Liking the beta Facebook timeline thingo. Due to launch soon, apparently.
Much more intuitive than the last update. However it seems like a sensible progression… as we all know how anti change most users are.
It also seems a lot more newsy, editorial and flipboardy. Generally a good improvement. Oooh the social media landscape is getting interesting isn’t it!.

I’m sure you’ve all been through this…

Sometimes you may not have an idea, but you still need to make that meeting. Fortunately, now there’s an easy way to be a “rock star.”
Spin the wheel, download your concept board, and seal the deal.

It’s here.. 

Gap annouced yesterday that after so much controversy ove the rebrand they are going to go back to the original brand. I don’t know what all the fuss was about in the first place.. pretty shit threads in the first place.
See article from Creative Review.
The site has even gone back to normal..
See original post here.

I really love the irony of this.
Big agencies not embracing the digital future and not giving any decent content outside of the “Flash” walled garden (we might be a little guilty I hasten to add).

&
Flash not working on iphone and ipads etc….

The consequence is that we have  2 walled gardens.

CLICK HERE FOR LINK!

$40,000, was the prize money for the proposed online challenge. The US government competition was won by a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – just hours after it was launched. 3000 teams entered teh competition.

The Darpa Network Challenge, which took place on Saturday, offered a cash prize for the first group to successfully locate 10 large red weather balloons hidden at a string of secret locations across the US.

Competitors were asked to use the internet and social networking sites to discover the whereabouts of the balloons, in what Darpa – the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – said was an experiment to discover how the internet could help with rapid problem solving.

It was all done and dusted in just 9 nine hours.

The winning team has not explained precisely how they came to discover the location of all 10 balloons, but the process detailed on the team website explains that they created a viral campaign to encourage people to put forward information they gleaned about the locations.

This shows us how quickly, using social media, a bit of financial insentive can spread things around America in relatively super fast ways.

Simple pyramid formation and social networking = great viral oportunities.

This fantastic project by Droga5 is probably one of the most amazing, successful and influential projects on urban, social and educational regeneration I have seen to date. I should have posted this ages ago as it won some serious prizes, notably a Black D&AD pencil ….

The Million is a newish program that rewards New York City public school students for their academic achievements by connecting the things they like outside of school to their performance in school.

Short-term incentives encourage a long-term interest in learning and success.

It’s so simple and begins with a free, limited-edition personal mobile device.

It’s aim is to tackle the low literacy, science and maths issues in New York and the surrounding areas. Through this program, students in New York are eligible to receive a free personal mobile device for use outside of school. Based on their scores on a series of performance indicators – such as class work, attendance, and behavior – students earned “points” or airtime on their Million phones, which can be used for making calls, sending text messages, downloading ringtones and music, and other functions. Frequent rewards periods remind students of the link between learning and earning.

Students are evaluated on a set of specific performance indicators measured by each school. Two indicators, behavior and attendance, are measured across all participating schools. In addition to behavior and attendance, each school also measured three unique indicators based on school-specific priorities – such as math or social studies performance. Through the program, administrators have easy access to a wealth of data on their students’ performance and progress over the course of the pilot.

Ooohhhh… I’m liking Google’s Wave… I think the more people use it the more it’s true functionality and potential will open up.
Nice .

I’ve had my eye on this for some time. LINK

Being that my design agency Picture, do a lot of e-commerce and being that “we” the general public, have been getting “free” content, online for far too long.

I’m looking forward to seeing the take up on this, I imagine that the Times will start to offer so much more versatile content, film, more rich images, like the Boston Big Picture do etc… I think it will be a multi-platform offering (my speciality). Offering what the Economist does, BBC, CNN and ABC do.. Essentially the Times could become a broadcaster. Ohh to think….

Spotify is an application that when downloaded to your machine,  will let you make a search for some music that you want to hear, but don’t own; invariably it will find it and play it (internet connection needed). It’s instant, simple and free (that’s their strapline by the way). It’s revenue model is based on using legalised music.. you just have to hear/see adverts every now and then. Oh and by the way you can save your playlists.. and pass them around

Brilliant!

I’ve been using Spotify for some time now and realised that I haven’t posted about.. My musings with the new Muxtape made me realise that using Spotify (as a application) has just been as natural to use, as a new application could be. The UI is not re-inventing the wheel, the playlists are great and I’ve realised that the data they are getting form our usage is a complete gold mine for targeted, cross selling of  adverts

It just works…

I’m in the process of doing the brand development and execution for Chateau/Restaurant Englain. A fabulous place with masses of ideas and potential. I went to Toulouse last week to photograph the nearly finished restaurant. They have only just “soft” launched the restaurant and it has a great warm feeling about it.

See for yourself.. also there is plenty more to come.