Archive for September, 2009
News on the Blu-ray front is usually about upcoming releases and new Blu-ray players about to hit the mareket. Somewhat surprising but not entirely so was the news that “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” appears among the best sellers in Blu-ray titles. It also is high on the list of top pre-orders. This is interesting not only because it’s a six-episode television series, but because the series hasn’t aired yet and there will be full episodes of the show Online.
Yellowstone
It’s probably a testament to the quality of the Blu-ray format that people want to watch this documentary in all its glory. Of course the National Parks, from Acadia to Grand Canyon to Yosemite are a magnificent subject area for documentary exploration and especially so for Blu-ray. As John Muir once said, the parks are “Nature’s sublime wonderlands.” The documentary makes the case that while European wonders tend to be the great castles once owned by aristocrats, America’s National Parks belong to all of us. Of course we also have Graceland and other mansions once owned by barons of some sort or the other.
Yosemite
As it turns out Blu-ray has numerous earth-friendly titles among it 461 documentaries. There is “Wild Pacific,” “Planet Earth,” “Over Alaska,” and more. And “National Parks” is only one of several Ken Burns titles. Some day in the future Ken Burns could very well be the subject of a Blu-ray title for his style and his role in pop-culture. Burns is known for filming his subject matter at dusk or dawn, giving them a distinctive look. The “Ken Burns Effect” of zooming in on subjects in a still photograph and panning from one face to the other, is in use in Apple’s iPhoto and iMovie software and appears in the cover art of the latest iPhone. But his hairstyle is another story. Either way, if you can’t actually get to all 400 hundred National Parks, Blu-ray could be the next best thing.
For the longest time digital photographs were arrested from development, imprisoned in desktops and laptops old and new, gathering digital dust on portable hard drives, compact discs and flash drives. Then came dedicated photo printers aimed at remedying this problem. While various brands of photo printers are recognized for their numerous technological advancements, Canon has changed the game with a printer that talks. Make that, a printer that gives “voice guidance.” For everyone who hates to read directions, the Canon SELPHY ES40 talks you through the printing process at the push of a button.
A few savvy, tech users have taken issue with the idea that such a product assumes a certain level of unfamiliarity with the workings of technology. Who needs the talking printer? By this time printers are already user-friendly enough. This talking thing borders on downright flirtation, and who needs a flirting printer? Okay, they didn’t say flirtation. Either way, the folks at Canon have said they believe consumers are looking for ease-of-use and as such, the talking printer is a fine way to address this. No word on whether the printer goes into “recalculating” mode when you make the wrong move.
Beyond the talking point, the ES40 claims include, printing in 16.4 million colors with photo quality that will last 100 years. And it is fast. A postcard sized print in less than a minute. It prints from several storage devices, computer optional and it’s light enough to be carried around. Another Canon printer designed with portability in mind is the SELPHY CP79 – shouldn’t these have more creative names? CP79 comes with a basket. Yes, a basket for carrying ink cartridges, paper, adapters and what not. All of which means, that for a couple hundred dollars, your photo-printer can be your new party-animal buddy – if your idea of partying includes printing the evidence.
Wisconsin has one, Illinois has five. But nary a one is found in Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas and Montana. Is it a bird? A Plane? Neither. It’s a B Corporation. And while B can stand for a lot of things, in this case it means “beneficial.” A “B” Corporation is a new brand of corporation that adheres to the oft-used phrase, “Do well by doing good.” A true B corporation is good to the earth, and by extension all the creatures in it. The founders of this style of business believe that it is important to distinguish between those who are truly doing good deeds from those who are just good at marketing the idea that they are doing good - in order to do well without actually doing good.
The idea started in Silicon Valley, of all places, in 2007 with one of the founders being Andrew Kassoy who previously worked for the company that managed the financial empire of Michael Dell. Initially 21 companies signed on and now they claim, “190 B Corporations, $1.0 Billion Marketplace, 31 Industries.” In order to become a B corporation, a company must score at least 80 points on a 200 point scale through a survey administered on the B Corporation’s web site. But for those who think they can change back to the old ways of doing business after signing up, there is an audit process to keep everyone honest.
Leaders of B corporations believe that the marketplace consists of a diverse range of customers who, especially in today’s economy, have a certain set of beliefs about the environment, animals and humans. And they spend money accordingly. The B companies care more about communities than shareholders. Though shareholders are owners and owners are thought to be rulers – legally. The Greyston Bakery is a B corporation which makes brownies for Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream. It employs people with little training who were formerly homeless, incarcerated or faced other adversity. In Chicago, the Pivotal company plans events that are “exciting, edgy, innovative and fun,” while also being “lean, mean and green.”
Recipe for socially conscious brownies.
This week, people who define themselves as world leaders, gathered to discuss solutions to the world’s problems. And it isn’t clear if any were found. But out there, far away from the halls of the United Nations, ordinary folk are putting their design skills to good use. Among them is German architect, Anna Heringer who designed mud buildings in Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest countries. No one knows whether Heringer’s buildings will survive the ravages of the next major monsoon but it’s nice to know she’s using her design skills to try to change the world.
It is true that mud buildings have been around probably for as long as humans have been building shelters but Heringer’s design goes so beyond what we usually think of this genre. First of all, the buildings don’t look like mud. Secondly they are sturdy and moisture resistant. Using a combination of earth, straw and bamboo along with a technique called ferro cementing, the designer takes advantage of local materials and environmentally friendly construction methods to achieve a beautiful finished building. But it’s not all about mud buildings. The 2009 Open Architecture Challenge is urging designers around the world to make a difference through architecture.
