Archive for January, 2010

  • SXSW’ward, ho!

    Austin

    Big news, little doggies…

    Flights have been booked, passports renewed, and Tim’s brought his ten-gallon out of mothballs. Yes, that’s right — Made by Many, the entire company, is going to South by Southwest! Read full post

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    Sara Williams By Sara Williams

    29th January 10

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     Made by Many

  • A transatlantic breakfast summit

    This morning I took part in a transatlantic blogger meet-up in the Martini Lounge (alas, not a one in sight, though it was 9am) at the new Arch Hotel.

    The event was organised by our friend Jeremy at Transatlanticism, a New York-based organisation we’ve gotten to know through our work on Metrotwin.

    Metrotwin is about creating connections, through people and places, between New York and London. This morning’s chat delivered hugely on that premise, so much so that I thought I would introduce some new additions to my transatlantic universe.

    Urban Junkies — met the very stylish Taryn; love the site… both the London and Barcelona versions.

    Hint Magazine — Lee Carter’s baby is one of the original online fashion magazines.

    Gadling is one of AOL’s travel sites and is stacked with great content about New York, London and beyond. Contributor Annie was on hand this morning.

    The Brooklyn Nomad — author Andrew is a lifelong New Yorker and seems to encounter his share of unruly characters. Entertaining.

    Matador Network is a motive-driven travel site that has me thinking more about why I travel; author Sarah, just in from Mexico, has me thinking I need some sun.

    Refinery29 — met Associate Editor Connie; cruised through the fashion/lifestyle site ‘just for a minute’; am now hopelessly addicted.

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    Sara Williams By Sara Williams

    28th January 10

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     New connections

    Social Web

  • The Nike+ for … sleeping

    There’s a pretty cool iPhone app that I’ve been trying out for a few days nights which seems to capture the imagination of everyone I talk/Twitter/Facebook to.

    It’s called Sleep Cycle and it purports to analyse and track your sleep patterns and then wake you at the optimum time in the morning (ie at the lightest sleep phase. You can check it out here (or purchase directly from iTunes for £0.59).

    You set it up by placing your iPhone on the mattress (next to the pillow but not covered by it), and then the app uses the accelerometer to measure tiny movements in the mattress as you toss, turn and generally shift around.

    Here’s my sleep snapshot from 3 nights ago:

    sleepgraph2425

    I woke up feeling pretty awful, certain that it had been a bad night’s sleep, and Read full post

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    Justin McMurray By Justin McMurray

    28th January 10

    8 comments

     Social Web

    innovation

    mobile

  • 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.

    surface

    ‘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”.

    endwarminorityreportesque

    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.

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    Mike Laurie By mike

    28th January 10

    1 comment

     Uncategorized

  • Delightful punctuation

    As an erstwhile pedant and ex-employee of a major dictionary publisher, I have had my fair share of run-ins with punctuation. So I chuckled to see this brilliantly illustrated explanation of how to use the semicolon.

    The Oatmeal - How to use a semicolon

    Hairy Knuckles

    Bears have pause

    By the way, if you’re looking for something to delight you on any given day, head over to Maria Popova’s site of wonder Brain Pickings (or follow her on twitter), which is where I stumbled across this little gem.

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    Charlotte Hillenbrand By Charlotte Hillenbrand

    28th January 10

    2 comments

     design

  • New Year resolutions? How are they going?

    It used to be fags and booze that people gave up as a New Year resolution. 2010 was the first year I heard lots of people claiming they wanted to give up social networking. Fragile idiots.

    Between Christmas and New Year I saw quite a few tweets from people quietly waving goodbye for a while (the correct social media terminology here is a “Twitter hiatus“).

    Stephen Fry announced he was having a rest – in order to get some real work done. And then there was the Web 2.0 suicide machine. Oh – and a rash of articles and blog posts about social media being various shades of addictive, boring and deadly (some of which we’ve talked about here). At times it looked like the long-awaited backlash might finally break… the dwindling skeptical rump of luddites *soooo* want this to happen – but it hasn’t. A similar thing happened last year, and probably the year before that.

    On the other hand – I noticed that lots of other people resolved to look after their blog, or tweet, more/better rather than less in 2010.

    I guess you know something has really arrived when people start giving it up because they’re enjoying it too much.

    I also predict that they’ll be back – just like the smokers and boozers – with their tails between their legs. Losers.

    2 Comments

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    Tim Malbon By Tim Malbon

    27th January 10

    2 comments

     Uncategorized

  • Buzzing around Made by Many: January 2010

    This post is a sort of modified version of my ‘Stuff that’s floating around the office’ posts that I used to do earlier. With our increased use of Twitter, I realised that all of us at Made by Many were tweeting interesting links individually rather than sending them around the office. So I’ve turned to Twitter to aggregate some of the best links as fodder for this refreshed series of posts. They’ll probably reveal what a diverse bunch we are – and we like to think our diversity is reflected in our work!

    1. Star Wars Action Figures Doing What They Do Best: At Made by Many, some of us have a bit of an obsession with Star Wars, and that includes someone like me who isn’t a great fan of the movie series but is immensely amused by the entertainment that comes from objects based on them, like the Lego Death Star (only £274.99) and this website.

    2. Unhappy Hipsters: Why do people look so sad in Dwell magazines? This is one of the most creative things I’ve seen lately! So much for picture-perfect homes. We live in the REAL world, people!

