December 2011
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Forget The Cloud
Here are some trends to look out for in 2012.
Social media will become an inescapable and indispensable part of our lives. People will stop talking about Facebook and Twitter and accept them like other everyday mediums (email, TV, and radio).
More artists will experiment with direct to fan sales like Louis C.K. Embedding commerce into a website is just as easy as installing a share widget.
...
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3 Reasons A Blog Is Not a Fast Food Reading Diet
Blogs, which house a majority of the Web’s daily content, are the fast food of today’s publishing society. - Scott Fulton(RWW)
Scott is right in the “fast” sense, that blogs are merely quick bites compared to long form content such an essay or book.
But blogs do have benefits.
For one, blogs can be more insightful than a book. You’ll take away more from a Seth...
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But No Button?
“How do you play it? There’s no buttons.”
The button world is gone and it’s not coming back.
The touch and wireless era has begun and they’ll get more advanced so that one day, I can instinctively play Fifa or Madden on my mobile or tablet. Right now, a buttonless experience makes a game hard to play.
Fast forward a decade from now and anything computer operated,...
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Book Publishing Enters Myspace Era
The rift between writers and publishers is getting louder.
The writers argue that they can publish directly through Amazon and make physical books on demand. They can even build their own fans and followers (aka potential buyers) on Facebook and Twitter for free. Just ask Mark Cuban whom produced at an eBook and marketed it with a few Tweets.
The publishers counter that without their marketing...
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3 Sure Bet Tech Products For 2012
Since everyone else is making predictions for next year I’d thought I’d list a few sure bets.
Below are three new products we’ll see in 2012, starting with what I think will roll out first.
1. iPad 3
I know, I know, obviously. But this release will be thinner, faster, and take better photos and videos. It’ll also be Siri enabled and include a couple cool tools to be...
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2012: The Year For Social Refinement
Recapping Facebook and Twitter in 2011:
Facebook wants to be your cultural operating system, providing recommendations and serving as a platform for music, movies and news. Twitter has taken its initial lightweight design and begun to offer more windows of content, hoping to keep you tuned in for more than 140 characters.
Facebook and Twitter have moved beyond simplicity to stay hyper...
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The Password is Dead
Passwords are manual collections of forgotten memories.
Unless your passwords are automatically saved, your going to be very frustrated this morning buying a last second EGift card on Amazon or iTunes while also logging into Twitter, Facebook, and your bank’s website.
There are three ways to solve the password burden, given each of these also has your credit card on file.
1. Log in...
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Social Commerce Convergence
There is such a thing as social commerce, it just hasn’t worked yet.
Part of the challenge is Facebook’s reticence to support F-Commerce, leaving it up to retailers to guide the strategy while it focuses on ads.
Social games made by Zynga show that social users will give their credit card info on Facebook.
One way to make social commerce more compelling is through recommended gifts....
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From Services To Essential Hardware
Barnes and Noble got it right with the Nook, converting its brick and mortar stores into a digital eReader.
B&N learned the lesson from record stores like Virgin and Tower that if you’re not building a piece of hardware with an integrated store your business will go extinct.
The same risk was at play for Amazon. Even with a digital store the hardware owners with integrated stores like...
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V Day Augmented Reality
Lacta Mobile App - English from LactaFilms on Vimeo.
Augmented reality is a digital visualization applied to physical objects.
Like a QR code, once something is scanned the mobile phone populates a new, unique image.
Many brands are experimenting with it to see if it creates more stickiness around products.
Expect to see more Valentines Day campaigns like this.
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Twitter US Growth 2006 - 2009 (Visual)
Twitter hit mass first in its birthplace of San Francisco followed by Boston/NYC.
I bet we’ll see a similar adoption diagram for Instagram given its SF base and its East Coast explosion.
I’m even more interested in seeing the adoption map of a social network (weibo) in China.
My guess is that all the adoption is on China’s East Coast starting from the bottom at Hong Kong all...
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Business Card powered by Blippar
If you want someone to remember you, give them a business card. If you really want someone to remember you, give them a business card with augmented reality.
Like the above video, show a few different angles of expression. Start by showing what your company is all about whether that’s a logo or latest product and then use one display for personal expression. Remember to apply music.
No...
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IBM Next 5 in 5: 2011
People produce energy
One password tied to your identity
Mind Reading
Digital Unity through mobile
Spam email to become relevant
Listed above are the 5 digital developments forecasted by IBM over the next 5 years. I crossed two off.
We just got Siri, which is tech’s attempt to turn our wireless thoughts into handless actions. Plugging technology to the brain so all you do is...
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Steve Jobs: Billion Dollar Hippy (BBC)
“His hippy background made him a better millionaire.”
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Ljung Lunges Out "Sound Will Be Bigger Than Video"
Sound is more than music.
Sound can be an everyday thought, and distributed with one click like a Tweet.
Sound reaches the emotional part of our brain.
Sound is parallel, we can listen while doing other things.
Because of these reasons, SoundCloud CEO Alexander Ljung argues, sound will be bigger than video.
SoundCloud is a useful tool. Personally, I’ve used it to host my Music 4...
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2011: The Year of Mobile
Mobile took over the world in 2011 but people also had their first taste of tablets.
As I wrote yesterday, the future hot gadget will be a mini tablet with a built in phone. Apple is leading this hardware development while Amazon tees up its own mobile deals.
The two companies will essentially produce the same mini tablet concept; one major difference being that Apple is retrofitting the...
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7-inch iPad
The first thought that popped into head when I touched the Kindle Fire was that Apple must make a smaller version of its tablet but bigger than its iPhone.
Looks like that thought may come true.
The iPad is made for videos. The Kindle Fire is made for reading. A cheaper 7 inch iPad retina is the next logical iteration, despite Steve Job’s wishes.
There should always be the larger screen...
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Tamed Gamers
Video games are exploding and violence is going down.
In 1999, video games were blamed for the Columbine High School massacre.
Now that the mobile phone has put gaming into everyone’s hands, 5 billion of them, we should potentially be seeing more crazies.
Some would say since Grand Theft Auto was released today for the iPhone we just might see a spike in violence. Others would say that...
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Mobile: The Key To Reviving Drained Users
Facebook is not going anywhere but let’s face the facts:
Slow growth and lower return rates in US which makes up 1/4 of Facebook’s user base (200 million)
Rocket growth overseas in Asia and Latin America because Facebook is “new”
And in general:
Fatigued users
Impersonal
Weak mobile app experience
It’s actually an exciting challenge, to re-excite a drained user...
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Moosejaw X-Ray App
Moosejaw X-Ray App from Gary Wohlfeill on Vimeo.
Simple and provocative augmented reality app from outerwear company Moosejaw.
According to Mashable, it boosted sales 37% over prior year.
Augmented reality adds a cool engagement layer to physical product, leading to longer attention and ultimately more purchases.
But what happens when you want to scan a digital magazine or catalog using...
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Off Path
I gave the Path app a chance two weeks ago.
Everything is superb from a design and usability standpoint about the app.
The only drawback is the timing.
Had Path preceded Foursquare or Facebook on the mobile, it would be huge now.
True, Instagram came along late in the photo app wars and achieved mass. But it also carved a niche by supplying one editing tool really well, filters. And it debuted...
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Vladmir's Greatest Challenge
Gone are the days when a constituency goes passive in a corrupt country.
Younger protesters — so digitally connected that they broadcast the event live by holding iPads over their heads — said this was a day when a group that had been silent made itself heard.
Digital protestors will thwart Putin’s return to presidency.
The catalyst for the latest protesting uproar is an anti-Putin...
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Is Twitter the best marketing tool ever?
Must be.
Twitter is public SMS on steroids.
I can’t think of anything more powerful and free at the same time.
Start using it or miss out on the most interesting engagement tool of our lifetime.
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Twitter's Lovers And Haters
Tech pundits are praising and criticizing Twitter alike.
The praisers mostly call it a masterful update that retains the
The critics say it’s been dumbed down and intentionally built for the masses.
Both observations are on target and that’s why I love the latest update.
The mobile app version is stylish and overly comprehensible, making it easier for me to get friends to actively...
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Appathon
The ultimate workout app would be one the gives you your weight with a touch of your thumbs.
There’s got to be way to measure body mass digitally without stepping on a scale.
And when you pass your weight minimum or getting near it, the app will warn you via push notification.
I guarantee you a body scale would be a top 5 grossing app.
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Generative Art - Computers, Data, and Humanity...
This century is the century of data, that’s the defining thing. Last century was the century of electricity.” - Luke Dubois
Interesting video on turning heaps of data into creative visualizations and sounds.
Pre-computers data was hard to come by. Today, data is more about assortment than collection.
What type of data do you work with? How do you use it to produce the results you need?
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The Starbucks Index
One in four Starbucks purchases are made via the mobile phone.
I joked yesterday on Twitter that the Starbucks Index should be the new way judge a country’s technological progress.
But the more I think about it the more it makes sense.
If the Mac Index is an economic evaluator, then the Starbucks Index should be a credible tech indicator.
Starbucks is practically ubiquitous, like...
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Talking Kindle
I flipped on my Kindle this morning as I usually do to automatically download my newspapers.
On the way to the train I heard a Siri-like voice coming from my backpack, but it was male.
At first I thought it was one of my two iPhones and then possibly my GPS which I take with me when I travel.
Nope.
I dug and dug into I heard “Your New York Times Subscription.”. My Kindle was...
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Thoughts on the Digital Divide
Professor Susan P. Crawfor on the extant digital divide:
Thirty years from now, African-Americans and Latinos, who are at the greatest risk of being left behind in the Internet revolution, will be more than half of our work force.
I’ve been reading about the digital divide for what seems like ages.
Internet access is in a majority of US homes, if not people get access through their...
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Silicon Valley Brain Drain?
New York City has everything and anything you want in terms of goods and jobs.
So it’s no surprise that Facebook is opening up a full engineering office in the Big Apple, following in the footsteps of EBay, Spotify, and Twitter. Foursquare and Tumblr are already there.
I tweeted yesterday about a brain drain from Silicon Valley to New York. Let me clarify.
By no means will we see a...
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For Pinterest, A Picture is a Thousand Words
Thinc Iowa: Ben Silbermann of Pinterest from Silicon Prairie News on Vimeo.
Pinterest is a focused version of Tumblr.
Whereas Pinterest focuses on collecting stuff through photos, Tumblr is a blog platform for expressing collections through multimedia (photos, video, quotes, text).
My most popular Tumblr posts are typically a compelling photo plus one or two insightful sentences. The same...
