Review: Transformers: Age of Extinction

No spoilers.

TF4

A little over a week ago (and thanks to my childlike and somewhat ridiculous public excitement – I blame the Superbowl) those super lovely people at Paramount Pictures invited me to a ‘super-fan screening’ of Transformers: Age of Extinction (TF4), at the biggest screen in Britain, the London BFI IMAX.

TF4 Superfan Invite

I’m not kidding around, when that first trailer dropped, I admit it: I was so much SUPER FAN NUMBER ONE that my excitement was palpable.

Optimus Prime. Riding a dinosaur (or Grimlock as we geeks know him). You can’t get any more balls-to-the-wall nerdgasmic than that. No siree Bob.

tf4

Now, let’s fast forward to the super-fan who has seen the film. First off, if you’d spoken to me the moment I left the cinema I probably would’ve said something like: ‘Transformers 4 is probably the most unintentionally hilarious film I’ve seen all year.’ – it’s almost tongue in cheek with its brazen audacity and the belief-suspending leaps of faith it puts before you.

Example: yes I accept we’re dealing with house-sized transforming alien robots but MARK WAHLBERG IS PLAYING AN INVENTOR. Think about that for a second.

If you go into the film capable of accepting that as a fact (or as a running joke) then you’re in for a fun ride.

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsStory wise, it’s not bad: four years after The Battle of Chicago (see Transformers: Dark of the Moon– well, don’t see it, just know that it happened in that film) Transformers of all kinds are hunted all over the world and have, in the main, gone into hiding. Marky Mark’s CADE YEAGER (great name), a modern day rag-and-bone man, happens to find an old truck that he wants to break up and sell for parts.

Thing is, the old truck just happens to be one Optimus Prime (rocking an awesome nod to his original 1980s form) and then, well, someone tells the Feds and everything rolls out from there.

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Before we carry on, let’s get the whole MICHAEL BAY thing out of the way. In my last Five things on Friday post I linked to an 8min video of what makes a Michael Bay movie (it’s 8mins long, worth watching, and embedded below).

TF4 is no break from this style.

In fact, Bay embraces it.

TF4 is pure Bayhem.

Soft country music, US flags flowing in the wind, low shots looking up (for no reason whatsoever), slowed down battle scenes – it’s all there. In fact, TF4 it so Michael bay, it almost verges into self-parody.

This is a man that loves American sunsets so much that in the opening chase, you go from glorious daylight, to an orange dusk, to a sunset over farmland, back to daylight (racing through fields), back to sunset (this time in the city), then to daytime (escaping on what can only be an actual race track – with the action and editing such that maybe he hoped you wouldn’t notice) to sunset again but this time out on the desert plains.

Obviously all these places exist in or near Chicago (probably) but are they all within 15mins of a farmhouse? With bonus magical yo-yo sunsets to boot? I don’t think so.

Example: these two images take place within minutes of each other.

Screen Shot 2014-07-13 at 11.14.36 Screen Shot 2014-07-13 at 11.14.49

Notice anything about the lighting?

Jesus.

It’s easy to criticise Bay. Too easy. But y’know what? The man nails bombastic action like no other and while the story may not be the best in the world, it’s better than previous efforts and jettisoning the ineffective Shia LeBeouf means what plot is there isn’t being held up by the acting equivalent of a damp cloth.

‘Yeah but, it’s just another robot smash up, but this time with dinosaurs, right?’

Well, yes (that’s the whole point) and no.

The first Transformers film was pretty good (purely because, aside from a novelty dancing robot car commercial, we’d never seen the Transformers made real before) but the following two sequels were rubbish. Terrible even. Age of Extinction breaks that mould and, contrary to the finality of its title, actually breathes new life into the franchise.

The Transformers themselves, leaving the obvious war hero tropes aside, are given at least some attempt of being different from one another, as well bit of personality to them (thank you John Goodman and Ken Watanabe). Plus, for the geeks, we get a new set of Decepticons, a couple of new kinds of Transformers (oh hey Drift, what’s that? You’re a Bugatti Veyron and a helicopter? Sweet!) and a brand new Decepticon leader.

But no more on that one…

On the character front, probably the best addition to TF4 is that of Lockdown, the gun [for-a-head] toting robot seen in nearly every bit of promotional material you would’ve seen.

