Ideas. Hyper Island Kids Hack the Post Office Queue.

Mai 15th, 2012 • 1 comment Experimental, Mobile, Tools, We like
Tags: Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Hyper Island, Ideas, Mobile, Tech, Tool, We like

Many of you have probably heard about Hyper Island. The Swedish educational concept essentially promotes life long learning and has “produced” some of the most talented creative young talents I ever worked with. Hyper Island was always much more than a school. It is an attitude, a network, a way to see the world. And beyond  the original school in Karlskrona they now also offer Master Classes in Stockholm, London, Manchester and New York.

Hyper Kids like to play with things and experiment a lot. And most of the solutions they develop is a lot more than just aesthetically creative but a creative solution for a problem.

I just stumbled upon this little gem – a rather smart mobile way to hack the queue (link). It was developed by students from Hyper Island Manchestere and I thought you will like it…

Man-Machine Interfaces. Learning From the Death of Air France 447.

Mai 10th, 2012 • Tech, Tools
Tags: Air France, Design, Flying, Interfaces, Planes, Strategy, Tech, Tools, UI, UX, World

I don’t like to fly. Being constantly quite anxious in planes I once started to try to understand plane crashes. The objective: to get to the roots of my fear. I was particularly moved by and interested in the horrific crash of Air France 447 in 2009 that cost 228 people’s lifes.

After recovering the lost flight recorder after months of desperate search from the depths of the Atlantic one thing became terribly clear: the series of flaws, mistakes, and misconceptions that lead to the disaster were connected (among other things) with the user interface design of the super modern Airbus Airbus A330-200.

At heart, the problem was one of feedback. In a world of flight dominated by computers, Airbus designs its planes with less tactile response (in the name of pilot comfort) and less potentially overwhelming information (in the name of clearer pilot decisions). In the case of Flight 447, some of the plane’s ducts froze up, removing the information of airspeed, and forcing the plane out of autopilot. In response, a pilot named Bonin pulled up on his stick, gaining a bit of altitude to, presumably, safely keep the plane in the sky. (via)

He didn’t.

The story of this fatal flight should make anyone interested in user interface design think.

Time to share four recent links on this topic – one of them is actually an interview with a friend of mine who is a pilot himself.

• Fastcodesign: How lousy cockpit design crashed an Airbus killing 228 people
• davaidavai.com: Hooked. Alex Wipf and his theory of flight.
• Worldhum: Malcolm Gladwell on Aviation Safety and Security

Just another chapter in the neverending story of how we expect technology to be fail-proof. Most of the time it is. Up to the point where technology and humans interact. Titanic anyone?

The Jig Is Up: Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future.

April 19th, 2012 • Allgemein
Tags: Experimental, Facebook, Future, Ideas, People, Prediction, Social Influence Marketing, Social Networks, Tech, Tools, Trends, Truth, World

From the great article ‘The Jig is Up: Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future‘ (The Atlantic)

‘It slipped into parody late last year with the hypothetical app, Jotly, which allowed you to “rate everything” from the ice cubes in your drink to the fire hydrant you saw on the street. The fake promo video perfectly nailed everything about the herd mentality among startups. Its creator told me to watch for “the color blue, rounded corners, SoLoMo [SocialLocalMobile], ratings, points, free iPads, ridiculous name (complete with random adverbing via ‘ly’), overpromising, private beta, giant buttons, ‘friction-less’ sign up, no clear purpose, and of course a promo video.”

And then, the hilarious parody ate itself and my tears of laughter turned to sadness when the people behind the joke actually released Jotly as a real, live app.’

Here is the original video. Isn’t it ironic? Revolutions always eat their own children. Did anyone say google Glass?

Jotly, the Ultimate App for Sharing Everything with Everyone (Psych!)

Animated GIFs. The History of an Almost Art Form.

März 12th, 2012 • Experimental, Media
Tags: Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Funny, Gifs, hipsters, history, Meme, People, Tech, Tools, visual

Okay, let’s just get one thing straight: Animated Gifs are the best thing since sliced bread. And if you don’t agree you are worse than Kony which is pretty bad.

Some people actually consider animated GIFs as an art form (I prefer to use things like GifShop to create stupid loops like that). And the following 6 minute documentary takes us back to a time when GIFs’ were early crude incarnations (American flags, “under construction” signs, flames) before taking us through to the more sophisticated cinemagraphs around the web today. (via Co.Design).

There is one strangely annoying thing about this film…possibly about Animated Gifs in general. To quote a Youtube comment: if feels like ‘Look at this fucking hipster: the movie. But let’s not get distracted by that. AnimatedGifs are great. And I am not a hipster.

Social Media Management Software. Check Out Altimeter’s New Buyer’s Guide.

Januar 9th, 2012 • 2 comments Reports, Social, Tech, Tools
Tags: Altimeter, altimetergroup, Business, Facebook, Presentation, Reports, Social Business Design, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Tech, Tools, we are social

So once you have given all the presentations about the value of Social Media and explained that a fan is not worth $2.38 (or something) you will – at some point – face the challenge of managing real time interaction with your customer. Here SMMS, a type of software especially designed to support the management of complex social interaction platforms, are usually your weapons of choice. Especially in a world in which any major enterprise has to be able to manage its 178 social media accounts in average.

A Social Media Management System (SMMS) is a software tool that uses business rules and approved employees and partners to manage multiple social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. This system contains features such as governance, workflow, intelligence, and integration capabilities across the enterprise. The success of these tools is dependent upon a business-led strategy, defined processes, trained staff, and ability to measure efforts.

SMMS are there to reduce the complexity of large real time social media platforms. And there are many, many different vendors on the market. From Hootsuite to BuddyMedia, from Wildfire to Spredfast, no two vendors are alike and there is no one-fit-for-all SMMS-solution. Altimeter’s new “Strategy to Manage Social Media Proliferation” serves as a great overview over the SMMS-scene and offers metrics to support the choice for specific vendors based on the social objectives of your organisation.

If you have ever tried to give your customer a founded recommendation on which SMMS to choose you will know how important the following report is. In a market as cluttered and dynamic as this we need more top-level reports like the following one instead of infographics on Mashable.

Read more »

Klout. Why It’s not a Metric for Influence.

Dezember 20th, 2011 • 2 comments CRM, Tools
Tags: Analytics, Influence, Klout, Metrics, Social Infliuence Marketing, Social Networks, Tech, Tools, Truth

My colleague Heather – Strategy Director at StrawberryFrog here in Amsterdam – has posted quite an interesting article on her personal Quest for Klout.

This is the story:

A little over a week ago, a comment was made by a client responsible for social media that they would expect someone offering advice on social media to have a higher Klout score than themselves. I wasn’t in the meeting, but one of our art directors made the comment “Wait until you meet our head of planning. She’ll give you a run for your money.”

When my colleagues return and tell me about the meeting we go online and compare Klout scores. Mine is 40. The client’s is 51. I’ve never paid any attention to Klout before this but they insisted I try to do so and get mine up. So I connect my Facebook account. Then Foursquare, Instagram, Google+ that I never use, and LinkedIn (that ought to take care of this competition). And then I simply put attention into all of these networks. After 24 hours my score had gone up 6 points. By the end of the week I was at 53 and it seems to have leveled off there. But that’s still 2 points higher than the client’s.

We had a bit of a conversation about Heather’s challenge with her client. Of course it was just a game but an interesting one as the client really defined Klout as a crucial metric that really describes Influence.

The problem? If you are all up for lifting your Klout score all you have to do is to basically connect every social profile you have and get retweeted constantly. In the end you get something like this (which basically says nothing but…wait…MY KLOUT SCORE IS HIGHER HEATHER!!!! ):

Klout does not get tired to pretend it is the standard when it comes to influence metrics in the social web. It’s true: if it comes to asking how to measure influence somebody will mention Klout pretty quickly. Or in other words, I think Klout did a great job in making people believe they can measure influence. I think they can’t. My reason? Klout does not measure influence. It measures blah blah.

Angela Merkel’s Klout Score is only one point higher than my own. British Prime Minister David Cameron is even less influential than I am. And do you think this comparison makes sense? No, I don’t think so either. Because we all know Klout does not work that way.

My problem with Klout is simple: Klout defines itself as the ‘Standard for Influence‘. Sometimes – in more humble moments – as the “standard for Online and Internet Influence”. As a Strategist interacting with marketing clients (such as Heather does) this is just fine print when it comes to explaining if we are able to measure success.

“It’s simple, isn’t it?”, Klout is the metric for influence. And even though we all know that real influence cannot be split into an online influence and a real world influence…and even though we all know that unless I become German Chancelor or British Prime Minister I will never be as influential as two Politicians mentioned above…and even though I know that if I go on vacations tomorrow without tweeting for two weeks my Klout score will half: we still seem to accept it as a metric for influence.

Klout is not a metric for influence. It is something like a counter that tells the world how many e-mails I sent or how many telephone calls I answered yesterday. Oh…of course it turns that into a nice info visual and awards me a ridiculous set of badges (I am a “Klout OG”).

Read more »

Meanwhile in Japan. A Kinect Hack a Day keeps the Doctor away.

November 21st, 2011 • Tech
Tags: 3D, Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Funny, Hack, japan, Kinect, prank, Tech, visual, World

This fantastic looking little Kinect hack is almost too typical Japanese. At least if you consider that it seems to be completely normal (after a little surprise) for Japanese people to pose with your evil Manga-twin in the mirror…

Stuff We Like. Selfcontrolfreak’s Interactive Videos.

Oktober 20th, 2011 • Experimental, People, Tech, We like
Tags: Amsterdam, Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Funny, Gaming, intelligent, Pechakuchanight, People, selfcontrolfreak, Tech, video, visual, We like

Last night I attended Amsterdam’s Pechakucha Night at Roest. Most of you probably know the concept: Random people present their business concept/idea/art theory/whatever on 20 slides and they only have 20 seconds for each page before a heartless Powerpoint algorithm switches to the next one. The one person that definitely stood out for me was Olivier Otten – a young Dutch Creative/Developer who tries to play with very playful ways to interact with video under the name Selfcontrolfreak.

I don’t want to say much more. Just one thing. Gamification is not about badges and check-ins. Traditional playful, interactive metaphors have been around since the 1990s. But even two decades later I know of few platforms which are as much fun as this one.

Check out his 22 simple, playful video examples and start playing with Selfcontrolfreak.

Mobile Apps. Why responsive design actually begins on the server.

September 28th, 2011 • Mobile
Tags: Apps, Mobile, Presentation, Strategy, Tech, Tools

Yiibu is a small office in Edinburgh specialized in Mobile marketing. And they spent quite some time to think about more efficient processes in creating mobile apps – particularly in replacing native with web apps.

If there is such a thing as a superhit on Slideshare their first presentation Rethinking the Mobile Web comes pretty close to it. And the deck embedded below is again a strong statement for web apps.

It is long but very smart.

It is just a bit more than a year that Chris Anderson on Wired claimed that the future will be “driven primarily by the rise of the iPhone model of mobile computing, and it’s a world Google can’t crawl, one where HTML doesn’t rule.”

I guess this one time he was wrong.

Oh Boy. How to Fuck up the Announcement of a Great Invention Big Time.

August 11th, 2011 • Tech
Tags: 802.22, Cool, Experimental, IEEE, innovation, Tech, Tools, Trends, WLAN, World, WRAN

Engineers just know how to ruin a good story.

The thing which has just been announced as a new technical standard by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) will probably really be a revolution. But instead of giving this thing a really cool name they called it ‘WRAN’. Or to make it even more cryptic: 802.22.

‘WRAN’ stands for ‘Wireless Regional Area Network’. It basically takes the idea of your WLAN at home one step – or more – further and offers wireless internet access in an area up to 62miles/100km wide. We are talking about 12,000 Square Miles aka a lot. (via PCMasters)

As far as I understand this means we are getting one giant leap closer to Internet wherever we go. The potential implications of this new standard are absolutely breathtaking – just think about the challenge for Mobile carriers as well.

But anyway. It is good to see that there is absolutely no need to revise my stereotype of Engineers. You guys have possibly just invented one of the greatest technical solutions of our time and you call it “802.22″? Seriously IEEE: What the Fuck? This could have been the greatest product announcement since sliced bread. But you ruin it because you name it like a species of Alien Bacteria.

If you want to check out more of the IEEE’s fancy marketing concepts go check out their ‘Product page‘or the Wikipedia article.

It could have been good.