(www.google.com/gmm)
Great on your desktop, even better on your mobile.

4. i-Metro
(metro.nanika.net/imetro.html)
The essential public transport journey planner.

5. National Rail
(wap.nationalrail.co.uk)
A perfect complement to the train operators' policy on punctuality.

6. Wapipedia
(www.wapipedia.org)
Ruin discussion with Wikipedia on your mobile.

7. F365
(www.brightai.net)
An excellent way to halt productivity in your office.

8. The Onion
(mobile.theonion.com/content)
Just as funny on your mobile.

9. BBC
(www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/index.wml)
The BBC doing their thing on your phone.

10. Nokia Sensor
(www.nokia.com/sensor)
Would be great if Nokia pre-installed this.

With over a million people descending onto the streets of west London over two days, Notting Hill Carnival represents the height of organised chaos.

We identified two factors key to overall enjoyment of the day; Cold beer and not getting lost.

The problem of lowering beer temperature using just a mobile phone proved to be beyond the limits of our R&D department. However, a map showing the carnival route, local landmarks and how to navigate around blocked roads was a breeze.