Cherryflava

Purple bikes and pics

Posted on 18. Sep, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

Imagine if every journey you took was automatically captured in pictures for others to see. ‘Life caching’ without the hassle of worrying if everything is in focus.

That’s the idea that Yahoo are busy pioneering with a project called Purple Pedals.
To essentially showcase the power of their Flickr Maps, the company have launched a couple of cameraphone-rigged and GPS-enabled bicycles in selected cities around the world, which take photos in one-minute intervals while the bike is moving. The
photos are then
uploaded and geotagged immediately on the bike’s own Flickr account for everyone else to enjoy.

Pretty handy in documenting your travels or the number plate of that pesky &*^% that has the balls to cut you off in the traffic.

Also see: The Cherryflava Flickr Map
[via]

Put the bastards off nickin’ your sarmie

Posted on 17. Sep, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

Sometime real innovation is just so obvious. This idea has us trading painful lummies in the office for not having thought of it first.

It’s an anti-theft office sandwich bag.

Anti-Theft Lunch Bags are regular
sandwich bags that have green splotches printed on both sides. After
your sandwich is placed inside, no one will want to touch it…[via]

…cause it looks like a dog slept on the thing before it was carefully transported to work. Genius.

Further entrepreneurial versions perfect for making millions in South Africa include: a Bles Bridges full volume vehicle audio immobilisor which blares tracks from his greatest love songs collection when the car is unlawfully engaged unless the system is made redundent via appropriate retina scan. And rubber vomit which can be laid on an unattended laptop to render it unattractive for transfer of ownership.

[via Lifehacker]

Billboards disguised as casinos

Posted on 16. Sep, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

Casinos are chock-a-block with sneaky psychological tricks which have been handed down through the ages via Vegas to convince punters to part with their cash.

Nobody [other than card counting actuaries] actually ever wins anything at these places, but the bells, lights, fancy carpet design and MVP areas all combine perfectly to create a trance-like desire to happily lose all your cash [this may sound like we're also referring to your ex-wife here, but that's completely unintentional].

Here’s a fascinating interview, with pictures, with a Tokyo-based architecture design company and the work they’ve done for casinos with the intention of attracting and milking gamers.

Read: Tokyo Odyssey: Pachinko Parlour Glitz – Pingmag

We’re stringing a new set of brightly-coloured Christmas tree lights outside the Cherryflava HQ as we speak to test the theory. Will let you know.

Globalisation on show thanks to ‘The Box’ from the BBC

Posted on 15. Sep, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

The BBC have launched a year-long project where they will be tracking the journey of a standard shipping container [unsurprisingly called 'The Box'] via GPS tracking around the globe.

Already the container has already travelled through Scotland and is picking up whiskey in Ireland.

When it arrives in South Africa it’ll probably be turned into a spaza shop, so enjoy the interesting show till then.
Would be cool if the site could also have a carbon footprint counter to indicate just how much carbon this thing’s journey actually causes.

Read: Box takes off on global journey -  BBC

Spotted: PnP turns to Bibvertising

Posted on 12. Sep, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

Usually seen on inner city street corners to promote ‘Cash for Gold’ pawn shops, South Africa’s supermarket giant is running an ambient street corner ‘bibvertising’ initiative to alert passing motorists, that after nearly two years of absence, their new Claremont store will soon be open for business.

Clearly the budget for effective marketing of the new store was used up to purchase the new trolleys.
How very disappointing and a great creative marketing opportunity lost.
After spending R40 billion [...or whatever it cost...] on the new store you would think it reason enough to invest just a bit more on blowing your own trumpet in celebration.

See more of our Streetflava spottings via our new Flickr Map

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Will that be cash or retina scan?

Posted on 11. Sep, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

Hold onto your eyeballs and fingertips, ’cause according to Barclays very soon they could be as good as cash.

Barclaycard, which is part of Barclays, has already introduced a
new-style cash machine in the United Arab Emirates enabling people to
use their fingerprints to withdraw money and shoppers in the UK may
soon be able to use the same technology.

Antony Jenkins, chief executive of Barclaycard, said: "It’s possible
we’ll see an end to plastic in the next five to 10 years with new
technologies to take its place emerging now. It could turn out to be
one of the shortest lived payment methods in history, going from being
ubiquitous to a museum piece in the same way as the video cassette."

Oh dear. Very soon hanging onto your iPod and cellphone on the streets will be the least of your worries.

More: Shoppers to use fingerprints or eye scans to pay for goods – Telegraph

[via]

Free movies

Posted on 10. Sep, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

Michael Moore is planning to release his new film Slacker Uprising for free on the Internet from 23 September.

The film, called Slacker Uprising (trailer embedded),
documents the director’s 62-city tour during the 2004 U.S. presidential
election, during which Moore rallied young voters to support Democrat
John Kerry. [and we all know where that ended up]

According to the big guy – he’s hoping that the free film will inspire young, useless Americans to put down the controller for Grand Theft Auto and get off the butts to hopefully vote for somebody that the rest of the world doesn’t hate.

Our suspicion is that the film is so bad, nobody would have paid to see it anyway.

More: Michael Moore to release Slacker Uprising for free online – Wired

Funniest South African advert 2008

Posted on 09. Sep, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

We attended the South African Comedy Awards last night, which was rather pleasant. Naturally the category which had us on the edge of our seats the most was the ‘most humourous TV commercial’. And the nominees are…

Nando’s "Only R21.95"

Vodacom ‘We’ve been having it’

Toyota Hilux ‘Urbanite’

And the winner is:

Vodacom – by a mile. [Interesting how 'corruption' is a humourous theme in two of the three nominees here]
But we couldn’t help thinking that there were others which missed out on a nomination here. The Vodacom ad is a good winner, but was there not more competition out there?

Video link: SA Comedy Awards

FNB ATM in Kloof Street gets the treatment

Posted on 08. Sep, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

Poor old ATMs in the country really do take a pounding. If they’re not being blown up with stolen mine dynamite, they’re now getting tagged with these brilliantly crafted symbols of danger (apparently made from pulped ATM slips).

Now there’s a sound recycling idea for you.

Lovin’ it. [thanks Warren]

Puma turns to fluffy animals

Posted on 05. Sep, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

These’s nothing very innovative about print ads which are nothing more than pretty pictures, but you can never discount the use of animals and a clean white background to bring a little tear to the eye of your audience who’s desparately trying to avoid seeing your ad.

Footage of Usain Bolt smashing a world record at the Olympics for boys, butterflies fairies beating wings and penguins standing on the tip of shoe for girls – work well done, yay…lets get wasted .

[via]

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