15th March 2015

1) Love this creative role-play idea from City University in London – How would cartoon characters or historical figures approach your problem?

2) The very wonderful, inspiring and always surprising The Story conference took place recently. Here is a link to some reports from the day and here are some fabulous sketch notes of the talks.

Finally –  7 things I learned at The Story , by Fiona Thompson.

3) This could be bad news for the music industry , and even for other forms of content – ‘It’s okay if you hate Robin Thicke. But the ‘Blurred Lines’ verdict is bad for pop music’.

‘Will Madonna sue Lady Gaga? Will George Clinton sue OutKast? Will Prince sue Bruno Mars, Beyonce, Justin Timberlake and umpteen-hundred others? And then will Little Richard sue Prince?’

This from @davepell of The Next Draft – ‘…the $7.4 million ruling against Blurred Line’s Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams could have an impact beyond this case; and maybe beyond music. This, after all, is the digital era when we’re all borrowing ideas, words, and cat video memes from each other at an unprecedented pace’.

4) It may well be better than ‘official’ forecasters (remember this from Michael Fish in 1987?) – How’s the Weather There? Crowdsourcing App Promises Better Forecasts.

5) Funny and Clever –  ‘Shitphone’ – A Love Story ‘The easy tactile pleasure of a nice phone makes you feel like you’re at the centre of the internet, which is designed to respond to your desires. A shitphone is a comparatively degraded interface with the world. A flicker, a stutter and a momentary freeze are all it takes to remind you that what we think of as the internet – the interminable feeds – will move on without us…’

6) How much do we want to share videos? Welcome to Meerkat, the App of the moment.

7) Rather like this –  Love Cult are heroes of Russia’s new underground music scene: they’ve been recording disturbing and abstract tracks for over eight years and are based in Karelia in the Far North of Russia.

8) LVMH’s luxury watch expert Jean-Claude Biver on the Apple Watch: “This watch has no sex appeal. It’s too feminine and looks too much like the smartwatches already on the market. To be totally honest, it looks like it was designed by a student”

9) Pretty impressive research and pretty good news – the  Congestion charge has led to a dramatic fall in accidents in London.

10) Ouch! The price of distraction at a basketball match.