Shocker! Apple product placements dominate Hollywood

Something you already knew to be true has just been confirmed by Omnicom's Interbrand brand consultancy division: Apple reigns supreme in Hollywood films. Interbrand's Brandchannel website dug deep into the fetid bowels of product placement to reveal Hollywood's preferences (paid or personal) in the 33 films that hit the US box office number one slot in 2010. Brandchannel identified 591 total brand or product appearances for an average of 17.9 placements per film, with Apple appearing in ten of the top films for a 30 percent share -- Nike, Chevrolet, and Ford each appeared in eight. Incidentally, Iron Man 2 won the dubious distinction of being cluttered with the most identifiable brands (64) in 2010. Apple is actually off from its peak of 50 percent of number one films in 2008 and 44 percent in 2009 as demonstrated in the chart after the break. But it's not for a lack of trying. Brandchannel contends that the competition for brand placement has simply intensified resulting in fewer appearances of Janoff's U+F8FF.

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WakeMate Warns Users Of Major Safety Issue With Product After One Bursts Into Flames

It was only days ago that we wrote that after nearly a year of delays, the first WakeMate units were finally shipping to customers. And now there’s some more bad news — really bad. Some of the initial units are apparently bursting into flames because of any issue with the USB charger included.

Repeat: Do not use the USB charger included with the shipping WakeMate units.

The company has just sent out the following notice to customers:

Hello WakeMate Customer,

We have just been alerted to a safety issue with our product. The black USB charger bricks that have been included with the product are defective. Do not use them.

The USB chargers were sourced through a Chinese vendor. We paid to have the proper certification and safety tests performed here in the U.S. for the chargers. However, tonight we were informed by a customer of a safety incident with the black USB chargers. Therefore, effective immediately we are recalling ALL USB charger bricks and informing our customers that it is not safe to use these USB chargers to charge your WakeMate.

We will continue to look into the situation but needed to email you immediately to ensure that you stop using and unplug the included Black USB Power Bricks.

We are extremely sorry that we sent a product containing defective components. However, we also want to stress that this issue is with the chargers only, and not with the WakeMate itself. It is still safe to use the included USB cable to charge the WakeMate, and it is safe to wear the WakeMate while sleeping.

I sincerely apologize for this mishap on our part. We are doing everything we can to prevent any further incidents with the USB charger bricks.

If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,
Arun Gupta
CEO, Perfect Third Inc.

While the notice isn’t specific about what the exact problem is, there is at least one report out there of a unit catching on fire. Jason Toff, a Googler, sent out this tweet tonight:

WARNING: my @WakeMate just burnt into flames, nearly catching my bed on fire. Do NOT use. Video of it afterward: http://twitvid.com/UBBWC

As you can see in Toff’s linked video, this looks really bad. He followed up to say he was fine, but that he was lucky he was around or his home would be on fire right now.

Obviously, this is yet more bad news for WakeMate, but they seem to have done the right thing in alerting customers as quickly as possible. It’s not yet clear if this is the only incident or if there have been others. Either way, WakeMate clearly feels this potentially won’t be an isolated problem.

Again, just to be clear, they’re saying the product itself is still safe, it’s just the black USB power adapter that is apparently defective. And if that’s the case, they shouldn’t have to do a full product recall — hopefully they’ll just have to send new USB adapters to all customers. The company says they’re still looking into the situation.

Update: There’s a bit more info in the Hacker News thread on the issue, including the company answering questions (they are Y Combinator-backed). Of note, the company says:

yes the batteries are safe. we believe that the chargers are spitting out a noisy electrical signal, which is causing the battery charger IC on the WakeMate to overheat, thus causing the problem. We have only seen any incidence when the unit is plugged into the black USB charger bricks we shipped with. To date we have logged over 20000 hours of sleep on our system, so we’re certain that sleeping with the Wakemate is safe, and that the batteries on the WakeMates are safe as well. This is in addition to the testing and certification we had done on the unit as well before we began shipping units.

and:

We sent this email tonight within an hour of hearing about the first issue. One of our goals as a company is to increase people’s quality of life — starting with sleep. It was immediately apparent to us we had to tell our customers, especially if their safety was at all at risk.

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iPhone App Uses Barcode Scans for Product Recommendations

Blake Scholl and Jason Crawford are two Amazon alumni transferring their e-commerce background and social product discovery experience to mobile in the form of Barcode Hero, an iPhone application that is receiving a massive update today.

Barcode Hero is designed to be a community where people share product recommendations through barcode scans. The application [iTunes link], a product of Scholl and Crawford’s KimaLabs, originally launched in August. Today’s update better surfaces those recommendations to help app users make more informed purchase decisions while shopping.

In version 1.0, Barcode Hero users could scan barcodes on products, leave short product comments and give their review in the form of a thumbs up or thumbs down. The application was built to be incredibly social in nature, so users could find and follow friends, post products to their social networks and compete Foursquarefoursquare-style to become the king or queen of each of the 50,000 product categories.

With version 2.0, the focus shifts from sharing to recommendations, so users can now scan products to see recommendations from friends. For instance, users can scan a bottle of wine to see reviews on that bottle, but also uncover the most highly recommended wines in the same category, according to the community. Of course, there’s also price comparison additives to ensure that users aren’t getting ripped off.

The updated app now supports browsing and search for products, photo uploads for additional points and the ability to discover if users’ address book contacts are using the app.

Scholl was reluctant to share specifics around application users or downloads, but he did disclose that users are very active — 30% leave thumbs-up product recommendations and 10% leave short product comments. Apple also plans to feature Barcode Hero in a list of featured holiday shopping apps beginning today, which should cause a spike in downloads and activity.

Barcode Hero resembles a slew of other applications including Stickybits and myShopanion. What makes it unique is its core purpose is to help people choose amongst products. The founders also don’t plan to add rewards in the immediate rewards, which prevents the app from infringing upon the store scanning and rewards zone that Checkpoints and Shopkick occupy.

Barcode Hero has raised $770,000 in seed funding from top notch backers including Ron Conway’s SV Angel and former MySpace CEO and Amazon alum Owen Van Natta. The company will likely raise an additional round next year.

Image courtesy of FlickrFlickr, littleREDelf

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