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Whilst the whole industry is looking at location-based technology solutions as the new nirvana, Louis Vuitton enters the digital mobile space with a series of value-added content products using low-tech location. Creativity at its top!

The Louis Vuitton Soundwalk, a unique location-based urban soundtrack, produced in collaboration with Soundwalk is a cutting-edge audio guide, available in six languages, offerring a vibrant portrayal of three Chinese cities – Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai – following the footsteps of the three greatest icons of Chinese Cinema: Gong Li for Beijing, Shu Qi for Hong Kong and Joan Chen for Shanghai.

Ideally for people travelling to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, each hour-long soundwalk features a story whose narration perfectly synchronizes with the itinerary - the voice of the narrator geographically guides the physical visitor in real time through an area of a city or a district - accompanied by the signature sounds of the city.

Original soundtracks composed by Kubert Leung and Albert Yu. Shan Sa (”The Girl Who Played Go”) and Mei Feng (up-and-coming young Chinese author), have written these journeys much like film scripts —- subtly blending reality and fiction to offer a cinematic experience in the heart of the city.

Each Louis Vuitton Soundwalk are available in six languages: English, French, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean and Mandarin. Each Louis Vuitton Soundwalk can be purchased separately in six different currencies: 17 USD, 12 EUR, 8 GBP, 2 000 JPY, 140 HKD, 130 RMB.

The mobile Java MIDP 2.0 client, powered by Clicmobile, will be released on July 4th; this version adds exclusive mobile content such as images, texts and maps to the audio lifestyle experience.

2008, Albert Yu, Announcements, art of travel, audio, audio art, audio experience, audio guide, audio walk, audio walks, Beijing, China, cinematic experience, cinematographic experience, city, city guide, city guide series, city guides, contemporary, digital luxury, elegance, fashion, Gong Li, Hong Kong, innovation, international, iphone, Joan Chen, Kubert Leung, lbs, lifestyle, location, location based, louis vuitton, louis vuitton soundwalk, love stories, Mei Feng, mobile, Mobile Content, Mobile Lifestyle, mp3, multimedia, Olympic Games, Olympics, passion, secret places, Shan Sa, Shanghai, Shu Qi, soundwalk, travel, traveller, travelling companion, Trends, universal, Urban, urban travellers, user experience

While I’m most of the time always ‘connected’ with my laptop and/or my mobile phone, for this years’ summer holidays I decided to opt for a completely disconnected vacation. I felt a healthy need to get away for a couple weeks from a social media overload - and guess what? I didn’t miss my email or chat conversations, neither Twitter or Facebook, or other social media apps I regularely use…

It was more then 5 years I took such a long break and it was GREAT! Apart from some teenage “Can we go to check our email, dad?” hiccups, I managed pretty well to stay away from checking mails on my mobile phone or a computer… The last week I was actually completely disconnected in Formentera without GSM connectivity at all.

Last year, it was the first time I didn’t take an extra mp3 player with me for holidays, the Nokia N91 did just fine as a multifunctional device. This year, it was the first time I didn’t take an extra digital camera, since the Nokia N95 with its 5 megapixel camera has now reached a basic quality need for my holiday snapshots - the 2 megapixel iPhone doesn’t fill that need yet for me, sorry. You can check my Ibiza and Formentera pictures here.

The best part for me was our stay at Belgian friend Gilbert’s house in Formentera. On top of the cliffs of La Mola with a magnificent view on the Mediterranean Sea, completely disconnected with only a couple of boats passing by daily. The house, his painters atelier, and the garden house are all powered by solar panels only and provide enough electricity to comfortly host 10 to 12 people, electricity use is cut to a minimum whenever possible. Water is usually rare on Formentera so people use it with care: after every shower, the recycled sea water you used is captured and re-used for the plants, same with the water used for cleaning dishes, actually an ideal place for everyone who needs a personal global warming reducement training

No GSM coverage at the house - we needed to go to the village to pick up a signal, so you had that purely disconnected feeling you hardly encounter these days in the western world… alone with nature, daydreaming in the hammock, swimming in a Caribbean blue sea, lizzards eating rests of watermelon, the sweet sound of crickets, seeing the Milky Way again at night, the taste of local countryside chicken, well no more words to say I had a GREAT time! Anyone interested in a perfect place to rest, think, write or brainstorm give me a wink.

I had a strange feeling getting back the first day reconnecting, trying to find my ‘connected’ rhythm again, meanwhile I’m back on track, it’s going to be an exciting autumn with lots of new projects and events, more on this later here… stay tuned!

