a hundred avatars

Analyzing Sir Martin

It’s a disadvantage of the revolution. People used to say that information is power but that’s no longer the case. It’s analysis of the data, use of the data, digging into it – that is the power. You get so much of the stuff and everyone has access to it. via Google's Think Quarterly

Tesco South Korea: Great bridge from outdoor to digital to home

One of the most talked about ideas at Cannes 2011. Great link from outdoor to mobile to home. Whether or not it's great outdoor or digital or mobile, but it is a great stunt...

 

Qwiki Information Experience

Pretty cool. Saw this in Most Contagious 2010 (oh yeah, go check that out too)  .

In a cruel twist of fate, it's the future of the internet, destroying TV by becoming more like TV. Not sure where this will go, but it's cool

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Qwiki at TechCrunch Disrupt from Qwiki on Vimeo.

The Social Inbox

Plenty of coverage elsewhere about Facebook's email, but this video does a great job of explaining why you should care. It reminded me that Facebook is about people, and the more they remember that, the cooler and better their innovations will be.

Really nice job.

Briefing is the soul of wit

via farisyakob.typepad.com

did i post this yet? i'm reminded by what good thinking this was from Gareth on digital briefing after seeing it over on Faris' blog.

Worth a look, and worth realizing just how much our craft and work have changed in an incredibly short period of time.

it's why i've gone and taken a new job in a place which has done an exceptionally good job changing with the times.

Spread this! (it's not viral)

I enjoyed this deck posted by my-almost-Planningness-presenting partner Eva Hasson

Stop Saying Viral - A Case for Spreadable Media

View more presentations from Eva Hasson.

There's a lot of rich dense intellectual topsoil there (which i mean in the best possible way), fertile ground for breeding ideas around what makes people share ideas and why anyone could be interested in spreading ideas, either on behalf of another person or, God forbid, for a brand.

Far too often, the focus is on technology, not ideas and certainly not on people.  It sounds almost obvious to say it, but in the end, all that matters is satisfying what people want.  

Obvious, but all too often neglected.

SPEWing good ideas

Tom O'Brien recently tweeted a link to Neal Stephenson's Spew, a piece in WIRED from what is essentially the dawn of time, 1994. What's crazy about it, given when it was published, is how prescient NS was on where we would be 15 years later.

Go ahead. Read the piece. It's really good, in the way that a cyberpunk piece called 'Spew' from 1994 is good. I know sometimes the links don't come through when these blogposts pop up on Facebook, but Google it if you don't see the link and read it.  I'll wait...

OK, it's not the Baroque Cycle or even Snow Crash, but it's sort of what we do for a living (or should be), right?

Anyway, a few things occurred to me while reading the piece:

1. Why don't people move more quickly? TV networks, publishers or advertisers don't respond to niche opportunities anywhere near as quickly as they do in the piece. I don't understand why, unless ennui, inertia or fear are fair explanations. There's no good excuse why, and we can accelerate how we move against opportunity. We just need a better infrastructure.
2. Try harder to find it: finding insights that are actionable.  Frankly in this day and age it's not hard to find information that matters, but honestly a lot of what we see in the business world is more often than not the result of outdated models that measure something that we all agree matters as opposed to the things that actually are happening. Not sure why this is the case.
3. WTF? Do you think anyone who read this piece 15 years ago really understood what NS was talking about? Did he? Did pieces like this create our reality (which is pretty spot on, at least from the perspective of what is possible) or was NS just so hyperaware that he intuited the next 15?
4. DIY: NS captures where culture really comes from perfectly.  As much as in his future there seems to be some sort of corporate-entertainment-technology complex that produces 'everything' they need to be culture vultures to find out what is really happening.  Technology that centralizes culture doesn't actually centralize culture creation but rather paradoxically just seems to help figure out what's really going on. Then the 'centralizer' can figure out how to take advantage (or not) of what's going on.
5. Intuition and in person: As much as the character in Spew has access to all the information out there, he's not purely quant driven in his approach.  He knows  "something is there" without being able to put his finger on it and really can only find out by going to where the target is and seeing it in person. Data feed doesn't replace human touch.

The Power of the Human Interface

Hi from Multitouch Barcelona on Vimeo.

that was sweet. via ivette

Just one personality, please.

Loved this description of the new digital life we lead from an introduction to an article about The-Dream written by Sasha Frere-Jones in the New Yorker.

One way to understand social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace is to consider that  younger digital natives are not necessarily being exhibitionists when they post photographs of themselves and share personal details there. Instead, these users are living a life in which consciousness is spread out evenly over two platforms: real life and the Web. Rather than feeling schizophrenic or somehow pathological, digital natives understand that these two realms divide the self much as speech and the written word divide language, a division that humans have lived with for a long time without going bonkers

Based on some new research I've seen lately, I think there is an increasing unification of behavior and thinking between the mobile and 'wired' world as well.

Obama, the Recovery and Transparency

According to www.recovery.gov, yesterday was the first day that federal agencies in receipt of recovery (which I suppose is how we're trying to brand the stimulus these days--well done) funds start to be obligated to report in a transparent manner how the money is being spent.

The site is pretty basic (I've copied the mission statement below) but I'm very interested in seeing how it evolves, as promised, over time.  As people can interact with the site and how the money is flowing I hope that not only will it have a positive effect on limiting waste, but also almost a placebo effect on making us all feel that something is changing for the better.

Perhaps this degree of transparency + accountability should be added to Andrew Cuomo's lessons from yesterday's post?

                                    Our Mission

• Education: Explain the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act;
• Transparency: Show how, when, and where the money is spent;
• Accountability: Provide data that will allow citizens to evaluate the Act’s progress and provide feedback.

Read the rest of the mission statement after the jump.