The package contains no less than 3 different remixes from X-Press 2 and has already been given full support by the trio in their sets and charts, plus picked up on by a wide range of international DJs since first emerging at Miami WMC back in March. For this key release, content assets include streams of the track, images and a doc containing interviews with Hakan and Rocky for press/bloggers to use for quotations or in their entirity. All supported across Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and beyond.

There’s plenty more to come from SOUNDZ and it’s legendary house music-focused sister label, Slip N Slide, over the coming months. As online streaming, Twitter and mobile all become increasingly central to the promotion of new tracks, the importance of a good content generation and management package becomes ever more obvious.

All this week we’re out in Mayrhofen, Austria, producing a real-time stream of news content for the official Snowbombing festival iPhone app by Eristoff – Vodka from the Land of the Wolf.

If you’ve got an iPhone or iPod Touch, download it for free while the event is taking place and let us know what you think. You’ll find news, gossip and interviews direct from the week-long festival, which sees artists like The Enemy, Editors, 2ManyDJs, De La Soul, Fatboy Slim, Vitalic, Doves and Friendly Fires playing to 6000 fancy dressed loons high up the Tyrolean alps.

Live Feeds

The app makes use of Alchemy Content’s specialist experience of developing and running mobile applications that go beyond the gimmicks; providing a useful, always up-to-date information service that’s constantly available in a user’s pocket.

Live feeds of high-quality custom content give people a reason to refer to the branded application repeatedly throughout their time at the event. For Snowbombing, we’ve devised an additional Eristoff Secrets feed, offering exclusive calls to action on things like VIP party access, ticket competitions and insider tips for getting the most from the resort.

Intense Usage

Mobile apps based around intense periods of usage, like major events or holiday locations work particularly well, so the Eristoff Snowbombing app is an ideal use of the technology and Alchemy Content’s editorial and project management services. See our Clubber’s Guide to Ibiza app for more.

GPS maps pinpointing and recommending local businesses, a fully searchable events schedule including artist profiles, plus user generated community feeds from YouTube, Flickr and Twitter all add to the application being an essential download for anyone – whether out at Snowbombing or not – with an interest in the artists or wanting an interactive guide to the best of Mayrhofen’s après ski.

Download the Eristoff Snowbombing app for iPhone or iPod Touch.

Forget the latest social media trends, communications fads and all those lofty opinions on the future of Twitter. The one thing that has emerged as a modern essential (one I believe we will soon consider on a par with having a phone number, or a listed postal or email address), is the status update.

It makes perfect sense in an age dominated by information, that we all provide a short ‘headline’ about what we are up to as part of our contemporary suite of work and social tools. We’re fast approaching a time when not to have a status update of some sort will feel as socially awkward as not having a mobile became in the late 1990s. And for businesses, it will be unthinkable.

It’s interesting to see the mobile operators and device manufacturers rushing into this space now (see the Vodaphone video below). The range of options they offer shows that this isn’t exclusively about Twitter, Facebook or any other brand. It’s also not about celebrity, or society’s obsession with self-importance, or an invasion of privacy, or a time consuming distraction. It’s a maturing of how we all use real-time social media in a way that isn’t overwhelming. It’s a practical method of communicating now we are all so instantly, permanently connected. An inevitable evolution of communication, no less. Ok, so it’s one that hasn’t featured in much sci-fi so makes us feel odd about our ideas of the future, but is ultimately very human.

Train Your Brain

The headline feed, whether this be news, marketing messages, blog posts or a public SMS from a friend’s mobile are the ultimate way to cope with and condense a torrent of real time information. Excellent free tools like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite help us to make sense of this as the feeds themselves become a flood. The mobile app and the personal website become important again as aggregators of particular feeds.

Our brains need to get to grips with this new way of receiving information, and its rapid advance is causing plenty of friction and resistance… of course. But the technology is guiding the way. Limiting the text characters (originally down to the basic restrictions of SMS) forces us to be brief and trains our minds to express ourselves in the concise way necessary today.

As society becomes more comfortable with sending and consuming information in this way, as yet unthought-of possibilities become apparent, both good and bad. Witness last week’s #trafigura and #janmoir outrage incidents (Twitter mobs could become a real problem, even if they can be mobilized for good), or the innovative #beatcancer charity drive. The best advice can only be that we all embrace the coming of the status update and train ourselves to be savvy as its cultural importance grows. What’s clear is that the pace of change isn’t going to stop, so those who remain resistant put themselves at an increasing disadvantage.

Such topics are to be discussed from a brand perspective at Media140 London on 26th October, a one-day conference on the impact of real-time media. Alchemy Content will be there, and we have a discount code for £40 off the ticket price for the first five people to buy a Media140 ticket using our exclusive promo code: E8NZAHJH. That makes it a very affordable £95.

Video for Vodaphone’s new 360 service, that is heavily geared towards the importance of status updates…

The recent change in standing of our once world-leading postal service is largely down to the same technology that continues to reshape the media and many other industries. Seeing as many skilled media people still don’t have a grasp of this digital stuff, I doubt that the postal union reps are thinking ‘digitally’ about the consequences of trying to protect an outdated status quo.

Even with Lord Mandelson stressing that a strike would be “a suicidal act”, they seem intent on pressing on with action supposed to improve the deal for their members. The pace of technological change has caught most industries off guard, but Mandy isn’t just issuing idle statements about the potential demise of the Queen’s very own posties.

It’s not just the fact that banks and utilities are moving their billing (and junk mail) online, but the broadband-equipped population demands efficiency and above all immediacy in every area these days. We hear daily stories about companies planning on leaving the Royal Mail, and they really have no option. The majority of these are businesses that are successful online, including the home delivery daddy, Amazon. Trying to argue for better pay deals for an analogue workforce in a streamlined digital era is as ridiculous and futile as trying to copy-protect digital music files. Far better to accept the reality of how we live today and work out how to provide a relevant service around that.

There will be job losses, but we’re in the middle of another social revolution here. Next week may go down in its history as the moment a great institution was steam-rollered by progress, but it need not end that way.

A birthday bash for a 1-year-old I attended at the weekend revealed a great example of how people are creating their own personalised communications systems using free web tools.

The parents had no fewer than 3 laptops set up, all running Skype video connections so relatives in various parts of the world could join in the singing of ‘happy birthday’ to the little boy.

The grandparents in Malaysia were propped up on the sofa while an uncle and aunt in Manchester were on the windowsill. The connections were clunky and eventually went down, but as an indicator of the changes such devices are already making to our daily lives I thought this was a great effort.

Knowing that the gathered toddlers will be looking back on the photos one day and laughing at the ‘prehistoric’ technology we employed is a reminder of the pace of change that continues to effect us all. My own 1-year-old had already spent the morning making faces at her 92-year-old great grandmother on Skype, who was of course the far more bemused of the two.

It looks like future generation’s ‘can’t work the video recorder’ moment is going to come earlier and earlier.