Tag Archives: faris

Ten Stories We Have Enjoyed This Week

1st May 2015

1) Not a great week for Social Media as LinkedIn becomes the third company this week to lose as much as a quarter of its valuation after reporting a weaker outlook. Some $7bn was wiped off its market cap in after-hours trading on the warning that sales in the current quarter would be $45m below Wall Street forecasts of $670-675m – partly because of currency fluctuations. This comes after Twitter shares dropped as much as 26 per cent on missed revenue expectations and lower forecasts and Yelp closed 23 per cent lower yesterday after missing revenue and earnings forecasts’.

2) And in the same vein Secret has closed The founder David Byttow said: “I believe in honest, open communication and creative expression, and anonymity is a great device to achieve it. But it’s also the ultimate double-edged sword, which must be wielded with great respect and care’.

Somewhat in tune with this sentiment, this is what I said about anonymous social media channels last year – Whisper and our World of withering comminications.

3) Seems almost astonishing how quickly attitudes have changed in the US, in relation to marriage equality – This Is How Fast America Changes it’s Mind.

One of the reasons for this, has been the tireless afforts of Evan Wolfson who has been fighting for same-sex marriage since the 1980’s. From Slate – The Marriage Mastermind.

However, according to this piece from This American Life , it is actually quite rare for people to change their perspectives – The Incredible Rarity of Changing Your Mind.

4) The BBC goes global with it’s chat app strategy : “The BBC’s latest effort comes via chat app Viber, which the broadcaster is using to send news and information to Nepali people affected by this week’s earthquake. The alerts, which the BBC experts to change over time information, have so far included news, information and safety advice.”

5) The very smart and very entertaining @Faris has a book out –Definitely worth a look.

‘Paid Attention is a guide to modern advertising ideas: what they are, why they are evolving and how to have them. Spanning communication theory, neuroscience, creativity and innovation, media history, branding and emerging technologies, it explores the strategic creation process and how to package ideas to attract the most attention in the advertising industry’

6) Great Idea – using technology to re-imagine reality and engage young people with the great outdoors. Minecraft fans invited to design Australia’s perfect national park.

7) Love this – in an age when we struggle to cope with an overload of information, here is (another) clever ad from Honda that challenges us, even forces us to pay attention.

8) Your Imaginery relationship with a Celebrity – “In a highly connected era where fans can easily and directly interact with famous people online, long-standing parasocial relationships have intensified and become increasingly complex to navigate”.

9) A piece of shameless self promotion – we are presenting atDigital Shoreditch – 11.50am in Shoreditch Town Hall on Monday 11th May. Our chosen subject will be The Geography of Ideas. Do come along if you can.

10) We had to see this coming right? This selfie stick is arm shaped to make you look less like a loner….

..and this is even better. An entrepreneurial graffiti artist , who isn’t Banksy but sounds very similar, has taken to spray paining shapes around pot holes in Manchester. The nature of the shapes has encouraged the local council to mend the holes at an astounding rate.

Ten Stories We’ve Enjoyed This Week

Saturday 6th December

1) Compelling viewing. British cinematographer Danny Cooke has  captured the abandoned city of Pripyat in the Chernobyl Zone Of Alienation on film using a drone.

2) Totally Obsessed.  The Age of Cultural Manias ‘What is “it”? It could be Serial-unless it’s True Detective, the surprise album by Beyoncé, the first season of Girls, the last season of Breaking Bad, “Too Many Cooks”, or any of the other crazes that have possessed us in the last few years. Though they feel like manias in and of themselves, they are all part of a larger fad: obsession itself’.

3) An interesting perspective –  Strategy as Algorithm – ‘Fits with a thought I have had lately around how strategy is really about building algorithms (rules) that help drive optimal outcomes in decisions’ . By Noah Brier.

4) From Business Week on their 85th birthday –  85 disruptive ideas in 85 years.

5) This year, the UK is to be the first country in the world, where over half of all ad spend goes on digital.

6) Not feeling too great as the days grow shorter and the cold weather sets in? Here is  Google’s Misery Index – the times of the year when we feel most depressed ,anxious and stressed. Apparently …. ‘Christmas is the least miserable day of the year, with Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day not far behind … A seemingly random Wednesday in late April may be the worst day of the year’.

