After sitting around together for too long perhaps bemoaning that their love of Manga comics and general geekery had prevented them from getting girlfriends some Japanese students from the University of Tsukuba have found a solution and developed the “girlfriend coat”.

It is a coat that keeps you company and gives you the feeling that there’s always someone there for you. It hugs you and talks to you and says things to you that a real girlfriend would say such as “you said you’d call”, “I’m sorry! I’m late!” and that “really doesn’t suit you”.  Read More »

Whilst online surveys often overstate the uptake of technology, Ipsos MediaCT’s offline Tech Tracker data tells us that just over four in ten GB adults now own a smartphone, representing an increase of roughly 30% in the last two years. The rise of the smartphone has coincided with the increased popularity, and normality, of social media usage. Arguably the two are connected, the modern mobile device being the ideal format for keeping up-to-date, and updating, as it means people are always online, even when on the move. Read More »

With Propeller PR’s expertise in the media and tech media space, we’ve partnered with PR software provider Cision to reveal our ‘Tech Influence 25′ list. Rory Cellan-Jones, technology correspondent for the BBC tops the list.

He’s closely followed by Charles Arthur, technology editor for The Guardian, and Mark Prigg, science & technology editor for the Evening Standard. Read More »

You may have heard the news that Facebook has partnered with more than a dozen music services, making for richer musical experiences for the social networking site’s millions of members. But are you listening yet?

The top three favourites so far are Spotify, MOG and Rdio. Other services in the mix include TuneIn Radio, iHeartRadio, Audiovroom, earbits, Deezer, SoundCloud, Rhapsody, Vevo, Jelli, Songza and Slacker, among others. All have been introduced as part of Facebook’s Open Graph approach, that aims to feed music, movies, TV, news, books, media and something called “lifestyle apps” into the social mix. All was revealed at the f8 conference back in September when Mark Zuckerberg took to the stage, alongside music darling Spotify. Read More »

Don’t you just love mad scientists? They used to be people you only saw on the telly. You know, blokes with lots of wispy, backcombed hair and eyes that looked like they were propped open with matchsticks. They had a perpetual look of wonderment and terror as if they had accidentally attached electric wires not to a Van de Graaf generator, but to their own genitalia instead.

But now every good agency has a mad inventor. Except they’re more clever than mad. And they’re not called mad scientists any more, either, but Creative Technologists (although they’re mad scientists at heart.) Read More »

‘Why are your ears pointed, Mr Spock?’
‘To heat up butter popcorn, Captain.’

People will always be a bit interested when someone takes the very familiar, gives it a tweak, and makes you see it in a different way.

The appeal is probably due to the child-like excitement that comes when ‘What if…’ and ‘Why not!?’ prevail over sound reasons not to. It’s fun. It’s unexpected. It pushes the boundaries. It’s precarious, and there’s a bit of jeopardy involved. Throw some innovative technology into the mix and the result is an interesting trend for reinventing the familiar, using digital means. Read More »

Along with Kate Warwick, the founder of PR Savvy, we are developing a social media public relations plan, and workshops, to help a number of the agency’s B2B clients prepare for how they will approach this emerging medium.

While social media for B2C companies is better defined, with terrific case studies to look at such as what Comcast, Skittles and JetBlue have achieved, we are finding that it is harder to find a lot of examples of many relevant and successful B2B social media PR campaigns. Read More »

Some of the world’s largest companies are accepting that they have been slow to engage with social media tools such as Facebook and twitter, especially when compared to their smaller business counterparts. Read More »

This Monday the world’s leading contributors to mobile technology will gather at the BFI Southbank to celebrate an industry that is transforming how we connect with each other, access the Internet and entertain ourselves with the Heroes of the Mobile Screen event, in conjunction with Mobile Monday.

The event invites industry gurus, along with total newbies to mobile to join several hundred attendants in a fully packed day of insightful discussions, and special insight to the minds of a group of teenagers who will be taking centre stage to share their thoughts on how they use mobile phones. Expect plenty of opportunity to learn about what the future may hold for the little devices that most everyone carries, and for whom many report that they just can’t leave home without their mobile phone.

Nothing more than communications devices? Or are mobile phones truly our heroes? Think about it — in many cases mobile phones are re-shaping the world as we know it, by helping people in developing nations cross the digital divide, by saving countless lives when they are used to phone emergency services in accidents, or becoming the tool for voices sharing reports from war torn nations and places of political unrest.

The line up of heroes from the mobile industry for the day includes:

And bring your old mobile phones to the event to give to the World Film Collective!

Hurray for the heroes that are behind the little device that I can’t leave home without,

-Lisa

I am frustrated. I am bored. I feel patronised. PC World is telling me My World is Pink (it has not been pink since I was 7) and I need a new laptop to match my outfit (it would never even occur to me to match my outfit with my technology). Samsung is asking me “What Colour is my Life?” (hello?) and Dell is telling me that technology is like candy (do me a favour).

I am a 35 year-old professional woman with my own home. I am educated, fairly tech literate and, most importantly, I have cash to spend. Plenty of cash to spend, on technology that will make my life easier, more creative and fun.

Out of every ten gadgets bought in the UK, four are now bought by women. And, before you ask, we are not talking about fridges and washing machines. No, these are high-end items such as HD TV’s, games consoles and smart phones. And there are more games being played by women than men between the ages of 25-34. I am not alone in feeling patronised or alienated by technology and consumer electronic brands.

I recently conducted some research for Forrester. This highlighted that one third of all British women do not feel connected to a single technology brand. Over half of all women walk out of shops because they cannot find what they are looking for. This missed opportunity is calculated at £0.6 billion. The technology industry is where the automotive industry was 20 years ago- nervous boys at the school dance who do not quite know what to do or say to women. They end up leading with two left feet.

So why do technology companies think that pinking up and dumbing down their marketing is the way to get professional, well educated women to part with their cash? Why do they treat young girls and women alike – as an afterthought? Why are companies not researching “what women really want” and getting advice from expert consultants?

How can we help technology companies understand what women want?

Many technology brands believe that the way to a woman’s purse is to make her feel “special”, and have aimed to achieve this by giving women their “own” space, site or product. Dell’s disastrous Della website, which handed out technological advice alongside recipe tips and fashion articles, was shut down within weeks. Carphone Warehouse, Dixons and Comet (Comet Angels) have all had their share of “initiatives” and women’s only days, all with the aim of helping women turn the telly on. All, one assumes, with a glass of Prosecco held in their manicured, nail-varnished hands.

No woman wants to be a target with an overt “female friendly” message. Being singled out as different is as off-putting today as it was when you were singled out at school. Nor do women want to be stereotyped or bamboozled by obscure jargon. It is ironic, given its widespread reputation for untarnished machismo, but the BBC’s Top Gear has democratised cars. It might be a legacy to make Jeremy Clarkson flinch, but he has helped to make cars accessible to women. Once purely the domain of men, the programme now has nearly as many female viewers as male, thanks largely to being both playful and light-hearted. It stands for unadulterated honesty and entertainment looking at how people in the real world think and relate to their cars.

In September this year, the Harvard Business Review stated that women now represent a bigger market opportunity than India and China combined. Technology brands must put an end to these clumsy marketing strategies and put money and time behind understanding how real women in the real world engage with technology.

Women are no longer the second sex. We are the more profitable sex.

Belinda Parmar is the founder of Lady Geek http://ladygeek.org.uk, which helps technology companies understand and sell to women. Belinda would love you to have your say on how technology companies are talking to women by filling out this short survey  Follow me on Twitter: