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Things of note for the week ending Friday May 22nd, 2015.

This isn’t a thing to be a big enough thing on its own but I’m super interested in what Hillary Clinton is doing with her Twitter account in the run up to the Presidential election.

Hi there! I’m Mary Jo—a mom, small business owner, and Granite Stater—and I’m taking over this Twitter account today. Welcome to Portsmouth!

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 21, 2015

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Worth keeping an eye on.

OK, shall we?

1. MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

So yeah, I saw MAD MAX: FURY ROAD this week (Thursday) at the IMAX (obvs) in 3d (natch) and it was pretty awe-inspiring. Admittedly it should be called MAD MAX: FURIOSA ROAD or even just ‘FURIOSA: THE ONE WHERE SHE MEETS MAD MAX’.

But whatever. The film is EXCELLENT. The cast is fantastic. And the visual spectacle of it all truly is something to behold.

See it big. See it loud.

A true wonder.

2. MOBILE TECH NEWS: IN YOUR EARS
After a short hiatus at the end of 2014 and a time-zone enforced attempt at publishing monthly, the five-star rated mobile tech news podcast, The Voicemail, returns to its usual ’30mins, weekly’ schedule this weekend.

If you like a) mobile tech, b) the sound of my voice, or c) listening to two mates chew the cud about one of their favourite topics; then The Voicemail is for you.

• Subscribe via iTunes
• Subscribe via RSS

And if you’re not a mobile tech head but know someone that is, be a darl and pass it on x

3. THE CRYSTAL MAZE

Know who this man is? (sit down at the back, Rocky Horror fans) Or what the little thing in his hand stands for/means? No? Then where the hell were you during the 90s?!

If however, the the very sight of this man makes you think of the phrase ‘START THE FANS PLEASE!’ then you’ll understand just how important this awesome piece of reporting from Buzzfeed truly is.

Entitled ‘The Inside Story Of “The Crystal Maze”, The Most Epic Game Show Ever Made’ this piece is a great read for anyone who literally raced home from school to catch the utter randomness on their TVs that was The Crystal Maze.

This quote, from Richard O’Brien himself, is wonderful:

“On the first series we had five cameras, two outside the cells and three looking at the game. And the producers weren’t watching the ones outside because they were too busy seeing how the game was playing out. One of the camera operators outside said, “What are we supposed to do, Richard, are we supposed to shoot the backs of their heads?” And I said, “No, no, come over here.”

I just started talking into the camera, about anything. I was just trying to make the cameraman laugh and as soon as I saw the camera shaking on his shoulders I’d look back at the clock and say, “OK, half a minute to go.”

They didn’t know they had any of these asides until they came to edit the series together, and once they did, they realised how that worked – a quick cutaway of me saying, “They’ll never manage this”, or I’d pull out the harmonica, and unknowingly it added a complicity between me and the audience at home because I was looking straight into the camera. I never did it when the contestants were there, only when their backs were turned.”

Go read the whole thing.

4. TESTING SOCIAL DATA ACCURACY
This post, by my friend and colleague, Daniela Badalan, is a write up on the accuracy of self-reported data vs third party.

So how do you test social data accuracy and how do you decide if third party data might be a better choice to reach your audience across a social platform?

To answer those questions, we’ve done a little test of our own at Social@Neo recently to analyse the accuracy of employment data specifically – as offered by LinkedIn vs. Facebook, against a known data set.

When Daniela told me she was working on this research I was really excited (as the process and the findings are really interesting) and I said ‘You have to blog this!’ and Daniela has. So hurrah and hurrah again.

To me this is the first scratch on a much broader itch of research that could be triggered across our entire group both at a regional and global level.

Check out the methodology and findings yourself, I’m sure Daniela would love to hear from you.

5. CULTURAL BLEEDING

The headline above is taken from a piece that appeared on Vox earlier this week. We’ll come onto the specifics of the article shortly but reading it prompted me to return to a broader theme that I’ve been noodling on for a little while now; that of the influence of real world events (and the subsequent hopes and fears they bring about) on both the story telling industry (read: ‘Hollywood’) and moreover, popular culture as a whole.

After watching TRANSCENDENCE, EX_MACHINA, and AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON in the space of about a month, I read up on artificial intelligence (see more at item three back in FTOF #112) and, while ‘killer robots come to earth/get invented by man and then attempt to destroy the world’ isn’t exactly a new trope, the prevalence of the theme on today’s science [near]-fiction cannot be ignored.

So it was with great interest that I ‘discovered’ the article in the above image. Analysing everything from Sam Raimi’s 9/11 adjusted original SPIDER-MAN through to the destructo-porn of MAN OF STEEL, it is a well-constructed critique of our recent obsession with the superhero genre and overall probably the best thing I’ve read this week.

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Bonuses are all in the medium of Medium –

• The chokehold of calendars
• How to improve presentations
• Election night heart racing

Whatley out.

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Things of note for the week ending Friday May 15th, 2015.

Why not read these things while listening to Sia cover California Dreamin’?

Great stuff.

Shall we?

1. DIGITAL SHOREDITCH
It’s been Digital Shoreditch (#DS15) this week and as part of the (hugely successful) Ogilvy sponsorship, each of the digital heads in the Ogilvy group was tasked with submitting a talk that could possibly be given at said event. Lucky for me (and you?), mine made the cut.

The talk was entitled ‘Seriously, what now?‘ and it was pitched as a bit of a reality-check-cum-rant on the state of social trends in the industry today.

Watch the video (around 14mins of silliness) or read the slides (65 thereof), and maybe let me know what you think?

Ta.

2. GOT AN INTERVIEW COMING UP?
Here’s a double whammy of interestingness from Life Hacker. Click it, open it, bookmark it for later.

It could prove useful one day.

3. THE GALAXY-SIZED VIDEO GAME

No Man’s Sky is set to be a very exciting game indeed. Using a mixture of old and new coding techniques, a small team from Guildford has [very nearly] created a virtual world of an unbelievable size.

Even if you’re not into gaming, this New Yorker report, entitled ‘World Without End‘, is a fantastic read.

4. WHO KILLED THE INFOGRAPHIC?

I read this great article earlier this week (thanks JG) and it reminded me a lot of the social media ‘industry’ back in the late noughties. As the article goes:

5. NEW TRAILER: CRIMSON PEAK

Guillermo Del Toro’s latest film has a proper trailer and everything now and it looks ACE.

That is all.

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Your bonuses this week are as follows:

• Museum nights are on tonight and tomorrow night all across the UK. If you’re free, you should go. They’ll be back in October too. Check it.
  
• I wrote an article for The Drum (also part of the Digital Shoreditch festivities) about the state of social content in 2015 (consider it a companion piece of the talk at the top – I’d love to know what you think).
• The Guardian asked me for 700 words on Net-a-Porter’s new social commerce platform, ‘The Net Set’. I gave them 708.

Things of note for the week ending Friday May 8th, 2015.

I don’t like to apologise too much for this update going out late. The fairly loose ‘terms of service‘ do say that it’ll sometimes arrive late so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’ve been travelling this week and genuinely got my dates mixed up. In fact, this week in general has been fairly epic. As I write this [in my moleskine] to you now, I’m somewhere over the Atlantic on my way home. I’ve just left Boston where I’ve been for some amazing work-based things and, well, aside from a minor brush with a dangerous health issue (all is fine now), this week has been ridiculously positive.

If you know me well enough, you’ll know that positivity is my thing. My blog is called ‘My Happy Place’ for a reason, y’know; I am a terminal optimist.

I mean, when you see a BACON TRUCK, how can life not be amazing? 🙂

Right then, shall?

1. SOLAR-POWERED SPACE TRAVEL

Carl Sagan once envisioned a universe where humans travelled through it in massive super-amazing solar-powered spaceships. In just over two weeks from now, a company known as The Planetary Society (co-founded by Sagan himself) has scheduled the first test flight of such a vehicle.

This is nothing short of amazing.

Baby steps forward.

But forward we go.

2. WEI VS PGA TOUR
AKA: Live-Streaming vs [live] Sports events.

The @PGATOUR is revoking my credentials for rest of season because I used @periscopeco on Monday. Feels personal. #crimedoesntfitpunishment

— Stephanie Wei (@StephanieWei) April 30, 2015

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Stephanie Wei is the brains (and words) behind ‘popular’ golfing blog, ‘Wei Under Par’. A couple of weeks ago, Wei posted a few video clips of one of the player’s practice rounds on Twitter’s live-streaming service, Periscope. Given the strict rules around video content rights specifically around sports events, you might be unsurprised to learn that the PGA subsequently threw the book at Wei and stripped her of her press credentials for the rest of the year.

Ouch.

There’s no case pleading ignorance on Wei’s part, alas, as a similar issue came up before at a different Tour but this time the platform of choice was Instagram. Wei got a telling off and the videos removed. Sharing unauthorised video content is a big no no. And Wei knows this.

So when it happened again, you can see why an example has been made.

The commentary since has been very interesting. On one side you’ve got a push back on the rules themselves (are they out-dated? Who do they actually apply to) and on the other you’ve got traditional sports broadcasters saying that Wei had it coming.

With Live-stream going Mainstream, this issue is going to keep coming back. Perhaps even press credentials themselves perhaps need to be reviewed, allowing for impromptu sharing such as this. For now, the industry will safe-guard its revenue first, and the favoured platforms of its fans and reporters second.

Interesting times ahead.

3. HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE
Did you play with He-Man when you were a kid? Remember the figures? If words like ‘Stratos’ and ‘Orko’ mean nothing to you, then please do skip onto the next item. This thing is not for you.

Still here?

Good!

The geniuses over at iO9 have just published the definitive list and ranking of He-Man action figures – AND IT IS AWESOME.

Covering Skeletor, Kobra Khan, Ram-Man, Fisto, Ninjor, Evil-Lyn,and MORE they’re all here and more.

PS. Major geek points to the first person who can email me/comment with the names of those pictured above. I’ve already given you two of them…

Go nuts.

4. JW-RELATED UPDATES
Minor excuse for an update on a few things from me:

• If you’re coming to see me speak at Digital Shoreditch please note that the timing has changed from 12:35 to 17:25 (on May 14th, btw). On a related note, if you’re yet to purchase tickets – here’s a kick-ass discount code.
• The Pebble smartwatch has changed the way I interact with my smartphone again – in a good way.
• My employer launched an FGM-awareness campaign for 28 Too Many this week. It’s hard to look at but holy hell does it land the message. You’ve been warned.

5. EMOJIS ON INSTAGRAM
Big deal. So what. If you’re a geeky face like me, you might like this deep dive into some of the data behind their usage leading up to the hashtag integration that was rolled out recently.

Good read, this.

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Bonuses this week are all video game related:

• Destiny: House of Wolves drops in a week. If you’re a player, this is a great round up video of everything you’ve got to look forward to.
• Arkham Knight is out soon, and you’re going to be able to play as Nightwing, Robin, and Catwoman. Nice.
• I’m thinking about getting a Wii U for the sole purpose of being able to play the latest version of Mario Kart. Question for you, do you have a Wii U? Do you enjoy it? What games do you have? I’m listening.

Whatley out.

Things of note for the week ending Friday May 1st, 2015.

1. WHY CAN’T WE READ ANYMORE?

My two-year old daughter, dance recital. Pink tutu. Cat ears on her head. Along with five other two-year-olds, in front of a crowd of 75 parents and grandparents, these little toddlers put on a show. You can imagine the rest. You’ve seen these videos on Youtube, maybe I have shown you my videos. The cuteness level was extreme, a moment that defines a certain kind of parental pride. My daughter didn’t even dance, she just wandered around the stage, looking at the audience with eyes as wide as a two-year old’s eyes starting at a bunch of strangers. It didn’t matter that she didn’t dance, I was so proud. I took photos, and video, with my phone.

There is so much relevance here I feel like copy and pasting the whole article word for word. You wanna talk about neuroplasticity?

Try this:

So, every new email you get gives you a little flood of dopamine. Every little flood of dopamine reinforces your brain’s memory that checking email gives a flood of dopamine. And our brains are programmed to seek out things that will give us little floods of dopamine. Further, these patterns of behaviour start creating neural pathways, so that they become unconscious habits: Work on something important, brain itch, check email, dopamine, refresh,dopamine, check Twitter, dopamine, back to work. Over and over, and each time the habit becomes more ingrained in the actual structures of our brains.

How can books compete?

This is a recurring theme [for me] at the moment. I saw the amazing neuroplasticity talk (#neurobrand) at SXSW (y’know, the one I mentioned during item number two last week) and ironically enough, it’s been playing on my mind ever since.

Neurons that fire together, wire together – right?

Email is bad.

Digital dopamine is bad.

Unplug.

…

I’ve recently signed up to Headspace (cheers Jed) maybe you should too.

Also: read the whole article quoted above.

All of it.

In one sitting.

GO.

2. STEALING FROM MH17
Jeroen Akkermans is an RTL News Correspondent for Holland. With the still-under-investigation MH17 air disaster on lockdown (dubbed ‘the biggest crime scene in the world’) Akkermans decided to do some investigation himself.

It’s unbelievable that no one, thing, or group has been held accountable for this crime.

If you know anything about the theories behind this ‘accident’ then you’ll know where the main evidence points – and reading Akkermans’ words serves only to underline them further.

‘MH17 Crash: my revealing fragments from east Ukraine‘

3. THE FUTURE OF INFLUENCE
This slideshare document, from one of London’s better looking plannery-shaped pessimists, is really on point. What does the future of influence actually look like?

There be gold in these slides.

4. MORE APPLE WATCH STUFF
This is worth reading: back in Five Things #119 I stated that The Verge had written the definitive review of the Apple Watch. I take it back.

This beats that.

Oh, and this is fun too.

5. STARS
The premise of this photo shoot is simple: ‘What would cities look like if they were lit only by the stars?’ – and the photographer, Thierry Cohen, nails it.

Beautiful.

More.

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Bonuses this week consist of three awesome videos.

• Video 1 is one man’s attempt to save a falling drone. Watch this one to the end.
• Video 2 asks the question: ‘What if Zack Snyder’s MAN OF STEEL’ was in colour?’
• Video 3 demonstrates how dangerous ‘one click’ purchase can really be.
  

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Hope you’re having a gorgeous weekend, until next time..

Whatley out.

Things of note for the week ending Friday 24th April, 2015.

1. MAKE YOUR OWN BB-8
There’s a new STAR WARS film on the horizon (well, there’s several actually – but that’s not the point) and one of the key things that director, J. J. Abrams, is keen to do is employ more practical effects than CGI.

To that end, it seems the breakout droid/star of THE FORCE AWAKENS is set to be one BB-8.

This fella –

So far so what. This past week, at the STAR WARS celebration event in Anaheim, BB-8 joined his creators on stage – and look! NO CGI!

Awesome.

Even better than that, uber-talented industrial design student, Christian Poulsen, decided that – once he’d seen the above video – he needed BB-8 in his life.

Er.

So he made one.

That’s great, right? Well, because Christian is such an awesome fellow, he went and shared the guide on how to make one yourself!

Sidenote: you need kit.

2. YOUR PHONE VS YOUR HEART
This is old but of late I’ve been thinking a lot about neuroplasticity (it’s OK, I googled it for you):

And the havoc that the digital revolution is causing with it. I’ve been aware of the output for a while but I didn’t know the name of it. An excellent talk that I saw at SXSW (thanks, Hey Human) prompted me to go into full research mode. The one quote that stuck out for me was ‘Neurons that fire together, wire together’.

‘That’s cute’ I thought, as several hundred people around me all took out their phones and snapped the slide in unison. Ironic that just before this the presenter had just warned us all of using our devices as ‘transactional memory replacements’ – but that’s beside the point.

The point is: I went a-googling for that phrase. I wanted to know its origin.

On the way, I found this excellent piece on the New York Times.

Read it.

Reminds me of ‘relationships matter‘ from 2011 and ‘the pressure of immediacy’ from 2012. These things won’t go away unless we make them. As I write this to you, I have three smartphones and a smartwatch within my peripheral vision. I understand I am an edge case however all of these devices are currently turned over or turned off.

I’m mono-tasking so I can Get [five] Things Done.

Think.

3. INTERACTIVE AVENGERS GRAPHIC

The Wall Street Journal has created this amazing interactive and colour-coded history of all things Avengers. Proper geeky. Be warned: you’ll lose HOURS.

Speaking of Avengers…

4. AGE OF ULTRON KLAXON!!!
(there be no spoilers here)

I’ve literally just got home (well, about two hours ago – it’s 1am on Friday morning as I type) from seeing AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, the sequel (of sorts) to AVENGERS: ASSEMBLE, and the end of what is known as ‘PHASE II’ of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and…

…
..
.

it….

..

…is….

…

EXCELLENT.

Excellent but by no means perfect. There are a few perfect moments however to say it’s the best MARVEL film to date would be an untruth (maybe 3rd best, after Winter Soldier and Guardians); I would give it an 8/10.

You kind of have to forgive a fair amount (as the film moves at such speed – with so many characters to meaningfully touch upon) and there are a few leaps in logic that I felt a little uncomfortable with but whenever my brain went ‘Wait, what?!’ we’d already moved on to the next awesome scene.

