Plasmo and the Infinite Sadness

Manifest (Melbourne Anime Festival) Twitter Overview

Manifest (Melbourne Anime Festival) is currently on this weekend and I set myself a task to suss out what people were thinking about the convention via twitter on the Friday and Saturday. I culled data from the hashtag #manifest and heavy filtering with ‘manifest’ and this is what I got.

BASIC SUMMARY
471 tweets, including retweets
100 twitter accounts
27283 readership reach

TOP WORDS TWEETED
Not surprisingly, the top five (relevant) tweeted words were:

Cosplay
Going
Awesome
#anime
photos

A convention just isn’t a convention when people aren’t dressed up. Attendees really like to spread the word (going to the con!) and have an affinity to the word awesome to describe something they like.

SENTIMENTS
Majority of tweets lied in either positive or neutral; and stayed consistent between the two days. Sentiments were all manually labelled, considering the majority of the demographic like to be sarcastic and describe failings as a positive thing.

Continue reading “Manifest (Melbourne Anime Festival) Twitter Overview”

An enlightening affair with Local Search Marketing

Two weeks ago, whilst being driven home from work, my friend’s tyre went flat. Unable to unscrew one of the bolts, our first instinct was to search for the nearest auto repair service . We whipped out our internet-enabled iphones, opened up Safari and typed in “auto repair North Sydney” into the Google search bar. Five or so local results turned up at the top of the list. We pinpointed the nearest one on the Google maps feature attached to the local results and gave them a call.

This wasn’t an isolated incident of my behaviour; various statistics suggest that 74% of all online searches are local in nature and that between 40%-50% of those searchers are looking for a local merchant to buy from. With search engines like Google being so ubiquitous, it’s not uncommon that we use it as a part of our day-to-day lives to quickly look for goods and services within our vicinity. Recently, I’ve also pinpointed an Adelaide hotel conveniently located close to the Convention Centre for a tradeshow, bought movie tickets on a whim and looked for the nearest takeaway shop to satisfy a massive craving for Thai food. All up, $800 was spent on goods and services, found through 4 local searches. Picture the millions of local searches being conducted now and the transactions being made as a result of it.

Continue reading “An enlightening affair with Local Search Marketing”

Mana Bar announces drinks on the house for Krome layoffs

What do you do if you own a bar and know a couple of people getting laid off?

Krome studios, one of Australia’s largest game development studios, let go of over 100 staff last Thursday, closing down their Adelaide office and shaving off employees in Brisbane and Melbourne. But that did not stop the Mana Bar, a gaming-themed bar in Brisbane, from offering their condolences by posting on facebook that they would be offering drinks on the house for those that got laid off.

A total of 160 reactions (112 likes and 48 comments) was noted for the single status post for a facebook page sporting a bit under 15,000 fans, with nothing but positive sentiments.

Continue reading “Mana Bar announces drinks on the house for Krome layoffs”

French Kissing is Gross (from Freaks & Geeks)

I’m glad Freaks & Geeks never got renewed for another season. There was no way in hell they could create a second season that would’ve topped the first one. I love how it was left on such a high and promising note, and just left it there. Just made each and every episode available so… cherishable.

What if she puts her tongue too far into my mouth? What if I throw up? What if I throw up all over her? What if I throw up in her mouth?

Are Australian cons ready to talk about cute Miku cosplayers on a live twitter broadcast?

Four to five years ago, Pictochat, an inbuilt chat system on the Nintendo DS where you can IM chat with other nearby people on DSs, was used during the costume play (cosplay) event of Animania, a Japanese Popular Culture event. People anonymously sent feedback and chatted amongst themselves about the entries parading and strutting their stuff on stage. Given the nature of some of these exchanges, it was a good thing it only stayed between the IMers and their tiny double screens.

Continue reading “Are Australian cons ready to talk about cute Miku cosplayers on a live twitter broadcast?”

Flying Lotus – Zodiac Shit & Do the Astral Plane

Flying Lotus is Steven Ellison. He’s currently signed with Warp records; that alone will summarise what you can expect from his stuff. If you can put a bit of space electro, hip hop and jazz into a blender and turn it into a consumable for your ears, this is what you’ll get as a result. His album was brought to my attention via “Do the Astral Plane” and its unique blend of electro, groove and opera elements. But what really got me hooked was “Zodiac Shit”; it’s lo-fi electro sound reminiscent of old tvs, it’s slow but heavy beat and those darn violin samples which makes this a beautiful yet unsettling 90 seconds.

Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma – 05 – Zodiac Shit
[audio:http://www.plasmoandtheinfinitesadness.com/wp-content/uploads/Flying-Lotus-Cosmogramma-05-Zodiac-Shit.mp3%5D
Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma – 10 – Do The Astral Plane
[audio:http://www.plasmoandtheinfinitesadness.com/wp-content/uploads/Flying-Lotus-Cosmogramma-10-Do-The-Astral-Plane.mp3%5D

notes on using facebook pages effectively (warning: boring stuff)

A facebook page could be one of many online ‘faces’ of a company (other than their website), and in our case being an online store, could be the first points of contact when customers have a problem or want to leave feedback. After a small explosion of growth on one of my company facebook pages, I developed a set of guidelines and good practices to ensure consistency amongst all our other administrators and, what I found to be, a good way to manage your online presence. Oh, and to also target influencers with engaging assets to act as platforms for conversation.

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Best Coast Boyfriend

This song’s getting a few rotations on Triple J and featured on a lot of music blogs. And there’s a good reason for that: it’s mighty catchy and dreampoppy, reminiscent of a less noisy 80s shoegazer thing combined with a drop of the Cardigans. Combine and picture the following words: teenage yearning, lazy summer, weed & cats, drone. I’ve an unfortunate gut feeling this is going to be a one-off buzzband, so it’ really up to the rest of the album and what they plan to do next; but Boyfriend is currently on a bit of a repeat on my winampz.

Front lady Bethany Cosentino said that listeners can expect the following…

“…songs about summer and the sun and the ocean and being a lazy creep…”

http://rcrdlbl.com/widgets/embed/d1dfaad8dfe9291ff49d2a9eb39cbb9c/

They can be found here as well:
Myspace
Blog

Plasmo – a 5min clay animation where an adorable alien sacrifices himself to save a planet and declares his undying love for his gf. Epic.

How can so much drama, selflessness, a beautiful soundtrack, poignancy and a silly bit of humour be packed into a 4 minutes and 37 seconds clay animation?

Plasmo, a little alien, risks his life by flying his spacecraft into an oncoming comet to deflect it. In doing so, the core of a certain planet gets filled by a naturalistic/ forest-like utopia. In his last seconds, he sends a photo of himself and Pasty, as a gesture that she was probably the last thing on his mind before he hurls himself and his spaceship into the comet.

Continue reading “Plasmo – a 5min clay animation where an adorable alien sacrifices himself to save a planet and declares his undying love for his gf. Epic.”

Some favourite SDCC 2010 Toy Exclusives

Comic Con; the last stage boss of all pop culture conventions. And like last stage bosses, they contain a lot of pretty neat stuff, like toy exclusives. Picked out the following from a recent emailout.

Of course, none of these are ever going to reach me, though if I had to pick one, that Fafi noir one looks pretty neat.