Getting back from the summer holidays, Italians got a nasty surprise: the price of a cup of coffee had climbed from 80 cents to one euro! But the Japanese seem to have found an inventive solution to overpriced coffee…
It’s fairly well known that vending machines are an essential part of Japanese culture. The country’s low rates of vandalism and graffiti-writing, high population density and shopping 24/7 have put Japan at the top of the list in terms of number of vending machines per capita: 1 every 23 people.
Last spring, a joint venture between Apex, the second largest operator in the dispensers’ market, and Willb, a Japanese advertising agency, gave birth to a new concept in vending machines, in which drinks are distributed almost for free.
Under the name of “MediCafe“, machines play an advert video for around 30 seconds (exactly the time the machine needs to fill the cup of coffee) on the 19-inch LCD display built into them. Consumers choose their drink by activating a touch screen and this feature provides additional opportunities to develop creative interactive ads.
These experimental vending machines have been placed in universities, hospitals and companies and are filled not only with warm and soft drinks but also with targeted advertisements that have allowed a drop in price to almost to zero yen. It looks like the first two-month trial has been successful enough to evolve to the next (more interactive) stage.
I’m just coming back from dinner in Red Hook, and the taxi drove along downtown Manhattan across the river on the way home. When I realized that it was September 11, and would have I been taking the same ride exactly six years ago, I would have seen the Twin Towers for the last time.
But six years ago, i was living in London. And I was at work as usual when I’ve received that email from my old boss in Paris (roughly quoting): “Un avion s’est écrasé sur l’une des Twin Towers. Va sur le site de cnn.” Or in English: “A plane hit one of the Twin Towers. Go on cnn.com”.
The attacks on the WTC were the first and most seismic news events in the Web Era:
(Pew Internet Report, The commons of the tragedy)
More than two-thirds of Internet users (69%) have used the Web to get news and information related to the attacks and their aftermath. Half of Internet users – more than 53 million people – have gotten some kind of news about the attacks online. Many online Americans have used the Internet to stay “on alert” for news developments by subscribing to email news updates and getting newscasts streamed to their desktops.
The demand for online information was so overwhelming that most of the news site became unaccessible, forcing their editor to strip them down to text-only version.
Few links:
Zoe is a copywriter and concept designer. She earned a degree in philosophy but her passion for computers made her win a scholarship for a geek master in Media Science and Technology. She has worked in webvertising since 1999, when she also became involved in media activism and graphic agitation. More in general, interaction design, web culture, social memes, digital commons, guerrilla marketing, political iconology, graphic bits and electro beats are among her favorite subjects of interest. She enjoys exploring her neighborhood with her vintage film cameras.
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