"MAKIES is an action doll creator: a player/customer can design their own action doll – features, hair, clothes and everything – & we then 3D print it uniquely to them, build & dress it, and send on to them within 3 weeks of ordering."
Via Makie.
And, please, do not even think about everybody having their own 3D printer at home! This will become your worst nightmare - just after the web ...
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"It will cost an eye-watering $25,000 - and this video goes some way to explaining that price." - Via gizmodo.
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"Of the vendors tracked (public companies who report mobile phone divisional performance), Apple obtained 73% of operating profits, Samsung 26% and HTC 1%".
All quotes and jpg via asymco.
Again it is about disruption:
"So if the industry is booming but the majority of participants in the industry are loss making (and surprisingly so) then what is going on?
There are two answers: new market disruption and low end disruption".
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Pure coincidence? Or is Google after foursquare? ;)
Above: Screenshots from the alerts Google showed me when I wanted to open a tumblr post (you also find at twitter) about chocolate flavored whiskey, I wanted to forward to Lyss (@BLYSS_choc).
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(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)
Intro / gap
- According to Microsoft people have moved on, they have explored and adopted online communication / connected technologies to such a degree that they’re online habits are almost unrecognizable compared to only five years ago.
- Think about that, five years ago most people didn’t know what either Facebook or smartphones were.
- We have to understand that people have an adoption mindset and culture – our history is a history of embracing technology, and then having the technology adapt to us. People have always been on the move, and will continue to do so.
- Contrast this to companies who calculate and protect. Businesses aren’t people, but they have to operate within the same world, they have to understand individuals and apply to their way of thinking and doing. This is where the gap begins, and especially these last five to ten years.
Continue reading "[L/M NET] Helge Tenno > "The next 80% (manuscript to slideshare presentation)" " »
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"Mr. Harris answered questions about Ford’s business in China, his predictions for car sales in China this year, training and human resource issues, the unique challenges facing multinational auto makers in China’s car market and the importance of friends and family in car-buying decisions. He also addressed the role of digital media in auto marketing, his favorite Chinese websites and social media tactics for Ford’s advertising and the rise of e-commerce and group-buying in China."
Source: Thoughtful China Newsletter
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I know, I know: What might we possibly learn from an aquarium? We are the consumer brands, we are the experts, the gurus, we have seen it all. We understand, we transcend. We inspire - not that Monterey Bay Aquarium.
All wrong!
First of all the Monterey Bay Aquarium is a fantastic place to be - not just because of its animals, architecture, and surrounding, but because of its caring wo/men, because of all those people sharing a vision and a spirit. Because of the culture you feel immediately when talking to any person being employed or volunteering time and resource there.
And this is the base you desperately need. Because: First of all you need every single one to truly live the brand, the positioning, image, and personality. All else follows!
Secondly the aquarium is a brand you can walk into! Think about that, please.
Thirdly, the learning (now, after you know a little bit more about the Aquarium):
Continue reading "What Your CRM Might Learn from Monterey Bay Aquarium" »
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Via jesuisperdu.
"[According to the Telegraph newspaper, tech giant Apple have just filed for patents which could result in some massive technological advances. From the looks of it, the patents will allow Apple devices to be powered by hydrogen, meaning they could go for weeks without charging. Named “Fuel Cell System to Power a Portable Computing Device” and “Fuel Cell System Coupled to a Portable Computing Device”, these patents are essentially the same technology used by satellites to remain charged and powered. Apple released the below statement with the filings:
“Our country’s continuing reliance on fossil fuels has forced our government to maintain complicated political and military relationships with unstable governments in the Middle East, and has also exposed our coastlines and our citizens to the associated hazards of offshore drilling.]
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Via thisisnthappiness.
May All Your Wishes Come True!
Thx for following. See You next Year.
ralf
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(Note: This is a post for The Third Club)
In 'Edge'*, meiner Lieblings-Publikation, las ich gerade folgendes Zitat. Ich möchte es hier als Gedankenanstoß wiedergeben, als Aufforderung, es kritisch zu hinterfragen, nicht zuletzt weil sich die Reflexionen des The Third Club auch um die Beobachtung immer seltener werdender Innovation drehen:
"A tiny number of ideas can go a long way, as we've seen. And the Internet makes that more and more likely.
What's happening is that we might, in fact, be at a time in our history where we're being domesticated by these great big societal things, such as Facebook and the Internet.
We're being domesticated by them, because fewer and fewer and fewer of us have to be innovators to get by.
And so, in the cold calculus of evolution by natural selection, at no greater time in history than ever before, copiers are probably doing better than innovators. Because innovation is extraordinarily hard.
