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Archives - January 2008

Give us this day our daily read

29.01.08 | Permalink | 0 Comments

It seems we can’t get enough of literature in bite sized portions - and are choosing to consume said portions in a number of different ways

If Tankbooks aren’t your thing (although lots of people are loving em), then maybe you’d prefer to get your lit on digitally?

Kindle, Amazon’s new electronic paper wireless reading device claims to be the future of book reading.

Or perhaps you’d prefer not to invest in a pricey e-reader, and would rather use your mobile phone? If you sign up to the Swedish service Storytel, you can download audiobooks split into chunks of about 50 and 150 minutes long - you can even download comic books to browse on-screen.

Now Daily Lit will send you a snippet of your chosen book by email or RSS at the date/time of your choosing - with each instalment small enough to be read in 5 minutes or less.

The makers of Daily Lit admit that they got the idea from newspaper serialisations of classic novels: books they had always meant to read but never got round to - but finally read because each chapter became part of their daily routine of reading the newspaper. They observed that the only thing they did more . The only thing they did more consistently than read the paper was to read their email - and lo, Daily Lit was born,

Ironically it seems we’ve come full circle - whilst we might be accustomed to reading entire volumes of Dickens novels, most of his work was originally published in episodic format, in monthly or weekly instalments in journals - resulting in that famous anecdote of American fans waiting at the docks in New York for the arrival of the latest installment of The Old Curiousity Shop, shouting clamours of ‘Is little Nell dead?’. Whilst the accessibility of literature has meant such anticipation is a rare occasion (with the exception of Harry Potter and the like), it’s fascinating to see that whilst the medium may have changed, how we consume literature seems to have come right back round again…

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5 blogs that get you thinking

28.01.08 | Permalink | 2 Comments

The ever thoughtful Neil very kindly tagged me as a thinking blogger (thanks Neil!)

Participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog)

And here for your reading pleasure are 5 blogs that always get me thinking:

Chris at Mediation - not just a former colleague and all-round-good-egg, but a blogger who always provides lots of tasty morsels of food for thought on the wonderful world of comms planning.

Alex at A Better Course - has both an endless supply of utterly cracking del.icio.us links and fascinating insights into what how and why marketing works.

Dan at Extenuating Circumstances - longstanding friend (ever since the first ever UK blogmeet way back when!), longstanding genius - he makes amazing stuff, he writes about amazing stuff.

Graeme at Planning for Fun - in the words of, er, Bill and Ted, a most excellent read, dude.

Jason at Memehuffer - planning goodness, mmmm.

Go check ‘em out, they all rock.

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If everyone gets 15 minutes of fame, what do microcelebrities get?

21.01.08 | Permalink | 1 Comment

So I’m sure you’ve all seen the story about Corey Delaney, the 16 year old Melbourne dude who threw a massive party while his folks were out of town last week, racking up A$20,000 (about £9,000) worth of damages, and (with balls of steel) proclaimed it on-air to b e the “best party EVER”.

The video of which made its way onto YouTube where it, not surprisingly went down a storm.

But such is the speed of microcelebrity in the digital age that it didn’t stop there.

You can now not only see the video, but you can buy the t-shirt

Annoyed by his slacker smugness? You can slap some sense into Corey

Hell, even Paris Hilton’s in on the game (OK so that one might be made up)

The man himself has allegedly signed a A$10,000 deal with Zoo magazine, and is said to be launching his career as a party planner.

When Andy Warhol said that everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame, I doubt he could have forecast how quickly microcelebrity would be generated by the power of the internet.

Or, no doubt, how quickly their 15 minutes (seconds?) would be over…

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The Revolution will be Caramelized

18.01.08 | Permalink | 1 Comment

Imagine a spirograph crossed with a candy floss machine crossed with a printer. Or put it another way - remember the replicator from Star Trek which would beam up a fabulously tasty concoction out of this air?

Wouldn’t it be cool if that were real?

Well, the fabulously named Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories have done just that with their latest production CandyFab (aka The Evil Mad Scientist 3D Fabricator)

3D printers aren’t totally new. But they are extremely pricey. The Z Corp Z450 will set you back a cool $40,000. But Candyfab was first built using three sacks of granulated sugar, an aquarium pump, a car jack and some recycled printer parts. And it only bloody works.

It’s totally open source - so you can make one at home. In fact, since people have been making their own at home, printing has been refined from 5 ppi to 20 ppi. Not bad for something home-grown and made using odds and ends on the cheap.

Yet another example of innovation at its best when driven by the minds of many rather than the minds of the few. (And apparently my interest in geeky things to do with printers!)

