Howie's Hot Five

Listen to this weeks Howie’s Hot Five here

5. Facebook … evil or potential…(We have to talk about Facebook)

Just the Facts: (how to weigh up the bet)

• Advertising on Facebook you can reach 65 million US viewers (American Idol topped 29 million viewers)
• 2010-2015 global online advertising market EXCLUDING MOBILE will increase from $68 billion to $120 billion (Australian growth in 2011 16%)
• Mobile internet is exploding

BUT – buying Facebook shares now is paying 77 times the expected earnings
Current annual sales: US$4 billion
Company worth after share float $100 billion

• Facebook users 900 million
• Facebook trialing paid movie downloads
• Virtual currency to pay for online Facebook games
• The future of advertising to nearly a billion users… there’s the bet.
• One word ‘Amazon’…IPO $1.50…now US$126 per share

4. At last ‘open plan’ is labelled for what is really is…cheap…

15 years ago the walls and privacy came down (in the name of open plan) and other obstacles went up – NOISE levels….then headphones, books and pot-plants etc – anything for a bit of privacy!

Open Plan  = one room, throw desks together  – that’s it.

65000 office workers surveyed by Univ of California from Australian to Africa find ‘speech privacy’ is biggest dissatisfaction…

e.g. Studies show that people have shorter and more superficial conversations in open offices because they’re self-conscious about being overheard,” (noise is sometimes good – remember typewriters, telephones – all helped with privacy – no there is silence…too much)

New groovy happenings are:

Pink Noise Systems – that mask conversations only 20 feet away. (Pink noise is soft whooshing noise matching frequency of the human voice)

The Booth – like restaurant – but acoustically designed for privacy…

What we’d like:a really small office with a big door…best of both worlds… open plan is still cheap!

Sources: NY Times
Book:  ”Quiet, The Power of Introverts in a World
that Can’t Stop Talking?” Susan Cain

3. Smart watches…

The Short Story: caller IDs, text messages, Twitter and news feeds, and the weather, too – all beamed from a nearby companion smartphone.

Price: $135 in Australia and arriving here soon for around $190.00

Next up: a smart watch with voice recognition – it has to happen – and the smart watch ‘app’ war…

Downside: gadget upgrading – when will it end!
Source: Sydney Morning Herald

2.Robots, Sex and Tourism

From Smart watches it’s a short move to the lady above… and robot prostitutes anyone?
This was reported earlier in the month -with a paper from Victoria University of New Zealand…’a management professor and a sexologist

The crux: In the future humans will patronise robot-staffed brothels, freeing them from the guilt associated with visiting a flesh-and-blood prostitute.

“Realistic skin, the ability to make eye contact, faux breathing (to avoid that “walking human corpse” feel), convincing conversational skills, dexterous manipulation of objects, and the ability to not walk through sliding glass doors — we can assume that these things will be attainable within the next few decades.”

1. Google goes Moog

For Bob Moog’s 78th Birthday google produced a pretty good online moog machine… with four-octave range; a filter to tweak, mixer and oscillator to create new sounds; and a four-track virtual tape deck records tracks for posterity and social-media posting…

here’s an example

Borders Books has closed! Kapow! When did that happen… Anyway on with the countdown;

Listen to this week’s HH5 here…

5 Kitchens in Kapiti Rock…!

HH5 has a horrendous cold…awww, it’s winter and someone put us on to Kapiti Kitchen natural syrups (Lemon, Manuka Honey & Ginger – and put the kettle on). We’ve read the blurb and they say they are all hand-made, small batches… – goes well with Appleton’s Rum we’re told.

