-
Guardian #Activate2010
Yesterday, I was lucky enough to attend The Guardian’s Acvtivate2010 Summit, which is dedicated to looking at how the Internet is changing the world. The focus seemed to be very much on global good. Props need to go to Robin Hough, Head of Media Events and his team for packing in some of the most fascinating and inspiring speakers into a single day. Although it was fairly exhausting, it was worth being exhausted for.Here are a few themes that stood out for me.
Do what you’re passionate about and the money will come naturally – This sentiment was most convincingly posited by Julie Meyer, CEO of Ariadne Capital but the living embodiment of this was Jamal Edwards of SBTV who started a YouTube channel devoted to urban culture after receiving a video camera for Christmas when he was 17. Now at the grand old age of 19 he’s turning down TV spots from MTV and others because he wants to stick with the Internet and the ad revenue he receives for his content on YouTube. Jamal didn’t start by wondering how he was going to make money out of it, he simply loves creating content for people to enjoy. Julie’s main point was “Don’t try and be the next Google, just do what you’re good at”. This might seem common sense to most but to really put your effort where your passion is isn’t easy for everyone.
Money fuels the engine of social good – Many agreed on the fact that ideas are useless without actions and actions cost money, therefore ideas need to make money. Simple really, but there was a sense that philanthropy isn’t going to save the world alone. A far more sustainable approach is to create businesses that help society but pay for themselves while they’re doing it. Sustainability in every sense. We can’t rely on generosity alone.
Don’t assume anything about those in need – Ethan Zuckerman from Global Voices told us about 1million shirts, an utterly terrible idea for social good that was almost set to destabilise the second-hand clothes trading market. Through some harsh exchanges, the organiser was introduced by Teddy Ruge, a prominent blogger and social entrepreneur in Uganda. After a rocky start they are starting to collaborate on something that makes much more sense. This is really a larger point about collaboration, co-creation and empathy being vital aspects of creation of solutions for those in need. We need to stop trying to fix problems that don’t exist.
The web is increasing our ability to empathise – Ethan proposed that just as transport made the world feel smaller, the Internet is making us cosy up close. And when people begin talking they start to understand one another better.
We’re still leaving people behind – Britain’s Digital Champion Martha Lane-Fox was driving home the inclusion agenda on various panels. Right now, in the UK there are 10m people that have never used the Internet. The people that can benefit most from the Internet are still missing out. One of the most poignant quotes was supplied by Martha regarding her experience when introducing someone to the web for the first time – “I didn’t realise I had such an enquiring mind”. See Martha’s Race Online 2012 project for more on this.
Talkers v.s. Doers – Doers WIN. Well, 9/10 times they fail, but failing is winning right?
Mobile technology is leapfrogging in the developing world – Georgia Arnold from MTV and Jan Chipchase from Frog Design (formerly of Nokia) both touched on the way in which mobile phones have overtaken other technologies such as TVs and PCs and err… indoor toilets* in developing countries and therefore mobile, SMS and WAP all present an enormous amount of potential. But again, Jan was keen to stress the problem of exclusion.
Some priceless soundbites from the day:
- “If I could download a handbag, I would” Bridget Minamore, contributor to Livity
- “We learn by copying, so why is it illegal?” Peter Sunde, Flattr (formerly Pirate Bay)
- “The music industry isn’t in a bad place, it’s thriving, it’s the record industry that is suffering” Peter Sunde
- “We have free art galleries but people still pay millions for art at Christies” Harriet Thomas, iCaring
This is a top-line for now, I will hopefully break out some of the more interesting talks and do full posts on them, so you know, stay tuned.
This event and its predecessor has been such a success that they will be taking it to the US in December and are considering extending it to two days next year. I heartily recommend it.
*Georgia Arnold claimed that 70% of young Kenyans use social media, 80% have mobile phones – only 53% have an indoor toilet. Personally, if I lived in a small, very hot house I probably wouldn’t want an indoor toilet either.
-
The risks of parasitic apps
Twitter’s new and native URL shortening functionality (t.co) is going to make other URL shorteners such as ow.ly, is.gd and bit.ly totally obsolete.
