from the hip

The sadly deceased Scandinavian crime writer Stieg Larsson’s book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is selling more and more, both in the UK and in the US. Also, Steig Larson’s second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire is high in the hardback charts. The third and last book in the Millenium trilogy is due this fall.

And now the Swedes have almost finished the first movie based on these fabulous books! Here is a teaser from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo:

embedded by Embedded Video

The Icelandic band Sigur Rós has recorded a somewhat unusual music video for a song entitled “Gobbledigook”. The video has lots of nudity (what is known as “frontal nudity” in the US). As a result, it will be banned on MTV and has been removed from YouTube.

The movie may be interesting because of the nudity – it has both nude males and nude women. It may also be interesting because of lots of pubic hair – a new trend? In Iceland?

However, the most interesting aspect of this is the marketing aspect. We have seen Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton, and others using sex videos and nudity to become world famous. Is this possible for a band with a music video too? If it has lots of nudity?

Also, the media world is changing, and this video may well illustrate how relatively unimportant traditional media channels are becoming – even YouTube, when it chooses to censor. My bet is that this video will go viral, and that it will be one of the most viewed music videos this year.

It is still art? Who knows? However, the new album, which this song is from, is called “Nude”, so at least it reflects the title of the album.

What remains to be seen is whether sex sells, and whether the group will be able to reach their intended audience with this content or not?

We will see!

PS: Oh, and the video? You can find it on the homepage of Sigur Rós:  Here.

I have written earlier, in What’s wrong with American banks about the lack of efficiency, the continued use of checks and their outrageous fees. However, it seems I was much too kind. Some American banks seem to do much worse than even that. Now, according to New York Times,

Wachovia has agreed to pay as much as $144 million to end an investigation that accuses the bank of allowing telemarketers to use its accounts to steal millions of dollars.

So instead of trying to build customer confidence, sharpening up the service, improving efficiency, and building business by producing customer satisfaction, a huge American bank gets involved in a rather petty scam against its own customers for a few million dollars in profit! Elderly customers, at that! Wild! What a great way to destroy a brand name! What a great way to destroy customer confidence – just when they need it the most!

The bank’s actions were “part of a pattern of misconduct” that resulted in Wachovia’s collecting millions of dollars in fees, regulators wrote.

Wachovia has agreed to pay a $10 million fine, contribute $8.9 million to consumer education programs and make restitution to victims that could top $125 million. In a statement, the bank said this “situation was unacceptable and we regret it happened.”

How silly is it possible to behave? When is the American banking industry going to stop treating its customers as uneducated, stupid fools, and instead try to focus on building trust, satisfaction and loyalty by means of excellent service? Or building highly efficient transaction systems using the best available technology and software? In a country that, technologically speaking, is ahead of the rest of the world, but that nevertheless, from an implementation point of view – especially as far as the banking sector is concerned – is 10 years behind Scandinavian and German banks in the use of modern technology? They should improve transaction efficiency and lower costs – not run scams!

And if the high paid executives of the huge American bank are unwilling to or unable to improve their banks and customer service, then why hasn’t there been any regulatory action to just force them to increase efficiency and performance? Do American regulators not know how bad American banking is? Do they not go abroad and study how it’s done elsewhere? Do they think America is still in the forefront – and don’t want to be confused with facts?

The Swedes deserve special attention today. Two of their international brands, H&M and IKEA, both fabulous successes internationally, came out on top in a study of European brand names.

H&M is Europe’s second biggest clothing chain. On Thursday it was named Europe’s most valuable brand, beating such rivals as Zara and the British chain store Marks and Spencer. Financial Times writes:

The Swedish-based chain’s brand has a value of €10.37bn, according to the first ever rankings of European retailers by Interbrand, the brand consultants. It is well ahead of the rest of the pack, with runner-up Carrefour valued at €6.6bn.

And, not only that, IKEA, the world famous furniture store, placed at the number three spot on the same list, with a brand name value of €6,5 billion! In addition, that is only the brand name value in Europe – IKEA is a brand name in the US and other parts of the world as well. A great sucess for Sweden!

Here is the complete list of the top European brands:

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

A new, little cool gadget is quietly conquering the US. A camcorder. Not produced by any of the big name manufacturers. Not a brand name at all, actually. And not conquering the market by means of huge marketing campaigns. In a year, it’s captured 13% of the US market. And it’s a bestseller on amazon.com.

Actually it is less advanced, rather than more advanced than its competitors. That’s not all that common as far as electronic gadgets are concerned, in our day and age.

It’s a sweet little story actually. This little device, the Flip and its successor, the Flip Ultra, produced by Pure Digital, is winning in the marketplace in the old-fashioned way: It’s very easy to use – anybody can use it and have fun – and it’s real cheap.

You want to know more? From New York Times:

Now, understanding the appeal of this machine will require you not just to open your mind, but to practically empty it. Because on paper, the Flip looks like a cheesy toy that no self-respecting geek would fool with, let alone a technology columnist.

The screen is tiny (1.5 inches) and doesn’t swing out for self-portraits. You can’t snap still photos. There are no tapes or discs, so you must offload the videos to a computer when the memory is full (30 or 60 minutes of footage, depending on whether you buy the $150 or $180 model). There are no menus, no settings, no video light, no optical viewfinder, no special effects, no headphone jack, no high definition, no lens cap, no memory card. And there’s no optical zoom — only a 2X digital zoom that blows up and degrades the picture. Ouch.

Instead, the Flip has been reduced to the purest essence of video capture. You turn it on, and it’s ready to start filming in two seconds. You press the red button once to record (press hard — it’s a little balky) and once to stop. You press Play to review the video, and the Trash button to delete a clip.

There it is: the entire user’s manual.

It is point and shoot. It’s simplicity incarnated! It is “less is more”.

The video and audio quality is surprisingly good — not as sharp as a tape camcorder or even digital still cameras, but far superior to cellphone video. It has TV resolution (640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second), with softer images than you’d get with a real camcorder.

The shocker is the Flip’s low-light abilities, which trump even $1,000 camcorders. Not only is the video grain-free, but recorded dim scenes actually look brighter than they looked to your naked eye.

Once you’ve shot a few scenes, you slide a button and — sproing! — a U.S.B. jack pops out at 90 degrees to the camera body. This, too, is part of the Zen of Flip. You’re spared the hassle of storing, tracking and finding a U.S.B. cable.

…. “Look what my first grader did with it all by herself,” one guy told me. “We’re using them in schools to teach narrative structure,” said a teacher at a conference. “I bought two of ‘em: one for my 80-year-old grandmother,” said a neighbor, “and one for my 5-year-old.”

Pretty neat, is what I think! No cables, no fuss, ok pictures without 200 pages and manuals and advanced computer programs. And real, real cheat. What do you think?