The new characters are superb. With James Spader specifically being utterly brilliant as the eponymous antagonist and probably deserved much more screen time as a result. These are minor niggles.

AGE OF ULTRON is a great MARVEL movie; it manages to round off PHASE II of the MCU very nicely indeed while simultaneously time setting up PHASE III (and more) with spectacular aplomb.

You will enjoy it.

So yeah, go see it.

PS: there is ONE mid-credits sequence. That is all.

5. CHIEF FUTURES OFFICER – WHAT?
Tom Goodwin says that if to avoid going obsolete, brands and businesses should hire a ‘Chief Futures Officer’. I see his point, but I’m not sold.

What do you think?

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Bonuses:

•  Now that Swiftkey is across both mobile platforms, the emoji data it has is all kinds of awesome. Want to know what’s the most used emoji in the world? I got you covered.
• The source of addiction.
• Related: like coffee? Try Pact Coffee and get your first bag for £1 with this link.

Whatley out.

Things of note for the week ending Friday April 17th, 2015.

Hey everyone, slightly late this week. OH WELL.

Let’s kick things off with something easy. It’s…

1. MY NEW FAVOURITE TWITTER ACCOUNT
And it goes by the name of @Pentametron, I’m not sure it’s that new but it’s new to me and you might like it for the same reasons I do.

The bio explains the premise:

‘With algorithms subtle and discrete / I seek iambic writings to retweet.’

Perfect.

It’s little things like this that make Internet worthwhile.

Glorious.

Go follow.

2. BLOODBORNE

(it’s a little dark)

There’s a game out for the PS4 at the moment going by the name of Bloodborne. Apparently it’s of the same ilk of another set of games – those by the name of Dark Souls. It should be noted that when I saw the staggeringly good reviews for Bloodborne and subsequently made my decision to purchase (thanks for the £10 off, PayPal) I had never played any of the games in this series at all; I had no idea what to expect.

In short: the game is brutal.

BRUTAL.

In the first 24hrs of gameplay I think I saw the ‘YOU DIED‘ screen more times than I did throughout my entire play through of The Last of Us. And that’s saying something.

But as the great Depeche Mode once said: I just can’t get enough.

If you’re a PS4 owner, go and get Bloodborne.

But that’s not why this section is here. The real reason we’re talking about Bloodborne is because I wanted to direct you to this fantastic write up. Not of the game. But of the experience that the game puts you through.

It’s one of the best things I’ve read all week.

—

On a related note: big shout out to those lovely folk at Sony who invited me to a special Sony Mobile / PlayStation remote play event earlier this week.

What’s remote play? That’s playing your PS4 from your actual phone.

For context on the below Tweet, I’d just finished changing the hard drive over on my PS4 (don’t ask) and had to pop out for lunch straight after. Cue: connecting to restaurant wifi, linking to my PS4 at home, re-downloading all my games while I’m out and about.

Amazing.

But the cool thing is, you can actually connect a PS4 controller to your phone via bluetooth and play that way. Here I am aforementioned remote play event playing Bloodborne on a phone and a PS4 controller.

Brilliant.

Anyway, lots of fun and, well, if you’re on Android and you’ve got a PS4 you should probably… know about this already.

Moving on.

3. AMERICAN PSYCHO: KNOWLEDGE

Here is a list of 19 things that you might not know from one of my all time favourite films.

Love this.

4. THIS AD IS AWFUL
You may have seen the furore over Protein World’s advertising this past week.

Missed it? Well, it’s here:

https://twitter.com/Whatleydude/status/588229451214938114/

Here are three things you should read about this:

• This excellent takedown, by the wonderful Pippa Hardingham
• This excellent Guardian Women piece, by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
• This excellent Buzzfeed list on objectification by Rossalyn Warren

Advertisers of the [Protein] world: DO BETTER.

Side note: if you find the above ad offensive, you can complain to the ASA right here. It’s super simple process and please feel free to use the link to the tweet above as your source.

If you’re familiar with the Advertising CAP code then you’ll know what you’re talking about but if you’re not, take a look at Pippa’s post above (which outlines the specific areas where it directly contravenes it) and then complain.

Cool.

5. YOUR CAT IS TRYING TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOU
According to Dr. Gary Weitzman, author of ‘How to speak cat‘ that is.

You could file this one under ‘n’ for ‘nutso, but stay with me.