I guess those businesses could see it coming. URL shortening is fairly basic functionality. It would take a decent developer a couple of days (if that) to comp something together that works well enough. It seems morally bankrupt of large social networks to toss aside small apps that add value to their platform by blatantly copying functionality. However, with URL shorteners it seems like it was simply an oversight not to add them from the off and that their replacement was inevitable. Incidentally, it seems like URL shortening is going to be a key factor in their Promoted Tweets revenue plan. Whereas some applications like Farmville on Facebook seem very difficult to duplicate because of their originality and quirky appeal. It would seem a bit rubbish for Facebook to simply come out with Farmbook as a direct competitor to Farmville once they saw the success of the latter. However, it doesn’t stop them copying the likes of iLike or RockYou. It will be interesting to see how Twitter ‘deals’ with the URL shortening apps. When they omitted search functionality in the early days, they simply bought up Summize and added it to the search subdomain. The sum that Twitter paid for Summize hasn’t been disclosed, however, Summize itself was funded to the tune of $750k so it certainly wasn’t worthless. Suffice to say some developers got jobs out of it.
It’s sad that, as a parasitic app, your success can be your undoing. And developers are going to start trusting large networks less and less. The strategy for many, such as Tweetdeck and Farmville is to use the network as an incubator and then detach themselves from the host like the chestburster scene in Alien, albeit with slightly less blood.
The kind of risk involved in developing a wholly parasitic app is one of the dangers of Technology Remixing – you’re always dependent on the whims of the host.
-
Hey social web, a little privacy?
Imagine being able to share conversations, pictures, links or movies on your chosen social network, safe in the knowledge that your information isn’t going to be passed along or sold to some third-party you know nothing about or that there aren’t going to be massive security holes that reveal your secrets to the entire Internet, or that your privacy settings aren’t changed indiscriminately . Sound good? Then read on.
Not everyone cares about privacy. But I for one do, and if you’ve got this far then clearly you do too. I’m concerned about Facebook’s new Like feature and its potential to detect websites I visit that carry it. I’m concerned about security holes and I’m concerned about political affiliations of social network owners. Call me paranoid but I believe privacy is a right, not a feature. And certain networks are constantly eroding privacy. I want privacy, yet I also love to connect with other people over the wonderful medium that is the web. These two things should be compatible, but right now it seems like they simply aren’t.
What social networks do is provide a virtual place, an infrastructure and a way for you to interact with your friends when you’re not physically near them. Any public social place, be it a social network, a park, a restaurant or a bar needs to be maintained, kept tidy and clean, repairs need to be made etc. Similarly, any social network has hosting costs, moderation, localisation and developers, designers and CEOs to feed. For parks they are paid for by taxpayers as a common good. For bars they are paid for through the sale of conversation-enhancing things such as booze and food. But online social networks have been grappling with ways to make money out of this for while now. They are finally beginning to face up to the fact that they are going to make money mostly from advertising, of varying levels of interruption. Most folk don’t mind advertising, providing it’s relevant, timely and appealing. However, the networks are finding they need to dig deeper and deeper and share more and more of your data to maximise their clients’ media spend.
Enter private social networking
As far as I can see there are just 2 ways that we can have private social networking. The first is that people are required to pay to use the space. Strictly speaking, users are currently paying for social networking, only instead of exchanging money, we are giving up our attention data and our attention to paid media i.e. ads. However, as a money-paid approach, it simply doesn’t seem realistic for this to get off the ground. The second way, which I want to discuss in more detail is the concept of a ‘distributed social network’. In essence, users pay for the network by being the network. To use the network you simply need to provide some input in the form of computational power. This would use P2P technology similar to Napster, Kazaa, BitTorrent or even Skype.
There have been attempts in this area, namely Safebook, Elgg, OneSocialWeb and Krawler[x]. However, the only project here that seems to have got some traction is elgg.org, though Elgg isn’t distributed, making it really just an opensource social networking framework. This is still potentially useful but not a distributed client that is inherently private.
Then there’s Diaspora.
Diaspora is a “… privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network”. It’s put together by a young bunch of NYU students. This isn’t something that investors would fall over themselves to get into. As evidence, consider the fact that, to date, this hasn’t been mentioned once by Techcrunch, despite the fact that the public has just seen fit to donate $33k to the venture on Kickstarter. That’s 3x more than they asked for in just 1/3 of the time they needed. There is serious demand for this. From an investors perspective, the only interesting thing might be in selling some form of hosting and support services to seeds. However, the approach is inherently and entirely non-commercial.
The main challenge for a distributed social network is really in getting anyone to use it once it’s built. But with the current backlash against certain social networks, the timing could be right and might explain the huge support this is garnering.
This kind of P2P distributed network defines disruption. Just take a look at how filesharing has destabalised the music industry. Private and distributed social networking is as disruptive to the models of Facebook, Twitter and even Google as they themselves were to The Wall St. Journal, USA Today or MTV.
