Posts tagged technology
avin narasimhan
often rambling, but hopefully always interesting
#newpresentation: Brands And Digital Culture— It Doesn’t Have To Suck
(Full disclosure, the professor in question who invited me is my father, and I’m still not sure if I deserved the privilege on my own merits. But was glad to get the chance to meet and speak with some future clients).
WeTransfer Just May Be A Worthy Drop.io Successor
Not too long after the announcement broke that facebook had acquired drop.io (and subsequently the latter would no longer be accepting new drops), I along with many others felt a bit frustrated by the sudden lack of (good) file transfer options. Have never really had a good experience with Yousendit, so that didn’t really seem like an option. But then WeTransfer quietly bubbled up, without a lot of fanfare, but seemed intriguing. After trying it out several times, I’m starting to wonder if the experience may be even a little bit better than drop.io (though I do miss my drops, I won’t lie). Love the dead simple UI and transfer process, and 2GB free limit is pretty impressive. Have been using it several times a week for the past month and a half or so, and have yet to have any issues. And I love that they took the time to think about adding an extra element of design to the background. Small detail, but nice touch. Should you require something a bit more heavyweight, there’s also a paid, yearly subscription option:
In case you’re wondering, no I don’t work for WeTransfer in any capacity, but have been happy enough with it (particularly given the surprising lack of suitable post drop.io alternatives) that I figure it’s worth pointing anyone else to it who may still be looking for a good service. Anyone else have other options they’ve turned to in a post drop.io world? Or any WeSI’m all for keeping options open.
Pre-Holiday Reading: Most Contagious 2010
The latest installment of Contagious Magazine’s ‘Most Contagious’ is out, and always is full of inspiring ideas and work. Particularly enjoyed section 08 on Gaming, and not surprisingly, Angry Birds gets its fair share of time (hate it or love it, it’s hard to deny that it’s taken hold of an unhealthy amount of many people’s time).
Full pres is worth a few minutes of your time, and definitely one to keep on hand for quick reference.
via slideshare.netPre-Holiday Reading: Most Contagious 2010
The latest installment of Contagious Magazine’s ‘Most Contagious’ is out, and always is full of inspiring ideas and work. Particularly enjoyed section 08 on Gaming, and not surprisingly, Angry Birds gets its fair share of time (hate it or love it, it’s hard to deny that it’s taken hold of an unhealthy amount of many people’s time).
Full pres is worth a few minutes of your time, and definitely one to keep on hand for quick reference.
via slideshare.net#techdream: The Future of Screens In 2014
via gizmodo.com
This is a truly amazing video put together by the good people at The Astonishing Tribe on what our future screens might look and act like. I’m now going to be dissatisfied with every piece of technology I buy until it comes close to resembling this. Thanks a lot guys.
But seriously, well worth a watch, pretty incredible to imagine the possibilities. And reminds you how much more ubiquitous information could possibly be in our lives. Great stuff.
The Bucket Brigade Has Been Funded. Congrats @bud_caddell
Not much more to say than what I already have. Awesome. 
Last Minute Airport Movie Downloading Made Easier
Just noticed this for the first time. While boarding a flight in Portland earlier this week, caught this smart and seemingly simple idea near the gate. Best I can tell, it appeared to be the product of a company called FSH, and surprisingly enough not connected to Netflix, Blockbuster or any other more widespread rental/streaming company (or in blockbusters case, perhaps not that surprising after all). Anyway, basically it’s a small kiosk at the gate, not some elaborate ‘entertainment’ store somewhere far off in the terminal, that allows you to wire up your laptop and grab movies for the flight in case you forgot to ready yourself with iTunes content/airport wifi not cooperating/etc.
Easy step by step process for the traveler who can barely see straight, let alone deal with a kiosk that isn’t built to just plug in and work.
Sure, not the most high tech option, or prettiest tech in the world to be sure, but really as long as it works, that’s not really a major (or at the least, not the only) criteria at that point in time and for that need.
Good way to make the miserable flight experience a little better for the weary biz traveler who forgot to prep themselves with entertainment. Nothing flashy, no major show about it, just simple idea and simple tech that makes the flying experience better. Not much more to ask for. And a smart idea on Portland Airport’s part, rather than waiting for Netflix’s seemingly slow airport expansion of Redbox, or Blockbusters forthcoming airport kiosk system.
Google Upgrades To A Decision Engine. Your Move, Bing
By now you may have seen that Google has begun rolling out a slew of new features and additions to it’s search functionality worldwide. Though they may have been in the works for a bit, timing wise it seems like a direct response to some of Bing’s claims of superiority. Personally I was never blown away by Bing to begin with, but given Google’s track record of innovation, I would expect this to be just the first in a string of updates.
Very curious to see how msoft responds (and what the response to the response will be).
