The Chambers

Number 11 onto the #goodpeople twitter list is one Matthew Burgess. @therealburgo previously worked @tourismqld in the Digital Marketing team, but recently moved on to greener pastures.

Matt’s a cluey dude who knows how the internet works and is an all round good guy. Currently tweeting about renovating his newly acquired house, you can expect to see a good mix of witty one liners and intelligent online marketing information.

Follow him, it’s worth it.

#notdeadtome

I’ve added another interesting tweeter to my #goodpeople list. More info on this project can be found – @ckjchambers favourite tweeters

#10 #goodpeople @brettow who runs BNE digital shop Speedwell. Very knowledgeable about digital & team does great work https://twitter.com/#!/ckjchambers/goodpeople

I’ve started up a list of my favourite tweeters, which I’ll add to frequently. You can find the list -> https://twitter.com/#!/ckjchambers/goodpeople

As at today I’ve only added 7 people. I certainly intend for it to be a far greater representation of all the good peeps I follow, but I am not intending on adding them all in one swoop. I’ve embedded onto this page http://www.ckjchambers.com/my-favourite-tweeters/ the list and their most recent tweets. The comments on that page include when I added each tweeter and why.

h/t to Mr Andy Elwood for the #goodpeople tag inspiration.

Whilst I am here, I’ll also add #8 to the list….

Rohit Bhargava – @rohitbhargava. Rohit’s twitter bio reads: “I write a blog about influential marketing. I work at Ogilvy. I have a personality. I wrote a book on why personality matters: readpni.com”

#goodpeople #8 @rohitbhargava posts regularly about online marketing & once sat on a TQ panel about “Best Job”. https://twitter.com/#!/ckjchambers/goodpeople

One of the projects we’ve been working on lately at work is Roo Mail. The result is the video below, a tall tale about a North Queensland community which has trained Kangaroo’s to deliver their mail.

How amazing is this video from Disney which is about the revamp of the Star Tours ride at Disney Land. Featuring Darth Vader frustratingly waiting for the ride to re-open after refurbishment, this is a great bit of content from the Disney team which should gain interest from fans of the park and the Star Wars movies.

Star Tours: Darth Vader goes to Disneyland

Huzzah… After a loooong time in between drinks, I now have a driver back in my golf bag. After the round at Cab del Sol where I smashed three wood – three wood brilliantly (highlight hole post to come), I decided I could manage to re-learn how to hit the driver and get a bit more distance off the tee.

At Cabo del Sol I hit the Taylor Made woods well and was going to get myself the new R11. Those things look amazing cool and the trickery in being able to adjust the club is phenomenal. I have the R9 Taylor Made three wood and I’ve managed to hit it fairly well, so thought I’d get the Taylor Made R11 to go with it. I had some Golf World vouchers so went to Golf World at Newmarket. The dude who helped me out was great, I’ll get his name and update the post later on.

Unfortunately the R11 is not in stock yet through most Golf World stores, but I wanted to get a driver whilst motivated, so decided to try out a couple of clubs in the net & on their “hawk eye” system which helps determine what shaft strength / style club you need and determine club suitability. I liked the looks of the Ping and also Adams drivers, so tried them both out.

Both clubs held a similar visual appeal for me, in that they didn’t look like massive bulbous distractions. The clubs both also felt good to hit shots with and produced similar results, but I ended up going with the Ping.

The “hawk eye” swing & shot tracking system was great as it effectively measured the trajectory, path and distance of the shot. I have been hitting shots with a high trajectory and this means they effectively stop where they bounce, with no run-on. So, even though I hit my irons well and a fair distance, they dont run on and I get robbed of distance. There was no evidence of this in the “hawk eye” tracking, with the shot trajectory being good, the shots straight (just a minor adjustment in stance required) and the ball carrying just under 200 yards (approximately 180 metres) on the fly. Once on the course and with some more practice I should be able to work that out a bit further.

Thanks very much to the guys at Golf World Newmarket, I appreciate your help!

Looking forward to next weekend’s round at Pine Rivers Golf Club and testing out my new Ping I15.

A review on the Ping I15 Driver can be found http://www.golf.com/golf/equipment/article/0,28136,1941092,00.html

Here’s the commercial for the I15 which has Bubba Watson in it.

#project365 – Jan 6 – Brisbane International

Originally uploaded by ckjchambers

The Brisbane International is a tennis tournament played annually in Brisbane. It’s an ATP World Tour event and brings some pretty big tennis names to Brisbane. In the mens draw Andy Roddick and Robin Soderling lead the way and in the womens side of the draw Nadia Petrova and Sam Stosser are the main drawcards.

The venue is fantastic, with the main court covered and close by to a train station. Further information on the Queensland Tennis Centre, which is where the tournament is, have a look at http://www.queenslandtenniscentre.com.au/

For more information on the Brisbane International have a look at http://www.brisbaneinternational.com.au/

You can find the Queensland Tennis Centre

http://foursquare.com/venue/346372

Jan 4 – Flooding in Queensland

Originally uploaded by ckjchambers

Today’s photo is not one of me directly, but rather something about my beautiful State. Areas of Queensland are experiencing terrible flooding currently & I thought today I’d post a photo of the web page which has information about how to donate to the premier’s flood appeal.