-
RFID packaging as a real-life eco platform
Wired have an interesting post about researchers in South Korea experimenting with semiconducting ink that would allow manufacturers to replace bar codes in supermarkets with RFID signals. As the article points out though, it’s a proof-of-concept but the technology has tonnes of benefits, not only for consumers but for shipping and logistics.
The benefit for consumers seems to be around reducing the size of queues. However, I’m far more interested in how it might be used once we’ve actually finished with the product itself. Imagine an infrastructure where a container of washing powder could be made of a much more robust material which could be reused time and time again. Like glass, for example. The container could be placed in the same place you put your recycling when you’ve finished with it. Only, instead of being broken down and re-made as another material, the package itself could simply be cleaned out and used again. At the recycle centre, the manufacturer and the type of container could be identified through a central database. Packages could then be grouped together and shipped back to the manufacturer en masse. The manufacturer then repackages their product into the clean packaging instead of making new packaging. Depending on how robust it is, it could be used indefinitely. Of course the packaging, in particular the semiconductor ink, might begin to perish over time but a system could track how many times the packaging has been used and could replace the ink regularly.
If you’ve ever had milk delivered to your door, this model will be familiar. I remember the pride my mum used to take in sending back sparkling clean milk bottles. She would fill them with scolding hot soapy water and let them stand for a few minutes before going at them with her pink Marigolds and The Milk Bottle Brush. Scenes used to run through my mind where some guy on a production line would be washing up milk bottles and along would come one of mum’s bottles and it would totally make his day.
I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible for people to be rewarded for their efforts too. I remember being given 10p for returning pop bottles, which of course I would immediately give back to the shopkeeper in exchange for a sherbet dibdab, which also happened to cost 10p, coincidence?
Of course, this would equate to some kind of Tesco Rewards scheme and there could be an API and mashups galore etc. Mike’s Family Liked Cherios this week.
What’s more, you could have predictive shopping lists based on what you’ve actually consumed, rather than what you want to consume next week.
The packaging might have card inserts that show the product inside, nutritional information, offers etc.
It just strikes me that many of the problems we have with dwindling resources could be addressed somehow with some of the incredible advances we’re making with nanotechnology and the creation of open real-world local platforms.
As a side note, brands such as Coca-Cola and Gap have tried inserting RFID tags into packaging many times before. There’s usually lots of privacy concerns, which is justified, however it’s really a question of agenda.
-
Backchannels: what’s the potential?
One of the most enjoyable things about being at SXSW this year was sitting in some of the larger and more disastrous talks and reading the tweets roll in from around the room. I’ve heard a few social media muggers call this ‘the social media backchannel’. It’s consistently amusing. It’s like passing notes around a class full of your best friends in front of a blind supply teacher.
Last night’s #leadersdebate was a total treat. Eventually I was reading the tweets from the people I follow and the search results for #leadersdebate and not even watching the TV. Clearly, occupying both the TV screen AND the only laptop in the house pleased my wife no end. She was reduced to squinting at Facebook on her iPhone instead. And I wasn’t alone; a few non-industry friends said they preferred the talk on Facebook over the telly.
So, given that this backchannel stuff is hugely popular, what’s the potential? Is there a chance that the backchannel might become the frontchannel? Could you see yourself totally ignoring the commentary on the World Cup this year in favour of a large-screen feed of tagged football commentary from fans? Could you see yourself at a wedding writing messages on a virtual wall? And how about planning a happening simply in order to enjoy the backchannel? It would have been sweet for Parlorphone to hype up the release of LCD Soundsystem’s new album This Is Happening and schedule a giant global listen and to pull in the backchannel from twitter. It would be like a giant record club. You could do the same for a movie like Kick-Ass, perhaps allow 20k people to view the film and have them backchannel it for others.
What’s interesting is that the majority of people tend to go with the consensus, so if the backchannel is negative, don’t bother distributing that extra 100k copies or planning that high-budget tour if the album flops in the proto-backchannel.
One of the major criticisms might be around profanity. But really, I honestly believe we’ll grow out of most of that. Though there’s always someone that has to draw the penis on the notepad isn’t there?
There’s a startup idea there somewhere.
-
We might be living in the wrong experiment
One of the many very enjoyable and inspiring talks I attended at SXSWi was on Design Fiction.
Here’s how it was billed.
Design fiction is an approach to design that speculates about new ideas through prototyping and storytelling. The goal is to move away from the routine of lifeless scenarios-based thinking. We will share design fiction projects and discuss related techniques for design thinking, communication and exploration of near future concepts.
