ClothesSourcing, Going Boxless, Windfarms, Design Schools and Your Own Adventure Decoded

Some thoughtful reading from this morning – time spent trying to wash from my mouth the bitter taste of ABC’s two-hour homage to Milton by way of Coppola-in-the-jungle ((I am referring, of course, to last evening’s LOST season premiere))…all to Aloe Blacc’s terrific Shine Through:

Nuisance Machines

Nuisance Machines by British design student Andrew Friend are devices that provoke a reaction from users by dripping dye on their clothes, interrupting their conversations or slapping them on their heels as they walk along a corridor, as triggered in real-time by business data.

(via Dezeen  » Blog Archive  » Nuisance Machines by Andrew Friend)

Geoff Livingston on Evading Accountability

From Valeria Maltoni’s interview with Geoff Livingston this week on Conversation Agent:
Social media had an opportunity to make more companies accountable, but by and large, companies are evading this call to responsibility. I question whether social in corporate America can get the job done, and instead am starting to look at other ways to affect [...]

Contemplating the Soft Infrastructure of Social Media

There are some really intriguing underpinnings of an infrastructure meme at the moment, which I’ll attempt to coalesce around some ongoing social media trends. Please bear with me:
Deepak Kumar, a consultant with the ICFAI Journal of Infrastructure, outlines the distinctions between ‘hard infrastructure’ and ’soft infrastructure’ in these terms1:
(The) infrastructure sector is divided into hard [...]

Snowboards, Interesting, Napping and the Progress of Batteries

Three loosely-related notes on a theme:
A colleague and I were discussing this morning the relative stagnation of snowboard design in recent years. By this we meant, of course, the structural design of the boards themselves, and not the graphics (which are often fantastic to behold). Both of us are old enough to recall the swallowtail, [...]

If You Can’t Tell Who the Cool Kids Are, You’re Probably Not One of Them…

Julian Cole outlines a list of common traits for cool kids – those most likely to start (or ignite) trends in the digital space:

Cool kids have a lot of friends.
Cool kids will pick up technology really fast.
Cool kids hang out with cool kids.
Cool kids can remix.
Cool kids rock at asynchronous conversation.
Cool kids meet offline.
Cool kids [...]

Two Toys: Trading Up vs. Trending Up

Two equally-addictive toys I’m playing with this week:
1. The Brand Asset Valuator: Some of you will be familiar with this particular gadget from Y&R (or at least from John Gerzema of Y&R). The Flex application allows you to compare the momentum of up to three brands simultaneously along four distinct criteria:

Energized Differentiation – the measure [...]

Baseball as a Mall Store and Getting Over Feedback

Two more seemingly-unrelated articles, with a thread in common:
ESPN’s Buster Olney, among the best sportswriters in America, and my favorite source for baseball analysis, wrote a poignant piece last Saturday – before the news of Alex Rodriguez’ positive drug test broke – in which he argues that it is a business imperitive that baseball players [...]

links for 2009-01-15

Behavior Change Is The New Game Change
David Armano on the real goal.

Ghostwriting, Social Media and Ethics | Marketing Profs Daily Fix Blog
Beth Harte considers the notion of having others do our social media legwork for us.

TED Blog: What do consumers want? Joseph Pine on TED.com
Joseph Pine thinks selling authenticity is tough. I'll say.

Conversation Agent: Two [...]

Late, and still inspired

Inspired by a handful of others who have posted personal aspirations for the New Year, a list of my own1:
1. To strike up unexpected conversation. I’ve no qualms about the simple fact that I’ve never had occasion to meet most of those with whom I interact on Twitter, and yet it would never occur to [...]