This month Farmers old and new alike took interest in Google's revelation it had fallen victim to “a highly sophisticated and targeted” cyber attack “originating from China” and resulting in the theft of its intellectual property. The official Googleblog went on to all but outright accuse the Chinese government of orchestrating the attacks in an attempt to access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

As the evidence mounted that the People’s Republic was indeed behind the debacle it became clear we had an interesting power play on our hands - Superpower vs Cyberpower. It was interesting to speculate how that showdown would play out… 

The good news? It turned out the attacks (which also hit over 20 other companies) had exploited a vulnerability in IE 6 (http://praetorianprefect.com/archives/2010/01/the-aurora-ie-exploit-in-action/)  – thus putting another nail in the coffin of a browser which should have been buried long ago.

For the record: The Farm happily ceased support for IE6 from October 31 2009. In the aftermath of the cyber attack Google, better late than never, announced it would follow suit from March 1. Thanks Hu Jintao!

Google’s answer to the iPhone – the Nexus One smartphone – may be yet to hit Australian shores but it’s already got Farmers' chins wagging.

The topic – not so much the merits of one phone vs the the other – though you can read about this here http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/torn-between-two-phones-nexus-one-vs-iphone/?ref=technology – but what the competition bodes for the future of the www.

While the smartphones might work well with their own software they don’t seem to be making an effort to get along with one anothers other services. Some commentators – namely Tim O’Reily - think this bodes a bloody period of competition that could threaten the interoperable web of today. In the 80s it was Macintosh v Microsoft – in the 2010s the war looks set to take place between Apple and Google.

O’Reily may be onto something. While it’s too soon to tell if the Nexus One will emerge as a serious competitor to the iPhone, some Farmers have already taken sides.

Those who like that Google’s Android platform is more open to developers champion the Nexus One. The others, like everyone else, are so deep in iPhone love they can’t see past their touchscreens. One Farmer has even suggested we change the phrase “the best thing since sliced bread” to “the best thing since the iPhone”.

What do you think? Will you trade in your iPhone for a Nexus One? And who’s your money behind in the war for the web?

The image of a remote phonebox with tumbleweed blowing past it has long been a symbol of isolation and the wilderness. Will the phone work? Will someone have hidden some sort of message there, perhaps instructions on how to get to an old school rave, or will it be full of old takeaway and worse? Placing itself firmly in the middle ground between fixed landlines and the always-on lifestyle associated with a mobile phone is Skype, thanks to a new campaign from the Viral Factory, London.
www.phoneboxexperiment.com 

We wouldn’t normally sit glued to a two minute TV ad, but this is spine-tingling. Colenso BBDO in New Zealand came up with this beautiful animation for the New Zealand Book Council: http://bit.ly/nzbooks

Innovative retailer Miele has opened a London store which encourages people to trial the products before they buy. Any students not wishing to take their laundry home for Christmas, this is for you: http://bit.ly/dirtysocks

Movie releases, particularly those targeting families such as Up, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs and the just-released A Christmas Carol, have been experimenting with 3D to add extra va-va-voom to the big screen. But now cognac brand Courvoisier has dipped its toe in 3D waters.
The ad, ‘Cognac With Another Dimension’, shows cognac in a balloon glass exploding and then spinning into a vortex that forms a cocktail. Don your 3D glasses and watch it in all its glory here: http://tinyurl.com/Courvoisier

You might remember Toshiba launching a chair into space recently from the desert in America. Well, the footage from that projectile has made its way back to earth and has been mashed together to form ‘Space Chair’, the brand’s latest TV commercial through Grey, London. Watch the biodegradable chair and its specially built camera rig’s graceful and surreal journey to the edge of space and back at http://bit.ly/1hflUf

I came accross some future predictions around Facebook penetration a couple of days ago and is it truly staggering.

Discounting China (Facebook is restricted there) it looks like we will  be approaching 30% of the worlds active internet population will be regular Facebook users by the end of 2009.

In the article they also talked about future projections and the possibility the Facebook audience could possibly top 1 billion users, the digital universe would sure be a different place, for a start we have to play by Facebook's rules while on their platform.

As agencies and marketers what does this mean for us? Well I guess it certainly means no matter who you are at the moment you cannot ignore the big F. The most obvious way to tap in to this huge potential audience is through ads but until now they have been targeted in a fairly standard way. These ads have been more effective in my experience than standard units due to organic impressions generated, context and their non banner like appearance but the targeting has been at best unimaginative, certainly not taking advantage of the social platform.

There is a new option open to us though which seems subtle at first, you can simply target your ads at friends of your connections. These connections are defined by Facebook as: Fans of your page, users of your applications, members of your groups or attendees of your events. Looking in to it a little further this is a different method than the top ten targeting methods currently available. 

Why? Well the ads can have social context which is after all what Facebook is supposed to be about. So if I am working on a new film theatrical release and someone fans my new movie page I can target ads at their friends which will list below the ad that their friend is a fan of my film. If the person viewing the ad would also like to see the film and I am offering pre-release tickets or a competition, who are they going to ask to go with them I wonder.

It is a great step in the right direction I believe for Facebook, there is still much work to be done, I could rattle on for hours about the numerous ways I would like to use the platform but lets save that for another day and simply be happy they are thinking about us little agencies and marketers.

Yesterday the DDB WWF ad sparked a little debate round the office on the subject of shock ads, it was amazing how quickly and fiercly the fuse burnt once lit! THis section of the email trail literally flew around in under five minutes. Some interesting questions were raised, does the message get lost? Is any conversation good conversation? Do shock ads work? What I really would like to see is what impact the ad has on donations after this little storm. Anyone else have an opinion?