Ahem:

“The meaning of a scratch or a hiss is pretty clear, but cats can talk in more subtle ways – with their eyes and tails. A slow blink from a feline, for example, is like a wink between friends, Weitzman said.

“Blinking is like a kitty kiss,” he said.

And extending their tails straight up equates to a human handshake, he said. A cat perks up that appendage as it approaches to show it’s happy to see you.”

The Huffington Post has more.

(yeah, I know)

_________________

Bonuses this week are pretty random:

• I hope that this (followed by this) was real; it really made me chuckle.
  
• Cute gif (for ex-Gameboy players).
• Like newsletters? This Here just launched a new one called ‘Click to Update‘ – issue 001 is out now and as first editions go, it’s not that bad. Go sign up and be sure to get 002 in a fortnight.
• I bought myself ‘Pencil’ by Fifty-Three the other day (I love it, natch) and in doing so unlocked this 10% off code for the Device website where I bought it. Go, use it as much as you like!

PS. Star Wars.

Whatley out.

Things of note for the week ending Friday 10th April, 2015.

1. HOW DO SNAKES BEHAVE IN ZERO GRAVITY?
I know, it’s probably something you’ve been asking yourself all week. It’s OK. You’re not alone. It’s been on my mind as well. But you can now put your mind at rest.

According to Shobhit Sharma on Quora:

“A high number of animals, including snakes, have been subjected to a zero-g environment, either naturally or artificially. As results show, different animals react differently to this unknown territory. For example, tree frogs have been known to assume a nosedive position when the effects of gravity are removed. And even funnier, cats have been known to assume that they are falling over, so they just roll over and over, trying to orient themselves into a safe landing position.”

He goes on…

“But to keep the discussion limited to the behaviour of snakes, they have been known to exhibit some fairly interesting results in a zero gravity environment. They usually tend to have one of these two reactions: either they attack themselves or they coil themselves into a tight knot – like a bunch.

The roots of both of these behaviours are believed to be the snake’s response to the loss of its sense of proprioception, or the awareness of one’s body parts in relation to another. Being isolated from the effects of gravity, snakes are no longer able to differentiate their own body from a physical obstacle, which results in two possible effects:

• Snakes perceive their own body as an enemy, which makes them attack themselves.
  
• Snakes perceive their own body as another snake, which makes them try to bunch up against themselves as a result of a behaviour that is common to a stressed group of snakes.”

An outstanding bit of useless information.

Go and ‘up vote’ Shobit’s answer and say thank you for enlightening your Friday.

2. NEW ORANGE WEDNESDAY HACK

Sorry, not Orange Wednesdays. Meerkat Movies on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Hurrah and hurrah again.

Get to the point, Whatters.

Remember how you could just go get an Orange PAYG SIM card purely for sending that one SMS every Wednesday? That’s gone now (thanks EE).

However, a very smart person has found a way to hack its replacement service from Compare the Meerkat. Resulting in you having to pay a mere £1.37 for a full year of 2-4-1 cinema tickets.

Perfect.

One imagines this loophole will close very shortly, so move fast.

3. TINTYPE HOLLYWOOD STAR SHOTS
New York photographer, Victoria Will, hung out at the Sundance Festival (in NY) and, using a blend of modern and historical techniques, captured some amazing photographs of Hollywood’s finest.

These are gorgeous.

You can see the entire set over on Hill’s website; they’re well worth a look.

via

4. THE ONLY APPLE WATCH REVIEW WORTH READING
Honestly, I think this Verge write up is pretty stellar. They come under a fair bit of fire for their approach to non-tech news and, well, irrespective of whether or not they deserve it, you can’t fault this work.

I’ve read it on mobile and desktop and the former is a better experience.

Related: if you’re sat there wondering ‘James, are you going to get an Apple Watch*?’ – the answer is a no. As some of you may already know, I have an [original] Pebble watch. I’ve had it for a little over a year now and the new version, Pebble Time, was recently announced on Kickstarter.

I backed the steel edition so, at some point over the summer, that’s the smartwatch I’ll be sporting.

Now you know.

*If you hear anyone say ‘iWatch’ – tut loudly, then correct them immediately.

5. THE ROCK DOES TAYLOR SWIFT
No. Not like that. Get your mind out of the gutter at once.

What is WRONG with you?!

I’m talking about THIS:

The URL I am about to link you to contains two videos from the new show ‘Lip Sync Battle’ (the child of all those amazing skits from Tonight with Jimmy Fallon) and, well, it’s all kinds of awesome.

