Electronics

In contrast to IBM’s unimaginative predictions, Microsoft’s Future Visions videos are actually a bit inspiring, pointing to innovations in technology we’d be excited to see and use. Their “future vision on manufacturing” concept video brings to life many advances that seem rather intuitive: ubiquitous touchscreen interfaces, holographic video conferencing, virtual paper, 3-D guided assembly processes, and a host of other efficiency boosting technologies. Watch the video below:

[via 360design]

Team PSFK are pleased to announce our second book! At this time of year we’re supposed to produce a trends report for 2009. When we all sat down and chatted about it, we thought such a report would be so gloomy and rather depressing. We didn’t want to write about things like ‘trading down’ or ‘discreet consumption’! We wanted to talk about all the inspirational ideas we read and write about every day, we wanted to spread the positivity, we wanted to encourage you to re-ignite the world. Honestly.

So we created Good Ideas In 2009. The 80 page click-to-print book features nine Good Ideas and manifestations of them. We write about design, mobile, collaboration, digital, social media, the long term and much more. Click through to the Blurb site and you can get a sneak peek.

The books are $50 for the softback and $60 for the beautiful hardback. If you’re considering buying reports for your company or just books for your coffee table, we ask you to consider Good Ideas In 2009. We’re rather proud of it. We hope it inspires you yo make things better.

Good Ideas In 2009

LiveRail recently revealed their advertising platform for the iPhone, giving developers the option of adding short commercials to their applications, which would play whenever their app is launched. The positive spin: LiveRail gives developers the chance to monetize their apps without making them charge a premium price - meaning potentially more high-quality, free games and tools for iPhone users. The flipside: more ads, on our screens, all the time. LiveRail also implements a video streaming system that might not sit so well with Apple. As TechCrunch reports:

Apple takes a cut of all premium applications sold through its store, but it absorbs the bandwidth and hosting costs for free applications, charging the developers nothing. If these ads make the one-time payment model obsolete and more applications switch to “Free”, Apple may wind up changing this structure (or even ban ‘intrusive’ advertising entirely).

Developers can tag their apps with keywords to help pair them up with the most relevant ad content, and future versions of the platform will even offer location-based ad options. Watch the video below for more:

TechCrunch: LiveRail Lets iPhone Developers Put Commercials in Apps, Get Paid

The allure of the iPhone has unsurprisingly garnered the rapt attention of the advertising industry.  With 100 million App Store downloads since it launched and 90% of those downloads being free applications, ad support is a clear way for developers to balance profitability and popularity.  Currently, one of the iPhone’s most popular applications is Loopt, a location-based social networking program, but on different platforms and in early development it was sold to consumers for a few bucks.  Now, thanks to venture capital backing and further ad-revenue support, Loopt is hoping to be completely free.  A similar story can be told of iBeer, which is a simplistic fun application that turns the iPhone into a virtual beer, and more importantly, costs $2.99.  Carling caught onto this idea and released their own application, iPint, with the identical formula, but thanks to the corporate backing, provided it for free.  CNN reports on this growing trend:

“Consumers are drunk on free from the Internet,” says Peter Farago, vice president of marketing at Flurry, a startup that has developed an analytics tool that lets mobile developers track how people use their applications. Farago believes that paid-for mobile services will initially give way to ad-subsidized applications.

[via CNN]

There have been so many “Hello I’m A Mac” ads they’re not normally newsworthy but we noticed a new set via Digg this morning and thought that the Bean Counter was a rather good attack on Microsoft’s approach to the market:

Apple

The death knell for branding has come in the form of exclusive car companies selling their image to just about anything.  Everything from mundane Hummer shot glasses to arguably ridiculous NASCAR meat snacks.  When Ferrari first threw its name on a laptop, it was a novelty and spurred many bad jokes about owning an exotic car, but just when it was wearing off other companies jumped on board.

The most infamous case, as highlighted by the fantastic British car show Top Gear, was Bugatti’s £1500 cologne.  These other worst 10 products compiled by Jalopnik give cologne a run for their money.  The slumping auto market has always been fast to catch onto gimmicks, but when it comes to branding, consumer products should be off limits.  The addition of the brand name is a completely transparent marketing ploy that degrades not only the reputation of the car company, but the legitimacy of the product.

[via AdWeek]

The iPhone is clearly a media darling and the graphics user interface is already recognizable the world over.  Recently we stumbled on Teehan+Lax where you can download that iconic iPhone GUI in a Photoshop document to play around with.  It is a helpful resource when trying to visualize the layout of your latest App or even just to serve as a simple compass of a clean design. The PSD (PhotoShop Document) is in simple effect formats and is completely scalable, allowing for a flexible collection of iPhone visuals.  It includes all the readily identifiable icons like the smoked glass menu, the keypad and all purpose status bar.  For those less design oriented, it’s also a handy tool to photoshop a “slide to unlock” button on a picture of a loudmouth child or friend.

[via ISO50]

Marketing 2.0 guru (and PSFK speaker), Hugh MacLeod has spent some serious time analyzing the Digital Nomads blog from Dell blog. Here are a couple of his random thoughts:

1. Though the blog was created by Dell, it seems they don’t want the blog to be all “about” Dell. I think that’s a smart move. As I’m fond of saying, if you want to be boring, talk about yourself, if you want to be interesting, talk about something other than yourself. Of course, in the comments there were a few “This is just a cynical marketing ploy by Dell to sell more laptops” remarks. This is to be expected, I suppose. If Dell tries to have a conversation online, some bloggers are going to have a problem with it. If Dell says nothing, some of the very same bloggers are going to have a problem with it. I call this, “Having Your Cake And Eating It 2.0″. I find this phenomenon increasingly common in the blogosphere. Maybe it was always thus, maybe once I was better at not noticing it…

4. The Digital Nomads blog is what I call “indirect marketing”. People aren’t supposed to read it and go, “My, what a lovely blog. I think I’ll go out and buy me a couple of brand new Dell laptops”. This is more of an “Alignment” play. In other words, by “aligning” themselves more with the digital-nomad crowd, they hope it’ll help them in time to create products that are more compelling and relevant to them. If you were in the computer business, you’d want to have the same alignment. “The Porous Membrane” etc. The good news is, Alignment plays can be extremely effective. The bad news is, they take FOREVER to gather momentum.

gapingvoid: “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”: thoughts on being a digital nomad

A user interface is the crucial middle-man between the fluidity of use and the complex technology behind it. Often a crummy interface can cripple an otherwise fine device while an innovative approach can build a success story. Smashing Magazine lists 10 designs that range from production-ready simplicity to far-fetched prototypes. The biggest stand-out is Futuristic Glass, whcih aims to migrate the wealth of information on the web into real life through a looking glass (pictured). Other designs highlight the recent trend to expand the usable space in either larger format displays of data or enable a better tactile interaction with the user. Regardless of the probability of the these designs making it from the drawing board to a store shelf, it makes for an interesting read.

Check out the complete list here.

[via The Guardian]