The founder of Blu Cigs, battery-powered electronic cigarettes that mimic the look and feel of traditional cigs and deliver vaporized nicotine to users, believes he’s discovered an innovation that could help his company compete with R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris.

Jason Healy, president of the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company, and his team have spent about a year developing the “Smart Pack,” a first-of-its-kind e-cig pack which features unique ID technology that detects nearby e-smokers.

Before, e-cig packs were meant simply as a portable charging device for the glowing blue-tip devices. Now, when a fellow user is “vaping” (not smoking) within a 50-foot range, the Smart Pack will notify both parties, potentially prompting a social interaction. What’s more, the company has designed the products for seamless integration with social networks like Facebook and Twitter, essentially making the Smart Pack the Foursquare check-in for the nicotine-addicted consumer.

“Customers were always telling us how social Blu e-cigs were–they’d be in a bar or outside, and someone would see this blue light and what looks like smoke,” says the Australian-born Healy, who before developing the unlikely smokeless cigarettes ran his first business manufacturing basketball gear in China. “Quite often it sparks a conversation–I actually had a doctor who kept emailing me cause it kept getting him laid. So we started to develop the social aspect of it.”

This is all sparking up as public smoking gets slowly extinguished as a social habit. Restaurants and bars around the globe have shooed second-hand fumes to the sidewalk, where cigarette-dependents stand cordoned off from the inside chatter, likely griping about the soaring cost of a pack.

“More and more smokers are becoming lepers,” Healy says. “We’re not just selling electronic cigarettes–we’re selling freedom.

WTF?

More here.

ViaBrandShandy.

I find most of these this-is-the-future films completely pointless – this one is no exception. Haven’t we’ve seen all these ideas before?

Good Day,

I am Shung Hin Hui, I have a business of $15.5 million for you contact me for details.

That’s it.

Genius…

Like the man says: ‘This is a great enhancement to safety.’

Genius.

Here.

Just get a laptop you numpty.

Here.

So is the the sky is bursting with salivating terrorists desperately trying to take you down, or is it all a load of stay-home-and-be-scared nonsense?

Here’s the chart:

Shame the US government/homeland security doesn’t see it the same way. The leaked new flight rules here.

All viaBoingBoing.

This post is not intended to be an attack on Carousel, Philips or DDB Amsterdam. I have simply picked Carousel as an example as it’s topical. My point is about advertising industry awards – not about an individual film or campaign. Carousel could easily be replaced with any number of pieces from the last few years (including some of my own work), but I figure it best to pick one – and it’s the one that’s winning awards right now. Also, I am sticking my neck out a bit because I don’t actually have any figures, but logic (and a little research) suggests my claims to be true. So, Carousel, a very good (well executed )’digital’ film has won/will win almost any advertising award ‘worth’ winning. It’s been a complete industry success story – but I have to ask the question: Has it sold many televisions?

Perhaps not.

But carousel has been canonized and is winning awards left right and center. ‘They are creative awards!’ I hear you cry. Rubbish. What business in their right mind would hire a company to simply be creative and win awards? This is about selling stuff – that’s our job – we sell stuff. We are employed purely for this purpose – that’s it. We are not film-makers, artists or poets – we are marketing people. Our industry sometimes forgets this, often celebrating these much coveted qualities. That can often be work that actually fails the people who employ us to do it? On top of that some marketing people still engage agencies based on the amount of awards they’ve won not selling other peoples stuff.

It doesn’t make much sense.

It’s like going to The British Insurance Awards and the ‘Broker Grand Prix’ going to a someone wearing a nice suit who hasn’t sold any policies..?

Maybe it’s time for change?

Oh, and before you ask – yes I have won awards and no I’m not bitter. I just think that times are changing and we all need to move on. Internet culture is exposing the frailty of some communications models and systems. My worry is that it won’t be long before companies ask themselves why they employ a marketing department and agency that could easily be mistaken as caring more about things looking pretty, and winning awards, than they do about actually selling stuff.

Which ironically I think we mostly all do (care about selling stuff) – and that, of course, includes DDB.

*Awards based on effectiveness may be exempt from my rant.

I shit you not.

Here.

Happily rubbishcorp® can exclusively reveal that the much maligned artist of the dog/pool series (Arthur Sarnoff) was actually a soothsayer.

Snog this phone and it will measure your pressure, speed, temperature, and sucking force and then transmit those same parameters to the person at the other end of the line – recreating your kiss. Providing of course that the person at the other end of the line has a KissPhone, which they won’t unless they’re a total divvy – in which case you are highly unlikely to have phoned them.

WTF?

ViaGizmodo

Firstly, for an agency to recommend a booze brand make a campaign out of the the ‘drink responsibly’ thought is frankly ludicrous, not to mention completely paradoxical. They have essentially taken a serious issue (one perpetuated by the products being advertised) and made it into a recruitment campaign. Their justification for this is seemingly the inclusion of ‘helpful’ tools; like a service enabling you to send yourself a text message to remind you not to get really hammered. WTF? On top of that, just to really insure that I won’t consume slightly too much of their product, they have loads of detestable smug w**kers telling us how we should behave, oh and a Facebook page, coz it’s for the yoof right?

Genius, that will do the trick, not least because everyone really responds to smug w**kers, especially those employed by marketing companies:

Dear Smug W**ker (employed by marketing company),

Thank you for your sincere advice – you’ve saved me. Prior to your meaningful message all I ever wanted was to be a hopeless alcoholic. Pretty much as soon as I was old enough to drink, I decided: I want to become an addict and ruin my life.  Until this moment I have been struggling to manage my relationship with the hugely addictive culturally accepted substance – but  thanks to you, I can now put all that behind me.