-
Gnawing on the bones of Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix has a ‘new album’ out. I hate it and I haven’t even heard it yet.
I’m a lifelong Hendrix fan. Ever since I heard his interpretation of The Star-Spangled Banner I was hooked. My initial response upon hearing it was “I didn’t realise that was allowed”. I had a tape of his performance at the Isle of White Festival in 1970 and the entire performance re-engineered what little I understood of music. I put Hendrix on a par with Aphex Twin or Squarepusher for experimentation. There are just some sounds which nobody else has ever made before that just leap out at you and remind you that you’re alive and that life is actually very interesting. The distorted screams and moans he would make with his strat echoed the pubescent confusion I was feeling at the time. And even now they still root out emotions that don’t often see the light of day.
That aside, this ‘new album’ is a collection of studio outtakes, jams and cover versions that has been chucked together by Jimi’s step-sister Janie. Janie was adopted by Jimi’s father Al, who died in 2002. Jimi’s brother Leon was written out of the will by Al shortly before his death. It seems that this kind of in-fighting and wrangling goes hand-in-hand with the legacy of dead rock stars. Especially those, such as Jimi, who died tragically early and unexpectedly, without the foresight to create their own will.
Hendrix only actually completed 3 studio albums in his short career (he died at 28). But each one is crafted into a complete body of work which tells a unique and original story. This ‘new album’, titled ‘Valleys of Neptune’ tells a story, but it’s a story based on lies. It’s a mishmash of stuff that I can’t believe Hendix or anyone else in the Jimi Hendrix Experience would have blessed, if they were alive.
I’m not against these type of collections at all. The lie is in the marketing. The title track suggests it’s from some tape that Eddie Kramer found down the back of the sofa in the reception at Electric Ladyland studios, but which they were just too stoned to release. And just for you it’s been remasted into a deluxe package with horrifying digital clarity. Bullshit. Why not simply call it Scraps of Hendrix’ or ‘The Stuff Hendrix Wouldn’t Dream of Releasing’. I thought the same thing about Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, a collection of crap that Jeff Buckley wouldn’t have released if you’d paid him millions but which got chucked out by his estate once he’s brown bread.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some really good deep-dives into aspects of Hendrix that are worth a listen – Blues is exactly that. It was another posthumous release but simply collates many of the very bluesy recordings, jams and live performances he did. It tells a story, an honest story. And if you want to experience his live work, try Live at Monterey and Live at Berkeley. And if you want to hear the Hendrix BBC Sessions, well, listen to that, there’s a bum note on Manic Depression that has to be the most glorious and beautiful bum note I’ve ever heard.
This isn’t the first of these cheesy-titled anathemas, avoid First of the The New Rising Sun (much of which isn’t even in tune) and South Saturn Delta. There’s a reason why these things weren’t released when Hendrix was alive. Elbow call it demo-itis. It’s when you demo a song, send it to your friends, family and A&R people, they love it, then you develop it more. The problem is, nobody likes any other version than the one you sent them in the first place, even if you recorded it in your bedroom on a TASCAM 4-track. Most bands are pretty careful about what they put out. It’s only in death that they begin to lose control. They stop being able to tell their own story.
If you want to get into Hendrix, listen to Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love and then Electric Ladyland, in that order. Ovoid anything that has the name of a planet in its title, it is probably shit.
Image credit: designerfake
-
Lurpak’s Bake Club
I’m really enjoying the various incarnations of Weiden + Kennedy’s Lurpak campaign recently.
As well as a few nice TVCs, billboards and some recipe cards, they have created a nice little social thing called Bake Club.
The idea being that you sign up, invite some friends and schedule a time where you can have a bit of a bake-off. Pictures are then uploaded to Flickr. It’s all very nice and simple.
The only thing I wonder about is why they didn’t make it as a Facebook application. I’m sure it would get considerably more attention and may have grown much faster. They could also have targeted ads based on food-related keywords in their profile. Any suggestions on this?
The best thing about the campaign is that they enlisted the help of some food bloggers to create the food used in the photography. They had one of my favourite bloggers (and fellow Peckham-ite) Helen Graves cook up a giant angry-looking chicken & leek pie. No doubt they were inspired by this beautiful and gargantuan pork pie she did at Christmas.
