Tag: ANTHILL TV

Simon Moss, who co-founded a newly minted company that is tapping into the crowdsourcing phenomenon, offers his insight and personal experience in a talk presented at VIVID Creative Sydney. His enterprise, ImageBrief, aims to turn the stock-photography market on its head.

A typical successful entrepreneur is flexible, understands that a startup is not necessarily a business -- and computes with a Mac. That's the broad takeaway from an appearance on ABC's "Business Today" segment by Marcus Tarrant, managing director of MissionHQ, an online tool for developing business plans.

Products ranging from surfboards to fresh juice, are getting an unusual spotlight this week. Seven Australian entrepreneurs will be featured in a online book that will be unveiled as part of a launch event 28 June for Nokia's E6 and E7 smartphones. So, here's a video to promote an ebook about Australian entrepreneurs to sell mobile phones. Go figure.

IPowow, a Sydney-based interactive media company that has made its mark in international sports and entertainment, ventured down the runway this past weekend, giving viewers of the Miss USA pageant a chance to express their opinions in real time.

The next time you worry over a project flowchart, plan a company party or whether you'll put yellow pepper and/or cucumbers on a hero sandwich, just think of the logistics required to pull off this astounding lip dub video by the beleaguered but proud citizens of Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA.

Lord Vader, it is our grave duty to inform you that the revamped Star Tours attraction at California's Disneyland opened the first weekend in June. The 24-year-old ride is now a iridescent Death Star of 3D technology, high-def video and cutting-edge animatronics. Oh, and waits of two-hours-plus for those who don't wield the dark side of The Force. Poor, puny wastrels.

Based on this first-look video, Windows 8 looks eerily familiar to those of us who paid any attention to the Windows Phone 7 operating system when it came out a year ago -- big tiles that contain themes and logical (to the folks in Redmond, Wash., at least) collections of apps and data. And touching. Lots and lots of touching.

A couple messages emerge from this video, a talk by "The Book of Awesome" author Neil Pasricha at the TEDx Conference in Toronto, Canada. One is about the phenomenon is blogs-to-books. The other is about simple art of enjoying life.

We contend that imaginative commercials may come and go, but catchy jingles are forever. Sure, we recognise the Energiser Bunny and the Qantas koala. They're memorable. But not can't-get-it-out-of-your-head memorable. And now, will a possible ditty for 99Designs join them?

For those of you who know what a delicious temptation procrastination can be, we offer this amusing and information clip from Charlie McDonnell, a young Londoner who YouTube pays to make videos (Really!). Watch it. Now.

At news that the yanks had 'taken out' Osama bin Laden, we hungrily ingested the opinions of Washington insiders, Kentucky short-order cooks and Al Qaeda terrorists. (Heck, CNN and Time magazine even tracked down the kids who were listening to President George Bush read "The Pet Goat" when the 9/11 attacks occurred and asked them what they thought of Bin Laden's demise.) Oh, yes. We've heard it from all angles. At least, we thought he had.

This 99-minute film -- available in its entirety in YouTube and reconfigured as Android and Apple apps -- combines archival video and audio with footage shot from the International Space Station to re-create Gagarin's flight in real time. The space station closely followed the orbital path of Vostok 1, giving us an idea of what Gagarin saw out of his window on 12 April, 1961.

We won't give away the ending to this environmentally conscious flashmob event staged at a shopping mall somewhere in Quebec, Canada. We will say 1) that the video makes a disappointing statement about attitudes toward recycling and 2) one person ends up being a really good sport.

The video for this fill-from-the-bottom beer dispenser has been sudsing up the Interwebs for about a year now. Yet, strangely, it has never reared its frothy head as one of Anthill's breathtaking (often thirst-inspiring) Beer O'Clock innovations. Sure, we've brought you this beer tossing fridge and Melbourne based Beer Vaults, but not this well-lubricated lubrication machine that can crank out more than 40 pints a minute from a four-tap dispenser.

A fall from a 10-story-high mainframe extrusion can be messy. Worse, it can damage that expensive handheld portal generator. In a promotion for the new video game "Portal 2," Aperture Laboratories makes a slick investment pitch.

Every year, we at Stately Anthill Manor await the first day of April with giddy anticipation. The array of innovation unveiled by companies of every stripe never fails to drop our jaws to the pavement. But none approach Ikea Australia's gift to man's best friend -- the Hundstol.

Who says print is dead? Commonwealth Bank tapped the talents of Sydney computer graphics company Explore Engage and put out a newspaper ad that jumps off the page. All you need is a smartphone camera loaded with a reader app.

Because it's Beer O'Clock, here's a challenge to wind up the week. Go to the parking lot, put a blindfold on a brave volunteer and tell her or him to walk in a straight line. Your co-worker will fail, laughably. This might even explain why even the most perfect business plan can't prevent a company from veering hither and yon, instead of laser-beaming its way to entrepreneurial Shangri-La. We're just not wired to stick to an unwavering path.

What was the greatest invention of the industrial revolution? The automobile? The assembly line? The leaf blower? Wrong on all counts, says visionary Hans Rosling, who makes a compelling and personal argument for... wait for it... the washing machine. In this peppy presentation for TED, Rosling concludes that freeing his mother from the drudgery of hand-washing gave her time for things that improved, exponentially, the quality of life for her and her family. It's the holy grail of innovation.

This clip might seem frivolous (as if that's stopped us before), but the next time an entrepreneurial challenge appears to block your path, take inspiration from this penguin.