The late Steve Jobs used to talk about how Apple sat at the intersection of technology and liberal arts. I wonder, though, the extent to which technology is a precursor to new forms of art: whether photography, cinema, radio, television or now networked computing, it tends to be that technology comes first, and then art … Continue reading How technology creates art
Category: Technology
At last week's Research Now event, there was a fascinating, and sometimes quite touching, presentation from Richard Banks, who is an interaction designer with Microsoft Research. Richard talked about his work looking at producing physical objects that will enable people to reflect and reminisce about digital artifacts in ways analogous to how photo albums and … Continue reading Digital flotsam
On most corporate email systems, not to mention social networks, there's usually the opportunity to upload a photo of yourself. The photos that people put into these things tend to fall into one of four categories: nothing; a face shot; a picture other than just a portrait; and a photo of something else - varying … Continue reading Why you should always upload your photo…
LinkedIn, or Facebook for boring people, is celebrating it's 200 millionth subscriber by informing people who sit in the top 1% of viewed profiles and top 5% of viewed profiles of that exciting news. I fall in the 1%. Which tells me a few things... Firstly, that "top 1%" sounds an awful lot better than … Continue reading One in 2 million: my part in the LinkedIn story
OK, so something of a attention-grabbing headline, but let me explain... I recently saw an interesting post by Geoffrey Moore, he of Crossing the Chasm fame. In it he argued that the consumer IT boom has peaked, and that the next five to seven years will see the most interesting developments happening in the Enterprise … Continue reading Nobody should be building Enterprise solutions these days…
There is a good article that I picked up on over the weekend from November on Forbes looking at the intersection of responsive web design and mobile device apps. The responsive design movement is one which is founded on, in my view, a quite technical foundation: websites should be built in such a way that … Continue reading Contextual design
After a software update this morning, I was presented with the "browser choice" window after I logged into my PC. It struck me that there was very little variation in the way in which the words to describe the options available were chosen by the marketing folk responsible for these tiny adverts. Put simply, there … Continue reading Browser adjectives
One of my best friends had declared a state of UDI: unilateral digital independence. I'm not sure how I feel about it. She had ditched her smartphone and so now only accesses social services sporadically and through a PC. She lives in the countryside so mobile signals don't permeate the walks of her house so … Continue reading Declaring UDI
My wife and I spent last weekend pottering around the sleepy villages of North Norfolk. Vegas it isn't, but having dropped the kids off with grandparents, we had two days to recharge and spend some time together. It was a nice little break, but one experience has stayed with me. We were queuing to pay … Continue reading An ageing digital population
2012 was a year topped and tailed by analyst statements that point for me to some interesting changes in the way in which technology is consumed, managed and commissioned by big organisations: in January, Gartner reported that "by 2017 the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO" (something that has been often repeated, yet … Continue reading Digital Agencies: the new Systems Integrators?
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