Everyone loves Mini Coopers. Even among the most jaded consumers, you’ll be hard pressed to find someone who actively hates Minis. So it will come as little surprise to anyone that social sentiment surrounding the Mini Cooper will be overwhelmingly positive. That said, Mini is not the best-selling car. While everyone loves them and has glowing praise for the Mini, they account for just 0.5% of US auto sales.

What value then, do the comments of non-purchasers have when monitoring conversations? With several thousand followers on Twitter and a reasonable Klout score, I could be said to be somewhat influential—and I am highly positive toward Mini Cooper, yet I have no intention of purchasing one. Are my comments about Mini useful or merely interesting?

In my opinion, these comments are interesting in the aggregate, but useless when determining ROI or intent to purchase. The Mini Cooper Effect is a phrase I coined a while back to describe this phenomenon in conversational monitoring. Tools like Radian6 and Sysomos compile tens of thousands of these comments on a local, national and global scale, but it takes a skilled, patient analyst to sift through them for the gems. No matter how good your keyword set is, or how many parameters you filter by, you won’t get over the Mini Cooper Effect of interesting but useless comments. [DISCLAIMER: Campbell Ewald is a customer of both Radian6 and Sysomos]

Recently, I received a call from Barb Morgen at ValueVine to discuss their new Connect tool. It too monitors social conversations, but with a distinct and important twist: conversational monitoring is targeted to the building level. As I am to understand it, a client enters the addresses of all their retail locations. Connect then pulls conversations about and within those buildings and only there. If consumers check in to that location using Foursquare, Loopt, Gowalla, etc., their comments are only counted if they include a comment. Comments on other platforms about those locations are also counted, but not general comments. Only comments from consumers who have entered these locations will be tallied. The Mini Cooper Effect is effectively nullified.

I have not tried this tool (yet), but it gives me hope that (at least some of) the limitations of social media monitoring can be addressed in the coming year by new technologies like this. What are your thoughts? Have you tried Connect? How does it compare to other tools?

Photo CC 2007 The Pug Father

Audio Cubes from Percussa are one of the most beautiful technical innovations in live music—and a perfect example of Infotropic devices. Light-emitting cubes are placed end to end forming beats, loops and phrases. Changing which side of the cubes face each other changes the patterns, which are user-assigned through software. Moving your hands near and around the cubes changes sound parameters; something Roland has done for years with their D-Beam synthesizers. The video is captivating.

What do you think about Audio Cubes? Cute gimmick or the future of live performances?

My greatest fascination is participating in the ever-blurring line between online and offline realities. From simple channels like QR codes and Augmented Reality—to the supermechanical objects by visionary John Kestner,—our perception of what is online and what is offline is changing. Our children may never believe that there ever was a line.

Infotropism is the term I have been using to describe this blurring between online data and offline objects. Infotropism is the movement of data to other locations, in the manner I am using it, these locations are on/in/within/ offline objects.

Years ago, I got in a heated argument with a painter. I was an illustrator and had recently begun drawing using new software called Adobe Illustrator ’88. The Mac had only been out four years and laser printers had just been invented. The idea of drawing using a computer irritated lots of artists and illustrators. For me, it was the future of art. Anyway, a painter friend of mine was looking at an illustration I had done for a client. He indicated that it was, “A good rendering. Too bad it’s not real art.”
“Yes it is,” I replied. “It’s every bit as real as your oil paintings.”
“Are you high? That’s not real at all! That’s just a bunch of electrons floating around in space!”
“So is an oil painting,” I calmly replied. “So are we and everything we perceive as “solid” or real. It’s all just electrons floating in space.”

It’s hard for many people to conceptualize that what we call reality, is in fact, a highly-biased perception consisting of weak sensory input, memories, cultural indoctrination, (possibly) religion, education, personal experiences and our willingness to accept.

We alter our own reality every day.

Don’t believe me? Your eyes lie to you every day, in fact, every minute. Ever notice that infants cross their eyes? This is because they are quite near-sighted and the closest visual attraction is their nose. You can still see your nose, but your eyes have learned to ignore it as non-essential data.

Your nose lies to you as well. When you purchase a new cologne or perfume, you love the smell of it. Over time, it fades and you find yourself adding more and more—unless you know that it hasn’t in fact faded at all. It’s as strong as the first day you bought it, but your nose has learned to ignore it. But everyone else has noticed that you keep adding more perfume!