Visit www.Qld.gov.au/floods to donate

For the latest updates on road closures and travel information visit http://131940.qld.gov.au/ , or visit the Bureau of Meteorology http://www.bom.gov.au/ to check weather forecasts for your holiday destination.

Accessorising much?

Originally uploaded by ckjchambers

This gekko found its way into Kylie’s handbag this morning.

I am not sure whether he was looking to be turned into a pair of shoes or wanted to go to work with Kylie. Neither happened, I fished him out and put him outside.

Social platforms based on location, such as foursquare (www.foursquare.com), gowalla (www.gowalla.com) and facebook places (www.facebook.com/places) are growing their user base. The number of people checking in at locations is increasing and it is definitely an area which we’re watching closely at Tourism Queensland to identify opportunities for the Queensland tourism industry to become involved in.

At Tourism Queensland we have been running a foursquare promotion for the past three months, information on our foursquare promotion can be found on our website www.queenslandholidays.com.au/foursquare

I am very interested to see some of the facebook places promotions which will surely be rolled out by Destination Marketing Organisations (DMO’s) this year.

This post is not specifically about location based services though. The idea of checking-in and letting your mates know what you are up to is progressing beyond the location based check-in and that is what this post is all about.

I have been trying out two applications (Miso and GetGlue) which allow you to check-in to what you watching on television or what’s entertaining you. Depending on the application you can check-in to television programs, video games you are watching, books you are reading or movies you are watching. Why on earth would anyone want to do that?

Some of the benefits to using this type of an application:

A record of the shows you have watched. You could use these applications to know whether or not you have watched a program, rather than watch it for 10 minutes and then remembering you’ve already seen this episode.

The gameplay element, incorporating earning points and badges. With each check-in you have the possibility to earn badges. The badges are themed relative to the style of program you watch and also to individual programs.

Obtain discounts from production companies or television stations. I saw the Discovery Channel offer a discount code for “Deadliest Catch” merchandise.

Understand the content your social network is consuming. I’ve bought a book (From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor) after having seen someone I know check-in as reading that book (@teamgoodguys)

ReadWriteWeb wrote an article about miso http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/miso_a_foursquare-like_app_for_homebodies.php which was posted in March 2010. In that article the author (Sarah Perez) questioned whether Miso was “Foursquare for the Boring?”. The article also has an embedded video about Miso which is good to watch.

I am not sure how many users Miso has, but GetGlue apparently has 600,000 users. (Reference http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/getglue/id377615302?mt=8#)

From the iPhone application for Miso I can see that the television programs I most frequently watched (with the number of times watched after the show name) in 2010 were:

NCIS – 24
Deadliest Catch – 18
30 Rock – 13
Breaking Bad – 13
Community – 12
The Fixer – 12
How I met your Mother – 12
Eastbound & Down – 12
Law & Order SVU – 10
The Event – 9

NCIS and Law & Order SVU are time fillers, I generally have those running as early morning television while I am on the laptop and before Kylie and Jackson are awake.

I’m finding Deadliest Catch less interesting now, but it’s a show about crab fishing in the sea between Alaska and Russia and it has been entertaining. It was very sad to see Captain Phil die….

Breaking Bad is a great series produced by AMC in the USA. For a season one 60 second breakdown check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK3EWNnb824. The story is about a science teacher who is told he has cancer and he starts making and selling drugs to pay for his treatment. It’s got Bryan Cranston (the dad from Malcolm in the Middle) as the main man and he does a great job in this role. I like this show, season three has just finished.

My other current favourite on that list would be Eastbound & Down. Kenny “freaking” Powers! This is a story about a baseball player who has passed his career peak, his life spirals out of control and he ends up running off to Mexico to start his life over. There’s a lot of inappropriate stuff on this show, youtube search it (http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=eastbound+and+down&aq=0) for a giggle. Funny program!

One of the most useful purposes of applications like Miso and GetGlue, like the location check-in applications, is that you have a record of what you have watched. I was surprised at how much television I watch. Even just in the ten most frequently watched programs I watched, there’s 104 hours of programming. Four days! Even though most of that would be passive, in that I’d be on the laptop doing something else, that’s still too much television…. I could be doing something more productive. Somehow, I dont think the makers of these apps want to slow down your television consumption, but maybe I can use GetGlue to check-in to more books, or one of the location services to check-in outside and doing something more productive.

Eventually a service which allows you to check-in to a location, a television show, a book, a movie, a computer game, drinking a certain type of wine and so on would be very useful.

I would also like to see the location based services take on some of the functionality from services like Miso. It would be really useful for foursquare to extend their reporting / statistics page (http://foursquare.com/ckjchambers/stats) report on a period longer than the last month.

Have you used miso or GetGlue? What do you think of the premise for these apps & why would you use one of them?