See the whole process in its full glory at Flickr

[ as always, courtesy of Wired ]

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Buy your own self-constraint

18.01.08 | Permalink | 0 Comments

Finding those new years resolutions to lose weight or maybe even just get out of bed on time hard to keep?

Well if the motivation of tools like 43things isn’t enough, how about using financial penalties as incentives to keep you on the straight and narrow?

This certainly seems to be the trend, as more and more initiatives help us to achieve our goals by enabling us to hit ourselves where it hurts - our wallets

Stickk is one very obvious such example: when a Yale economics professor tried to lose weight, he found that the threat of forking out over $1,000 to a friend every week that he didn’t drop one pound was enough to keep his weight loss on a continued downward trend - with the result that he lost 10 pounds without paying a cent. So he and his colleague created Stickk - offering the rest of us the facility to sign binding contracts committing to pay a set amount to charity if we fail to meet our own goals.

Which is pretty much the same logic behind the creation of the wi-fi-enabled SnuuznLuuz alarm clock, which donates money directly from your online bank account to a charity of your choice every time you hit the snooze button - with a running tally of your donations providing a daily reminder of your indolence.

Except that whereas the SnuuznLuuz just uses ’stick’ tactics to beat you into submission, you can use Stickk to create your own proverbial carrots as well: e.g. you can pre-purchase items through the Web site, but the transaction only goes through if the you accomplishes the nominated goal. Or even add group solidarity into the equation - whereby a group of friends can create a group contract in which each commits a certain amount of money to a pool; but the entire pot goes to only those friends who accomplish their goals.

It’s a lovely idea - but will we ultimately be prepared to put our money where our mouth is?

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Are web 2.0 tools dumbing us down?

16.01.08 | Permalink | 1 Comment

There’s an article in the Atlantic Monthly (subscription only, but summarised here) which highlights a recent neuroscience study examining how multi-tasking affects both the mind and our body:

“Multi-tasking messes with our brains in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires—the constant switching and pivoting—energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning.”

As the article points out, finding out that that multi-tasking doesn’t make us more productive isn’t new news.

But as usage of always-on social networking and micro-blogging tools such as Twitter or Facebook proliferates in both volume and frequency, alongside the increased use of tabbed browsing, RSS feeds, Blackberries and IM, could our ‘always-on’ multi-tasking actually be making us even less mentally acute?

Studies have apparently shown that mentally juggling several tasks switches on the areas of the brain which deal with in visual processing and physical coordination - but at the same time “simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning.” Moreover, multi-tasking appears to boost levels of stress-related hormones (e.g. cortisol and adrenaline) - which can wear down our systems through biochemical friction, in the long term potentially leading to brain atrophy.

If this is true, not only does my endless switching between various apps serve as endless procrastination to avoid doing anything potentially productive, but may also be hastening the inexorable decline of my grey matter into a steaming pile of mush. Who said modern technology wasn’t life-improving?!

[ via A Better Course ]

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Links for 15th Jan 08

15.01.08 | Permalink | 0 Comments

Mapping Globalisation
Really cool visualisations of the history of globalisation

New 3-D technique makes posters pop
Appears to crap all over lenticulars

London’s Lightbulb amnesty
Really nice partnership between B&Q, British Gas and the GLA to get us using energy efficient bulbs

Intel predicts the personal net
Intel reckon that we’ll be using mobile devices with the power of today’s desktop PCs within 5 years

£27,000 mobile bill for UK factory worker
But Intel’s dream is only going to happen once the networks get their data usage costs down!

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They don’t make ads like they used to

14.01.08 | Permalink | 2 Comments

My personal favourite will probably always be the official Bayer ad for Heroin, however the below ads for Camels and 7-Up have to come a close second:

It’s always remarkable to reflect on advertising before the days of tobacco or HFSS rulings, but it’s still amazing to see quite what claims brands were able to make of their products - and what it was felt would persuade consumers to buy said products.

The Camels ad in particular reminds me of the Fry & Laurie ‘Dr Tobacco’ sketch whereby an incredulous patient is stunned to be prescribed cigarettes by his doctor - yet the truth really was stranger than fiction!

Which does of course beg the question - which of today’s ads are we going to look back at with utter astonishment, stunned at the crazy claims we used to sell products?

[ More weird and wonderful old ads at Oddee ]

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Mandala of Perfect Happiness

13.01.08 | Permalink | 0 Comments

…constructed entirely from plastic bits and bobs from the dollar store. Simply awesome.

[ via Boing Boing | more pics on Flickr ]

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Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should…

09.01.08 | Permalink | 0 Comments

Just because you think you can fit a digital screen and sell advertising on it, doesn’t mean you should…

Exhibit A: Pump Top TV

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