This guy, standing in front of the monster space ship –

Lockdown

He’s a bounty hunter, with no affiliation to either side, and his presence not only mixes with motivations and ideologies of the characters we’ve known so far but also alludes to a larger story yet to be told.

Lockdown is a badass

Plus he’s a badass. That helps.

In closing, TF4 is Michael Bay doing his best impression of Michael Bay and it’s got robots that transform into dinosaurs and Mark Wahlberg saying things like ‘I think we found a Transformer!‘

It doesn’t matter what I say to you (really, it doesn’t), I doubt very much my opinion will sway you. If you’ve decided to see it, you’ll see it (see it BIG) and if you haven’t well, you know you’re not missing out.

I started off this review saying that TF4 is basically a joke but the more I think about it, the more it’s been growing on me. Put it this way: I can safely say Transformers: Age of Extinction is the best and most Transformer-y Transformers since the first one.

You’ll love to hate it or you’ll hate yourself for loving it.

In cinemas now.

ROARRRRGGHH!

Five things on Friday #80

Things of note for the week ending July 11th, 2014.

I AIN'T PLAYIN' SON

1. Village Buildings as Art
In Burkina Faso, near the bottom of a hill over looking the sun-drenched West African savannah, there’s a village where every house is its own individual work of art.

Burkina Faso

Its residents, the nobility of the Kassena people, have lived in the region since the 15th century and are one of the oldest ethnic groups in the Burkina Faso. Keeping itself fairly isolated from the outside world (the photographer negotiated for a year before being allowed to enter) the village comes with strict rules, such as ‘only the most noble family is allowed to carry an umbrella’.

I doubt it rains much there but still.

Screen Shot 2014-07-06 at 12.39.37

Screen Shot 2014-07-06 at 12.39.47

More details, as well as more photos, over on Messy Nessy Chic.

2. My Life as a Tech Evangelist
I first met Myriam Joire – aka ‘Tnkgrl‘ – way back in September 2008, and since then she’s gone from a self-made mobile blogger, to technology news reporter at Engadget, to Tech Evangelist for the ‘original’ (and best) smartwatch, Pebble. This post, entitled ‘So what is it you do anyway?’ an,d published on Medium last Saturday, goes into the detail of what it means to be a Tech Evangelist at a start up in the one of the newest and most exciting product categories today.

Quote:

“How do you become a tech evangelist?” I get this question a lot. First, you need to be an extrovert who loves tech. You have to be comfortable talking with people — whether individually or up on stage, in front of thousands. It’s also important to have a solid understanding of the tech world and how it operates. You want be familiar with the products in your market and beyond, including the competition. Relationships are critical — start building connections with as many people in tech as possible, especially the media. Attend conferences and events, and have a strong presence online (social media, blog, etc…) Be yourself, be honest, be critical, be fair, and — most importantly — have fun!

Myriam is a great person, Pebble is a great product (trust me, I know), and this is a great post.

3. Toilet Tennis
Wimbledon came to an end last week and, as Djokovic enjoys his well-deserved championship, the New York Times has a great article about the uncertain protocol around Grand Slam toilet breaks.

Toilet break tennis

Not the most exciting of topics you might think, but brilliant reading (and trivia).

As Djokovic and the restless crowd waited, Murray stood alone in a tiny, one-toilet bathroom just off the court at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
.
“I stood in front of the mirror with sweat dripping down my face, and I knew I had to change what was going on inside,” he said the next spring. “So I started talking. Out loud. ‘You are not losing this match,’ I said to myself. ‘You are not losing this match.’ I started out a little tentative, but my voice got louder. ‘You are not going to let this one slip. This is your time.’
.
“At first, I felt a bit weird, but I felt something change inside me. I was surprised by my response. I knew I could win.”
.
He did not say whether he used the toilet.

Ha!

More.

4. 100 Social Media Content ‘Ideas’
This Forbes article lists off 100 different things you can do in social.

idea

Rather confidently named ‘100 Killer Ideas For Your Social Media Content‘ it is a little disingenuous in its pitch however, given that the article reels off a century of tactical things you can actually do with your social media pages, I’m willing to give it a pass.