Post-Conference Hangover: Thoughts on (half of) ROFLcon
This past weekend was my first time at ROFLcon, and it was a fantastic event. Have to caveat this post by saying that, unfortunately, I was only able to attend day 2 of ROFLcon due to a rather crazy week at the office. But half a conference was absolutely still worth the price of admission. Met some great people, saw some ridiculously smart folks on panels throughout the day (the highlight was far and away the final panel on Mainstreaming of Web Culture, but more on that later). My note taking consisted of my stream of consciousness tweets of interesting quotes throughout the day until my glorious iPhone battery gave out on me, but I’ll still do my best to recap some of the themes and interesting bits that arose from the various panels on day 2. After sorting through twitter feeds from day 1, feel like at least some common themes were shared, but anyone who can help add some more context from Day 1, feel free to chime in (particularly disappointed to have missed the keynote as well as the stellar panel on Race in web culture). Each of these deserves more time and thought, but just want to get them down while it’s fresh. In no particular order… Protecting the core of web culture.While the notion that web culture and mainstream culture are increasingly becoming the same was a common theme through the day, I also feel like ROFLcon is one of the last remaining events that brings together the core of web culture as it was intended to be. Fierce protection of anonymity, openness and lack of control, spontaneity and unpredictability. As many of these elements or ideals of web culture are becoming more fuzzy or going away altogether due to mainstreaming, ROFLcon serves as an enduring reminder that there is value in remembering where it all started and why. While there was a sense that mainstreaming of web culture is, in the end, probably a good thing because it places those who are leading it in a more prominent position of power, a strong desire permeated through to not completely lose what has always made it special. A quote from Ben Huh (one of many fantastic soundbites during the day) of icanhazcheezburger fame, captures the overall shift, and part of the reason why there is potential for dilution:
The increasing supremacy of copying over creation.
Adrian wrote about this notion a few weeks ago, and it was perhaps best brought out in the panel on Pop meets Internet culture, with Dan Walsh (garfield minus garfield), Randy Hayes and Xavier Nazario (The Juggernaut, Bitch), Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda (Chad Vader), and moderated by Rob Bricken of Topless Robot. Among many things, the panel discussed how copyright laws today seem to be out of step with where culture is at (ie the booming popularity of mashup and remix culture), highlighting the need for updating antiquated plagiarism standards and definitions. Similar to what many of us in the agency world have been kicking around for some time— and which Gareth highlighted nicely in his recent transformers talk— it’s not so much what we do (or what the original content was) that matters, but rather what people do to it, and what further content is created from the original ideas. So much of digital culture is about building off of what came before, paying homage to other creators and keeping elements of that original creation alive by putting a unique spin on it— it doesn’t make sense to punish those who would choose to do so. Captured nicely in this quote (though unfortunately I failed to capture who exactly on the panel said it).
Marketers overthink the shit out of digital culture and ideas.
Perhaps a bit of an obvious one, but worth mentioning again (and again) either way. As the panels rolled by and the major successes in internet culture gave their POV on what they think works or doesn’t work, it was all the more clear that marketers, as often happens with things the marketing world doesn’t quite understand, overcomplicate and overthink everything about digital culture in misguided attempts to simply have their brand ‘be a part of it’. It’s so easy to forget that at the heart of any technology is still the underlying human desire to share and connect, regardless of where or how it happens, online or off. We get so bogged down in brand objectives, core attributes, tonality etc that we lose sight of the need to simply start with what people actually want to do and work back from there. We often end up with ideas that don’t quite fit in the broader context, and feel every bit like a brand trying to fake its way into a culture that it doesn’t understand. Moot of 4chan, though he was speaking in broader terms than brand initiatives, dropped a quote that works quite well:
The lines are being drawn: Facebook vs Web Culture.
A bit on the lighter side, one of the other facebook themes that arose was the notion that it has essentially dumbed-down the social web for the masses, much the way AOL did back in the 90s. To that end, can’t forget one of the most memorable facebook quotes of the evening from Ben Huh:
Sidebar: where were all the iPads?
Not really a theme of the conference content, but something anecdotal that took me a bit by surprise. Over the past month or two I’ve debated many times about making the plunge and buying a first gen iPad, despite the fact I know it will only infuriate me when the 2G comes out at half the price and twice as fast. So far, I’ve resisted. And what truly struck me was the fact that, at one of the geekiest and most tech crazy conferences around, I could count the number of iPads I saw on one hand (maybe one and a half). I have to imagine that after the same amount of time had passed back at the launch of the iPhone, a conference like this would have been overflowing with people on their iPhones and comparing notes. The fact that this wasn’t the case was quite odd— particularly given todays announcement that 1 million iPads have been sold, hitting that mark faster than the iPhone. Perhaps it signals a shift in who buys the latest Apple invention? Interestingly enough, while I don’t have a witty quote from ROFLcon to go along with this, as I was writing I caught this bit from @aplusk— love him or hate him, he sort of hit the sentiment spot on (particularly as it relates to those who want to push internet culture forward):
Surely this is not a comprehensive list of things to take away from ROFLcon…
But captures most of what I found to be interesting and unique. Can’t wait for next year and the next iteration of what is a fantastic conference borne out of a desire to celebrate the greatness of web culture. Big, big thanks to @timhwang and crew for putting it all together. If you need more ROFL goodness, troll back through some of the feeds (including Saturday night’s afterparty), and catch some of the pix here (courtesy of laughingsquid).
Foursquare explained in < 2 minutes
via howcast.com
Smart stuff from Howcast, absolutely perfect for the next time someone tells you they don’t get foursquare. Reminds me of a slightly more geeked-out Common Craft/Plain English series.
Caught via @bmorrissey