The ad is from Austria’s federal casino, and advertises its poker tables with a little mirror and the statement “train your poker face”.

Even though Daniel Fuhry will kill me for this statement: interactive ads are the way to go IMHO. OK; Flash probably won’t cut it for now due to its insane amount of CPU drain (which is why FlashBlock is a must for notebooks)…but the long-term trend is clear.

P.S. For all Vienniese readers: yep, it is at Karlsplatz. I know that this is bad placement…but more on that another time.

P.S.2 In case you wonder about how interactive ads can look: Taschen’s Advertising OnLine Now can currently be had very cheaply at book outlets…

Seth listed a variety of books and web sites which could be helpful for people wanting to become decent graphic designers – further information can be had here:
http://www.squidoo.com/become-a-really-good-graphic-designer

Austrias number one dating page

More than ten million singles await you…

The catch is short and sweet: Austria’s 2001 census reported just 8,032,926 million inhabitants, with current estimates south of 8500k…

The boys never were too fast when it came to “accepting apps”: while a distributor like MobiHand accepts your app initially and removes it later if objectionable, PalmGear insists on performing an “acceptance test” on the first upload. These tests have always taken a day or two in the past…but recently, things started to escalate. Their latest masterpiece concerns TimeDrift, and can be seen below (look at the order of the messages…it is wrong, too):

Needless to say, of course, this is extremely unhealthy for a product’s marketing campaign. TimeDrift sold quite a bit at MobiHand’s, while PalmGear has yet to see a single sale. The initial peak makes quite a bit of money: money which both PalmGear and the developer loose. My PalmGear rep originally blamed the delays on a system change…as a few months have passed since then….

Colleagues of mine have even gone so far as to wait with their entire marketing campaign (and the releases at other ESD’s) until PalmGear eventually accepts their product. From a marketing agency’s point of view, this is a total catastrophy – imagine having to time releases with a +/- 10 days time frame…

P.S. In the past, PalmGear compensated developers who experienced such delays with a free marketing campaign. I will submit this “claim” and keep you posted on what happens…

The Queen has a budget for Christmas presents and won’t spend more than £50 a time on festive gifts for the family, even ordering staff to save the wrapping paper so it can be re-used.

The very moment I read this, I immediately thought about what a PR agency working for a gift shop or paper manufacturer could make of this story. Royals, a few rolls of free gift paper and a press release are a perfect mix – I can see the headlines about my client’s products in rags all over the UK.

I am fully aware that your every-day needs in communicating and developing eat loads of time – but keeping en eye out on the world can reveal great PR opportunities you would miss otherwise…

P.S. Before anyone flames me: the headline is not referring to the idea of recycling stuff (ask me about my envelopes), but rather about making a fuzz about it…

Seth’s core point is that there are two ways to launch a new product: you can either create a market sector, or work on integrating your product into an existing one.

As all developers have to launch a new product every now and then, this decision is more important than one may think it is on the first glance. Hit Seth’s blog – the post is short, but interesting!

This hard-hand approach sometimes leads to truly paradox situations – the (government-owned) Austrian railroad management company’s policy has inspired me to this rant. Before we dive in, it’s time for a little background information:

As the OEBB is a government-owned agency, it unfortunately isn’t free to do the economically best thing. After a few highly intelligent but misunderstood managers were laid off to protect political cronies, quality plummeted significantly. This led to bad press – the company responded by prohibiting professional photography on-site. Furthermore, hundreds and hundreds of Euros are invested into journalists every month, giving them access to free drinks, newspapers and even cheaper tickets.

Yours truly often commutes to the FH Hagenberg, and thus rides a train at least twice a week. So far, everything has gone well – unfortunately, the above-mentioned policy led to total mayhem a few days ago. I waddled into a Club Lounge with a loaner phone and wanted to test the camera by photographing a few coke bottles standing around the lounge.

Unfortunately, a brain-dead clerk felt threatened – and /me was booted out of the lounge by local security. Even though the press spokesperson intervened, the clerk still was stubborn as I returned to the lounge from Hagenberg in the evening (it was encouraged by a highly intelligent local head honcho).

In the end, the OEBB lost out big-time. The hundreds and hundreds of dollars spent on yours truly (and the good impression created by many motivated employees) has been fuxated by a single brain-amputee. Instead of a free link to its web site and a few mentions of its high-end Club Lounge service, the OEBB netted this rant.

Allowing customers to photograph stuff they like or dislike leads to discourse. While the discourse may not always be favorable, I personally prefer to “know my weaknesses”…

What do you think?

P.S. Seth Godin’s mind seems to be connected to mine somehow – he just posted about the same thing…

Using press ID cards for separation has worked very well in Europe – unfortunately, the two companies outlined above (working for Viva) have managed to fuxate this basic process.

Yours truly has had a press ID from a reputable journalists club for ages, and wanted to get into a backstage area to make some pics for a cop rag.

Unfortunately, the semi-simians deployed by ST security were too stupid to understand what a press ID card is. It took ten minutes of arguing until a level 2 supervisor came up and managed to rectify the situation…which made me go to another stage to get my shots there instead.

The company that lost out big-time was their employer – instead of getting some positive (and free) PR, StarGate group and ST security managed to piss me off enough to produce this rather lengthy rant.

Cutting a long story short: if you want your event to work well, stay clear from Stargate group and ST security. Feeding an extra groupie or two may cost a few cents…but pissng off a journalist is even worse…

In order to keep the reporting balanced, here’s his correction on the “MobiHand takeover” – do with it as you please:

Mobihand has ** NOT ** taken over mytreo.net. That’s couldn’t be further
from the truth. In fact, we have NO direct contractual relationship with
that firm.

We signed a deal to have SmartphoneExperts — which was last year ranked the
fastest growing private company in America by Inc. Magazine — to provide
our e-commerce platform. We took this step because it will allow us to
focus on supporting the Treo community effectively.

Before doing so, we operated a store that served over 80 thousand customers,
and we gained tremendous experience in the Treo market. But
SmartphoneExperts someday soon serve their millionth customer (or some
amazingly high count). They are a truly great partner for us as we approach
our 500 thousandth member on the site.

SmartphoneExperts has contracted with Mobihand to provide software, which is
why their software e-commerce solution is advertised on our site.

In the end, however, the result for developers remains the same. MobiHand (a company that pays bills in time) now handles the MyTreo store…and this is the only thing that really counts. I am pretty sure that everyone(Tadd and developers included) will be more than happy with the way the store will work from now on…

MyTreo.net’s recently-covered payment issues have been largely resolved, as the software store has been taken over by MobiHand. Most affected developers seem to have received their cash or are scheduled to do so soon.

MobiHand has provided me excellent service with next to no downtime in the past; I consider the company to be the best ESD currently on the market.

Unfortunately, current developer accounts from the MyTreo.net store can not be taken over. Instead, developers must register at MobiHand’s developer back end Mobireach and add their products top the MobiHand catalogue if they haven’t done so before.

P.S. The rumors about Handmark entering the ESD business by taking over the MyTreo.net store are false…

David’s official announcement is below:

Just to clarify, MobiHand has just launched a new software store on
MyTreo.net. MobiHand is not the owner of the MyTreo.net site, and our
arrangement does not involve taking on prior payment obligations.

We look forward to working with all our current developers, and additionally
welcome prior MyTreo.net developers who are not yet working with us to sign
up at http://corporate.mobihand.com/sda_dev.asp, so that we can offer the
best and most complete collection of software on MyTreo.net and across the
MobiHand network of mobile-oriented stores.