Tag Archives: kickstarter

Ten Stories We’ve Enjoyed This Week

1) Brilliant . From The Poke George Osborne And David Cameron Launch Kickstarter To Save The UK Economy.

Not far to go. They only need to raise £1,453,252,900,000.

2) The fabulous Street Wisdom project has launched a Winter Wander-land. ‘We’ve created a 25 day sequence of SMS messages that we’ll beam to your phone giving you a simple – but intriguing – instruction to follow. Each one builds on the last, turning December into an unfolding ADVENT-ure (see what we did there?). And each one will help you tune in to the creative stimulus of the streets all around you’ You can sign up here.

This has also been covered by The Huffington Post.

I have mentioned Street Wisdom before . But just in case you missed it, here is founder David Pearl explaining all in a TED Talk.

3) The European parliament continues to go after Google  as it it votes to support a ‘Google break-up’ motion. Although they have no power to enforce , this makes for an interesting debate between organisations with very different ideologies – ‘Google holds 90% of the search market in Europe and as such has been the subject of a long-running antitrust investigation with the EC, which was recently re-opened after the commission rejected the settlement proposal’.

4) RadiumOne’s report into Dark Social is worth a read.

‘Dark Social’ refers to any inbound web traffic coming from sources that web analytics are unable to track. It typically occurs when online content is shared by copying a URL and pasting it into message platforms such as email, forums or instant message, rather than sharing it via established social networks.

‘Research reveals UK consumers are sharing over three times more information on ‘Dark Social’ channels than via social channels like Facebook’.

5) A real tipping point for social commerce ? Twitter  launches Twitter Offers, which enables brands to embed redeemable offers directly into Twitter cards. They are also now tracking what other apps you have on your phone (creating and ‘app graph’) to enable a ‘more tailored experience’ ( HT to @neilperkin for this ).

6) The latest from Google Think – their Think Letter. Including case studies from Pepsi, Homebase and Asda. Plus top You Tube videos from October.

7) One positive perspective on social media is that it provides the opportunity for those with different views to engage with each other or at least enables the opportunity to acquire additional perspectives. But when it comes to divisive issues and opinions, this is not happening, much as it doesn’t happen in traditional media or wider society . This is how Republican and Democratic tweeters are ignoring each other over Ferguson.

8) Intriguing perspective from the FT –  Do the Jesuits hold the answer for misfiring multinationals? ( subscription needed )

9) Some fine, but perhaps not so easy listening, music for the weekend – NME’s Top 50 Albums of 2014.  St Vincent sits at the top of the pile.

10) And for our American readers on Thanksgiving weekend and indeed families everywhere – families who hate each other in Western art history.

10 Stories We’ve Enjoyed This Week . 24/5/14

1) A short Kickstarter Video : The Future of Work and Death. The great Will Self opines – ‘Most work is in fact a waste of time’. 

2) As ever the excellent David Hepworth writes brilliantly on the future of magazines and their relationship with advertisers: “Advertisers want to sleep with you but also want you to remain a virgin. They want to believe the favours they were granted are not being extended to the next hobbledehoy who comes along.” 

3) Google knocks Apple from the Most Valuable Brand top spot. 

4) David Bowie on the true measure of creative success – animated. 

5) Edward Snowden is now a comic-book hero. 

6) Google wants to be a gaming company – Looking to buy ‘Twitch’ : a service that allows people to share video recordings of games played on consoles. 

7) Spotify has just acquired it’s 10 millionth user – But It’s Not Making Money – As one analyst explains: “In many ways, the preferred solution [for Spotify] would be to get sold to someone. But they’ve become too successful.” 

8) GoPro is looking at a $100 million IPO and wants to turn itself into a publisher. 

9) Interesting piece from Frederic Filloux – Time to Rethink the Newspaper Seriously – Interesting content drawn from the New York Times Innovation Report , cross referenced with the views of the Editor of the Financial Times, Lionel Barber, in his digital roadmap published in Jan 2013. 

10) Rather Fun. An artist takes movie posters a little too literally. 

This Week’s Top Ten Stories

1) How Twitter took home the biggest Oscar of the night – read more and it was no accident that Ellen DeGeneres was using a Samsung Galaxy. Is this the Future of Advertising? – Read More 

2) How Kickstarter’s users have raised $ One Billion in funding – Read More 

3) From Nature: “In what seems like a plot straight out of a low-budget science-fiction film, scientists have revived a giant virus that was buried in Siberian ice for 30,000 years — and it is still infectious. Its targets, fortunately, are amoebae, but the researchers suggest that as Earth’s ice melts, this could trigger the return of other viruses with potential risks for human health.” – Read More 

4) Where would you live on this Map of the Internet? – Read More 

5) A time for tranquility? – in our noisy world, the increasing demand for  Silence – Read More 

6) Apple gets into Automobiles with the iCar – Read More 

7) Nice – The New York Times has issued a correction related to a typo in a story they wrote about Solomon Northup ( author of 12 Years a Slave) – in 1853 …… – Read More 

8) From The Telegraph. The Best Children’s Books of All Time (?) – Read More 

9) Are we as digital as we think ? Apparently one in ten Americans think that HTML is an STD And 27% think a gigabyte is a South American insect –Read More 

10) According to scientists ( not the most reliable source? ) This is the funniest joke in the world “Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He’s not breathing and his eyes are glazed, so his friend calls 911. “My friend is dead! What should I do?” The operator replies, “Calm down, sir. I can help. First make sure that he’s dead.” There’s a silence, then a loud bang. Back on the phone, the guy says, “OK, now what?” – Read More

Does Size Matter? When Collaboration is not a good thing

28th Feb 2013

The recent story about the new Seesaw crowdsourcing app got me thinking about the impact of digital on decision-making, collaboration and creativity. This is what Seesaw says about itself: “The purpose of Seesaw is pretty simple: you can instantly create a poll by taking a picture, and have friends (and strangers) vote on it. You can then send out a request for decision-making help through social networks or text message –

“It might seem a little silly for simple decisions you make throughout the day, but since all it requires is a photo you can use it for all types of different decisions, from home makeovers to vacation plans.”

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