The iPad & Flash

It has already been covered a number of times on TechCrunch that the iPad, like the iPhone and iPod Touch, will not feature flash. A rather contentious point with many people when you consider the amount of content on the web that is Flash based. In fact, many critics have gone as far as to say this could be the downfall of the latest weapon in Apple's arsenal of world domination. All this may be mute, however, if you look towards HTML5 and the possibilities that it promises. The brilliant folk at Brightcove, for instance, have already set out a roadmap (see below) outlining how they will use HTML5 for streaming video when the viewing device is detected as an iPad. Furthermore, even on an iPhone browser video thumbnails will launch a Quicktime player.

Brightcove CEO, Jeremy Allaire, says, "HTML5 is great, it is an open standard, and firmly entrenched in the Apple device platform. Flash can’t reach those platforms for political and business reasons.”

While it's true that HTML5 can't do everything that Flash can (specifically in relation to supporting advertising, audience measurement and social sharing), Brightcove have promised that they will bring HTML5 video up to par with Flash for Brightcove users. Allaire says that this will take until the end of the year, going through a number of iterative stages to get there. First Brightcove videos will play back in a very basic HTML5 player when they detect an iPad. The next step will be to add audience measurement and advertising features. Then finally Brightcove will work on upgrading the actual interface so that iPad and iPhone users don’t notice the difference between it and the Flash version of their player.

The actual raodmap will go as follows...

adidas 'Street Where Originality Lives'

For those of you who were at the cinema today, you may have been lucky enought to see the new adidas 'Street Where Originality Lives' ad. It just went live across Irish cinemas and features David Beckham, Snoop Dogg, Noel Gallagher, Ian Brown, Agyness Dean, Ciara, Whitney Port (The Hills)......and other celeb types. Check out the video below, or for loads of behind the scenes interviews and footage with the stars of the ad pop over to the adidas YouTube channel.

If you're interested, and I know I was as it's a banging tune, the ad is soundtracked to the Pilooski remix of Dee Edwards’ “Why Can’t there be love”.

Bushmills Voted Best Irish Whiskey in the World

A huge congratulations to everyone at Bushmills on a fantastic win at the prestigious 2010 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. Bushmills swept the board winning Best Irish Whiskey in the World, two double gold and four gold accolades. Bushmills is now one of only a few international spirit brands ever to scoop 100% gold in the competition. This is pretty spectacular considering that it was only a couple of months back that Bushmills won three World Whiskies Awards in London.

Bushmills won the top award for its entire range, with the Black Bush and 1608 blends each winning double gold, and the Bushmills Original, 10, 16 and 21 Year Old Single Malts all winning gold. Ultimately though it was the Bushmills 1608 that was named Best Irish Whiskey.

Colum Egan, Bushmills Master Distiller, said, "This is an incredible achievement for Bushmills. We like to think that we make the world’s finest Irish whiskey – it’s great to hear that the experts share that opinion and the team at the distillery are absolutely thrilled. We’ll definitely be cracking open a bottle and raising a glass to celebrate our wins!"

With Sarah Miles, Bushmills Global Brand Director, adding, "The awards are further recognition of the outstanding quality of Bushmills. It’s a real achievement to be placed at the forefront of the fastest growing international spirits category in the world today. Irish whiskey is obviously a competitive market and so we’re delighted that the excellence of our liquid has been recognised by our peers."

Again, congratulations to the whole Bushmill team - well done folks!

Want To Work For Ogilvy?

Are you an advertising hack? Do you want to work for one of the largest, most recognised, well respected agencies in the world? Ogilvy are now hiring! Kinda ;)

Ogilvy have just launched a campaign to find the 'World's Greatest Sales Person'. So if you think you can peddle sand to Arabs or convince an Eskimo to buy snow, you may be in with a chance. Beware though, this is not a competition for your average 'Del Boy', Sunday market, car boot sale geeza. The challenge here is to sell a brick!


The common everyday brick can be found almost everywhere. The brick was invented during the height of the Sumer empire between the 4th and 6th Millennia BC. In the 7,000 years since, mankind has made literally billions of them. However, they are still one of the most important things ever invented; the bona fide building blocks (pardon the pun) of civilisation.

So we know what the product is, a common Red Brick. The challenge is to convince people to consider it, to use it, to buy it. You need to create a pitch to someone who can actually make the purchase for good reason. Obvious choice is construction, but who else might want to buy a brick? That's the real challenge. Make people think, “Wow, I didn’t think of the Red Brick in that way. Maybe I need it.”

So what's the measure of success? You have several options of how you want people to respond so long as it is measurable. This could be by phone call, SMS, email, website or joining of a social network.

Now the only question is: are you the world's greatest sales person? If you think you are then you need to make a 1-2 minute long video of your sales pitch and get it submitted to youtube.com/Ogilvy by May 16, 2010.

For more information, follow the fun on Twitter, join the Facebook Fan Page or email the guys here: greatest.salesperson@ogilvy.com

Alternatively, check out this video...

The Future Of Photoshop

One of the biggest requests that Adobe have had for the new Photoshop is to make adding, removing, moving or repairing items faster and more seamless. This count be as simple as retouching to completely reimagining an image. To say that Adobe have taken this on board doesn't even begin to detail what is coming in CS4. Here's an early glimpse of capability that you may soon have access to...