Go. Watch.

And have an amazing weekend!

Whatley out.

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Bonuses this week are as follows:

• Ted Baker with its cool Instagram campaign.
• Stephen Pirrie on Notifications vs Mindfulness.
• Like cocktails? Get £5 off your first order at Shaken Cocktails with this unique URL.

Did someone forward you this? Sign up today and get your own Five Things on Friday newsletter every week.

Things of note for the week ending Friday April 3rd, 2015.

To those of you working today:

I FEEL YOU.

To those of you not working today:

I FEEL YOU.

Either way, I hope you have an amazing Easter weekend break and hey, to really cheer you, here’s a nine and a half hour Spotify playlist that me and a friend created especially for you.

Right then, shall we?

1. ALL YOUR TUBE DATA BELONG TO US
This is fairly geeky but stick with me (oh come on, you know I’m a massive tube nerd when it comes to this kind of stuff); below you’ll find a data chart that measures annual passenger figures from 2004-2012.

Look at that lovely data!

But that’s not why I’m telling you about this, oh no. The reason I’m drawing this to your attention is because Citymetric, the wonderful bunch that I’ve dug this stuff up, have gone a little bit further and analysed YOY passenger growth, disparity of usage between certain lines, and ultimately what reasons are behind these numbers – in turn offering up some really super-geeky facts and insights.

For example: if you divide total number of passenger figures by kilometres of line served, you get this pretty awesome chart.

What to know why the data looks the way it does (or why there’s that dip in the W&C Line)? Have a guess in your head and then get yourself over to CityMetric and find out.

2. MORALITY AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS IN SILICON VALLEY
This is my favourite long read of the week. Written by Eric Giannella, a PhD candidate in sociology of science and technology at UC Berkeley, it examines the amorality issues that rise from the blind faith that many place in ‘progress’.

‘ Progress, as we think of it, invites us to cannibalize our initial moral aspirations with rationality, thus leaving us out of touch with moral intuitions.’

Open this in a new tab, make yourself a coffee, and dive in.

It really is a fantastic read.

3. FORGET MILLENIALS; YOU WANT TO SPEAK TO THE REALTIMERS
Has the generation of ‘things’ arrived? Who knows. Read the results of this piece of UK research- aka the ‘Realitime Generation Survey’ [PDF download] – from Logicalis and make your own mind up.

As ever the first thing you should do when you come these kinds of documents is skip to the end and check out the survey size / methodology.

I’ve totes done that for you already:

• Methodology: Online quantitative survey
• Base Size: 1,116 UK children aged 13-17
• Fieldwork period: 12th December 2014 – 5th January 2015

There’s so much of this stuff floating around at the moment but most of it US-based. If you’re in the UK, you might find this useful – give it a look and see if you learn something.

4. I’M SPEAKING @ DIGITAL SHOREDITCH / #DS15
Digital Shoreditch 2015 is coming.

Set to ‘Celebrate Outstanding Creativity’ and spread over five very differently themed days (Make, Grow, Next, Connect, and Live), #DS15 is set to be bigger than ever. This year is my first year attending, so I’m hoping for good things.

In fact, on the CONNECT day I’m actually hoping to contribute to those good things myself as my talk proposal was not only accepted but was then also voted by my friends and peers into the schedule (so thanks for that, gang).

The talk is called ‘Seriously, what now?’ – and it will aim to cover off the BIG TRENDS and MASSIVE MYTHS of social content in 2015. I admit, I may have been angry at the time I wrote the synopsis so the output on the day maybe a little provocative. But we’ll see what that looks like when we get there, shall we?

• Time: 12:35 – 12:50.
• Date: May 14th.
• Place: Shoreditch Town Hall.

Digital Shoreditch itself runs from May 11th – 15th and the cheapest tickets available are only available for three more days. Fingers crossed I’ll see you there!

Tickets available now.

5. LOOK AT THIS GORGEOUS APPLE WATCH PIECE FROM WIRED

I really love it when publishers put something like this together. Written by David Pierce, ‘iPhone Killer: the secret history of the Apple Watch’ is not only brilliantly written but also expertly constructed as a web experience.

Wonderful stuff. Check it out.

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Bonuses this week:

• Ben Evans on ‘messaging and mobile platforms‘
• Reddit on ‘what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done in The SIMS?‘
• Tom Standage, on ‘Digital strategy and the limits of advertising-based models‘

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