Welcome to another edition of our News, Views & Clues where we talk about things that stimulated our curiosity or, perhaps as in the case of this week, made us “spittin’ mad.”
Shocker! The Highly-Acclaimed Little Prince Movie is Pulled…
We were shocked and saddened to read that Paramount Pictures pulled The Little Prince movie which was scheduled to arrive in theaters this weekend (starting March 18). According to a series of tweets by director Mark Osborne, the movie will now be released by another distributor later in the year.
The director tweets…
Okay, so this might be just a temporary delay of game. We feel fortunate that we were able to view the movie during San Jose’s Cinequest film festival in an awesome environment (Hammer Theater).
It was an awesome piece of storytelling and clearly a labor of love. We were especially impressed with the dimension that sound added to the experience. Maybe the delay will be good if it helps to get the movie into venues worthy of its amazingness.
Stay tuned for our thoughts on The Little Prince movie (we’ve got lots to talk about—blown away, we were!).
Playin’ Through Austin…
All eyes have been on Austin, Texas for the annual South by Southwest (SxSW) event where it seems every year innovations are unleashed. We thought it was brilliantly clever that technology company, Dell (based nearby in Round Rock), launched a mobile golf app that let’s you play a virtual round of golf through the town.
The game lets players explore the city through a nine-hole golf course, laid out to include some of Austin’s most famous landmarks, including the Paramount Theater, the Driskill Hotel and the Texas State Capitol.
Screen shot – app in action.
Way cool.
Dell is promoting the golf app, called “Dell Play Through,” with a video that’s running on YouTube, the PGA website and its own website, as well as paid and organic social media. It will also promote the app through its booth at SXSW and with a team on the streets of Austin during the event, which runs from March 11-20 in Austin.
Twitter (nearly) 10 Years Later…
Speaking of SxSW, the social networking service Twitter, owes it success (hockey stick-like adoption) to that event where:
…Twitter can thank the tech and media savvy throngs at SXSW for tripling their traffic at the 2006 event from 20,000 to 60,000 tweets a day. Eight years later and 288 million users later, that number averages a half billion tweets per day.
Source: Harvard Business School
Appropriately, there was a nice write-up in the Wednesday print edition of The Wall Street Journal about Twitter (How to Make Twitter Actually Useful)
Notable Quotable:
…It’s OK to use Twitter only as a real-time news wire, and only launch the app when you want to keep up with live events like the Oscars, presidential debates or the NCAA tournament. You’ll likely find it to be faster, franker and funnier than Facebook.
It’s time to stop thinking of Twitter as a social network. It’s more of a news network. I spend 75% of my time in the app getting news on everything from politics to technology to, yes, the Kardashians. Twitter is one of the few places where you can get direct access to the newsmakers, too, and eavesdrop on conversations between people you’ll never meet in real life.
She has some excellent points. It will be interesting to see what the company has in store for the “next 10” years.
Samsung’s Next Big Thing in The Journal AND at SxSW
Heading into last weekend, we noticed that Samsung took out a 2-pager in front section of The Wall Street Journal. Not a side-by-side ad, but a page turn ad (A7 and A9).
Page A7
Page A9
Truly an attention getter with all its “what makes us different” touted on A7 and the “more” on A9. Honestly, we still don’t get why we’d need a virtual reality machine… at least, just yet. But hey, they’ve got something to shout about AND the reviewers seem to really, really like this version of the Galaxy family. You can learn more here.
Curious, we took a look to see if Samsung was doing anything “special” at SxSW. Yup! Of course they were.
Galaxy Life Fest is Samsung’s three-day music event created for Galaxy owners and SXSW Interactive, Gold and Platinum badgeholders rom Friday, March 11 through Sunday, March 13. The event featured a bunch of artists / acts, including: Public Enemy and the debut live performance from ColleGrove, the new superstar duo composed of 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne.
Their 1-2 punch (WSJ ad / SxSW event) makes sense.
Running long here so it’s time to put “pencils down” and call it a wrap!
We had so much fun that the song that came to mind is I Love It by Icona Pop. And below you’ll find references to a movie that came to mind with all the “Twitter-speak” this week. Also, some tidbits from Twitter’s SxSW debut.
Enjoy! Stay curious and May the Jedemi Force be with you!
-The Gang
Song of the Week
Twitter plays big role in this movie.
The Twitter SxSW story
Where it began… the Visualizer.
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