- Rhubarb & Ginger, Ginger, Lemon Lime & Bitters, Elderflower…

P.S. Did you know the Kapiti Coast was formerly known as the Golden Coast (GC)

Source: kapiti kitchen

4. Let’s Hug this Out…

Yep, be a man-bracer we say…with rules for the perfect man-hug: (or as Ari Gold would say ‘let’s hug it out’…

1. - Three pats on the back
2. - No nuzzling
3. - And definitely not contact beneath the chest e.g. dont’ hold the other dudes hips like your want to salsaWe are talking nothing less than male masculinity being re-defined…

But trust a sociologist to wreck it…

Dr Harry Blatterer, a Macquarie University sociologist who specialises in the boundaries of friendship, speculates the definitive rules around the manhug indicate that the exchange is underpinned by homophobia…  therefore ‘it’s a very specific hug’.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

  =Not a Manhug

3. Buses are cool -  a renaissance?

People stopped taking buses because of cheaper flights, inconvenient schedules, discomfort and safety (dodgy Greyhound bus station stories).

Paris for a pound…Chicago for a dollar…wifi, huge comfy seats and big windows in all. The bus is back!

What’s not too like. HH5 even caught a bus from Auckland to Kerikeri couple of months back for $22! (no wifi- but bring it on and we are on)

Anyway in the US there’s an outfit called Megabus starting to take in Greyhound …with big seats, big windows, as well as wifi and power plugs with seats starting at $1.

Megabus started up to 6 cities in 2006 – now rolling into 40 cities.

As well, there’s a Megabus (Parent Company to the US outfit) in Europe: London to Paris for mega-cheap. (£1 to £40)

Target Audience: 18-34 (young professionals).  Plus gas prices going up…we have a renaissance.

And China! These babies have just hit the roads (capable of carrying 300 passengers)…

and some bus porn…

Source: The Telegraph

2. Internet Shopping Block – and we ain’t talking China…(Low Five)

Internet shopping in Australia is a scorching hot topic… a $10 billion hotty.

This week announced various retailers are making deals with overseas jean makers to outlaw buying these brands online in the US and mailing them to Aust.

Why do shoppers do this? To save up to 50%-200% on Aussie retail prices…despite their dollar being all-powerful.

So retailers struggling want to tax theses imports or ban them with agreements from US producers to ban Australian customers.

Que up US forwarding services for a small fee. By the way despite A$ being worth more or on par with US$ – Ipads are A$100 more expensive and jeans up to 200% more.

Two great articles from SMH:
Why GST on Internet Shopping Will Never Happen
Importers Closing Doors to Online

1.  Monkey Business – at the New Zealand International Comedy Festival … 

If you are an office dweller… we say this is the perfect bonding opp – Monkey Business at the Comedy Festival … you need to see this ‘interactive white collar safari’!  These guys cover all the bases from the low hanging fruit to the blue sky thinking and all the sad things office dwellers do without thinking in between.

Would we put your wrong?! It’s sold out Friday – so go tonight – some tix they say left on Saturday.

Monkey Business Tickets and Information

5. The future is Rdio…

Well we’ve been trialling Rdio for the past week … and there-after we’ll pay US$10 per month for unlimited streaming – and pay slightly more to stream to smartphone or I pad… and it’s an ad-commercial free service.

What an easy and quite marvelous way to discover music (15 million songs)… there is heaps of choice, recommendations and playlists – N.B. If you’re more ‘indie’ the experts say Rdio beats Spotify… we love its simplicity. Hook your laptop to  your amplifier go, go, go,!

PS. The guys behind Rdio were also behind Kazaar and Skype…

More info here

4. Digital Radio… just bloody well do it!

Just across ‘The Ditch’ Digital Radio is on very cusp of taking off… Currently a digital radio is in 1 in 10 Australian homes.
Good digital radio is all about…

 less static, clearer sound, more stations and interactive features such as pause and rewind..(Sydney Morning Herald)

And as new cars are including them as the standard radios…get ready to rumble.

In NZ we have Concert, BassFM, NatRad, Concert, BBC Worldservice and George…

But its simply in Auckland and Wellington and is a trial by Kordia – are we slow?

HH5′s Digital Radio: (Accesses the worlds Internet Stations, Ipod Dock, Digital Radio, wirelessly streams music from my Laptop…

3. Electronic help for the shy…

CraigsList – the hugely, massively successful online classifieds website – has one very, very popular ‘list’ and that’s ‘missed connections’…  due to the inebriated poets for one things:

To Jennifer the Chinese Girl Who Drank and Passed Out
Jennifer the Chinese girl
who passed out.
You met me
the tall european guy
and I invited you for a drink.

