Year: 2012

Commonplace Books

A couple of weeks ago, when out for a few beers with some friends, my mate Kai and I got into a discussion about how we use our respective RSS Readers.

Teleportation just ain't what it used to be

— this is the only picture of Kai that is ever worth using, ever –

The crux of the conversation came down to one thing: folders – Kai uses them, I don’t. Kai’s point was that he likes to choose what format to consume and when. For example, he may opt to read long-form content in the morning, and prefer visual / illustrative stimulation in the afternoon. A point that I both understand and recognise.

However, I prefer reading everything at random. It’s a habit I’ve kept for a long time but it’s something that’s recently been re-enforced by learning about the origins of the commonplace book, and its place in both history and the creation of serendipitous innovation.

What do I mean? Well…

In the book Where Good Ideas Come From, Stephen Johnson writes:

“Darwin’s notebooks lie at the tail end of a long and fruitful tradition that peaked in Enlightenment-era Europe, particularly in England: the practice of maintaining a “commonplace” book. Scholars, amateur scientists, aspiring men of letters—just about anyone with intellectual ambition in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was likely to keep a commonplace book.

The great minds of the period—Milton, Bacon, Locke—were zealous believers in the memory-enhancing powers of the commonplace book. In its most customary form, “commonplacing,” as it was called, involved transcribing interesting or inspirational passages from one’s reading, assembling a personalized encyclopedia of quotations.

There is a distinct self-help quality to the early descriptions of commonplacing’s virtues: maintaining the books enabled one to ‘lay up’ a fund of knowledge, from which we may at all times select what is useful in the several pursuits of life.

Each rereading of the commonplace book becomes a new kind of revelation. You see the evolutionary paths of all your past hunches: the ones that turned out to be red herrings; the ones that turned out to be too obvious to write; even the ones that turned into entire books. But each encounter holds the promise that some long-forgotten hunch will connect in a new way with some emerging obsession.”

———-

That, believe it or not, is what historians mark as one of the ways Darwin was able to come to his theory of evolution (he famously had no ‘EUREKA!’ moment, it came to him slowly – over months) and that, believe it or not, is exactly how I feel about my RSS.

It’s a big jump – from understanding nature’s beginnings to reading internet ponderings mixed in pictures of lolcats – but that’s how I see it.

Basically, you should use RSS. And if you don’t, why not try starting a commonplace book? I had one in school, and it was awesome. In fact, I think I still have it somewhere…

—–

Commonplace book links of note –

The Commonplace Book – Brett Bolkowy

The Ecology of Thought – The Chronicle of Higher Education

Good Ideas and Notebooks – EVSC

 

Five things on Friday #32

Things of note for the week ending August 10th, 2012

1. Christchurch Dedication
The building above is what’s left of the Christchurch Normal School that was damaged during the earthquake in New Zealand earlier this year. The additional images, that have been placed in as a kind of optical illusion, are only temporary as the building itself is due for demolition any day now. However, the work itself has meaning.

Mike Hewson, the artist responsible, wanted to pay tribute to the talented people that once lived there and covered the building with these mixed-media installations that did just that.

Thanks to Marek for the source.

2. Olympic Heat
Now that the first part of the Olympics is coming to a close, once wonders how the athletes themselves might celebrate. Well, wonder no more, ESPN has the scoop and they lay it down perfectly –

Home to more than 10,000 athletes at the Summer Games and 2,700 at the Winter, the Olympic Village is one of the world’s most exclusive clubs. To join, prospective members need only have spectacular talent and — we long assumed — a chaste devotion to the most intense competition of their lives. But the image of a celibate Games began to flicker in ’92 when it was reported that the Games’ organizers had ordered in prophylactics like pizza. Then, at the 2000 Sydney Games, 70,000 condoms wasn’t enough, prompting a second order of 20,000 and a new standing order of 100,000 condoms per Olympics.

It’s quite a long article, but the whole thing is worth a look. It’s a great read.

3. This is Now

This is Now pulls together real-time Instagram feeds and organises them by city. The usual suspects are covered and from Tokyo through to Sao Paolo, you can see exactly what’s going on where, right now.

And yes, of course I chose London – LOOK AT ALL THE OLYMPIC GOODNESS!

4. A man walks into a bank
Patrick Combs deposited a junk-mail cheque for $95,000 for a joke. The bank cashed it.
Free account set up required to read this article [on the FT] – but it’s worth it.

5. Thiel vs Schmidt
This isn’t new, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past few weeks ever since it happened.

First, a re-cap:

Eric Schmidt is chairman at Google and Peter Thiel is ex-CEO and founder of Paypal. A couple of weeks ago they appeared alongside each other at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech in Aspen and their topic of debate was ‘The Future of Technology‘.

Apparently these events tend to be quite plain and a bit boring (I can’t remember where I read it) however, this time ’round, Thiel wasn’t pulling any punches. Choice quote:

“Google is a great company.  It has 30,000 people, or 20,000, whatever the number is.  They have pretty safe jobs.  On the other hand, Google also has 30, 40, 50 billion in cash.  It has no idea how to invest that money in technology effectively.”