    3. This is the title of a typical incendiary blog post: You know what they’re like – they end with sentences that do this:

    Excerpt:

    This sentence invites readers to respond freely and without constraint as long as those responses fall within certain parameters. This sentence consists of an Internet in-joke that doesn’t quite fit the topic.

    4. MagCloud: Publish your own printed magazine. Can this help to revive the dying art of print journalism?

    5. LG Unveils Flexible Electronic Newspaper: It’s a newspaper. It’s electronic. And it bends!

    6. Simply Noise: Some people NEED noise. For reasons like enhancing privacy, going to sleep, blocking distractions, masking tinnitus, configuring audio equipment, and soothing migraines, among others. No, I didn’t make those up myself.

    7. Where Does My Money Go?: You’re a taxpayer. (If you aren’t, kindly proceed to the next item in this list as this will not be of use to you). Don’t you want to know where your money goes, in an understandable way? For the layman (i.e anyone who isn’t a chartered accountant who wants to entertain himself by digging into the details where they are likely to find worms), this data visualization is a rather useful glance at what’s happening to their hard-earned bits-of-paper-with-Queen-Elizabeth’s-head-printed-on-them.

    8. Inbox Zero: Merlin Mann is writing a book about ‘how to reclaim your email, your attention, and your life’, and these photos are related to that. I think.

    9. The Nerd Venn Diagram: Are you a geek, dork or dweeb? (via Laughing Squid). I always liked Venn diagrams in school.

    nerd-venn-diagram

    10. Microsoft Office, Version Bland.0: A designer re-imagines the Microsoft Office logos. Worth a quick look, for some design entertainment.

    11. Next Nature: Because this is a beautiful-looking blog that has an ambitious task. What exactly does it mean, I hear you ask:

    Next nature is the nature caused by human culture. That may sound like a contradiction, but really, it isn’t. Our technological world has become so intricate and uncontrollable that it has become a nature of its own. This means we have to re-investigate our notion of nature.

    12. Sleep Talkin’ Man: Because it is HILARIOUS. And we like laughing here at Made by Many. It increases our life span.

    13. Amanda Wachob Tattoo: If you’re considering a tattoo, you may want to look at her work. (We’re a bit rad like that).

    14. The Feltron Annual Report: Most of you have probably seen this already, but for those who haven’t, I’m sure you’ll find the intricate details of Nicholas Feltron’s life interesting. OK I’m kidding – it’s visualized in a very detailed way as well.

    15. Slam Ball: Words cannot describe this new sport that seems to have been created by combining basketball with the trampoline.

    That’s all for now, folks!

    1 Comment

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    Anjali Ramachandran By Anjali Ramachandran

    27th January 10

    1 comment

     Made by Many

    Social Web

  • Creation, curation and social contract

    People are sharing stuff online more than ever before. The popularity of services such as bit.ly, ShareThis and even Twitter are evidence of this.

    You often hear people bandy around an “80/20 rule” (see Pareto principle) where in a social environment, 20% of people will contribute 80% of the content, be it through forum or blog posts, new topics, videos etc. It’s horribly over-simplistic but it’s a tidy rule of thumb. It’s a good way to remember that you will only ever get a small number of folk actually contributing anything to a community. The theory being that if you can get the 20% then the 80% might follow. It’s been around for a long time and you can see patterns of this in anything that exhibits long tail behaviour. It’s supported by Forrester’s highly useful Social Technographics® ladder of behaviors, which is worth grokking if you have the time.

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    Mike Laurie By mike

    27th January 10

    3 comments

     Uncategorized

  • Objectified: giving objects memories

    This time last year I was deep in third year project stress at university.  Given the guideline that we could do ‘anything’ there was initially quite a bit of mental flailing.  Finally however, I landed on an area of personal interest – memory, what it means to us and how it is changing in the digital age.

    Why Memory?
    Memory maketh the man – we are who we are thanks to our experiences.  They’re sometimes comforting, sad, traumatic and always make good anecdotes.  We obviously don’t carry all our memories in crystal clear form around in our head, but they’re there, lurking – all they need is a trigger to bring them out.

    The old cliches of the smell of fresh cut grass awakening memories of never-ending, hot summer days or a song unleashing a flood of emotions about a long lost love are all true.  Sights, sounds, touch, smells are all powerful triggers for the mind.

    Digital effects
    More and more of these triggers are becoming digitised – Facebook albums, Youtube videos, blogs, libraries of music, the list goes on.  A simmering, unorganised mass of triggers, clues and  stimuli to wade through.  Brains remember all (in theory anyway), they just need the right trigger, the key to unlock a memory.  In the digital world, there is no focus to these, no way in except clicking aimlessly through Facebook albums and waiting for whatever memory hits first.

    The project
    Possessing a bad memory and an unshaken belief in the good of tech (Skynet aside…), I looked to technology to provide solutions to help my brain out.  This combined with a passing interest in my roots, vintage possessions and a childhood visiting too many museums, led to the first seeds of an idea.  Using objects as a trigger point for memories.  An idea I ran with to try and create something that would benefit not just me, but have real utility for a community of users and have the ability to grow and adapt to suit their needs.

    Read full post

    16 Comments

    16
    Tara Bloom By Tara

    27th January 10

    16 comments

     Uncategorized

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