Dazed & Confused and Swatch working together on a very cool project

The super cool magazine Dazed and Confused paired with the always cool Swatch to launch the website Satellite Voices, a global and cultural platform with the latest news in cities all over the world.

They hired local journalists from Paris, Tokyo, Munich, Rome, Shanghai, Santiago, Moscow and Dubai to write about the cultural production in these cities. The main areas covered are fashion, arts, photography, film, music, design and cultures. The result is a website with an extremely rich content and a truly global point of view. One can spend hours checking what's going on in the cool cities.

They work with the slogal:"local creation, global inspiration" and the cool thing is that they decided to work with cities out of the fashion and design circuits, like NY, Milan and London. In Germany, for instance, they chose Munich instead of super hype Berlin. Maybe because the creation in these super hype cities are very global to be characterized as local creation.

On the website it's possible to browse through different topics or cities. There are plenty of exclusive interviews with the local creators what showcases the richness and authenticity of the content available on the website.

They also keep a very good and cool channel on Mix Cloud (Facebook's app to listen to playlists) where local DJ's and artists from these cities offer different playlists. They are very good as they showcase lots of new artists and music. I just listened to the mix "Yokyo on air: Eiko". Simply divine!

There's one last thing that's very clever: As Swatch is the main sponsor of Satellite Voice, they inserted pictures like the one below to display the local time in these cities with their new display for their watches. Very smart and cool, don't you think?

Red Hot Chilli Peppers launch an interactive videoclip

I've just watched Red Hot Chilli Peppers' new videoclip and I was impressed with the quality of the interactivity they promoted in the video. The effects are truly amazing way better than previous interactive videos I had seen before. 

When watching the video you kind of walk into different rooms where one member of the band is interacting. On top of that elements in the scenario are shortcuts to extras such as making of videos and photos. And if you[re just not in the mood to keep looking for this shortcuts, you can just press the button "Show Hints" and they[re highlighted to you. #VerySimple.

Thumbs up! This video showcases what the latest interactive technology available in the market offer to creators everywhere. It's easy to think about several different ways to use this technology. #Awesome!

BTW their new song is also great ;). you can check it out the new video by clicking in the link below: 

Web 2.0 offers opportunity to new business models

Consumers live nowadays in a very comfortable and convenient world and much of that was provided by internet tools. Considering this new scenario, start up companies are blossoming everywhere, offering consumers a new solution to ease their daily lives. The challenge is to be showcased in the market. The key ingredient for success seems to be simple: to offer a solution that would  effectively easy a consumer´s life.

American website "Trunk Club" apparently found this key. Betting on a simple presumption that men don´t like to shop (sad, but true), Trunk Club offers a service that goes beyond shopping assistance: they actually select and buy pieces of garments for their consumers and "surprise" them with a package containing around 8 - 10 different garments. To choose the pieces, Trunk Club professionals take into account the consumers profile, previously uploaded on the website.

The cool thing is consumers can take up to 30 days to analyze and consider the garments they received and return the pieces they did not like. And all for free, including the costs for delivery and devolution transport. The website expects that with experience, consultants would achieve a better knowledge of their consumers what would reducing the average amount of return items.

Trunk Club works currently with a 3 thousand customers base and they accept around 50-60% of items in the boxes they receive. The website maintains a high profitability because they purchase with wholesale prices. The average price of a garment sold by Trunk Club is 70 dollars.

Aware of their customers´ lack of time, the company offers different points of contacts such as phone, email, Skype and a store where consumers can try on and immediately take away the garments they like. This new business model seems to be working well as the company saw the annual revenue growing from US$ 1 million in 2010 to US$ 5 million in 2011.

The video below showcases the way Trunk Club works: