Powerful structures for product-driven organisations
Inspired again this morning by a Clay Shirky twitter (this microblogging might have legs you know) Dear AAPL, re offer to upgrade to iTunes+ at $0.30 a song: Go fuck yourselves. I took yr stupid DRM off myself, too late to bill me now This reminds me (a) of a great gaping void cartoon: And… Continue reading Indecent pricing
Disorganized ramblings from the ‘trying things out for size’ department and the ‘Yesterday was Epiphany’ team: The original crisis in branding in the 70s – staring Bruce Willis – was a result of the multiple retailers asserting the power they had over the consumers’ attention spans to push out brands and promote own labels. And,… Continue reading Crisis in branding 2 – the revenge
I've been thinking about what 2009 holds in store. At this point, I should of course wheel out all of the great reasons one should not make predictions (especially about the future). Or perhaps I should recall the fictional Magrethea in HitchHikers' Guide to the Galaxy, a planet which decided to hibernate through Galactic recession… Continue reading 20 days for 20 years
We're lucky enough to have a Microsoft Surface where I work (Conchango). The reaction to it amongst staff, clients and - it has to be said - the cleaners has been most interesting. For those who've not seen it, the form factor of the new device is a horizontal, apparently touch-sensitive screen mounted on top of… Continue reading On the Surface
Here's a question for iPhone (and iPod Touch) crazies. How many input methods are there for your beloved biblical telephone? 1? - it's the screen. The Lord Jobs has made it so. ANd it's rally easi to tyd0 on. 2? - oh, you're counting the button. Yes that is a very important accesibility device. 3? -… Continue reading Point and click
Here's a bit written for a magazine (.net) who ended up using ony a few words of it). There’s been a lot written about how Barack Obama raised the funds that got him elected to the Whitehouse last month, with the total running at over $650m (compare that to a combined total of $696m for… Continue reading Where’s the party?
So Ted McConnell, P&G's general manager for interactive marketing and innovation has just told a conference audience that he didn't want to buy any more ads on Facebook (thanks to Dan W for the link). He succinctly summarises his thinking: "What in heaven's name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking… Continue reading Soap operas
A few weeks ago, on the occassion of the company's tenth anniversary, Marissa Mayer - Google's VP, Search Products & User Experience - shared her thoughts on the future of search. The most striking feature of the analysis is a kind of quasi-religious fervour with which Mayer takes on her mission to extend the scope… Continue reading Search as the new science
There’s a couple of things that every Brit knows about Americans. The first is that they make terrible TV. Not the shows that turn up as box sets at Christmas, but that stuff they pipe into hotel rooms: 1000s of virtually identical channels packed with ads for erectile dysfunction cures and multi-purpose household implements. The… Continue reading On progress
A while ago I got a bit obsessed about what the human benefit might be of the effect that technology was having on representation and meaning in society. 'Cheap, easy, global media' has is no longer a theory in a university library. It's the reality we get every day. So, once we're past this, what… Continue reading Now that we know what the future looks like part 2
Leading product 