My worry is that we could be moving in that direction, towards becoming more and more sort of docile copiers." - Mark Pagel, Edge
> Dass Facebook und Google dumm machen sollen, hat man ja schon öfter gehört. Verallgemeinerungen, die einem wenig helfen. Was aber ist mit dem Netz als Ganzem? Erzieht es zur Kopie? Verleitet es zur Kopie?
... bitte bei The Third Club weiterlesen ...
* Edge: "To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves." Eigendefinition Edge
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(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)
The reason large parts of the corporate Internet is boring, difficult and of little direct use / effect is because we are unnecessarily complicating it. The Internet should be one thing: simple.
.
Let me demonstrate with a couple of examples how even minute tasks get unnecessarily complicated online.
Example A:
Comoyo is an Internet based content service. The first thing that happens as I fill in the form is that it refuses the password that I use on 95% of all my Internet accounts. Why would you do that? Why would you start of by inviting people to a service they don’t know what is, offer them a log in and the first thing you do is just crash the whole process? If the system is to complex then redesign the system. We are putting to much of the responsibility on to people, instead of IT.
Example B:
This is the beta version of my Internet bank, the picture is from a sneak preview they offered their customers. Now, I have a bank because I need help doing bank-things. Most often (95% of the time) this means checking my account or paying some bills. The best thing the bank can do is offer me a service that makes banking better. But they don’t. Approximately 15% of the interface is spent on banking, the rest of it is navigation, CRM or a media platform that wants to sell me stuff I don’t need. They give me everything except the actual banking service that I should be demanding (people are just to polite and don’t know that their experiences are being robbed online. In the words of Richard Saul Wurman, the creator of TED: “I would have designed a much better Google interface, it’s not difficult.”).
Now, the reason the Internet isn’t simple, is because of technology. We are treating online as something complicated, something that doesn’t work, something we don’t understand. – And my question is: how much do we really need to understand?
Take a look at other pieces of technology: bread, asphalt, language, bicycle, chairs, door knobs. Now do you think about these things as technology? They work and they are, no questions asked. But this is not the case with the Internet, why?
Understanding the nuts and bolts of the Internet is as important to a business as understanding the complexities of the mechanics that goes on inside the door when we twist the door nob.
Unfortunately the fog of technology diffuses the process of building something meaningful by trivializing the discussions and spending to much time focusing on irrelevant details. When we think of the Internet we are not thinking business models, identity and brand value. We are thinking users (what is a user?), HTML5, responsive design (why would you offer the same service in every situation?), apps or clicks.
The Internet is fascinatingly simple, if we just stop referencing it as technology and start thinking of it as a loaf of bread – because our customers already are.
(ralf says:
All those gurus out there are very deep into the technologies and secrets of the internet. But they cannot transcend the easiest mechanics of it.
To the opposite of my father I never wanted to understand a radio, a television set or loudspeakers. And he was limited by that understanding. He always told me that small speakers cannot - due to the laws of physics - create deep sounds. But they can these days. I showed him. He said: No they can't. They just sound like they can.
We are in the very early stages of the web. We have to get it out of our way. We have to understand that it is not important to understand it. We do not have to understand oxygen to understand that we have to breath. We even do not have to understand that we have to breath. We just do.
We just have to take care of the web's independence, its neutrality, and ubiquity. We must take care that politicians do not sell it to corporations like they did with our water systems and resources ... as simple as that.
The more simple a medium (in McLuhan's sense) is the more precious it will be for us and our future.)
Helge works as a Planner for SDG, helping brands and organizations discover WHY they are valuable in consumers lives, and HOW they can create deliberate value on the arenas and inside the interfaces where they connect with them. Twitter: @congbo
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(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)
Do we fail to see the extent of what communication is / has become?
Here are 10 projects that should / hopefully would change / broaden our idea of what communication is:
1. The Copenhagen wheel
The Copenhagen wheel is a perfectly designed combination of a lot of separate ideas, that collectively demonstrates the potential in modern communication. It offers both immediate interest and value through personal benefits in the context where it is used, but also ads a layer of communal value – and taking us one step further in creating the connected cities of the future. It’s an exceptionally complicated idea made into something people could understand and want immediately.
2. Life of George
LoG is a small initiative exploring the interface between technology and reality. It has been extremely well concepted and designed. This might not be an eye-opening revolution, but it is a very well thought through commercial mass-produced product. It has been through all the barriers and ended up as something that could easily, and hopefully, be adopted by the mass (iPhone-owning) market.
3. Sniff
Sniff is only a prototype, but demonstrates with beauty the life an inanimate object can have as soon as it takes on some form of well designed behavior. There has been digital technology inside toys for tens and tens of years, but Sniff approaches the idea of what technology is, not what it outputs.