2007, digital camera, formentera, holidays, ibiza, imaging, lifestyle, Mobile Lifestyle, mp3, n91, n95, nokia, Personal, photos, snapshots

For the ones like me who appreciate the sound difference between a flat 128kbps music file (AAC, mp3, mp4, wmv or other formats) and a 320kbps quality of a normal CD, the news this week that EMI Music launches DRM-free superior sound quality downloads across its entire digital repertoire is great news, not only because major record companies will (finally!) be offering downloadable music files without DRM encoding - the stuff which makes it nearly impossible to move purchased songs from one computer or music player or mobile phone to another. It’s extra nice because major players in the music industry will start to offer songs that will sound a lot better.

As a passionate music lover, the listening experience of for example Petroushka by Igor Stravinsky on a good quality sound system is not comparable with the same music crapped into a 128kbps mp3 or mp4 file, whatever the soundsystem may be you’re going to play that file on. I remember lively the first time I heard Petroushka on vinyl performed by the legendary Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra on a good sound system blew me completely away. With digital music surrounding us everyday, you’d almost forget about the quality of a listening experience - just try to mix some mp3 songs with a vinyl recording and you’ll see what I hear
But any good music deserves a great quality listening experience whether it’s Philip Glass, Devotchka or the Cold War Kids, I’m listening to while writing this. So what does this weeks’ anouncement means for consumers and the business?

EMI Group’s announcement of February 14 - revenues for the financial year ending 31 March 2007 expected to decline by around 15% and Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Music might have accelerated the need for change but Eric Nicoli, CEO of the EMI Group is now taking the lead in what we digital music consumers have been waiting for for quite a while now. In only a couple of weeks time, EMI Music announced a multi-product content partnership with last.fm, the deal with Apple’s iTunes this week, and also announced “The Good, The Bad & The Queen” to become the first EMI album to be made available for download in a new DRM-free, high quality MP3 format. The first major record label listening to its’ consumers?

At CTIA, Nicoli listed a 3-step test that all consumer products should be able to pass, and that he thought was lacking in the wireless world (source GigaOM):

1. Give them something that is good value for money
2. Make something that is functional and works on practical level
3. Make something that is simple to use and easy to understand

Something the operators should have figured out by now but it’s where Apple is seeing the opportunity with the iPhone (to be released in June in US). Now is the Apple’s anouncement of Higher Quality DRM-Free Music from EMI Available on iTunes another leap ahead for Silicon Valley’s “rebel with a cause” Steve Jobs? The recent anouncement of Microsoft’s Mobile DRM system ‘PlayReady‘ - that will allow the use of commercial content on multiple different devices for a single fee comes basically way too late. Steve sets the tone, once again since he entered the music business.

Regular M-Trends readers know my early rants on this subject, for newbies read About digital music distribution to family targets and Mobile Music For Families. No thanks! both written in 2005. Knowing this, one can imagine I was really excited to try out my first DRM FREE download. Also I have been stopping to buy songs on iTunes lately since I just could not play them on my Nokia Nseries phones and wanted to make sure the DRM free and higher quality downloads were not only working as a multi-service or platform but also multi-device, you know the real thing we have been looking for. I downloaded a 320kbps mp3 file straight from The Good, The Bad & The Queen website, beamed from my laptop to our home PC and to my Nokia N80i and it works, hurray!

And where do we leave the independent record labels? EMI and Apple knew that progressive independant labels were already offering DRM free higher quality songs on their portal and that’s exactly where new opportunities lie for the smaller labels such as Sonar Kollektiv. I’m buying regularely music from their online shop since I cannot find it elsewhere and it has a lot of music of my taste. Smaller labels can build around their brand image and create a different added value to their audience.

Anyway, this decision is going to dramatically change the digital music landscape and may hopefully encourage other major labels to abandon DRM. This is not killing business, it is changing the way we do business. Consumers will be the winners. Free at last!

aac, Analysis, digital music distribution, drm, emi, itunes, mobile music, mp3, mp4, Music, stevejobs, Trends, wmv

Excellent Q&A with Steve Jobs in Newsweek: ‘Good for the Soul‘ on the cultural impact of the iPod the last years… Questioned if he’s worried since the anouncement of the iPod competitior, Microsoft’s Zune “…designed around the principles of sharing, discovery and community,…” Steve answered:

In a word, no. I’ve seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you’ve gone through all that, the girl’s got up and left! You’re much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear.

Something that every mobile developer and mobile startup should bear in mind before starting developing products: keep it simple and make things usable with only a couple of clicks, there’s easily the one click too much for the mobile user…

apple, Experience Design, ipod, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile music, mobility, mp3, podcasts, stevejobs, usability, user experience, zune