I bought the half pitcher of sangria
You downed those three drinks
and I told you
you were drinking too fast
and to sip them

O.M.G. you passed out in the bathroom
and the owners called an ambulance
I feel so bad …
I never got your number
and I want to know
that you are OK.

And now there are several other ‘shy-meet’ sites popping up…

iTiggy.com:  (meaning shy, flirty glances) Uses a Phone App and GPS on your phone picks up others who’ve had very recent missed opportunities – so they can chat electronically.

Wemetonaplane.com: Guy who set this up chatted to a sexy Australian girl on a flight from Malaysia to Sydney  – BUT she gave him her email – now they are living together. But he thought what if she hadn’t … that missed opportunity.

Bump.com: Allows people to communicate via license plate numbers. So you register your car rego and away you go… ‘“For so long, since cars have been around, people have looked to the left or right and wanted to talk to the person they see in another car,” says the founder.

For more inebriated love poems go here

2. Intoxication Sticks…pished without pain

WA|HH Quantum Sensations has been designed by a scientist and …Philipe Starck – and one sprays gives the instant effects of ‘a couple of glasses of wine’. …without the hangover.

Need a 1000 sprays to equal a glass of alcohol….

1. Rufus – the hitmaker…at last… and what a video with HBC…

From Rufus Wainwright’s new album – bloody wonderful. Pure Pop from this guy at last – thanks to Mark Ronson (Amy Winehouse etc)

Listen to the MP3Stream here or read on…

5. We are paid up fans of A.A Gill – do read on…

Why? Because let’s face it when is the last time you read a piece of travel journalism that a) was half-way interesting and b) didn’t have at the bottom ‘Angela flew to the Bali Hotel and Spa courtesy of Air New Zealand and the Bali Tourism federation yadda ruddy yadda.

But A.A. Gill is another animal altogether – A severe dyslexic genius all his work is dictated  down the phone to magazines around the world (Tatler, Australian Gourmet Traveler and The Times of London.)

His description of the Isle of Man caused a diplomatic row: “hopeless, inbred mouth-breathers known as Bennies” and “retired, small arms dealers and accountants who deal in rainforest futures”.

Italy: Italy has made itself into a looking-glass world, where none of the normal worldly rules apply. Take scooters. Only in Italy does a scooter look sexy and chic. And organised crime – everywhere else crime is a reason not to go, in Sicily, the mafia is the attraction.

London can see the dead, and hugs them close. If New York is a wise guy, Paris a coquette, Rome a gigolo and Berlin a wicked uncle, then London is an old lady who mutters and has the second sight. She is slightly deaf, and doesn’t suffer fools gladly. A.A Gill

Now the Olympics has come and dragged us all into the bright light, and a lot of attention is being given to London, and we’re not used to it. We’re not good at showing off. We’re not a good time to be had by all, we’re not an easy date. London isn’t a party animal by nature, it doesn’t join in or have a favorite karaoke song. It does, though, have a wicked, dry and often cruel sense of humor. It is clever, literate and dramatic. It is private and taciturn, a bit of a bore, and surprisingly sentimental. And it doesn’t make friends quickly, is awkward around visitors. We will be pleased when all the fuss and nosiness has gone away.

So come, by all means, but don’t expect the kindness of strangers unless you decide to stay, in which case you’ll be very welcome indeed. There’s always room for one more on top, which is what they used to say on the buses when the buses had conductors, which they don’t anymore. And that’s another bloody improvement. A.A Gill

Oh and his take on Gastro-pubs: food and pubs go together like frogs and lawnmowers.”
Starbucks: “Asking Americans to make coffee is like asking them to  draw a map of the world.”

Finally on himself: ‘When I joined the Sunday Times the people I was competing with were all 10 or 15 years younger, they all had double firsts from Oxford or Cambridge, they were all bright as new pins. But I’d spent that 15 years wetting myself and getting into fights and living a sort of subterranean life but it meant I had had 15 years more experience – which was incredibly useful, and meant that I just wrote better than they did.