Where it lacks in strategy (e.g.: ‘Share a Reddit topic!’), it makes up for in sheer volume.

Bookmark it for when you need to mainline some CONTENTIFICATION.

5. WOLFCOP
I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about this already. I honestly thought I had but it must’ve been a dream. In short, WOLFCOP looks AMAZING. io9 is calling it ‘The best 80s film ever made in 2014‘ and, while I haven’t actually seen it yet, the trailer is a BLAST.

I’ll put it out there, I love love love werewolf flicks. I’ve seen ’em all. Twice.

Wolfcop is next on my list.

I reckon it should be on yours too.

WOLFCOP

RAAAAARGH!

—- Whatley out.

Bonuses this week:

Five things on Friday #79

Things of note for the weekend ending July 4th, 2014.

Lego Glasses innit

1. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Early reviews of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes are in and it’s beginning to read like one of the best sequels ever made.

Apes, man

You can read a bunch of SPOILER-FREE reactions over on Screenrant but here’s the quote that won me over –

Not quite the intimate parable of the first movie nor a balls-to-the-wall battlefield extravaganza, Dawn is pitched somewhere in the middle, with much of its two hour-plus running time powered by the simmering, expertly sustained tension both between and within the two species. The key to selling this knife-edge friction, of course, is the ability to buy into the apes as fully fleshed-out characters.

Yeah, I’m in.

2. Testing the ORION Space Launch System

KAPOOSH

KA-POOOOSH!

I picked this up from Tab Dump (a great news source) earlier this week. The Atlantic put together this amazing photo essay of NASA’s test of its new Space Launch system – and it is gorgeous.

3. The Slap
Another week, another Max Landis thing – The Slap – is a [somewhat late] response to the viral clothes marketing video from a few months ago, First Kiss. Both are worth watching.

4. Sink Hole Corvettes
I don’t know if you caught this at the time but back in February a 40-foot sinkhole opened up underneath the Corvette Museum in Kentucky and the poor guys lost a couple of beautiful cars to the Earth below.

sinkhole corvettes

Well, after dragging the smashed up beauties out of there, the museum’s board got together and tried to work out what to do with the gaping hole in the middle of their building.

The museum’s board felt that it had three options available: completely repair the sinkhole, leave it as-is or modify it slightly to be somewhat smaller. In a vote, the members decided on the third option, which would reduce the cavity’s size to 25-feet by 45-feet wide and 30-feet deep. That might be further modified after studies into how having an open hole in the Skydome will affect the humidity and heating costs. Regardless, the hope is to leave enough room to display two Corvette models down there, possibly the ones most badly damaged in the collapse.

Yup, that’s right, the AMAZING folks at the Corvette Museum decided to not only keep the sinkhole, but also display the damaged cars therein! Apparently, since the sinkhole occurred, attendance shot up by 59% so obviously it makes complete sense to keep it.

Brilliant.

5. Cutting costs? Nah, let’s make more money.
I read Scamp quite often and it’s pretty much nearly always a damn good read. This latest post, looking at why it’s not always the right idea to save money but instead just make more of it (it makes so much sense when you write it down like that) is a very good read and might make think everso slightly differently next time you’re going into the FD.

Scamp.

-Whatley out.

________

Bonuses

One bonus this week – an awesome 8min long video on what the ‘one take’ in film really means and how the person you’d least expect is truly the one and only master.

 

 

Five things on Friday #78

Things of note for the week ending June 27th, 2014.
(sorry it’s late)

LOOK AT THE THINGS

1. Paper Later
Discovered via my friend Robbie last night (who had just taken delivery of his own copy). PaperLater is a super neat and super retro way of enjoying the articles that you save to your ‘read it later’ app of choice, e.g.: Pocket or Instapaper).

Paper Later

What it does is, for £4.99, pull all your saved-for-later articles, lays them out in a decent format, print them up on sustainable / recycled newspaper, and then delivers the whole thing to your door.

Lovely stuff.

The beta is UK only for now and you can sign up right here.

2. Petit Tube
Like Forgotify before it, Petit Tube is a website that celebrates the esoteric content of the internet. In this case, bringing out the very best (or worst) of YouTube by digging up those videos that have zero [or close to zero] views against them. This is deep exploration of the the long tail; here be dragons.

Seriously super random.

3. Phases in Mobile
A characteristically great post from Ben Evans. This week, using the TV ads of the past ten years to analyse how much the face of the mobile consumer space has changed since 1994.

Zero to 2bn customers in ten years. What will the next ten bring?

Read: Phases in Mobile.

4. Facebook’s ‘Experiment’
This story landed two days ago and it is spiralling like crazy. If you’ve not read about it yet, start with Marginal Revolution and click, click, click from there. This will not go away quickly.

5. Superman: DOOMED.
This isn’t an item about Superman. Well, it is. But that’s not what I mean. Guillem March is an artist working in comic books today. He uses his blog to demonstrate the process of creating, amongst other things, covers for different books.

This week he showed the process from this –

Screen Shot 2014-06-29 at 17.55.10

To this –

Superman Doomed cover color

I love this stuff.

That is all.

_____________________________________

Bonus items are all videos this week, enjoy –

 

Five things on Friday #77

Things of note for the week ending June 20th, 2014.

Bat bites. Like Whatley bits. But battier.

1. Burberry Twitter Cards
I’ve written about Twitter cards before and this year we’ll be seeing more and more of them appear in our collective streams. Further evidence of that is brought to us by a brand continually at the nexus of fashion and technology innovation, Burberry.

Imagine you’re Burberry and you want your oh-so-loyal and avid Twitter followers to absolutely tune into your next runway show. Got that far? OK. Now imagine you create a tweet with a calendar invite embedded in it.

Calendar Invite Card!

Ta da! Amazing.

Now, I want you to continue imagining you’re Burberry. But this time I want you to feel a pang of regret for the 98.98% of your followers that didn’t see your calendar event tweet (fact) and instead have to try and catch up somehow.

Well, that’s easy! You’re about to imagine a tweet with an embedded image gallery that your fans can easily browse, all without leaving Twitter.

Amazing Gallery Card!

Aren’t you fantastic, Burberry. Well done.

Via.

2. Good Music

MOOOOSIC

I’m a Spotify fiend. This Spotlight on new music playlist is the best new one I’ve listened to in a while. You should listen to it too.

Oh and for bonus sunshine action, subscribe to this beauty – Welcome to Summer folks x

If you don’t use Spotify well…

Sorry.

Maybe I’ll link you to something next week.

3. Hannibal
Last night, I finished season two of Hannibal.

Hannibal

Mads Mikkelson stars an the eponymous anit-hero/villain/cannibal and the show is loosely based on the events before and during those of Red Dragon. Telling the story of Will Graham and his first dealings with Hannibal Lector, Hannibal it is a stunning show.

Some of you may have heard of this show, some of you may have already finished it. But if you haven’t, or if you’re looking for something new in a post-Breaking-Bad, post-Game-of-Thrones-Season-4 world, Hannibal is it.

The season two finale is one of the best pieces of television I have ever seen.

I am still gushing about it.

Just watch it.

Now.

4. Ghostbusters 3

ghostbusters

It is happening. Bill Murry will return. It’s based on the video game. It’s based on Hell invading New York. Bill Murray won’t be back. It’ll feature new, younger ‘busters. It isn’t happening.

Much has been said about this long-gestating non-project but ever since Harold Ramis passed away, I’ve been firmly in the camp of IT ISN’T HAPPENING, but Max Landis (son of that awesome director guy I met once) has a hella wicked idea for the opening scene.

WHY NOT READ IT?

5. DERMAPHORIA
Last weekend I was extremely lucky to be invited along to the opening night of the East End Film Festival.

DERMAPHORIA

The opening film? DERMAPHORIA.

Described as ‘An inspired experimental chemist, wakes up in a New Orleans jail, accused of arson that’s linked to an illegal drug-manufacturing ring. Suffering from amnesia, he’s unexpectedly released on bail, determined to find his missing girlfriend.’ DERMAPHORIA is an unforgiving trip into the mind of a drug-addled way of life and is a non-stop back and forth between the worlds of the way up high and the deep come down.

It is JAGGED.
It is grimy.
It is a horror show of what it’s like to be under the illusion of being touched by God and it does not give its audience an easy ride at all. So go in ready. DERMAPHORIA requires concentration. You, like the film’s protagonist, will feel lost, frustrated, and at times utterly beaten.

I can’t recommend it enough and, without the East End Film Festival, I doubt I would’ve seen it at all. Good work, EEFF. Keep it up.

Find it and see it, as soon as you can.

Here’s the trailer.

Sidenote: Ron Perlman’s in it. I met him afterwards. That wasn’t as cool as I hoped it’d be. Ah well.

—

Until next week,

Whatley out.

_____________________

Bonus items this week –

 

Five things on Friday #76

Things of note for the weekend ending June 13th, 2014.

no-synthetic-biology-allowed-960x594

Tons of video stuff this week. If you’re reading this in a newsletter, I’ve thrown in the links to the videos along the way so you TOO can enjoy teh awesomez.

1. Silent Crickets
On the Hawaiian island of Kauai, Marlene Zuk has been studying crickets. Between 1991 and 2000, the crickets got more and more quiet and in 2001, Zuk heard only a single calling male cricket. The volume had decreased, but had the volume actually decreased?

The crickets hadn’t disappeared. Zuk would go for nighttime walks and see multitudes of the insects in the light of her headlamp. If anything, there were more of them than before. They just weren’t calling out. When she dissected them, Zuk found out why.

Male crickets call with two structures on the backs of their wings—a vein with several evenly spaced teeth (the file) and a raised ridge (the scraper). When the cricket rubs these together, the effect is like running your nail along the teeth of a comb—you get a thrrrrrrrrrrrp sound. But on all the silent Kauai crickets, the file was growing at a weird angle and had all but disappeared. Their wings were flat.

The reason?

The crickets were targeted by a parasitic fly, whose larvae burrow inside them and devour them alive. The flies finds the crickets by listening out for their songs and they’re so effective that, in the early 90s, they had parasitised a third of the males.

But the silent males escaped the attention of the fly. As they bred and spread, they carried the flatwing mutation with them. By 2003, the cricket population had rebounded. And in fewer than 20 generations, they had gone from almost all-singing to almost all-silent. The crickets have become a classic textbook example of rapid evolution.

Nature is awesome. Via.

2. Slow motion Ballet

slow mo ballet

In this video, six members of the Washington Ballet demonstrate their most challenging moves.

Worth watching.

3. What day is it Sunday?

Video link.

4. The best of E3
I am a gamer. If you’ve listened to this past week’s Voicemail podcast, you’d know that I confessed to not reading anything about mobile technology over the last seven days because, thanks to the Electronic Entertainment Expos – aka ‘E3’ – I’ve been totally and utterly bingeing on game trailers at almost every opportunity. The three stand outs?

BATMAN: ARKHAM KNIGHT
The fourth third* game in the Arkham series, this final part of the Rocksteady trilogy looks IMMENSE.

The one thing need to know? You get to drive the Batmobile.

*Batman: Arkham Origins, though officially part of the Arkham games canon, is widely accepted to ‘not count’ as it wasn’t built by Rocksteady Studios and, as a result, is a poor imitation of what makes a good Arkham game.

[video link]

ASSASSIN’S CREED: UNITY
There’s no doubt in my mind that the Assassin’s Creed series is probably my favourite set of games of recent years. AC: Black Flag was a day one purchase for me and this latest iteration looks like it might be the same.

The one thing need to know? In the video the commentary mentions that certain parts of Paris have been built at a 1:1 scale. That’s awesome.

[video link]

NO MAN’S SKY
This one very nearly passed me by completely (so big love to Matt for making sure I didn’t miss it), No Man’s Sky is a simple science-fiction game about exploration and survival. It looks stunning.

The one thing you need to know? Your character exists in an infinite procedurally generated universe. In. Sane.

[video link]

5. Clickhole
This is everywhere right now.

CLICKHOLE
The Onion is a satirical take on American news. In a post-listicle world, where click-bait and headlines such as ‘Seven things Nigel Farage could learn from Vladimir Putin‘ are commonplace, you could read this as some kind of post-modern take on what ‘news’, or news delivery, has become.

Or you could read it as The Onion not-that-subtly trolling the hell out of Buzzfeed. Either way, they uploaded 16 pictures of Beyonce not sicking in quicksand yesterday, and you won’t believe what happened next.

And that’s it, we’re done.

Except.

We’re not.

Bonus items for your oculars this week are:

  • The Calvin & Hobbs story
    If you missed this, read the write up. I must confess, I’ve never been a huge C&H fan (sorry), but this story made me smile from ear to ear.
  • Winging it
    Everyone is totally winging it, all the time. A great read.
  • Articulated TMNT
    The concept of ‘arty images of 80s pop-culture accompanied with deep and meaningful thoughts’ is not new to me however the mutant turtles are going through a bit a revival at the moment, so this seems timely.

See you next week.

Five things on Friday #75

Things of note for the week ending June 6th, 2014.

THE THINGS! THERE ARE FIVE OF THEM!

1. Click bait fixer!
Filed under ‘my favourite new Twitter account of the week’, @SavedYouAClick is here to thwart clickbait headlines and save you time. Examples below –

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

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2. Hercules
I love THE ROCK. There, I said it. I don’t care. Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s latest film, Hercules, is out soon and it looks a suitably special-effects-laden cheese fest that I’ll be seeing at the cinema because that’s the kind of thing I like to do and I don’t have to justify it to anyone. GOT IT? GOOD.

Anyway, here’s the latest trailer –

ROAAAR!

3. The Listserve
The premise is simple: one person a day wins the chance to write to a growing list of subscribers. Add your name to the list and that person could be you. What would you write if you had the chance to speak to 25,000+ people in one go? The Listserve is beautiful, ugly, perfect, dull, exciting, boring, sad, moving, and sometimes utter drivel. It is human.

Sign up today. I read a good one recently called ‘The Girl in my Phone‘ – maybe start with that.

4. The Last Billboard
Speaking of interesting lotteries, The Last Billboard is a 36 foot long rooftop billboard located on the corner of Highland and Baum in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Each month a different individual is invited to use the billboard and display their own message on the custom designed ad space.

tumblr_mcb726EQxP1rggf2to1_1280

tumblr_n58m0wSyQd1rggf2to1_1280

tumblr_mq9py1Mt0r1rggf2to1_1280

It is quite wonderful.

5. Farewell, Fantastic Four (?)
You can park this one under RUMOURSVILLE however there have been a lot of murmurings of late about Marvel dialling down on the marketing of all things Fantastic Four just as Twentieth Century Fox starts to get going on its latest iteration/reboot of the franchise.

Fantastic Four imagery was apparently taken down at Marvel HQ and an artist claims that they were instructed by Marvel not to use “FF characters or supporting cast such as Dr Doom, Galactus, Surfer, Skrulls etc” when it came to sketches for the 75th anniversary. Another artist backed the claims up, submitting an instruction sheet from Marvel which read, “all Marvel characters related to Fantastic Four are now off limits and will be immediately rejected by Marvel.” It even listed the characters that couldn’t be used. Even Fantastic Four-related assets have been reportedly been taken down by Marvel, so that promotional partners and licensors can’t access them.

The reason? Money, of course. But Screenrant has a great rundown of the conspiracy so far.

If true, comic book fans lose out, as always.

Bonus items:

1. The best Nicolas-Cage-based prank ever.

2. Thinking about The Internet of Things.

3. A happy hello to all the new and lovely Five Things on Friday newsletter subscribers. If you’re on the list, you’ve probably found it via a fancy Twitter Card. Wanna know how you make your own? I got you covered.

See you next week!

How to: set up Lead Generation Twitter Cards

Lead generation cards are free to use and set up.
This is how you do it.

Lead Gen Twitter Cards of WIN

Regular readers of this website will know that every Friday I put up a collection of the five most interesting things I’ve seen that week.

The posts, imaginatively entitled ‘Five things on Friday‘, are relatively popular. So much so that recently I decided I’d turn them into a weekly newsletter, so that a) folk can get the good stuff delivered to their inbox and b) I could learn how to do it.

And how am I going to get subscribers for this newsletter? From the lead-gen Twitter card!

What is a Lead Generation Twitter Card? Twitter itself expresses the definition thus:

Twitter Cards let you bring rich experiences and useful tools to users within an expanded Tweet. The Lead Generation Card makes it easy for users to express interest in what your brand offers. Users can easily and securely share their email address with a business without leaving Twitter or having to fill out a cumbersome form.

And they look a little bit like this –

Lead Generation Twitter Card Example

Fancy, right? It’s a one-click sign up. EASY.

What I’m going to walk you through today is how to set up not only how to set up lead-gen Twitter cards but also linking them to a Mailchimp mailing list and WordPress blog feed.

I’m good to you.

STEP ONE:
SETTING UP THE TWITTER CARD

First, go to Twitter. Well, not strictly speaking. You need to go to ads.twitter.com.

Screen Shot 2014-06-05 at 12.16.41

EDIT: THIS HAS NOW CHANGED

Before you can see the screen below, you will need to enter your credit card details. Twitter will no longer let you create Lead Gen cards (or Website Cards for that matter) without your credit card details.

I’ve entered mine and have steered VERY CLEAR of hitting the ‘promote’ button.

Without entering these details you will not be able to see the buttons demonstrated from this point onwards.

FYI.

Cards_-_Twitter_Ads

Sign in with your Twitter account (you don’t need to be an advertiser to do this), click on ‘Creatives’ in the top nav, and then ‘Cards’, hit the big blue Create Lead Generation Card button on the right and you’re away.

Most of this first part is pretty simple: you need a description, an image (650 x 150) and a privacy policy. This last part is a little ridiculous, but I’ve created a special page that says I’m not going to sell your email address etc. But there’s no policing around this, so feel free to put a big ‘F U’ in there instead and see if anyone actually calls you on it.

Finish that bit and you’re pretty much ready to go with your first Lead Gen Twitter Card.

Hurrah and hurrah again.

BUT!

You probably want to do a bit more once you’ve got those lovely email addresses. If, like me, you [want to] run your mailing lists through Mailchimp, then this is what you need to do next.

If you scroll down a bit on your lead-gen card page, you’ll see a ‘Data settings (optional)’ section. This is where you add in your Mailchimp id details.

STEP TWO:
SETTING YOUR TWITTER CARD TO TALK TO MAILCHIMP

When you get to Mailchimp (assuming you already have a Mailchimp account), set up a List in Mailchimp. I call mine ‘5 Things’. You might call yours ‘Magic Beans’ or ‘Web Curios’.

Lists___MailChimp

Go to your Lists section, click on the drop down arrow (next to Stats) and head to ‘Sign Up Forms’, then ‘Form Integrations’, and then – oh look, here are the bits you need for your Twitter Card.

And that’s it, you’re done. Anyone that clicks on your Lead-Gen Twitter Card ‘Sign Me Up!’ button will have their email address delivered into your Mailchimp mailing list.

STEP THREE:
SETTING WORDPRESS TO TALK TO MAILCHIMP

WordPress_›_AutoChimp_«_WordPress_Plugins

This part had me going around in circles for a good couple of hours and y’know what? It’s EASY. Go download a plugin called ‘AutoChimp’, boot that up, and pick what tag/category you want to publish (again, for me it’s ‘5things’) and that’s it – you’re done!

It’s not a short process but it’s a relatively simple one.

Some examples –
Test.
The Voicemail.
Mat Morrison.
WWF.

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Five things on Friday #74

Things of note for the week ending May 30th, 2014.

1. ‘Super Important Tweet’
I first found out about this web app via the always interesting Web Curios newsletter. Basically, the premise is that you can add ‘importance’ to a tweet by creating a text-based-image that you can embed in your tweet which subsequently hammers home the importance of what it is you’re trying to say.

However, what it actually does is allow you to create a perfectly sized image for Twitter. That’s right brands, a simple web app now does that thing you all seem incapable of doing.

Amazing, right?

Try it.

2. Ocean Piglets, Shield Toads, and Naked Snails
Aka, how to name animals in German. I used to study German at school and while I’m not a big one for publishing infographics on this here blog of mine, there’s no harm in linking to one.

Seriously, this is brilliant.

