These my micropostings and bookmarks – June 20th through July 13th:

• Social Shopping Gets Personal: Lucky Magazine Partners With ThisNext – Lydia Dishman – Style, Inc. – Forbes – An interesting development linking a ‘curating’, style-hunting and aggregating magazine with a style-surfacing, member-as-retailer site, ThisNext.
• Armourtex Ltd : Cycles – Power-coating bike frames in Hackney. As used by Al.
• Among Six Types Of Failure, Only A Few Help You Innovate | Co.Design – What an interesting and refreshing take on the ‘failure is good’ mantra.

  Enumerating different types of failure on a ‘failure spectrum’ is a good idea. 

  I would extend the thinking though to assess how predictable the failure was. Rather like the difference between manslaughter and murder, the determination is based upon intention, reasonable foreseeability (?) and levels of negligence or omission.

  The difference between ‘experimental testing’, recklessness and wilful, non-learning neglect should be considered as part of what makes a “good failure”.

• Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D – Yahoo! Finance –
• 3M Visual Attention Service – Eyetracking from 3M

These my micropostings and bookmarks – May 20th through May 30th:

• United Colors of Benetton – Official Blog – – “United Blogs of Benetton” – a nice new step in co-ordinated social media/contributions.
• All My Purchases Sorts Wad of E-ceipts From Square Users, Apple Stores, More | Fast Company – Nice service – scanning email to find receipts and then keeping them in an accessible ‘folder’.
• MS Optical Super Triplet Perar 3.5/35 Mark II | japan exposures – Wow. Handmade, short-run, exotic folding lens… What’s not to like?
• The Real Cost of Social Media (Infographic) – Drawing on some good sources there are some nuggets here of the costs of social media activity and some outline returns. Useful for making some points more visually appealing than a raw bullet point!
• “Capability and Maturity” – editorial from the May 2011 edition of InternetRetailing Magazine | Ian Jindal – This is my editorial from internetretailing.net.

  I mention the MSc in Internet Retailing.

  Applications for the MSc are now being accepted for September 2011 start: information at https://econsultancy.com/uk/training/qualifications/retailing. Open evenings on 26 May (Manchester) and 14 June (London) can be booked online . You will have a chance to chat with us, the academic staff from MMU and the Econsultancy trainers, as well as speaking with current students from the first and second intakes.

These my micropostings and bookmarks – April 12th through May 16th:

• Karl Falk Watches l Models – A singlehanded “einzeiger” watch. 

  Like old clocks that did not use a minute hand, this watch gives reading accuracy to within a couple of minutes via a red-tipped single hour hand.

  Neat idea, but without a sweep hand, date, and better granularity then it’s more a design statement than anything. 

• YouTube – Existential Star Wars (In French) –
• WVIL, A Glimpse At The Future Of Photography After Cameras Die [Video] | Co.Design – Interesting and well-thought-through example of how photography can escape its historical formfactors. As a committed Leica or simple SLR fan I like the simplicity and “hand-ful” heft of the established format, but given the extent to which cameraphones have opened the practice of photography and development from a sensor ‘chassis’ to link with some prime glass has got to be of interest.

  Sony NEX? RED digital movie cameras? The trend’s already in train.

• The street still rules for shopping » Yanidel Street Photography – Great ‘street’ photo, with a juxtaposition between massive brand and individual seller, between the promise of the ‘web’ and the scale of the personal, “analog” seller.

  This image was made for powerpoint presentations – I’m trying to resist out of respect for the photographer, but boy is it a challenge… 😉

• 10 Best Ad Campaigns “Life’s too short for the wrong job” (Pic) | Daily Dawdle –

These my micropostings and bookmarks – March 8th through March 30th:

• Tell-all telephone | Data Protection | Digital | ZEIT ONLINE – Wonderful data visualisation of months of mobile phone use – movements, texts, calls – overlaid on an animated map over time. I particularly like the columnar, dense way that each day is shown. Via @fastcompany.
• Microsoft Wants You to Control Your Phone by Touching Yourself | Fast Company – “Skinput” – love it.
• Twitter isn’t very social: study | Econsultancy – “50% of all content consumed on Twitter is generated by only 20,000 users.”

  This could mark the change from ‘conversational’ to ‘monetisable’.

• Optimizing a Screen for Mobile Use (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox) – Lovely example of ruthless simplification and device-specific polishing. I love the phrase “killing time is a killer app for mobile”.
• What does the future hold for f-commerce? | Econsultancy –

These my micropostings and bookmarks – February 20th through March 7th:

• Photographic Science: Exposure – Moret than you ever wanted to know about lumens, lux, flux and exposure.
• Method: Eight Things Stand-Up Comedy Teaches Us About Innovation | Co.Design –
• BBC – College of Production – College of Production –
• Owle Bubo HD Video Kit (iPhone 4) – Interesting, but getting to be the same size as a compact professional camcorder… Looks like it’s either unadorned iPhone chic (ie windy, distorted and shaky) or pro quality that’s bulky…
• Digital remit advice – Committee of Advertising Practice – Summary of the impact of the ASA’s new remit to include user-contributed reviews within its assessment of a brand’s marketing activities. 
• https://patterns.ideo.com/images/uploads/pdf/patterns_vol3_shanzhai_final.pdf – Lovely piece by Ideo, considering the Chinese “Shanzhai” manufacturing/pirating as a ‘design pattern’ and as an open source model for innovation.

  Nice examples, well presented and a lovely design too.