Guardian Profile:

4. Two words; Thigh and Master…

Let us for a moment ponder the career of Suzanne Sommers. Why? We have no idea….but work with us:

Part 1.  Three’s Company… plays the ditzy blonde…
Part 2. 1991 = Thigh Master – sells truckloads and revolutionises and industry 10 million pieces of junk plastic sold thank you very much.
Part 3. Home Shopping Network… was worried it was going to affect her acting career…but did it anyway…gangbusters people!
Part 4. The Butt-master – simply explained the thigh master plastic thing bend backwards
Part 5. Diet Books … (late 90′s) and a Poetry Book Touch Me: The Poems of Suzanne Sommers   e.g. ” Organic girl dropped by last night For nothing in particular Except to tell me again how beautiful and serene she feels On uncooked vegetables and wheat germ fortified by bean sprout…etc etc etc.
Part 6: The Sexy Years – a book on hormone injections – currently she injects a plant-based form of estrogen directly into her vagina each day…as its going to help her live to 110.
Part 7: Curing Cancer… without chemo, radiation or even surgery – and how she cured her own full body cancer.
Part 8: 2012 its Nanobots…her latest book promises to reveal the fountain of youth and its’ all to do with nanobots or small robots the size of blood cells injected into the blood stream to clean blood supply and wipe out today’s feared diseases.

Catch up on the career of Suzanne Sommers

3. Five ideas to bring us back to the movie houses…

These five ideas are not ours but we like them…(Fact; on average on 15% of a theatre’s total capacity is used)

No it doesn’t include 3D… but from Vulture of New York Magazine some ideas are:

1. More and better rewards for the INFREQUENT theatre goers… avid film goers provide 60% of income but this is at saturation – real growth is in the reluctant theatre goer.  They’ve done the it for airlines – frequent theatre going points anyone?

2. Cheaper Tickets (hello Village-yuck-Cinemas on Queen St) – The older the movie…cheaper the ticket. Allow pre-purchase of tickets for ends runs of movies

3. Multiplexes programmed by us… Get enough signed up for Austin Powers 1 – and you have a movie on at St Lukes – or especially popular for fruity 50′s stuff we think.
There is an outfit call TUGG doing this in the US right now.

4. Sell me stuff in my seat…right now – score to the Hunger Game, and action figure etc. Or if I provide my facebook details i get something free.

5. Baby-sitting: Starting to experiment with ‘in-theatre child care’.

Source: The Vulture (New York Magazine)

2. The USA Concert Ticket Rip-off…
or ‘we the paying public are actually just mugs’…

Our recent US$95 ticket to Bruce Springsteen cost US$230. (NZ$300) and here’s why:   The US concert ticket system is out of control.

The reality for 90% of music concerts in the US – is that you’ll go online and they are always sold out – BUT – on a second market site you’ll be able to buy a ticket to your gig for 300% above the face value…

Here’s a couple of reasons:
The Bots: automated computing programmes that online purchase 2 tix at at time via thousands of instant transactions.  Theses guys make half a million on Springsteen and loose $200, 000 on Carrie Underwood…but they buy everything!
Ticketmaster and Ebay – own a couple of the biggest secondary sellers – some say (on very good authority) that Ticketmaster will put 50% of its allocation to say Bruce straight on to their secondary ticket selling site and INFLATED prices. Springsteen seats were going for US$1000.   In short – The gamekeepers are the poachers.

Springsteen Ticket Sales Site:

and Finally a brilliant 14 minutes British documentary on the issue:

1. The Heartless Bastards (thanks to the Black Keys)…

HH5 has been tripping around the globe for the last month…LA-New York-Berlin-London…so here’s five hip things to while you’re out of Aotearoa… in no particular order..

Click here for Mp3-stream of this weeks show

5. Bruce! live in New Jersey.

What can we say – New Jersey and Bruce Springsteen Live. What we can say is that the man is a freak! Three hours of not just playing but PROJECTING.

