First up in a probably very occasional series is The Bloke Who Invented The Cash Machine.
He could have really cleaned up if he’d also invented a hole in the wall for people to pee into while taking cash out. None the less, thousands of inn-keepers and kebab shop owners owe a debt of gratitude here.
The DO Lectures – fantastic, wholly insightful and completely inspirational…and I haven’t even gone through all the talks yet. Whatever you do, don’t miss the talk from Matt Jones and Russell Davies. Oh yeah.
Everyblock is a very local news and info aggregator that tells you exactly what’s going on in your neighbourhood. USA only for now and no feedback mechanism for social/oral news and histories but I reckon this could be massive. Have a look at it here.
Title says it all really, but a nice little article for designers who use their phone for more than just calling (which is what they said to be honest) – post is over here…
Some lovely work over at Independent Studio – check out the SAMA Festival in particular
I’ve been looking at a lot of augmented reality stuff lately and am fascinated by the possibilities for live gaming involving mobiles and crowds. There’s been some great work done with augmented reality but it’s few and far between and I think the technology might be a bit limited right now, but I just know that an idea we pitched to the BBC a few months ago would be perfect for it…so more on that when the idea is bit more fully formed.
In the meantime, I’m going to buy some infra-red cameras this week and see if there’s anything in the thoughts I’ve been having about the effect of crowds and how they influence environments…a bit like digg-labs but with real LIVE people. Yup.
I’ve been looking back at some of my notes from my MA days and came across something on the origins of hypermedia and linked information.
In particular, I’d spent a lot of time looking into the peerless Vanevar Bush who had a great deal of amazing ideas but most notably (to my thinking) was his early conception of the memex – an early pre-cursor of the world wide web. A true heavyweight and a man who operated seamlessly across science and politics. His ideas of associative trails can be seen all around us – not just with the web itself but in smaller applications of his thinking with stuff like facebook, flickr, twitter etc.
And if you like that then have a go on Ted Nelson…he’s quite interesting too.
This must be the longest gap ever between posts. It’s not that I haven’t had lot to talk about, but more that I’m saying it out loud as opposed to writing it down…and that doesn’t really help. Anyhow, I’ll be back on track from now on and doing some regular posts that don’t actually involve telling you what my cat’s been eating or where I went for drink last night…I’ll bet you can’t wait. Later.
I’ve been doing a lot of it lately and over the past few days I’ve found myself variously at a very pleasant tea party in the Blue Peter Garden, at NESTA with folks in the film and digital industries, at a Multiplatform TV seminar and at a Media Trust event with charites & the one common feature with all of those events is that no matter what the mix of industries we all ended up talking to other people from our own industry. All of us…not just me.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I find it enormously valuable meeting others who work in the same industry as me (and that I professionally admire) but I would love it if the networking paid off the way it’s supposed to i.e. we meet new people who might want to work with us or hire us. Instead we share highs and lows and compare battle scars with our peers.
This isn’t a pop at the folks who organise such events (I think you do a great job) but rather a call to anybody at an event that I’m at…please feel free to say HELLO even if you do not recognise me, and I will promise to the same to the people that I don’t know.
A Creative Director was asked to train some Account Handlers. He had them spend the morning making a model airplane. Then at lunchtime he reviewed their work. He took each plane in his hand and crushed it to pieces. “That,” he said, “is what it feels like to be a Creative.” Check the excellent Scamp blog here.