Which basically translates as Thiel saying ‘Hey! Google! You suck! You’ve run out of ideas!’

Thing is, while Schmidt didn’t actually agree with him, the two of them did kind of agree when it came to barriers to innovation, namely: the US government.

ERIC SCHMIDT: What’s very odd about this conversation is you’re saying technology doesn’t matter, that it’s all politics.

PETER THIEL: I didn’t say that. I said, in fact, it’s the only innovation available, which is your point.

ERIC SCHMIDT: But, you’re saying we’ve been stagnant for 40 years because of bad government policy. If technology ‑‑

PETER THIEL: I didn’t say we’re stagnant. I said our policies could be improved.

And then… most tellingly, the moderator of the session asks Eric directly –

ADAM LASHINSKY:  You don’t want to address the cash horde that your company does not have the creativity to spend, to invest?

ERIC SCHMIDT:  What you discover in running these companies is that there are limits that are not cash.  There are limits of recruiting, limits of real estate, regulatory limits as Peter points out.  There are many, many such limits.  And anything that we can do to reduce those limits is a good idea.

— The whole transcript is available to read online and I implore you to grab a cup of coffee and sit down and read it all. It’s brilliant. There’s just so much that’s alluded to… and it makes great pub-chat fodder too.

__________

Whatley out.

 

REKALL

Creative print advertising on the tube shocker. 2012 edition.

Rekall

While the above ad isn’t as inventive (or as contextually aware) as the awesome Limitless Clear Pill ads from early last year, the above ad for the new Total Recall film (yes, another re-make) the similarities between the two still shine through – and I like it.

Let’s start with the basics: the above ad is not for Total Recall. No no. It is for the entirely fictional company [from the film] ‘Rekall‘.

Using real world reference points for what is a very futuristic film is a touch of genius, I love it. There are two main variants on the ad, one puts you as a football star and the other gifts you women and a yacht.

Rekall

“Tell us your fantasy,” the ad says “We’ll make it real*”
– the asterisk is used to perfection

Rekall Tube Ads

Why else does this work?

1. Title [or lack thereof]
If you slap ‘Total Recall’ on anything the first question that’d pop into anyone’s head is ‘Where’s Arnie?’. The original film is such an iconic sci-fi of its generation; it’s cheesy as hell and some of its Paul-Verhoeven-directed moments are stalwarts of early 90s pop-culture. Getting over that is not easy. So just ignore it! If we don’t mention the original, we won’t get the Schwarzenegger mind pop! Win!

 2. They make it REAL
As I mentioned, it uses real world fantasies to bring the message home and to pique commuters’ interest. I love the idea of fictional companies advertising fictional products from the films that they feature in and communicating this in the way – making it real, if you will – works perfectly.

How could it be better?

First and foremost the ad doesn’t work as hard as the Limitless efforts from March 2011. The two call to actions (one web, one Twitter) are semi-usable in our new kind-of-online London Underground BUT I don’t think its strong enough to warrant an online only response. There’s no recognition that you’re without mobile signal, and for that REKALL lose points.

Overall though, it’s a good effort and hey, I’m blogging about it!

Grade: B+
Better than most, but still room for improvement.

 

Notes:

  • The website is actually ace (up until you realise the Facebook bits don’t work).
  • Apologies for the blurry photos; it’s really hard to take photos on the tube without looking like a complete weirdo.
  • Finally, it turns out the new film isn’t actually that good either.  Damn.

We love you, Jessica Ennis

You beautiful, beautiful woman.


You make us proud to British, and we love you for it.

Gold.

x

via

Five things on Friday #31

Things of note for the week ending August 3rd, 2012

1. The London Underdogs
“The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well” 
– Pierre de Coubertin. Father of the Modern Olympic Games, speaking at the London 1908 Closing Ceremony.

And it is with that gorgeous quote that the spirit of The London Underdogs is built upon. Yeah, that’s right – let’s hear it for the Olympic Underdogs!

Here we are, at the mid-point of the two week extravaganza, and if you’re still yet to go (but have tickets to spend next week), get your posters from The London Underdogs.

Seriously, they’re awesome –

The London Underdogs

The London Underdogs

As the website says:

“We Brits love a good Underdog. The wild cards. The fighters. Those have-a-go heroes who haven’t a hope. We’ve never heard of them, we don’t know what they look like, and their fans are few and far between. But we cheer them all the same.
–
So join us, and together, we can show the world that it’s definitely about the taking part.”

Well done my friends, very well done indeed.

—–

2. Cellophane Art: WIN

I absolutely love this artwork and have no idea why something like this has never been done before. ‘Cellograff‘, as its referred to by its creators, is French in origin, but universal in its appeal. I love it. I think you might too.

