![all creatures [great and small] by allcreatures](http://24.media.tumblr.com/avatar_827f13ebf9f5_40.gif){kind=avatar}
“Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.” - Charles Eames
“American participants are exceptional even within the unusual population of Westerners—outliers among outliers.”
Get weird or go home. Normal is boring.
In the words of the philosopher Dr. Seuss, “We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”
Weirdness, Americanness.
Landed on my favorite influencer. Can you guess who? Hint: Pragmatist.
About “The Graph of Ideas”
The interconnected nature of the graph illustrates the landscape of human ideas. Many great influential people are missing from the graph as this information has not become available yet. For the moment, this is a snapshot of the evolution of ideas, from earliest antiquity up until the present day.
I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.
John Steinbeck (via razorshapes)
Just try walking the streets of New York every day. You see everybody and nobody.
The Art of Catching Up
People usually talk about family first when they catch up. The conversation then shifts to common interests in sports, music, books, or film.
Catching up is a lost art. Facebook, Twitter, and email have all silenced communication. We catch up but we don’t really ‘catch up.’
That’s why we’re often shocked when we run into someone that’s been keeping up with our life through our social streams. They often go into scary detail like, “So, you win that jackpot in Vegas?” or “your wife is beautiful.”
You should always catch up with people you truly care about face to face and be cautious of the updates you disseminate to ‘friends’, people you know but don’t really keep up with.
Conversation is flowing faster than ever. We’re meeting new people ever day. The abundance of communication is making the world smaller but our relationships less personal. Catching up is scarce. Make sure you catch up with the right people.
SXSW 2012
I’m at SXSW in Austin today. I’ve been wanting to attend this conference for years. I’ll be actively tweeting via @bombtune throughout if my two iPhones survive. Who’s whom I hope to meet: Semil Shah (Votizen, VC) Sahil Lavingia (Gumroad) Ben Parr (Former Mashable Editor) Tim Ferriss (Author/VC) Kevin Systrom (Instagram) Let’s go!
How I Became My Own Little Apple Store With Square
Square Register from Square on Vimeo.
It was 6 months ago today when I billed my first client using the Square app for $250.
My client told me his digits and pin code on the phone and I billed him on my iPhone at the same time. Had he been present I would’ve just slid his card through the Square plugin.
He received his receipt 2 seconds after the payment. Boom.
While I mistakenly got killed on fees it was still a worthy test. For that moment, I became my own little Apple store. I’m looking forward to pulling it out of my backpack again and using it more often.
New Mass Advertising: My Twitter Stream Made Me Turn On The TV
Mass marketing was probably the worst way to reach me the last few years. I stopped watching television, listening to the radio, and reading newspapers and magazines. Even the Super Bowl was hard to watch. The only way to reach me was through my RSS feed and social channels.
But now mass marketing may be the best way to reach me. For the past few weekends in a row I’ve watched The Grammys, The Academy Awards, and SNL because I wanted to see what people were talking about in my Twitter stream.
And these were Tweeps I admire, thought leaders, presidents, and people of importance. I couldn’t miss out on the conversation.
So my Tweets became one of the 13 million social comments shared during The Grammys.
If you’re on Twitter or Facebook there’s a high probability you’re watching TV. We don’t wait until the next day at work or school to talk about shows any more. We talk about broadcasts in real-time amongst virtual friends and followers.
The viral nature of the second screen and social networking just pushes viewership and therefore advertising costs even higher.
Just wait until you start seeing the same ads on both screens. You’ll have to to grab an old fashioned book to get away from it all.
Luke Wroblewski’s “One Thumb. One Eyeball.” Presentation at Victoria’s Secret NY HQ
Luke Wroblewski (@LukeW) stopped by the office today for a few hours to present his thoughts on mobile design.
I caught the first half of the presentation and jotted down these eye openers.More iPhones sold per day than babies born in the world.
That’s 378k iPhones vs 371k babies.
Mobile has eaten all forms of mass media before it.Those mass mediums include print, recordings, cinema, radio, television, and the Internet. Luke’s philosophy is that mobile design is done right when it shoves “content into people’s faces.” The cleanest apps and mobile websites are often the most effective because they focus on quick information and utility over heavy design. It works so well that many desktop websites have adopted the mobile designs. Less is more. My favorite learning of the day was about Instagram’s “adaptive pre loading.” Instagram starts loading your photos on its server before you even select your filter. Speed is the essence of its design. Instagram released its 2.2 update to make it even faster. With China officially passing 1 Billion mobile subscribers today, PayPal reporting $4B in mobile payments, and the ease at which I blog this post on my iPhone more than suggests that mobile IS the priority. I asked him about Siri’s impact on mobile design as well. He summed it up by saying that it’s still too early for sound as a means of mobile functionality but it showed signs of early adoption in apps like Yelp. My guy tells me that it’ll be used more than just search, like preordering Chinese foods or a new pair of Air Jordans. For “Mobile Web Design,” the future is now. Small or big screen, give people more with less.
On Facebook, Nothing Is Lost and Everything Is An Eternity
“The timeline is the rest of our lives…” (link)That’s it. Game over. Facebook’s timeline etches our lives into a digital map to save memories forever. The forever piece makes Facebook indispensable. You’ll always come back searching for something from the past, even if it’s not yours. Chances are that your friend has vacations captured on film or in photos even if you don’t. Facebook is the ultimate backup. There’s never a need to worry about losing anything from the past. Now that we can remember everything we’ll never forget. Everyone lives forever.
Rapid Fire Creativity (Instagram Update 2.2)
Instagram is loving this moment. Pinterest is the talk of the town. Facebook is updating all it users and brands to Timeline. Twitter is making millions of its enhanced advertising platform. Instagram is just riding the wave.
Source: instagr.am via Wells on Pinterest
“Twitter Makes Bad TV Good”
Twitter puts people on their couches.
I’ve never watched more award shows than I already have this year.
But what stands out is how boring these award shows and TV in general are without Twitter.
Conversation, social participation, drives TV viewership and interest.
I was done with TV before this and Twitter brought it back.
That’s says a lot. Imagine what the advertisers think.
Project Paperclip
QR campaigns are rarely successful. You have to point and shoot at an ugly looking barcode and the unlocked content is typically boring. That’s until you add music to the image.
We needed an interface that allowed us to have a bridge between the real world and the reactive ambience that we wanted. - Nuno SerrãoAll museums should augment pictures with a soundtrack. Sound is the real stickiness, especially for QR codes.
Ira Glass on Work…and More Work
Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.
The most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. - Ira Glass