He’s like some CEO – patting the backs of each of his 15 member band and seeing them off the stage at the end of the marathon. We were surrounded by Bruce disciples – some who’d seen him 100′s of times…in US parlance – ‘nice vibe’. Here’s a taster…

4. Allan Rickman at the Actor Chapel in New York City.

Example of what travel is all about – serendipity.
Reading the New York Times in a cafe and saw a free reading by actors to celebrate Dickens 200th Birthday…so ended up basking in Allan Rickman read the first chapter of Hard Times – ‘facts my boy, facts’

3. Stassi Prison in East Berlin…

Cycled way out into East Berlin to Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen (full name)

Area of prison –ex staff still live around it so ex-prisoners who guide get on the train at night and see or hear voices from their prison-horror days (years)

When the East Germans took over from the Russians in the 1950′s – the Stassi – decided that mental punishment was far superior to beatings etc  – so once in here you would get very, very little human interaction and never see another prisoner

BTW … up to four outfits in groovy Berlin have Kiwis and Australians serving ‘flat whites and long blacks’,  so little group of may we say ‘very serious’ coffee people working the cafes in Berlin.

2. La Isla Bonita Mexican Food Truck…

One block off the very hip Abbot Kinney Boulevard on Rose Avenue and 4^th Avenue you’ll find La Isla Bonita. I was told this truck and it’s owners have been doing this for 40 years when they used to be called ‘roach coaches’.

If you are in LA just go! Two words ‘incredibly fresh’

Yelp detail here: La Isla Bonita

1. Patti Smith book reading…Just Kids

A reading by Patti Smith at The Housing Works Books Store in the East Village…all the books are donated and all proceeds go to an AIDS  and Homelessness foundations…cool woman with right dollop of ‘kooky’ on top. She’s a huge fan of English murder TV like Midsomer Murders and Inspector Frost – who would have thought.

5.  24 hours of movie clips telling the time…It’s Art OK!

This is what blew the little HH5 minds this week…The Clock by Christian Marclay

An art installation that was first viewed in February 2011…that runs precisely the time of one day or 24 hours.

Each minute of the day is depicted by a movie clip with a watch, clock, time piece or someone expressing that exact time.

e.g at 6.03 Mr Banks from Mary Poppins is saying “It’s 6.03 and the heirs to my dominion are scrubbed, tubbed and adequately fed.”

or At 2:40 pm Harold Lloyd is hanging from the clock. (So the scene depicts the exact minute of the day you’re watching it)

Several renowned art galleries have purchased the work on a ‘time share’ setup – and its’ being called the perfect youtube mashup for the zeitgeist.

Viewers after repeated viewings are noticing trends such as all clips leading up to the top of the hour are about anticipation while all scenes after the hour are about regret.

Here is clip and the artist has asked that you watch it at 12:04 to respect the art work…

BTW it took two years and a team of interns to first find the clips, log them then edit this… 24 hour real time artwork.  And 12 am to 5 am is a crowd favourite.

Sources: The Wall Street Journal

4.  Rubber Giraffe 

Sophie the Giraffe is a teething toy 5 times more expensive the rest – and it’s selling for Africa and here’s why:

Nicole Ritchie, Miranda Kerr, Sandra Bullock, Isla Fisher etc etc.
And poisoned US toy scandals versus cute little French upmarket model.

And here’s the blurb: (BTW it’s French – so = fashion no? Made in small factory in eastern France)
Sophie’s squeaker keeps babies entertained, while her dark, hand painted spots are easy for developing eyes to see. Perhaps best of all would be her assistance in teething! Sophie is made of 100% rubber derived from the sap of a Hevea tree, and painted with food paint, so she is completely safe to chew, and chew babies will, on her horns, legs and ears! The pleased mothers talked, and as word of mouth spread Sophie went from being a French success, to a European success, to a world-wide success, with over 30 million sold to date! = That’ll be 25 US bucks rather than the average $5 for competing products.

