I've just noticed; today is the fourth anniversary of the first post on this blog. 1,579 posts, 5,960 comments, 314 trackbacks, 1 consistent theme - stuff and things.
hubertus would be impressed
One of the things that sadly dawns on you as you get involved a little in publishing (either as author or receiver of much publishing related near-spam) is that most of the people promoting books have a very limited understanding of the book they're actually promoting, ie they've probably not read it. I'm sure this is more true of business books or books about cafes than regular stuff, but reading the thing would seem to be at least the minimum requirement.
Which is why Penguin seems such a refreshing contrast. As well as regularly doing interesting and imaginative stuff they also show some signs of being familiar with the authors they're promoting. Promotional items in shipping containers? That's nicely Gibson. Hurrah.
notices
If you're only reading the RSS feeds (and who can blame you?) I should point out that there's a few interesting looking jobs in the distributed village notices section on the left hand side of m'blog. There's this job at Innocent. One at Propeller. And others at Lowe, Modernista and Dare. And I've got a few more to stick up this week. Just so you know.
what think you of innovation?
A correspondent wonders if anyone has any thoughts on these questions. Any comments gratefully received:
When you think of "innovation" what do you think of?
What kind of companies?
What is innovative in your mind?
What does the idea conjure up (or not)?
bunch of stuff
Every now and then I find myself swamped by things I've been meaning to blog about but haven't got round to and the moment is rapidly passing. So here's a bunch of them, all together in one convenient package.
Firstly, if you've not seen John's Brief And Unreliable History of Planning you should do. Plus many of the other 'what is planning?' links at the plannersphere. Then there's Richard and what colour is news? and the AdLads interview with the prize-winning Mrs Belmot. Whatever you do you should read Scamp's Tuesday Tips for creatives, I especially like number 11. And you should think about adding something to Ben's Design Disease Flickr Pool.
There's Schulze and Webb and The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Interaction Design, which contains more thoughts on experience hooks, and I guarantee you you'll be using Experience Hooks as jargon in the next 12 months. This piece on the background to buzz is worth reading, as is The Economist on The Union Of Television And T'Internet. This is the perfect way for qual researchers and planners to pass their time on a plane and this will help you determine whether x is the new y.
And I'd forgotten about these two splendid and intertwined pieces from Serendipity Book and Max Kalehoff about the negative effect bad research can have on your customers. I've always thought so much research is like strip-mining people's heads, we don't pay enough attention to the fact that the person we're talking to is very likely to be a very important customer - bang in the middle of our target demographic if we've got the recruitment right - and the research experience is invariably a negative brand contact.
Then there's this smart piece on Kids, The Internet and Privacy and here the redoubtable Malcolm Garrett will tell you what he thinks of interactive stuff and whether he wishes he'd done it. And a comment there from Martyn Ware, reminds me that I must try and go to The Future Of Sound gigs. And speaking of musical genius, Dino manages to unite twitter and creole in a single post. And HBR's Breakthrough Ideas are always worth looking at.
I really liked reading about week one at monocle (even if I may have inadvertently provoked Mr Hill into posting). And about how your camera doesn't matter, via (i like). And a little piece from Helen about a writer's bible which hints at all sorts of good practise for brands.
And, I couldn't end without pointing out that Stefan is closing in on his 100th monster and if you haven't seen any of them yet you really should. It's a phenomenon.
writeroom again
I've written about it before, but I've got to mention WriteRoom again because I love it. It's a minimal, distraction-free space for when you really have to get something written. I use it for doing my Campaign articles. Partly because when something sits nicely in the middle of the screen like that I know it's about the right length. (You'll notice I can't bear to be completely distraction free, the iTunes button still hovers in the corner.) WriteRoom is for Macs. There's also DarkRoom for Windows.
my best my first sony
All this talk about buttons and simplicity reminded me of my favourite defunct brand of all time - My First Sony - a brilliant brand idea, but also a fantastic range of products. I have a number of bookmarked searches on ebay but this is the one that always cheers me up the quickest. These things are masterpieces, they're designed to be used by kids so they actually thought about how stuff should be used, they didn't just throw it all together and try to make it as small and black as possible. Many of them are genius, but my favourite is the alarm clock.
That entire big blue ring clicks round to move the alarm hand. Dead easy to use. The numbers are huge and legible. That big yellow button on top is the off thing. Easy to find. The radio tuning is simple analogue up and down. (Though it's broken, so I'm going to have to open it up some time.)
The best bit is that you can select how you'd like the alarm to sound; digital dog, digital chicken, digital train or digital er, digital thing. All of which are loud, grating and very en-wakening. Exactly what you want. (Actually they've got that same grainy, sampled, 80s crunch you get with an early Akai). Sometimes you want real buttons you can actually press. And you want them to do something silly. That makes for a great product.
folk button design
With all the Christmas visiting you play with a lot of strange remotes.
And you have to leave your remotes in the hands of the people visiting you, or you have to try and explain to grandparents how to change the screen to show the PlayStation. (As we've done above.)
And you realise that remotes would be much better if they could evolve to highlight the buttons you regularly use, while, actually the reverse happens, the oft used buttons get the ink rubbed off quicker than everything else. Failing that it'd be nice if remotes were easy to draw on.
round-up
Here's another random collection of links and things for a Sunday evening.
House - here's something from the Arena blog about the death of house music, a phenomenon confirmed by Dino, our resident expert, but who also pointed out that vinyl's enjoying a resurgence.
Creative Generalism - the Fallon planning blog has got some interesting stuff about the University of Colorado's family of degrees about innovation.
Twittererings - thoughts on twitter from Liz Henry, Kathy Sierra (via rodcorp) and JamesB.
Steven Johnson on the positive effect of kids on city living and thinking from Richard Rogers on cities and suburbs (both via city of sound)
A brilliant report on an encounter between Craigslist and some Masters Of The Universe. A welcome reminder that not everything wants to be (or has to be) monetised. Via plasticbag. That's what I'm liking about this new round of web fun. Bubble 1.0 was business plan first, idea second. Bubble 2.0 is idea first, business plan maybe.
David's written some smart thoughts about Thomas L. Friedman's NY Times editorial about the Creative Consumer. (And he's kindly attached a pdf of the original for those without a subscription, thanks Dave)
A splendid way to start an impromptu gaming network with your wifi DS - badges. (via blackbeltjones)
Whenever I hear one of those huge motorbikes roar past ridiculously loudly it's obvious to me that there goes a rider who's afraid of speed. Otherwise why would they be expending that energy on sound when it could be directed to the road? A US think-tank expands the same point and suggests that only 1% of a car's energy is directed to ferrying the driver from A to B. As The Truth About Cars points out, this has serious implications for the future of car design.
This motorway map of the UK is just cool.