A while back, I saw the fantastic GE Brilliant Machines, "Robots On The Move" ad. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7DNYocXvR0&height=315&width=560 After seeing it, I sent a tweet confessing my love of the spot. I was pleased to see that GE responded with a note of thanks. I was surprised that they offered to send a token of their appreciation. I responded … [Read more...]
Pity Parti – A Designer On A Soapbox
Back in the day, there was a partner who would send me PowerPoint presentations and ask me to add some "sizzle." He knew I'd been to design school and had worked with me on a number of web development projects, so he figured I could add some lipstick to content we were going to share with clients. The problem was that in many cases, the flaws with the decks were structural and … [Read more...]
Standing On The Threshold
Some things that are amazing me: We can smash atoms together to unlock a particle that only existed in math equations a month ago. We can store enough data to simulate a living organism. We can slow down time enough to sort through photons and see around corners. We can sort through vast amounts of data and determine that someone is pregnant based on their … [Read more...]
Signal To Noise & The Demise Of Facebook
Facebook is in trouble. Not because of the questionable success of its IPO or difficulty finding ways to commodify its services (although, the latter may be significant contributor to the issue). Google+ is in trouble for the same reason, albeit at the opposite end of the spectrum. The reason Facebook is in trouble is because of the fact that it's signal-to-noise ratio is … [Read more...]
Is Brainstorming Broken?
I just got done reading William Duggan's post on strategy+business called "How Aha! Really Happens." It is an interesting read and I'll let you read it for yourself rather than try to recap it here. For brevity's sake an our purposes, let it suffice to say that Mr. Duggan asserts that the process companies use to come up with solutions to problems is flawed in that the focus is … [Read more...]
Google Knowledge Graph: Clustering On Crack
One of the big problems with most search technology is that it still functions in a Web 1.0 way. For instance, you type in your search term and hit enter; when results come back, you scan for what you want and if it you can't find it, you enter a new search term and hit enter again. It's kind of like Battleship - you take a shot where you think something is and then find out if … [Read more...]
Ifttt This Is Wrong, Then I Don’t Wanna Be Right
Every once in a while, something comes along that makes me hit my head like the star of an old V8 commercial, then reminds me why I'm so optimistic about technology. Ifttt is one of those things. Ifttt, while a funny domain name, stands for "If This, Then That," and that's the simple beauty of this free web solution. I haven't been this geeked up about a solution since … [Read more...]
CIO Dashboard: 5 Innovation Opportunities
I recently had the opportunity to co-author a post with Chris Curran over at the CIO Dashboard blog. It is an update on a post he did last year considering some innovations to watch in 2011. We spent some time thinking about some emerging tech trends in 2012 and what the opportunities are to the CIO/CTO community (i.e. what should you be thinking about to get ahead of the curve … [Read more...]
I Had A Dream (Apple Television Update 2)
So, back in 2008, I wrote a post about a dream I had where I was interacting with my television through a tablet device that controlled and augmented the content on the screen. Remember that this post pre-dated the launch of the iPad, so it's interesting to see how things have been developing. This fall, I read the Steve Jobs biography and read the part where he said he had … [Read more...]
Corporations Going Tribal
Interestingly enough, the topic of digitally-enabled tribalism came up at the office yesterday. We were having a meeting on a mostly unrelated subject when we started talking about what it meant to be a Social Enterprise. I brought up the concept of how digital media and platforms were altering the way we form social structures and form tribal cultures across distance and time, … [Read more...]