Would you avoid this?
It's a creative design for speed control
Blackberry mailbox?
Norwegian postbox
Postbox is software that claims to make it easier to organize your e-mails. Pictures of the new baby. The fifty e-mails for that key, client presentation. Specs for the new product launch. Organize and shine with Postbox. Now with their newest updates, Postbox is getting props for its advanced search capabilities that allow you a greater variety of search options such as, by keyword. It also allows you to browse web pages without leaving your e-mail program. An e-mail from a Facebook or Twitter friend will display their profile – which could be annoying if you don’t want to see this each time.
The big drawback of Postbox is that it is not free and it doesn’t come with your computer. It costs about $40 plus more if you get add-ons. If you have a thousand e-mails and you would like to organize them in order to deal with one topic at a time, Postbox will probably make your life easier. But for those who like the randomness of regular e-mail and enjoy being easily distracted by department store coupons or the newest Flixster movie news, all this organization could be annoying. Plus you would have no excuse for not finding stuff.
In the age of social media, what gets you to check your Facebook page more frequently? For many people that’s Parking Wars, an Online game that is thought to have generated hundreds of millions of page views. On any given day, say the Parking Wars developers, about five percent of users are active on most Facebook apps. But for PW, around 30 to 40 percent of its registered users interact with it on any given day. It is said to compel people to get up at midnight to check their “streets.” And really, that’s for the people who go to bed before midnight.
While most games require players to be on Facebook at the same time as their competitors, Area/Code created the game to engage people who are visiting their Facebook pages at different times. This asynchronous interaction has been much discussed but has not yielded much in the form of apps or games. In PW, players “earn money” by parking on other players streets and also by ticketing people parked illegally on their street. In other words the key is to be vigilant at different times, which leads to interaction with Facebook or whatever social media, more frequently. According to Slavin, parking activity increases around lunch time and people rush to park on a street where the owner is on vacation.
But Parking Wars is also about creative advertising. The game came into existence when the Arts & Entertainment network hired Area/Code to create a game to advertise their show about the world of parking meter monitors and impound lots. It led to a successful launch and now the folks at Area/Code are said to be working on iPhone apps and more games that involve asynchronous interaction. Slavin is convinced that games have replaced other media such as television news watching or newspaper reading that once consumed our grandparents’ leisure time. We’re all eagerly awaiting new games to play.
For anyone who thinks social networking has run out of ideas, there’s an app for that. Huzzah! Huzzah! Here comes CENTRL. And just for the record, that’s not a spelling error. Quietly making its way around the virtual social scene, Centrl is a free application, not just for the iPhone but for Blackberry and Android smart phones as well. It is said to be, “the first location-based messaging system,” that also interacts with your other social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Friendster and others. Once you and your friends, real or imagined, download Centrl you can follow each other around in real time and chat as you go. Choose only a few designated insiders or add a world of “friends.”
Other than just broadcasting your location and conversing with your friends, Centrl also helps you orient yourself to the world around you, wherever you may happen to be. Like Urbanspoon for the iPhone that was all the rage when it came out last year, Centrl lets you know what restaurants are nearby. Given the restaurants that actually come up, it seems like these restaurants may be advertising with Centrl, which isn’t a bad thing. How will you really know if a business exists if it doesn’t advertise, right? But once you’ve found a place to eat, Centrl doesn’t desert you. It has other uses as well.
Centrl says it displays locally relevant information on an interactive map. The map is organized into layers of information such as people, favorite things or places, information on various sites, and deals for say, movie tickets. So if you were using Centrl the app in Central the park, you could click on the Wiki and learn that Central the park is the most visited in the U.S. with about 25 million visitors each year. Then you could take the train to Grand Central Station where you would realize that Grand Central the station is really the post office whereas, the train station is called Grand Central Terminal. This is precisely why we need apps to orient us.
When the general public finally accepted Post-it notes as the new big thing in office technological advancement, most of us accepted the yellow, three-inch rectangles and went about our business. Then came the folks who imagined different sizes and colors and various methods of customization. But others looked at the sticky note pads and decided there could be more. The little notes, which could just as easily have been called, “jot & jerk” notes, have now entered a new design incarnation as popular fruit shapes.
And yes, just like the original notes from the 3M Company, the fruit shaped notes are more expensive than the average scratch pad, especially if you’re the type that collects free scratch pads from hotel rooms. Still, form doesn’t always have to follow function and when people are charmed by a cute design they don’t care about spending a few more cents for it. Good news for marketers there. The new shapes also make it easier to give a practical gift without appearing to lack creativity.
Beyond sticky notes all sorts of objects are subject to interesting makeovers in the hands of artists. Someone looked at shelves and re-imagined the possibilities. Who said shelves should be horizontal? And though some question the practical value of putting books on shelves that look more like a wall puzzle, others like the artistic possibilities. Then there are the lamps made from, of all things, galvanized steel pipes. Okay, so these are not everyone’s idea of aesthetics but not everyone has the ability to take plumbing supplies and turn them into something else. As is to be expected not all creativity is charming to everyone but it’s always exciting when something unexpected enters the marketplace.