3. The science of masseuses is in?

(This photo is legit: snake massage; six non-venomous snakes massaging the client’s aching muscles and joints -however we digress…

Forget the word pamper – here is the science of massage…
massage therapy;

• Boosts immune function in women with breast cancer,
• Improves symptoms in children with asthma
• Increases grip strength in patients with carpal tunnel syndrome
• On  littlest patients and premature babies, helped in the crucial task of gaining weight.
• Definitely eases for long term – Back pain…
  this from The American College of Physicians

and National Institutes of Health, is currently spending $2.7 million on massage research… so argument now is why don’t health insurers cover massage?

One doctor is even studying massage for its effects on anxiety disorders.

Sources: National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (lots of research here for those with the more pointy-shaped domes)

2. You’ve heard of early education – well welcome to…

Very Early Education!

For NZ$4000 a month you can in New York City put your 2 year old into very early childhood centres populated by trained teachers… you see a Nanny just doesn’t cut it anymore… because the infant toddler years are learning years.

Hello The Children’s Creative Learning Centre – opened a month ago and are signing up children still in the belly.
“One-on-one care from a nanny is great, but are they trained in getting my child to certain milestones?” (parent quoted)

Source: Wall Street Journal

1. Guess what’s going out of print after 244 years…

32 Volumes and 58kg….no more. As they need to take on, gulp, Wikipedia.

5.  Best Startup Launch Video Ever!!!!

This video was loaded on Youtube three days ago and has been watched over 600.000 times – the company is a year old and has big, big backers …have had a check written to them for $1 million… (Youtube will be the new television by 2013-14…see the New Yorker Article below)

Disruption marketing – capital D! For $1 you get razors shipped to your house. This answers so many needs – razors are overpriced monopoly by the grocery giants … men hate buying razors… $1 a month shipped to your door (plus shipping)

And the guy in the video really is the boss of the company – that’s cool.

PS. One problem…this campaign is so successful their site can’t keep up with demand…danger danger danger…

[Youtube] has recruited producers, publishers, programmers, and performers from traditional media to create more than a hundred channels, most of which will début in the next six months—a sort of YouTV. (the war with TV has started – with all TVs now produced having Wifi inbuilt – and today Youtube has 800 million unique users per month with 48 hours of new video uploaded very minute!)

Must Read: New Yorker
Source: Techcrunch

4. Noise – please be gone…

Mark our words – there will be more stories like this one (In January HH5 said 2012 is the year of noise backlash):

This guy is a holding a phone jammer he’s been carrying with him in Philadelphia to jam phones on the buses he rides on… to create mobile phone dead zones…

“A lot of people are extremely loud, no sense of just privacy or anything.” Eric the phone jammer

In New Zealand – it’s cafes! New hip cafe in Grey Lynn…. you cannot year yourself think simply with the bad acoustics…

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

3. Calling all new indie bands – take note…

Rather than dish out CDs or LPs (retro) you can buy their single as a poster or a postcard… simply with the download card which they have taken great care to design …so it’s groovy.

2. Facebooks on a plane…ahhhhhh!

The Atlantic Monthly sums it up: So: A service that’s social, but also anti-social, and that’s friendly, but also snobby, and that’s practical, but also creepy. Seems about right…. Meet and Seat!

We thought Facebook was starting to tire…but wait – businesses are now designing services around facebook… e.g.KLM has started it’s Meet & Seat program  – allows passengers before flight to upload their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles and then see profiles of others …and then select like-minded profiles  to sit next to- so people…network … or as the Forbes Article say – ‘parents can form a kid colony…singles a soul mate.”

The downside…we think…people want privacy!

1. RIP – The fulla behind most translated and one of the most played songs in the world RIP

For those of a certain age – a trip to the cinema at a certain stage in life to see Mary Poppins is up there with the experience of hearing Abbey Road, Are You Experienced and Never Mind the Bollocks…

Robert B Sherman – and his brother penned Chim Chim Cheree and scores for Jungle Book, Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and of course Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.  Songs had to be simple, singable and sincere…

But what a way to make a dime…sitting down with your bro and writing simple to the ear but complex tunes.

Btw – Robert Sherman was one of the first soldiers to enter The Dachau Concentration Camp…

Ohhh and Ringo Starr singing You’re Sixteen was one of Mr Shermans…

Source: The Australian