04-19-09
Festo and the future
OMG, etc. Check out these two great videos of some of the amazing creations from Festo, as blogged over at the always excellent Rubbishcorp. I spent a good hour this evening freely surfing the web, which I haven’t done in absolutely ages and just had to share.
03-27-09
Digital meets analogue, online meets offline
As the offline/analogue and online/digital worlds start to blend even more, I thought I’d share some favourite stuff I’ve been tagging over the past few months. I love this stuff and am really excited about the web weaving its way into more and more stuff.
Google Earth meets a 60ft Phallus.
Blogging meets a blackboard and goes fully analogue.
FAIL gets turned into stickers and gets stuck everywhere.
Two years of someone’s tweets get turned into a book.
Hashtags enter the real world.
Second Life inspired flying helicopter penis used by griefers to attack Gary Kasparov.
iPhone icons get turned into a coaster set.
DOS directories get turned into cushions.
Tweets get turned into bubbles.
02-03-09
Just be “human” (and be nice)
Think of people you like. What characteristics to they have? I bet they are kind, considerate, funny, sharing, trustworthy, respectful, appreciative, honest, caring, genuine, warm, friendly, approachable etc. They listen to you. They speak to you when you speak to them. They respond to feedback. They don’t shout at you. They respect your time. They aren’t pushy. They arrive on time. They say nice things about you. They are honest with you. You get the idea.
Now think about the people you don’t like. What characteristics do they have. I bet they are stingy, thoughtless, boring, untrustworthy, ungrateful, dishonest, fake, cold, unapproachable etc. They don’t listen to you. They talk over you or interrupt you. They have their own agenda. They don’t always respond to you. They shout at you. They ram things down your throat. They are late for stuff. They say nasty things about you behind your back. They don’t always tell you the truth. Again you get the idea.
So, what I’m trying to say is that this whole social media thing is simple. Just be human. Brands need to behave exactly the same way as real human beings. In fact, what are brands anyway? They are things created by human beings. Companies are collections of human beings. The walls of companies are being pulled down by social media. Quite literally, people are emerging from the shadows of companies and creating our perception of companies and brands, rather than their marketing.
To me, Rax is Splendid. James is Spinvox. JP is O2. Mike is Techcrunch. Will is NixonMcinnes. Wadds is Rainier. Steve is 3W. Iain is Poke. Again, you get the idea.
So, be a decent human being. Be all the things that people like about the people they like. And if you look deep into yourself (as a brand, a company or as a person) and don’t like what you see, then change it. Social media is an amplifier. All the bad stuff gets worse. All the good stuff gets better.
James is onto this. As are other people. It’s not something new. It’s not something that clever, or complicated. The hard part is when you do look inwards and find some of those nasty characteristics are a lot closer to home than they should be.
And that’s it – my thought for today. Just be human. And if you can’t be a decent one, you need to change – as in a world where technology adoption is growing at an ever-increasing rate, it’s becoming even more important.
Photo from a great collection of slides from Will Lion
Top image from Jared Donovan
Update – some people (quite rightly so) have likened this to Jimbob’s “Be Nice” post. One that I most definitely read at the time and agreed with – I even left ‘be human’ in the comments. So, as a nice person would, I just wanted to make sure that you guys know that and in honour of that have amended the title. Jimbob is a top bloke, a genuinely nice human being!
As is Faris, who also thinks we should be nice. And admits too to probably stealing the idea off Jimbob . . . .
01-06-09
It’s all about the data
Hello and Happy New Year. I am now back online after a nice refreshing break from the interwebz. Well almost, kind of in an iPhone kind of way. Anyway, like everyone else, I have a gazillion of things that I’d love to do this year, lots of thoughts on what might be in store for us netizens, loads of ideas about the future of the web and how it’s all about being human, lots of questions to ask and people to talk to.
But for the time being, whilst I play catch up and get my head back into everything after playing way too much Guitar Hero and spending too much money on geeky stuff, here’s a simply awesome data visualisation of a year’s worth of edits on OpenStreetMap.org.
OSM 2008: A Year of Edits from ItoWorld on Vimeo.
Data is the future. Of advertising, of the web, of everything. (Yes, I watched the Kevin Kelly 5000 days TED talk again recently!)
12-17-08
Man and (music) machine(s)
Music. Technology. Geeking out. Bring it on.
11-27-08
Video in video
Wow. This is a little crazy. Those clever Stanford types have created some software that enables video to be embedded within another video. Like in-game advertising but for real world video that (from the video below) looks as though it blends pretty seamlessly with the original content. Question is though – do we want our content blended with adverts? Or are there other uses for this? Whatever, it looks pretty cool to me.
10-24-08
“Blender Defender”
I actually think this is a bit cruel. But I appreciate the geekery involved and the website created to showcase the project. And did find it a little bit funny, if I’m being really honest.
[via @juter]
10-22-08
“My Goodness. This is insane!”
Said Ste on Twitter just now. So I had to take a look. And there is was, a creative agency called lisapmaxwell using its website as a ‘live case study in viral marketing’. Insane it may well be right now, but in the very near future I think it will be the norm to be able to video chat with anyone anywhere. It will be expected.
PS – I didn’t notice the request for a name first on starting a chat window, hence I’m called ‘yo dude’!
10-21-08
Feeding my Delicious habit
Today I saved my 5,000th link on Delicious. That means I’ve invested 13 hours and 45 minutes in Delicious, or thereabouts (I reckon using some fairly crude calculations on 10 seconds per save, allowing for some tag management and re-saves). I actually thought it would be more as this figure doesn’t seem that impressive, but then if I imagine sitting for 13 hours straight saving links it gets a bot bigger in my mind.
So. the big question is why bother? Well from a practical point of view, it helps me remember and find stuff I come across on the web. It’s as simple as that. It’s a big filing system that has traveled around with me from computer to computer and job to job. I actually feel naked without it, when browsing on someone else’s machine or mobile. I feed it relentlessly and I’m adamant that one day I’ll be able to extract even more use out of my bookmarks and everyone else’s bookmarks. For now though, I really do love Delicious and think it’s one of the best, most useful Web 2.0 apps that I use every day pretty much without fail.
Thoughts?
Oh and if you want to get some useful stuff, I’d personally subscribe to the feed for my stats tag. The cat stuff may geek you out a bit.
10-17-08
Nerdcore Rising
I’m pretty late to this but I’ve just finished watching Nerdcore Rising. Amazingly cool, genuine, funny collection of people and a great insight into the genre’s growth in the US. Hot Chip, Hedluv . . . we have our own hugely popular homegrown stuff too. I can’t wait until all this celebrity stuff finally goes out the window and the true rise of the nerds happens. Technology is driving huge global cultural change and nerds are finding themselves in the spotlight. And I love it (being a bit of a geek myself).
Full stream here, though be sure to check out the official site.
Official trailer below.
Here’s MC Frontalot, star of the movie and the rapper that’s held up as being the Godfather of the scene.
middledigit_
If technology doesn't seem like magic, it's probably obsolete . . .
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I'm a digital creative/strategist/doer that blogs about all kinds of stuff that usually involves brands, digital marketing, technology or cats.