Read from the bottom up.

From: Wade

Ahhhh … but we are critiquing the ad from the perspective of “is that an inappropriate message in relation to 9/11?”

The WWF message is getting lost …….. we are debating the WRONG topic.

Well done Drew – you Sh*t starter …….. my turn now

Ok … so which religion is BETTER Christianity or Buddhism?

From: Chris

Can an ad’s success be measured by the conversation it produces or the opinions it polarises?

From: Phillip

Agree with all comments, Wade definitely agree comparing man made to nature is ridiculous. What we need to do with things like the tsunami is humanise them, they are seen as things that happen somewhere else and a number is just a number.

Having said this look at the email trail, definitely got the office talking about serious issues....

From: Kristina

Fair point, but surely  there is a better way to show the value of third world life than belittle that of the US?

Though I guess it may indirectly touch an element of human nature we might not like to admit – we only instill value on something by taking it away from something else.

If we are talking about minute silences, there isn’t actually anything official for 9/11 in the States that I’m aware of… or the Bali bombing for that matter which was in the same vicinity of the tsunami..

Lots of talking points here Drew, nice debate starter!!!!

From: Tom

Disagree.

I think it makes an important point (perhaps unwittingly) about the value of third world life in relation to US lives. Where is the one minute of silence for the Tsunami victims (which seems far more relevant to Australia than terrorism to me).

From: Nikk

I completely agree. Never would have thought an organization like the WWF would stoop this low and feel it necessary to compare with and almost belittle 9/11.

The hell?!!

From: Kristina

Agreed Wade.

I actually find that disgusting – the comparison holds no merit whatsoever, how can you compare the two?!?

And more importantly WHY should we compare the two?! They are two equally devastating events, the body count should absolutely not be used as a hook to “respect” one over the other..

Very powerful image and it will no doubt get people talking but I think it’s a really poor way of getting this message across.

From: Wade

FAIL

I get that they tapped into the destruction of 911 because of the global impact that story had to get cut through, but it feels a little icky because the comparison is made to a man made act of terrorism which takes it off brief in my opinion.

I look at the ad more like -  “imagine if terrorism escalated” rather than going “isn’t mother nature a powerful thing that should be respected.”

From: Drew

http://blog.stephengates.com/2009/09/03/ddb-wwf-tsunami-twin-towers-ad-powerful-or-despicable/

Dell has partnered with MTV to try and create the world’s largest online choir, Amplichoir… in their words ‘we have no idea just how big it could become, but, deep down, we really want it to be the biggest one there is’. http://ema.mtv.co.uk/amplichoir, http://amplichoir.com/    

The Icelandic village Seydisfjordur was filled with speakers broadcasting music from an eclectic bunch of artists including Bob Dylan, Federico Cabral and Guillemots as part of a film by Fallon to promote the high sound quality on Sony TVs. According to Fallon's Juan Cabral, who directed the spot, Sony turned the village into ‘an extraordinary sound-system for a week’. Watch it here. http://tiny.cc/Soundville

On the subject of Sony, three new Sony Ericsson handsets - the Yari, Aino and Satio - are being championed via a global campaign masterminded by Saatchi & Saatchi, Iris and Dare, London. It kicked off last week with a viral video showing a flash mob of 500 brightly coloured space hoppers invading Barcelona which has racked up nearly 30,000 views on YouTube. Watch it here: http://tiny.cc/Hopper161.
Anyone envying those bouncing Barcelonians can create their own hoppers online and join in the fun. www.hopperinvasion.com

New Balance goes straight for the sneaker freak jugular with a beautiful campaign via Mother, New York. Each pair of the new limited-edition '574 Clips' shoes comes complete with a unique Polaroid picture showing where in the US it was made. This has a code on the back which connects the consumer to their own video hosted online - expanding on the origins of each individual pair. Users can then 'claim' their video before sharing with friends across various social networks and blogging platforms. http://574clips.com

Pop art via paintball on behalf of snack brand, Bon Yurt for Leo Burnett, Columbia http://tiny.cc/popart515. The full campaign features seven limited edition labels made by students www.bonyurt.com

In the US, BF Goodrich has launched a new app and online community through The Martin Agency, New York, similar to Nike+ that allows you to plot favourite driving routes via google maps or GPS and share them with other members. The campaign’s highlight is an iPhone app which automatically plots routes and tags any photos with GPS co-ordinates along the way. www.nationofgo.com

It’s been a busy week for everyone’s favourite micro-blog. There are now 18m US adults alone who access Twitter on any platform at least monthly, indicating a 200% increase over 2008 levels. Next year, that figure will be 26 million US adults, a further 44.4% climb. Twitter also announced new terms of service last week which will enable brands to embark on more targeted ad campaigns. In Twitter’s own words: ‘We leave the door open for advertising. We'd like to keep our options open’. Read more on the Twitter blog here: 
http://tiny.cc/Twitter744

Hockey Moms are the subject of a witty campaign to launch NHL 2K10, a hockey game for the Nintendo Wii. Via 72andSunny in Los Angeles, the campaign stars three moms who use the game to vent their aggression. http://tiny.cc/nhl2k10Wii 

Finally, check out Champagne Valentine’s beautifully interactive promo for The Never Ending Why, the new Placebo single. Through Nexus in London, the multi-sensory experience steers the viewer through a landscape of shadows, monsters and psychedelic colour. http://tiny.cc/PlaceboChV