?

Ok, so clearly I don’t buy the strategy – so what about the execution?

Well, if I was to write a list of all the lame things you could do if you were making a website like this, it would be the ID boards for this site. I won’t bore you with the details but come on? A Facebook group, user generated video content and ‘share’ on  YouTube/Twitter  button (which has had the embed disabled???). Straight out of the handbook on building ‘yoof’ websites 2003.

Porter Novelli, check yourself and ask yourself why? Why would anyone actually do any of this, especially the people you are intending on having a conversation with.

NYT article here.

Ironically, watching it to the end is effectively eternal damnation.

Top10ViralVideo

*Oh yes.

I don’t read the Metro, it’s makes me angry*. Because it’s free, it’s got little actual value. Therefore, it has to work very hard at convincing people (like me) that it’s worth picking up and reading – so it can sell more advertising space.

It attempts to do that by it’s ludicrous headlines (see above), celebrity clap trap and lightly veiled neo-conservative supremacism.

What do you mean, ‘addicted to terror’? I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure ‘terror addiction’ is a little sensationalist. How exactly does someone become addicted to terror? Is it because of a predisposition to evil, or do I need to go score, and then shoot, up some ‘Class A’ terror from a terror peddeler?

Hang on a minute, isn’t that you Metro?

*Please note: I am not addicted to anger.

This delightful ‘Remote Buddy’ stores up to four remote controls and features a cup holder for a tasty beverage. It also has some color coded buttons that allegedly help you locate lost remotes, apparently you simply push the button to signal the missing item. Which is great, just as long as all your remotes have built in alerts or vibration..?

Genius for $59.

“DNA 11 is the original creator of DNA Portraits-the world’s most personal form of art. We have propelled an entire industry with unique artwork based on genetic codes.”

How do you check it’s yours..?

Mr Briss don’t like ‘em and here’s why.

I tend to agree.

WTF..?

If you find the act of squeezing the trigger on a spray bottle to be too arduous a task, then get a motorized spray bottle.

Here.

Jive is a range of ‘devices’ that you can buy for your grandparents. Apparently acting much like a ‘social network’, these products are seemingly responsible for keeping old people up to date, and enabling them to stay in touch with you.

Lucky them. How thoughtful of you to buy them some irrelevant technology, rather than actually popping round or phoning them up.

You selfish bastard.

Like f@*k it is. Now tell us the truth.

Lee ‘Stiffler’ Stickler is our systems dude. He has many talents, not least of which is concise commentary on digital properties; like this frankly brilliant analysis of a new Time Machiner email service (above).

I love that they sell this on it being futuristic like I’ll be some sort of time lord!

Nobbers

Spot on.

Stealing a good idea does not make you good.

And you wonder why you’re struggling to survive…

rubbish

These Russian men are so heavily into CD-ROM’s, that they have a private religious group worshiping CD’s (of course they renounce DVD’s in any form as a heresy).

Oh yes.

Once you’re done with the said call, stay on the line and Love Detect will give you a live ‘Love Score’, or you can login and get a detailed web based report. If your ‘date’ doesn’t love you, then you can go round their house and brutally hack them to death.

You insecure freakoid.

It apparently took German Michael Arndt six years and almost 5 grand to built a full scale McLaren-Mercedes F1 car in his kitchen. To finish the wooden vehicle he used 956,000 matchsticks and 1,686 tubes of glue.

What an absolute divvy.

Is it a cry for help? Perhaps there’ll be a follow up…

Dear,

I’m a korean living in seoul.(name: Oh Minseok) Korean special investigative team are investigating samsung corporation.

But they do not work right.

I am suspicious to be bought off. samsung corporation has many crimes. And the team investigates samsung corporation. It contains korean companies samsung,huyndai,sk CEOs’ illegal issuing stocks or bonds. The quantity are plenty. (Three company CEOs did(and are doing) many crimes to me. Many koreans are knowing it. But many koreans are bought off by illegal issuing stocks or bonds.) The team are knowing it.

Korean special investigative team must investigate this.

But they are trying to conceal it. I ask for asking for this criminal investigation to prosecutors in any country. And help the shareholders and me.

P.S)Three companies are hacking me and trying to kill me. And are suspicious to use my name and email illegally.If you receive another message that I dictated above are not true, it is not from me, but from three companies. The things I dictated above are true.

Don’t forget to tune in next week for another unmissable installment of Korean Special Investigative Team.

MixMeister DJ scratch tool for iPhone apparently enables you to perform a ‘scratch’ anywhere, anytime and right on top of any song from your iTunes. Given that the majority of iPhone owners are 30 something balding wannabe DJ’s, I guess this app is gonna be fairly popular. Who knows, it could even be the ‘middle age’ equivalent of 2 step on a teenagers mobile at the station.

I hope so, it would be well funny – who’s not gonna look like a c@*t when they start scratching on their iPhone.

I’m a self-facilitating media node. Yeah?

Shock gaming works on the same principle as vibration feedback, and The Mindwire Company is claiming to have taken this ‘shock gaming’ to a new level with their MindwireV5. This “must have” games accessory apparently gives you the most unparelleled feeling of realism (on any game platform) to date.

It seems most of the compatible titles are “currently in development,” which means Mindware are still trying to convince publishers that someone’s actually going to spend £100 on an interface that serves little purpose other than repeatedly electricuting you.

Genius.