-
Why the Secret London Facebook group is so successful
Tim recently pointed me in the direction of a Facebook group called Secret London. It currently has 188k members. This isn’t entirely surprising until you realise that it was only created 2 weeks ago. The grou is for “… Londoners to inspire Londoners by sharing the secrets of the city”. There’s a very nice London-for-Londoners feel to it. Of course there’s a load of spam but the group’s creator Tiffany Philippou is working hard to keep it clean. Tiffany is now crowdsourcing the development and design of a new site from a temporary blog.
I’ve been thinking about why it has become so successful so quickly, especially considering the enormous glut of travel-related sites that exist. For me there are four things that make it work.
The proposition
Secrets want to be shared, by virtue of the fact that they are not supposed to be. People love to share secrets. We all love to tell others about a great pub with a huge log fire and the best Toad in the Hole in London, the best ice-cream, the best spot in Greenwich park for a drunken lazy Sunday. And even more, we love to share things that say something about who we are.
The convenience of Facebook
People are spending more and more time simply staying within Facebook. And it’s just too easy to share and join groups. It’s becoming a little world of content, like a vortex.
Inspiration
At first thought you assume that Facebook isn’t the ideal platform for Secret London. It would be difficult to archive the secrets and you have to scroll through a lot of crap to find the good stuff. But perhaps that is its charm. When you scroll through the comments and the responses, there’s is a lot of dross but you do come across stuff that inspires you. Most travel sites assume that you have the first clue what you want to do. You have to initiate your discovery by clicking on a primary navigation item or think of a search terms to enter. It’s a tiny but onerous little chore and you don’t know how the site is going to react, it might disappoint. But with a stream of random secrets, it’s like poring through an vintage shop and finding a little gem that you love, but nobody else cares about.
Simply put, it’s not about discovery, it’s about inspiration.
Shared ownership
Finally, Tiffany is crowdsourcing the design and development of a new site as well as a logo. She is also releasing the content under a Creative Commons license. It feels as close as we can currently get to a shared ownership of something.
I’d be fascinated to see what else you think might have contributed to the success of Secret London.
-
Wizards and haptic gestures
One response among designers and UX folk to Apple’s new iPad has been to criticise the effort required of users to command the haptic interface. Microsoft’s Surface had the same response, as did the interface that Tom Cruise used in Mission Impossible.
‘Ergonomically speaking, it’s just too much hard work’ is the usual response. There’s a lot of supposition and conjecture there though, mostly based on the received wisdom that less work is better. It seems obvious that they require more work to control, but I’m not aware of any long-term study into the ergonomic effects of haptic interfaces in everyday use or indeed that they are even hard work to use on a daily basis. I’m certainly one of those people that look at this kind of interface and thinks “It just looks like a lot of hard work”.
In recent years, the coal-face of sedentary computer terminal work has been reduced to mere mouse clicks scattered with a few little rapid tapperings on a keyboard. Our heads don’t move, only our eyes dart from pixel to pixel. Lots of typing and lots of clicking. Maybe even a little bit of dribble. I can imagine one day that our muscles might atrophy completely and leave us existing in a jellied heap still clicking our only STRONG FINGER, eyeballs recessed, still darting.
Author Archive
Our latest tweets
- @chrbutler thanks! glad you like it :) RT @chrbutler @madebymany Your blog is great! It's a never-skip for me. 2 days ago
- @chrbutler mentioned our blog in his post on designing for attention, here: http://bit.ly/aTo8eY 2 days ago
- @apophenia in Technology Review says that people will simply carve out a space for privacy as they think best: http://bit.ly/cbbNdy 2 days ago
- More updates...
Most commented
People
Categories
- advertising (9)
- agile (9)
- Clients (29)
- code (1)
- Conferences (41)
- content (6)
- design (17)
- Games (2)
- Great Stuff (13)
- innovation (25)
- interview (3)
- jobs (1)
- Labs (9)
- Made by Many (142)
- mobile (4)
- New connections (2)
- opinion (50)
- play (1)
- publishing (8)
- Social Web (132)
- technology (2)
- Transmedia (1)
Archives
Sites we like
- Aaron Koblin
- Barbarian Group
- BBH Labs
- Big Spaceship
- Big Spaceship – Think
- Bud Caddell – What Consumes Me
- Creative Applications
- David Armano
- Edward Boches
- Faris Yakob
- Ffffound
- Gareth Kay
- Howard Rheingold
- Iain Tait – Crack Unit
- idsgn
- Manuel Lima
- Mike Arauz
- Neil Perkin – Only Dead Fish
- Noah Brier
- Not For Paper
- Paul Davis – Our illustrator
- TED Blog
- Undercurrent
- We Are Social