Audi’s Efficient Films
This is a neat effort by Audi. In an effort to perpetuate a discussion about ‘efficiency’, the auto manufacturer created a Twitter meme that asks users to create a film summation in 140 characters or less. It’s a tenuous link to the company’s new efficient diesel powered A3 TDI but it’s a widely distributed (and cost-effective) idea that lets people have fun with the message..
Write your own: http://www.efficientfilms.ca/
UPDATE: My Sunday: “Final cynical cash-in on celebrity voiceover contracts for ogre-like family film #EfficientFilms”
The Guardian according to Gyford
UK-based creative technologist, Phil Gyford, has neatly interrogated the Guardian’s API to create a stripped back version of what an online news experience could be like: Today’s Guardian. The readability is enhanced by a layout which is quite similar to that achieved by hitting Safari’s new Reader button, and a sense of ‘completion’ (or percentage thereof) is shown by Tufte’s Sparklines at the top. Of course it lacks colour and movement, but who’s missing that?
Needless to say, this fits nicely into an iPad’s ideal column reading width. Phil hasn’t thrown in swiping yet but the one touch on the left and right columns make it pretty zippy on the pad anyway. This kind of site isn’t going to suit everyone – but it is going to suit a hell of a lot of people I expect.
More commentary from the designer the rationale here: Today’s Guardian (Phil Gyford’s website)
State of Design Digital Panel: July 22
Good friend of the Royals, Lou Weis, has invited me to be on panel at the upcoming State of Design Festival. The event at ACMI will look at how cities, organizations and companies can develop and articulate their digital strategies. It will also feature Dan Hill and Sam Davey so it should be a stimulating hoot. We’ll probably gather somewhere afterwards so let me know if you’ll be coming along.
David Lynch: Playing films on your telephone
A gentle reminder from the web’s great weatherman.
Welcome to Twitter, this is the news.
It all started when they changed the question from “What are you doing? to “What’s happening?”. Or more likely, the Twitter powers-that-be were addressing a trend they’d been noticing for a while: most people were using Twitter as a news platform, rather than a social network. I’ve heard plenty of people say (in various ways) that Facebook is for people you know, while Twitter is for things you know – ie. the latter being a platform for subscribing to a vertical list of subjects you’re interested in, via people.
Recently, four Korean researchers who collected all of Twitter’s data over a month’s time released their research on it. This is the first quantitative study of the entire Twitterverse. They analysed “.. the entire Twitter site and obtained 41.7 million user profiles, 1.47 billion social relations, 4,262 trending topics, and 106 million tweets.” Impressive. They did this in order to see if the way people use Twitter’s mechanics (follow, retweet etc) set it apart from other social networks. Secondly, they wanted to see if the results demonstrated characteristics of news media.
“You got the time, Uma?” “Heaps, Ethan.”
I just noticed this at NYT via @rosshill: Andrew Niccol, Writer/Director of ‘Gattica’, is plotting out a new sci-fi flick where time is the currency:
“Niccol’s project is set in the not-too-distant future where the aging gene has been switched off. To avoid overpopulation, time has become the currency and the way people pay for luxuries and necessities. The rich can live forever, while the rest try to negotiate for their immortality.”
This is a really fascinating notion to explore in a (current) world where media and technology are commanding our time, rather than creating or even releasing it. When we kicked off the Royals a couple of years ago, one of the fundamental beliefs that we had was you that had to ‘earn people’s attention’ (you can’t just have it..). We even considered naming the company ‘Time Lords’ knowing that brands and organisations are going to increasingly need help with negotiating ‘time spent’ with consumers in non-intrusive ways (by the way, our current work with News Limited is very much focussed around this challenge/opportunity).
This week Steve Rubel predicted the iPad could potentially accelerate the attention crash and he’s probably onto something, although it’s too early to truly understand the effects of tablet usage on media consumption habits. One thing that does stand out about the iPad and it’s ilk, is that it’s an ideal interface for a co-viewing experience (live adjacent content for TV) and back-channel (chat, #tweets, polls etc). But your current attention divided by two screens means fracturing of some kind. This notion also reminds me of advertisng models where watching branded messages can subsidize the cost of your content or data (is that what Blyk was trying).
So when devising content or brand experiences, more than ever we need to think carefully about where the consumer time is coming from. It’s obviously a finite resource with a tangible value so something has to give. I wonder if it’s possible to create a formula or metric that measures the average cost of consumer time. I’m not sure what would go into determining this as a commidity value but I’m pretty sure it would be trending upwards..
NB. Intreresting aside: Niccol’s sci-fi script, is, as noted by the NYT “.. one of the hot projects for the under-25 set because every character looks young. (The scenario makes it so that onscreen, adults such as parents appear to be the same age as their kids.)”. Hollywood gold!
