Really interesting article from Wired about the origins of T9 (predictive text) on mobile phones and how it was born out of the creators work on products for people with disabilities.
With around 4 billion (yep, that’s BILLION) phones still in in the wild using T9 (despite the march of touchscreen smart phones), it’s a massively important and influential technology that has truly entered the publics’ day to day life.
Love watching The Gadget Show (Channel 5) but usually only get the time to see it repeated on a Saturday morning with a nice black coffee – bliss. A nice way to keep up to date with consumer tech.
This week’s was even better as it had a challenge relating to advertising, and Jason and Suzy have to promote the show using different methods. Suzy goes with a digital twist on traditional methods (eg: posters with interactivity, augmented reality adverts, etc…) whilst predictably Jason goes the techy nerdy route (that’s why we love him) by creating a viral. The challenge focuses on them creating then releasing their campaigns and then one is chosen as the winner.
What I’d really have loved to see is how they actually compared against each other in terms of; cost, measureable impact in viewers / actions, longevity, etc… as it wasn’t really clear how the lovely lady from Ogilvy came to the conclusion as to which was better. I suspect (although I have absolutely no proof) that Jason’s would have been the most successful (bearing in mind the target audience) in terms of cost, relevance and as an idea with legs (eg: viral itself, ‘making of’ video, PR) – so well done Jason, even though you lost (yeah, I know I just spoilt it for you but it’s not about who wins it’s the participation, blah blah…).
Here’s Jason’s rather nice GadgetVader viral (as shot by a member of the crowd):