After watching these beautiful and visually captivating graphics, we really wish our iPhones could do this!

The dashboard displays a range of activity including the board name, date posts, clicks, likes and number of repins, all very useful stuff to help tailor your material to what’s working well. It also has the ability to schedule pins to catch your audience just at the right time.

Creators Wilco de Kreij and Mark Ramos, (from The Netherlands), were inspired by the success of Pinterest analytics tool Pinerly.

There are only limited features at the moment, but very soon they hope to set more live including detailed statistics and pinning and tracking non-WordPress posts (just to name a few). Also its worth noting that plug-in will only work on self-hosted WordPress websites on WordPress.org.

As WordPress.com only allows plugins from the official WordPress plugin directory WP Pinner has made this very handy video to explain just what you need to do…

Happy Pinning!

Imagine making a tailored suit for a hand?!

The food just kept on coming as we tucked into plates of hummus, tabbouleh, halloumi, roasted lamb and chicken. This was finished off nicely with a surprise song and dance by the waiters as they presented Janki and Charlie with chocolate cakes.

Happy Birthday guys!

Organised by Restaurant magazine and William Reed, The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list is an annual snapshot of the opinions and experiences of over 800 international restaurant industry experts. The results give a credible indicator of the best places to eat around the globe.

It was a challenging task to film, edit and upload the footage on site – whilst not getting distracted by the elaborate canapes and life-size chocolate sculpture of a chef!

The event was live streamed on www.finedininglovers.com.

Further information, photography and video footage is available on www.theworlds50best.com.

Up until now LinkedIn (the world’s largest professional social network) has been a bit behind with its app development. The iPhone app was only released last year, and was fairly limited in its design and capability, and poor iPad users were stuck having to use this version too (not really making the most of its high tech Retina display).

The LinkedIn app now has a sleek looking clear and simple main screen. One of the most interesting things they’ve made more prominent in the app (versus the web) is the list of users who have viewed your profile. A secretly addictive and powerful tool for networking.

The app has some lovely design features as well – really making the most of your tablet experience. It’s not just pretty, it’s clever too! It syncs up with your Google or Exchange calendar and pulls out your day ahead for you, giving you rich streams about the people you’re meeting, and highlights from the news.

LinkedIn say “We know that our members use their iPads heavily during the morning and evening hours. This “Coffee & Couch” behaviour is so pronounced that we designed our new app to make every professional feel like they have their own personal assistant. Imagine having one place where you can get all the info you need about who you’re meeting with that day, trending and timely news that is impacting your industry, who’s changed jobs and what your co-workers are sharing, liking, and commenting on. We’ve pulled all this for you, all in one place.”

Let us know what you think!

It’s a real treat – the 19-second “Me At the Zoo.” The video stars YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, chatting to camera about elephants having “really, really long trunks, and that’s cool.”

But isn’t that the beauty of YouTube? Everyone can tell a story (no matter how high tech) and share it with the world in matter of moments.

As I’m sure you already know, we are great advocates of video here at Brandcast Media, and this video really did pave the way for biggest and most popular video sharing website we’ve ever known.

YouTube currently houses more video than any other site in history, and since its buy out by the internet giants Google in 2006, it just keeps on growing.

For all our fellow video geeks here are some other staggering YouTube facts:

• 60 hours of video are uploaded every minute – that’s one hour of video uploaded every second
• More than 4 billion videos are viewed every day
• More than 3 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube
• More video is uploaded to YouTube in one month than the three major U.S. networks created in 60 years
• In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views or almost 140 views for every person on earth

The power of video is just huge, and a very important engagement tool for us and our clients here at Brandcast.

What’s your favourite YouTube clip?

Since the Woodstock days of the late 1960s festivals and concerts are now using all sorts to keep us entertained, including spectacles of holographic appearances from deceased artists and keeping artists sets interactive with live text song requests. This not only makes the experience a lot more personal during the set, but allows us to share our experiences and create a bit of buzz with our friends back home.

This infographic (courtesy of HTC & T-Mobile) highlights the key milestones in this music festival digital journey. Our favourite being the old lighters, replaced with lighter images on a bright digital display of the smartphone. Health and safety eat your heart out.

How do you use yours?

With the new adverts supporting phrases such as ‘140 characters doesn’t equal staying in touch’ and ‘upgrade from a wall post for a first class conversation’ Skype suggests that we have ‘lost touch with humanity’ through Twitter and Facebook. The ads not only downgrade the quality of communication offered by networks such as Facebook and Twitter, but they also raise a mirror to a culture that has become overly automated and lacking real human contact.

“With so many ways to communicate, there has been a shift towards communicating in ways that are less conversational, more transactional—less human,” says Francie Strong, Skype’s director of global customer-base marketing.

But perhaps Skype are a little quick to attack such loved platforms? Especially ones that offer such different services.

The bullish campaign ignores the fact that last year Skype signed a deal with Facebook to allow its users to make video calls using Skype technology. The two companies have also shared instant messaging technology – proving they are actually a lot closer than you might think. With the hashtag #timeforskype, Skype also rely heavily on the very platforms they are slating for their social media campaign. In another ironic twist, those signed up to Skype’s Facebook page will be able to take a picture of their face and share it with their Facebook friends for the duration of the campaign.

Do the ads make you more inspired to use Skype? Or does the negativity of the campaign leave a bitter taste in your mouth?

Perhaps this is something to Tweet about.

]]> http://blog.brandcast.tv/2012/04/skype-the-gloves-are-off-round-1/feed/ 0