4. Nokia Push Snowboarding
The way the technology has been implemented into the culture of the sport it is trying to augment is the most impressive feet. Nokia and Burton have pushed the snowboarding culture first – and then designed itself to it – which could not be said for a lot of other commercial technology…
5. Nest the learning thermostat
The objects learns by recording our behavior – and calculating something on top of that recording. Objects are still dumb, but in a very intelligent way. The Nest is an example of everyday appliances becoming a second brain, and a demonstration of how digital objects have gone from furniture you hide away in small offices upstairs to objects you display and want to talk about.
6. Up by Jawbone
How does a wristband with no screen and no sound communicate with its carrier? A vibration in itself says nothing, the interesting thing is how we learn what the vibration means in different contexts. This is a perfect example of the rich unexpectedness of communication – the one without the spoken/written language – and how quickly we adopt and learn new forms of communication.
7. Zeebox
Zeebox is one of several new products being launched to augment the TV experience. Behind it lies the concept of increasing the value of something local by connecting it to the rest of the world – through a parallel system. In this case the linear TV experience. Now any idiot could do that, but it is the tools by which they try to achieve the connection which is brilliant. Zeebox is a first generation concept in this arena, but demonstrates the potential of what is to come.
8. Waterpebble
Ideas don’t have to be big and shiny, they can be small and solve minute problems. It’s the aesthetic of the idea that is the important thing: How does the mechanic of such a small thing change the dynamic of something bigger… Now, if they only could connect it to the Internet…
9. The Wattson
The Wattson gives us access to things that previously where invisible and not present in our consciousness. Just because we can’t see things and talk about them doesn’t mean they aren’t important. The Wattson gives us access to a layer of reality that we haven’t been able to see before but which is highly real and important.
10. Nokia kinect
Now the first nine examples have been impressive, most of them include sensors and things which gives us access to a part of reality that we haven’t explored before. But it doesn’t stop with the invisible data… The next generation handsets gives us access to the layer of communication that emerges as objects becomes haptic and kinetic, opening a whole new world of interaction and behavior, through the sensitivity and richness of touch and force.
In conclusion:
“Our goal is to first connect all the rabbits, and then connect everything else” – Rafi Haladjian
(ralf says:
This just tells me in its own way and means, that we still do not understand the true scope of the web. We still do not understand what we would sacrifice, if we choke the web with obsolete rules and laws and stuff.)
Helge works as a Planner for SDG, helping brands and organizations discover WHY they are valuable in consumers lives, and HOW they can create deliberate value on the arenas and inside the interfaces where they connect with them. Twitter: @congbo
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I WANT A CUBESTORMER II!
Via Helge Tenno, member of lead/marke NET.
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"We are confident that in the near future we will be able to bring the first shoes, T-shirts and bags, that are either compostable or recyclable, to the market," Puma boss Franz Koch told the German business magazine Wirtschaftswoche.
He explained that the company was working with partners on developing products on the principle of the "cradle-to-cradle" design. "It follows two circuits, the technical and the biological: I can use old shoes to make new ones or something completely different, such as car tyres," said Koch, who has led the sports clothing company since July.
"In the biological cycle, I can make shoes and shirts that are compostable so I can shred them and bury them in the back garden. We are working on products that meet these two criteria."
Via theguardian.
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Via Alan van Roemburg.
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Via tumblr.
More about tumblr's "Protect The Net" (against SOPA).
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(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)
I have a long history with computers. I got a Sinclair Z81 for my birthday one year and the 16K ram pack for my birthday the next. I did maths and computer science at college where we learned Pascal on Vax mini computers. My history with computers became intertwined with my history as a planner when in 1992, I started working on my first account: AST Research, a now defunct PC manufacturer and shortly afterwards Sun Microsystems, a now defunct workstation/server manufacturer.
In 1996,I started working on Microsoft and the next year Steve Jobs returned to Apple. By then, Apple had ceased to be relevant – our sights were set on companies like Netscape, Sun and Oracle. Along with most others I assumed that it would be too little, too late. And when the “Think Different” advertising launched, my assumption was confirmed.
I remember asking my colleagues, “How can an ad about what you are, a thing that everyone already knows, change what you think about a company?”
In fact, I don’t think it did. It was everything that came after that changed how we think about that ad.
And for me, it was everything that came after that changed how I think about computers, about technology, about advertising and about marketing.
Goodbye Steve.
(ralf says: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." RIP Steve.)
Adrian is founding partner of Zeus Jones a branding company believing actions speak louder than words and that modern brands are defined by what they do not what they say. He speaks (and writes) regularly about non-communications based models for marketing & branding. Twitter: @adrianho
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