3. Beautiful Brands on Instagram

Beautiful Instagram Brands

The value of branded activity on Instagram is still very much a point of argument amongst the marketing folk of today. Does it drive any meaningful value? Can you actually measure anything? Why are we bothering? – are all questions that float around when this comes up for discussion, and you really have to know your onions to formulate a decent response.

If you don’t know your onions and want to know more about how Instagram can ‘work’ for brands, the blog of those folk at Nitrogram is a good place to start. There’s a ton of stuff to read up on and, if you’re looking for inspiration, they’re latest post isn’t a bad read at all.

4. Faking Cultural Literacy

It’s not lying, exactly, when we nod knowingly at a cocktail party or over drinks when a colleague mentions a movie or book that we have not actually seen or read, nor even read a review of. There is a very good chance that our conversational partner may herself be simply repeating the mordant observations of someone in her timeline or feed. The entire in-person exchange is built from a few factoids netted in the course of a day’s scanning of iPhone apps. Who wants to be the Luddite who slows everything down by admitting he has never actually read a Malcolm Gladwell book and maybe doesn’t exactly understand what is meant by the term “Gladwellian” — though he occasionally uses it himself?

This, from the New York Times, is remarkably spot on.

Go read it.

Properly.

Without skimming.

The final paragraph is a knock-out.

5. Gorgeous Art, at High Speed

From this:

High speed art before

To this:

High Speed Art

Cool, right?

Made to been seen at high speeds, these colorful patterns form a sequential whole for commuters whizzing by at top speed. Dubbed ‘Psycholustro’, the artist (Katharina Grosse) created the work as a way to ‘engage everyday travelers with a project that addresses their in-motion perspective and the passage of time’ (more at the source).

I think it’s awesome and, bizarrely enough, similar to an idea I had for the Channel Tunnel when I was nine years old.

It’s OK, I’m pretty sure she didn’t copy me.

 

…

 

Celebrating 100 Episodes

Of our mobile news podcast, The Voicemail.

Stefan & James, together on Episode 60

Back in May 2012, Stefan Constantinescu and I were in search of someone to podcast with.

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Thanks to a sharp-eyed friend (thanks Michael) we were connected over this mutual need and committed to not only doing a podcast, but doing it properly. Organised over Twitter at first, Stefan and I bought the right kit and then, less than two weeks later, sat down and recorded our first episode of The Voicemail.

The Voicemail 001

Our first episode was just a bit of history about our mutual interests in mobile but from episode two onwards we decided we’d cover that week’s latest mobile news and cast our eyes over what was hot (and what was not) in the industry that we’re both so passionate about.

We’re an opinionated pair at times – ahem – and don’t always agree however that combination turned out to be quite popular and now, some two years later and now with over 1000 listeners every week (!!!), we’re still going strong.

This morning Stefan and I recorded our 100th episode.

It shouldn’t be that much of a big deal, it should be ‘just another episode’ and in many ways it was. However it’d be unfair to get this far without pausing to reflect upon the brilliant support we’ve had along the way.

So this post is a big fat THANK YOU to everyone that’s listened, commented, tweeted, facebook’d, blogged, chatted, gossiped, even mentioned us in passing to a fellow geeky friend – your positive word of mouth has helped us grow and grow and grow. It’s amazing to know we have your continued support. Thank you.

A second THANK YOU goes to the numerous guests we’ve had along the way. Stefan and I don’t have many rules on the show but one of them is that we only ever have two of us on. If one of us can’t make it, then it’s the other’s responsibility to get a replacement. Which was fine right up until Stefan went travelling for four months and we had a new guest every single week. You know who you are and we appreciated every single one of you.

Finally, the last big fat THANK YOU goes to my Podcasting partner in crime, Stefan Constantinescu. Having a project buddy who can ensure you stay committed (and vice versa) is a really valuable thing. Not only is Stefan super knowledgeable in all things mobile, he’s also been there every week [nearly] without fail. Simply put: the show wouldn’t happen without him.

Episode 100 is now live [here’s the direct download link for the MP3, 30MB], this week we covered the LG G3, Apple [finally] buying Beats by Dre, and Google’s self-driving cars.

If you’ve never listened to us before, why not check us out and subscribe today?

You can find us on our website, on iTunes, or copy and past this RSS feed into your podcast app of choice and just go from there.

Here’s to the next 100 episodes!