Month: February 2012
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Skeuomorphs
Thank you Clive Thompson. At last I have a word for something that has long bugged me: elements of digital design that are based on old-fashioned, analogue, physical objects. Skeuomorphs. My new favourite word. In the latest issue of Wired, Clive talks about classic examples of Skeuomorphs such as digital calendars which (in month view) force…
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Perceptive Media
I've been using Zite for a number of months now. It's the personalised magazine app for iphone and iPad that 'gets smarter as you use it'. Zite's personalisation engine is super-smart. Behind the app is a quite mind boggling level of social and algorithmic modelling and curation (created, they say, over 6 years of product…
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System Failure
Everything is a Remix Part 4 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo. "Our system of law doesn't acknowledge the derivative nature of creativity. Instead, ideas are regarded as property, as unique and original lots with distinct boundaries. But ideas aren't so tidy. They're layered, they’re interwoven, they're tangled. And when the system conflicts with the reality……
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Is The Average Age of Entrepreneurs Getting Older?
Steve Jobs once said: "It's rare that you see an artist in his thirties and forties able to really contribute something amazing". Yet in his forties and beyond he went on to reinvent the music industry model, mobile phones, computers (again) and books. When we think of entrepreneurs (and particularly tech entrepreneurs) we tend to…
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Fish Food Goodness
Every now and then I feel I should give a mention to the weekly curation of digital goodness I compile and send out, mostly because many readers I meet are unaware that I do it. I use it to gather all the best things that I've happened across in the past week and happily quite a…
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“Holding Knowledge Is Not As Valuable As Evaluating Knowledge”
"We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools, growing into interconnected systems that remember less by knowing information than by knowing where the information can be found". Jonathan Mugan's new book The Curiosity Cycle looks rather intriguing. It talks about the importance of very human attributes such as creativity and curiosity in equipping our children for…
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Making Room For Innovation
One of the big challenges in these budget-crunching, resource-stretching times is finding the space to innovate. The idea of adopting a 70:20:10 approach creates some interesting possibilities for building innovation into the fabric of what you do, as does opening up the raw material (data, content, ideas) to third parties through APIs and customer interaction…
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Post Of The Month – January 2012 – The Winner
After a very strong showing for Richard Huntingdon's post on Crimes Against Social in this month's vote, it was Mel Exon's excellent two-part interview with John Willshire of Smithery that edged it and won through. So well done to Mel (and to John of-course). As is usual, they get not only the props of their blogging…
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Post Of The Month – January 2012 – The Vote
Thanks all for the nominations. So our vote this month is between: Web Second, Mobile First by Mark Suster Crimes Against Social from Richard Huntingdon The Flipside Of A Big Audience by Gina Trapani Mobilityness And The New Marketing from Thom Kennon Culture Eats Strategy For Lunch by Shawn Parr Interview With John V Willshire Part One, and Part…