And here a ( somewhat) related story on how divorce rates ,contrary to most peoples perceptions, are actually falling. Divorce rates actually peaked , in the States, in the early 80’s.

More upbeat ( and makes perfect sense of course ) Google is to revamp its products with a 12 and younger focus.

7) Hint Hunt looks like an interesting spin on creative thinking and team building.

‘HintHunt® is a new simple and fun live escape game, designed for small groups of 3-5 people. You get 60 minutes to climb a mountain of puzzles and mysteries in a tiny room. The goal is simple yet challenging: get out in time! Else … you could be trapped inside forever! During this engaging and challenging game team members truly live and breathe in union for an hour’.

8) Here is an interesting and important debate, added to by the inimitably engaging Faris Yakoub (@faris) – Does Big Data inspire or hinder creativity?

9) Love this –  there are 213 reviews for the Grand Budapest Hotel on Trip Advisor. Unfortunately ( and unsurprisingly) the Tripadvisor algorithm cannot find any prices for this establishment….

10) And finally , this is great fun from Flowing Data – ‘How to use Pie Charts effectively’.  Worth a second look.

Ten Stories We Have Enjoyed This Week

6th September

1) Is Modern Life Making Us Dumber ? 
We already know that we have smaller brains than our distant ancestors and more recently research has indicated that overall IQ’s are dropping.Apparently the rot set in when we stopped hunting and started farming. 

This is not a solution but it can help limit the damage – Why Walking Helps Us Think. 

2) The Brighton Digital conference is on this month and kicked of with the standout Dots : Connecting Ideas event ( #dotsconf ) which featured such innovation luminaries as @neilperkin, @faris and @herdmister. If you did not manage to make it you can find all speeches on here. 

My favourite quote from the day – You are a mash up of everything you let in your life HT Hugh Garry (@huey) 

In the same vein , from @brainpickings this week – On Why Dot Connecting is The Key to Creativity. 

3) A rather ‘time sensitive’ travel and information guide – 33 things to Eat, Drink, See and Do , before climate change ruins everything. Some of the highlights include – Cherries, Las Vegas, Oysters and of course – The North Pole. 

4) From Frederic Filloux – Legacy Media: The Lost Decade In Six simple Charts. 

5) So Apple may have had a data breach ( or not? ) Who then is at risk now? 

But this is more interesting – Our moral perspective on different kinds of leaks and how inconsistent we are. 

Slate’s Amanda Hess takes on commentators who have shared advice such as “don’t take nude selfies” that appear to be blaming the victim: “These messages instruct women that they are to blame for being sexually exploited because they dared to express themselves sexually in private and in consensual contexts. (When hackers steal credit card information, the public isn’t blamed for daring to shop.) As Lena Dunham succinctly put it, “The ‘don’t take naked pics if you don’t want them online’ argument is the ‘she was wearing a short skirt’ of the web.'” Hess brings up a lot of important points. But there is a difference between blaming the victim and reminding everyone of the inherent risks built into the network. We shouldn’t blame someone who had their personal photos hacked any more than we should blame a victim of credit card theft. But we should advise both to assume that if it’s on the Internet, it’s not safe. 

6) The Digital Revolution Exhibition finishes next week. Definitely worth a visit if you haven’t been. 

At the exhibition, City of Drones allows players to pilot virtual crafts through a ‘generative geometric environment’. City of Drones charts “the story of a lost drone drifting through an abstract cityscape,” in which, “players pilot a virtual craft to explore an infinite urban landscape.” It looks great and you can get an indication of how it works here. 

7) Interesting piece on why we always like to hear bad news and positive thinking and optimism come less naturally. 

8) Worth checking this out ,weekly from MIT – Recommended From Around The Web – Including : There is no hope for Amazon’s Fire Phone, Ferguson reveals a Twitter loop, Three things you didn’t know about Arachnids that live on your face…. 

9) A must for all lovers of sophisticated writing – The Unlikely Rise, Fall, And Rise Again Of “Viz” Comic (spoiler alert – it’s not as funny as it used to be…..) 

10) Essential weekend viewing : Slow-mo skateboard tricks – Impressive and soothing. 

Finally – love the new delivery mechanism for the latest IKEA catalogue.Welcome to the ‘bookbook’.