1) Always worth a look at the beginning of the year – JWT’s 100 Things to Watch in 2014 – Read More

2) ‘Edit Wars’ reveals the most controversial topics on Wikipedia – the Top 10? – George W Bush, Anarchism, Muhammad, List of World Wrestling Entertainment, Global Warming,
Circumcision, United States, Jesus, Race and intelligence and Christianity – Read More

3) “Netflix possesses not several hundred genres, or even several thousand, but 76,897 unique ways to describe types of movies.”
Alexis Madrigal on how Netflix reverse engineered Hollywood (and you still can’t find a decent film to watch) – Read More

4) Covered by Radio 4 this week, but the FT reported on it back in November – we have moved on from the BRIC’s countries ( Brazil, Russia,India and China).
According to Jim O’Neill, the Goldman Sachs economist who coined the BRIC’s phrase 12 years ago, the next wave are the MINT countries Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey – 
read more. Nigeria will have a bigger population than the US by 2050.
On the subject of high performing countries, I was interested to see that The Economist picked Uruguay as their country of the year in 2013 – Read More

5) How has Technology changed in the last 5 years? Possession of electronic devices in the US – Read More

6) Could this be an alternative to QR Codes? Introducing Clickable Paper – Read More

7) Most entertaining. Amongst all the hot air surrounding the Consumer Electronics Show (C.E.S.) in Las Vegas, it is often difficult to tell fact from fiction. Here is a multiple choice quiz that highlights this fact. From The Wire –
Can You Tell the Difference Between an Actual CES Product and a Thing We Made Up?
Which of these is true? – A system to make payments using your breath, or a system to make payments using your veins ? – Read More

8) The Very Best of Kickstarter in 2013 – Read More

9) Visualising every country’s life expectancy
Compelling and sobering visualisations from Marcelo Duhalde, an Oman based Data Artist . Monaco is highest with an average of 90 and Chad the lowest at 50. – Read More

10) And finally, Old Spice’s reputation for creating wacky and oddball content continues with this, let’s be honest -plain weird and even creepy piece – Mom’s Song – ‘Smellcome to Manhood’ – Read More