Astana: Visitors of Cafe to Pay Not For Food, But For Time Spent There

Anti-cafe to be opened in Astana, the capital of Kazakstan, where visitors will pay not for the food and drinks, but for the time spent in anti-cafe.

“The format of this facility is taken from the Western and Russia analogues. This is a kind of social networking, but here is a live chat. Visitors may bring food with them, tea and coffee, board games and other leisure activities,” author of the project Erbol Kushugulov told June 14, 2012.

It is assumed that customers will not only meet here with old friends, but also actively make new friends.

Anti-cafe is planned to be “alcohol-free zone”. The exception will happen on June 17, 2012 when the first small rock festival with local bands of different genres will perform there.

Source: CA-NEWS: Visitors of cafe to pay not for food, but for time spent there.

How many Internet users in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan?

Internet audience is rapidly growing  in Central Asia, 60-million region in the heart of Eurasian continent.

According to recent data, Internet users in the I quarter of 2011 accounted for 34.4% of the population in Kazakhstan and constituted nearly 5.6 million people. This statistics has been provided by Kazakh Minister of Communications and Information Askar Zhumagaliev.

Interactive Design = Harmony

Seattle has changed for me since I was learning principles and practice of interactivity design pillars in MCDM program at the University of Washington. My look at things around me became more deep and maybe more harmonious.

The small signs, handles, tubes, stairs that I was taking for granted started to tell me story about their creators, users, producers. They all have personality and even small features do matter.

I’ve learned a lot in interactive design. Designing process is constant and has many iterations. It’s always beta. The successful design is synonymous of simplicity. Simplicity makes designed product democratic.

The Great Inforgraphic About Egypt Uprising on Twitter

The 2011 Egyptian revolution took place following a popular uprising that began on 25 January 2011 which featured a series of demonstrations, marches, acts of civil disobedience, labour strikes, and violent clashes between protestors and security services and supporters of the regime of Hosni Mubarak.

Timeline of Egypt’s revolution – A chronicle of the revolution that ended the three-decade-long presidency of Hosni Mubarak (Al Jazeera).

Here is the infographic about Twitter usage during the revolution.

Proposal for Design of News Website – Central Asian News Service

Vision

The idea of “Central Asian News Service” CA-NEWS website is oriented to develop the high-quality online resource of accurate information that reflects variety of opinions and meaningful discussions about development of democratic society in Central Asia. CA-NEWS provides instant news reports and analytical materials, reviews, comments on Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

CA-NEWS produces up to 100 news items in Russian and 50 news items in English about politics, economy, society, culture, science, and sport in Central Asian region. Its interactive features include traditional push-channels of content: RSS, maillist, online bookmarks and social networks: Facebook, Twitter.

Design Strategy for UW Libraries Mobile App

Mission

“The University of Washington Libraries enriches the quality of life and advances intellectual discovery by connecting people with knowledge.”

As the part of UW libraries strategy, we suggesting the development of mobile application to make its resources accessible for users of mobile devices, phones. tablets.

The design strategy includes:

The Games I Play in Seattle: Kinect Xbox, Wii, Zynga@Facebook

I’m not heavy gamer but sometimes I like to relax and spend my time for computer games. I don’t like time consuming multilevel strategies and shooters. Prefer simple and fast versions with the opportunity of competition against real players. Here I present you short analysis of the 4 games I played in Seattle and which attracted my attention.

Kinect Xbox

The newest game console from Microsoft Kinect Xbox brings amazing impression to every gamer. Never tried Xbox before I was surprised by its concept of playing and moving body. It’s really energy consuming game. I felt myself as I had workout session.

Kinect Xbox requires time to learn its features and navigation principles as it’s based on gestures. There is no controller. I tried dance game that requires special skills. You have to learn movements during pre-game training session and later to try earn points by dancing as accurate as possible. You need to repeat everything that virtual instructor shows you on screen.

The game is fun as it has vibrant graphic and such features  as gamers’  movements recording and freestyle dance entertain you while you playing a game. But, personally, I was discouraged to hear that the game doesn’t support multi-player mode. There is only option to compare your results with general scoreboard online.

RFE/RL Mobile Site Review

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is an international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East “where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed”.

RFE/RL broadcasts in 28 languages to 21 countries including Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq and the audience size reaches 17.6 million/week (radio, web, streaming audio). Its multilingual website www.rferl.org features both live and on-demand audio and text, pictures. One of RFE/RL products is a mobile site actively promoted on its webpages.

IKEA Seattle’s case of mismatching online and mobile efforts

We are going on with exploring SMS marketing in Greater Seattle area that is well known as the second Silicon Valley for its high-tech industries and IT startups. This time we are assessing the mobile media of IKEA Seattle, the branch of global furniture producer.

Where the campaign is promoted

We started from Google where we found the IKEA Mobile Seattle official website http://info.ikea-usa.com/mobile/seattle/. There is huge banner on the homepage that invites to join a $500 gift card giveaway by sending SMS to shortcode. Short description under the ad banner describes perks of this promo that includes enrollment in the Free IKEA Mobile program to get mobile alerts and special deals.

OfficeMax runs unavailable SMS sweepstake for Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving 2010 is coming to Seattle. Only one week left to the crazy shopping rush on Black Friday, following that day.

I’ve decided to check ads and found a website with pretty interesting opportunity to check my luck in a lottery. It was OfficeMax that promised a trip to Disney World – huge colorful banner on the home page.

Want to provide specials via SMS? Do it, don’t promise

We continue to explore mobile lifestyle in Seattle. This time it is nightlife – bars…

Thursday  evening I was reading a new issue of “The Stranger”, a local newspaper, and particularly, the events’ section, where you usually can find ads and announcements about coming events, shows, happy hours, bars.

My attention was attracted by the “Tiki Bob’s Cantina” bar that promoted SMS service to receive special offers and invites. To get specials and join the TBC’s Text Club they asked to send the keyword “TIKI” to the short number 313131. Actually, it is appropriate service for newspaper readers on a go. I was pretty far from the bar. It was the simplest and most convenient way to find information instantly as no one would bother himself by searching online.

Can A Mobile Site Help To Attract Movie Fans?

This time we try to use mobile technologies to make a decision about watching a movie in the USA. According to Mobile Marketing Watch, the Lionsgate movie production company is using a mobile marketing campaign to promote its new movie ‘For Colored Girls’ that is going on in theaters from November 5, 2010.

Indeed, if you check posters of this movie you can find a QR-code to get a clue about it. In addition, the movie is being promoted via SMS short code to get a link to the mobile site.