3. Blackpool’s Dune Grass
What is it? Have you seen it? Never heard of it? Watch this…

Blackpool’s latest addition to their pleasure beach takes the shape of these rather quite enchanting blades of ‘dune grass’. Conceived and created by the geniuses at Freestate, these kinetic sculptures have been in the works for several years and it’s actually quite lovely to see them at last, living and breathing in the real world – where they belong.

Super regular readers may recognise them from an earlier video… say, back in 2009?

I’m saying nothing.

—-

4. Age-verified Following on Twitter
Earlier this week (or maybe the week before, I don’t remember), I was followed by the beer brand, Tsing Tao – Huzzah!

I quite like Tsing Tao and drink it fairly regularly, so a follow back was in order… but then, when I did, I got an auto direct message response.

Sidenote: auto direct messages suck. They’re spammy, impersonal and generally a one way ticket to an auto unfollow.

But this one was different, this one wasn’t asking me to subscribe to someone’s blog or to check out something else this new follower had done, no – this one asked me to confirm my age.

– I have not seen that before.

While this could be seen as merely a hoop-jumping exercise that alcohol brands go through to meet certain regulatory requirements (there’s no credit card details or anything that actually verifies a thing; I could be 17 and lie about my age), it does please me to know that these rules are actually being adhered to.

I’m not sure how long Twitter has made this feature available to brands, but I really like that it’s out there and I really like that Tsing Tao is doing things properly.

A cricket clap for for all of you.

—

5. (Fake) Injuries up your social status
This is old but apparently, back in 2009, it was fashionable in Beirut to sport your very own nose-job bandage. This trend was born out of the rise of the nose job in Lebanon and, given their expense, pretending to have had one implies that you have $1,000 to throw around on plastic surgery. Incredible.

—

Bonuses this week: as it’s that time of year, then it’s worth re-watching Monty Python’s Silly Olympics; More Olympics-based chatter from Herdmeister but this time focusing on what the event actually reveals about us, as human beings; and this map of the internet is awesome too.

 

—

Whatley out.

Google bought Wildfire: Mind. Blown.

For $250m apparently. The mind boggles…

WF G

So what does this actually mean?

And why is it such a big deal?!

Well, as I explained to some friends earlier:

“They – Wildfire – are a preferred developer for Facebook and have probably built every amazing branded Facebook app you’ve ever used or heard of. Google BUYING them not only gives the big G access to a whole host of Facebook data, but is also a HUGE strategical move that is just mind-blowing in its scale and ambition. 

Google just walked into Facebook’s yard, picked up their ball, players and goals, and casually walked back home.”

Gaining preferred developer status is no easy task and Wildfire have been knocking out big brand Facebook apps/games/sweepstakes now for a good four years. Since March 2012 in fact, Wildfire have been the (self-proclaimed) ‘biggest social marketing company in the world’.

In 2011, Wildfire saw revenue growth of over 300% and surpassed a total of 13,000 paying customers, including 30 of the top 50 global brands. This makes us the largest social media marketing software company in the world.
–
Our platform has been used to power over 200,000 marketing campaigns throughout the world. Going global required some expansion, though, so we’ve grown our team to over 300 employees (from 2 in 2008). We put offices in London, Paris, Munich, and Singapore, which helped grow our international business by 500%, and now more than 24% of Wildfire’s revenue comes from outside the U.S.

That’s some impressive work.

I’ve seen presentations from Wildfire: everything from Polaroid and Lady Gaga to Virgin Atlantic and Vodka, there’s hardly any major brand out there that hasn’t been touched by these guys. Seriously, their customer list is immense.

And, try as they might to reposition themselves as a ‘social marketing company’, Wildfire are (or were) a Facebook company.

And now they’re owned by Google.

I’ll say it again:

And now they’re owned by Google.

— —

My immediate instinct is to yell: HOLY HELL! FACEBOOK ARE GOING TO PISSED!

But then I think more…

I think about how Wildfire also have deep YouTube integration, and I think about the cool stuff they’re doing (or were doing) with LinkedIn and Twitter too.

And you know what I do then?

I think about Google+

What does Google+ need more than anything right now?

  1. Big brands
  2. Big brand promotions
  3. Big brand promotions that deliver user engagement

Y’see, no matter what the numbers say, Google+ just doesn’t cut it right now. Not for brands, not for users, not for anyone. Wildfire can bring all those folks to the party, and more.

Don’t count on Wildfire (as we know it at least) to burn for much longer though, I mean it’s not like Google have a history of killing off a whole bunch of products – right?

Right.

 

Google just bought Wildfire.

Mind. Blown.

 

 

New. Bond. Trailer.

Bond. James Bond.

I’ve already waxed lyrical about why Skyfall looks set to be bloody fantastic and now Bats is over, it’s all about Bond.

The latest trailer just dropped and, well, watch it for yourself –

Warning: trailer contains plot points you may not want to know

Alright, it gives a bit of the plot away…
…but holy hell, at last we might have a proper villain.

Immense.

Via