Just starting to map out some personal experiences of using the iPad in the first week..
- It’s certainly more than “a big iPod Touch”, although if purely looking at form factor it’s an undestandable mistake to make. My initial feeling is that it’s closer to a computer than an iPod.
- it’s freaky quick (hope it stays that way after I clog it full of stuff)
- Amazon books on iPad will be where it’s at (although, as expected, it’s probably to heavy to read ‘novel-like’ in one hand).
- the lovely screen really dresses up content and makes it shiny.
- the newspaper and magazine apps are definately very 1.0 – which is understandable (I still can’t understand why Apple doesn’t let content creators develop and test on it months in advance).
And, maybe most interestingly, I really think I will read much more on this screen than any other I’ve come across – I’m not sure I want multi-apping capabilities to distract me :)
UPDATE:
After a couple of days occasional use, I’m starting to get used to the initial awkwardness of holding and typing on it. I seem to have found comfortable positions for different tasks.
But.. the uber-glossy screen looks sooo dirty in certain lighting that it can be quite annoying. I wonder if people will get used to this or modify their behaviour first.
UPDATE 2:
It’s bright/vivid screen radiates light in a dimly lit, public place that kinda makes you look like you’re sunning yourself. This would be the case for a laptop too but you’re more inclined to pull out the iPad in a range of contexts that you would never pull out your laptop in.
WiFi didn’t work in the first hotel room I stayed in (..It did work for my laptop). I suspect this was about the hotel’s own browser, authentication method, rather than the ipad itself, but disappointing. I’m hopping Paddy will be a good travel companion (eventually).
UPDATE 3:
This summarises of the feeling of intimacy of consumption that I’ve been feeling using Paddy. From Information Architects, Inc:
“The iPad brings hands and eyes back together.”
You feel closer to, even a part of, the content experience because of the screen size, removal of keyboard and feeling of unaided (finger not mouse) control.
Microsoft Courier: the creative professional’s ultimate companion
Image credit: Engadget.
If you’d asked most people five years ago about which company would the best positioned to create a Moleskin-like digital notebook, we all probably would have said Apple. The iPad is a very interesting device, and will sell like hotcakes, but one thing it severely lacks is notetaking, scrapbooking and concepting applications. While Keynote in iWork is pretty good for getting words and images into slides, Microsoft’s Courier slate looks like it intends to take this to a whole new level (if the concept videos via the link below are to be believed).
It could be a turning point for how we perceive Microsoft vs. Apple. Surely MS has always been the company that pushes content to people, and Apple has been about creating it (although the boundaries have long since become blurry). The iPad is well-geared towards consumption – reading, web surfing, watching videos. The Courier seems is like a right-brained version of Office where the focus is on capturing creative influences, grouping and sorting them and getting things done. And the Moleskin reference above is not by chance – you can literally feel the er.. homage.. that Microsoft have offered to the much revered notebooks. It’s also interesting that this product is based on the Zune/Windows Mobile 7 OS – this really could represent a revitalisation for Microsoft if it continues to deliver products and services like the Zune and Xbox Live.
Of course with the depth and breadth of Apples application development community, it’s quite possible that a company or two will come up with the ultimate creative scrapbooking journal for the iPad. But it really does look like nothing that’s graced the iPhone or been announced for the iPad thus far (eg.. Evernote is good and functional but…)
Check the videos from Engadget, and hope that this is representitive of the final product in Q3/Q4 this year:
Engaget’s Microsoft Courier article including images and videos
See a Kindle in your city: curated “serendipity”
It’s quite difficult to fully describe the e-reading experience without letting someone hold the device, balance it their hands, turn pages and marvel at the type. With “See a Kindle in your Area”, Amazon is trying to source help from its community by asking existing Kindle owners to make them, and their Kindles, available for prosective buyers to roadtest.
This is an interesting way to tap consumer evangelists and let them do the sell job for you. Normally I’d expect this kind of tactic to work best when the experience actually becomes better when more people get into it (as in, i’ll recruit people because it’s good for me). But I suppose there are two things at play here. One, people who have bought Kindles want to believe that they’ve made the right choice and at the right time (ie post-purchase_rationalization) so it helps substantiate that by being provided an opportunity to convince other people of the Kindle’s merits. And two, I suppose there is actually an advantage for the Kindle-owning consumer in seeing Amazon succeed so that the book marketplace grows in content.
Either way, crowd-sourcing demonstrations of goods sold online is a neat strategy. It could be worthwhile Amazon exploring the formalisation of this member-get-member program by offering book credits if you bring someone into the fold. “Hey, wanna come over and touch my Kindle?” Mmm…
Go find a Kindle to poke: See a Kindle in Your Area
