Everything facebook Launched at f8

Everything facebook Launched at f8

A nice wash-up of the f8 conference here. My salient take out / conclusion:

“Zuckerberg said Facebook wants to be a “cross-platform platform” that rides across iOS, Android, Windows Phone, the web, and more. That’s a convenient framing of the fact that Facebook doesn’t own a mobile operating system.”

That’s clearly something that keeps Zuck up at night.

One other element which peaked my interest was AppLinks to allow users to load content held deep within apps as opposed to having start at the top level.

Apple’s Second Quarter Sales Numbers Show iPad Fever Is Cooling

Apple’s Second Quarter Sales Numbers Show iPad Fever Is Cooling

The usual mind blowing revenue numbers from Apple and as with the title of the article a slowing in iPad sales makes for some interesting forecasts on where the tablet market is headed (if anywhere). Personally I still view the iPad as grossly overpriced when you compare it to quality Android alternatives like my own favourite, the Nexus 7.

Also worthy of contemplation is that figure of just 3million iPod sales in the quarter, down from 23million in 2008. A device which changed the world and sold in such insane volumes (both in terms of hardware and media) is selling just 10% of what it did six years ago, I certainly can’t think of any precedent for that kind of drop off for such a mass market device.

A Progressive CMS – Project Feather

I spent Monday in London with Telerik, the company behind Sitefinity, the CMS that powers AstonMartin.com. Lots of good discussion around their future roadmap and some nuggets on current functionality which we aren’t using – very worthwhile.

On my roadmap (as with many others) is to develop our site towards being full responsive, we currently have a mobile site but alongside most in the industry who are more brand than transaction lead, we are working towards being fully responsive. The challenge we have is to blend the power of our CMS with the flexibility of Bootstrap which we have used to build our latest launch microsite for Vantage N430.

The great news is Project Feather is on the horizon, if we can blend the flexibility of a bootstrap front end with the power and breadth of our CMS then we’ll be in a great place.

‘Discover an Icon’ Film Series

Throughout January we released a series of films exploring arguably our most famous current model – DB9. With an exclusive opportunity to preview each episode by signing up to a distribution list, the films have gone down extremely well, with over 40k views to date. We were looking for the films to really help tell the story of the ‘DB’ series but also explain the Design and Engineering qualities which make up the current DB9, the ability to release these in a phased way to build anticipation within our social media followers was something I’d earmarked some time ago.

A great aspect around creating solid video content like this is that it’s got uses across the AM website, motorshows, dealers etc but also opportunities to use within social media in many guises for a long time to come. In contrast to ‘campaign videos’ which may have a shorter shelf life, overarching product positioning films like this pay back over time with regular and repeated exposure.

All films were produced by an agency we have a long standing relationship with: Fin London