I spoke about personalisation earlier in the year and then remembered that I also had these examples done for me at AppSwing when we were considering a mail-out. They were all done by Lorien Unique a local company specialising in this sort of work. They are all eye catching and show off the capability of modern digital printing techniques really well. In a couple of them the personalisation is obvious but cleverly done. The other two are more subtle but perhaps work better – particularly the flight departures board.

Click on any image for the bigger picture.

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Since my post yesterday about the iPod Touch update that add new applications and features to the device I have discovered that it also takes some things away. A couple of the existing applications were Calendar and Contacts which you could sync with Microsoft Outlook – not any more. It seems that this ability has been”lost” and Outlook no longer appears as an option – in fact there are no options listed at all! A quick search of the Apple support forum reveals that I am not alone in having this problem. I suspect that this is a bug rather than a deliberate choice on the part of Apple but given that it seems to be affecting quite a few people including iPhone users it is a little embarrassing for them. One can only hope that they fix the problem quickly.

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So the picture on the left is what my iPod Touch looked like after I had applied the software update announced at Macworld earlier in the week. The big question is, however, is it worth the £12 price tag that Apple have cheekily applied to it? I think the short answer is no, it’s not and only serves to highlight the differences between the Touch and the iPhone. It also raises questions as to whether the Touch is trying to be a music player or a fully featured PDA.

The update itself adds five new applications: Google Mail, Google Maps, Weather, Stocks and Notepad. While all can be used offline to make the most of them you really need to be connected and that means wifi. The problem is that there are now so many ways to access maps and mail that having another is just overkill. For example, I have both Google maps and mail on my phone and my BlackBerry which have GPRS/3g allowing me to get information anywhere, anytime. Also, Apple take note, they were free to install.

Despite that It has to be said that all the applications and Google Maps in particular are beautifully implemented and a joy to use. I can imagine me using some of these while listening to my music and connected to public wifi but the Touch to me is not a PDA – yet…

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Interesting article in Wired magazine this month where Talking Heads’ David Byrne examines the state of the music industry and the alternative delivery methods for today’s artists. I won’t go through the whole article other than to say that it is well worth a read and I particularly enjoyed the comment Byrne made on artists taking control of their own destiny: “Not everyone is as smart as those nerdy Radiohead boys. Pete Doherty probably should not be handed the steering wheel.”

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It looks like that 2008 is going to be the year that personalisation really takes off. The picture on the left is the cover of a magazine sent to me by a software reseller and the cover has my name printed on to the front as one of the lead stories. It is very eye catching and has a real “wow” factor the first time you see it. I have seen examples of this sort of thing over the past year when companies have approached me to use the services in a targeted ad campaign but this is the first time that I think I have been targeted by a campaign myself. Advances in digital printing technology are going to make this sort of thing more and more economical for businesses of all sizes and so is soon going to become common place. Of course once that happens it will quickly lose its impact and its appeal and become, I predict, intrusive. So, I guess, you should try and enjoy it while you can.

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