Jonathan Linds: Digital Guy

[profeshinal]

Celebrity Meat and Liability Clauses

A few months ago someone put up a website advertising celebrity salami. That is meat grown from tissue samples taken from celebrities that’s then cured and turned into artisanal sausage. The site, called BiteLabs, is obviously a joke. Ellen DeGeneres has not offered up her DNA to be part of the charcuterie platter at some hipster restaurant. It’s all a funny, funny joke.

What’s not a joke is the site’s terms and conditions that can be found hiding in the footer. Among them you’ll find this tidbit:

"2.2 In no event shall Bitelabs, its licensors, its suppliers, or any third parties mentioned on the Site be liable for any damages (including, without limitation, incidental and consequential damages, personal injury/wrongful death, lost profits, or damages resulting from lost data or business interruption) resulting from the use of or inability to use the Site or the Content, whether based on warranty, contract, tort, or any other legal theory, and whether or not Bitelabs, its licensors, its suppliers, or any third parties mentioned on the Site are advised of the possibility of such damages. Bitelabs, its licensors, its suppliers, or any third parties mentioned on the Site are not liable for any personal injury, including death, caused by your use or misuse of the Site or Content use of the Site, Remedies under these Terms and Conditions are exclusive and are limited to those expressly provided for in these Terms and Conditions. "

What they’re saying here is that if some nutjob goes after Ellen with a butcher knife and some Lowry seasoning, Bitelabs is not responsible. It’s a standard liability clause and any site with satirical or fictional content needs something like this.

Our project Surveillance Nation is a game that takes place in a fictional universe where the government spies on its citizens, brutally repressing dissenters. It’s not likely to cause any real world confusion, but just like Bitelabs, we need to protect ourselves. In-game calls from the resistance to “Rise up and fight against the government” aren’t meant to be taken literally, and we need to include content that makes that clear. A liability clause keeps us safe from legal claims that someone might want to launch against us. Because you never know what people might do. 

[profeshinal]

'We Are the Sevens' and our Weird Business Model

Throughout this semester the guiding star for my business model has been Secret Location’s We Are the Sevens interactive film. Beyond being just a great piece of filmmaking with excellent visuals, a compelling story and innovative user experience, Sevens is a great example of what I would call a piece of ‘calling card’ media. Rather than put together a demo reel or portfolio of their best work, Secret Location is showing potential clients what they can do by creating a completely original interactive experience. With Sevens, the team at Secret Location built a standalone experience that attracted more than 700,000 visitors and boasted a 38% completion rate. Essentially they proved that they were able to create a compelling story using interactive technology. It was a big gamble—this thing couldn’t have been cheap or easy to produce.  They filmed it, developed it and marketed it all themselves.

But it paid off. We Are the Sevens received a lot of buzz and helped prove Secret Location’s bonafides as one of the most innovative and creative digital agencies in the industry. 

In our business model, Kuru and I are trying to prove that our project can accomplish the same thing. I realize what an incredibly tricky proposition this is to make. Claiming that our product is worth money because it is going to generate business through as-yet undetermined partners and sponsors isn’t much of a business plan. If we were on Dragon’s Den we’d be laughed off the set. Unfortunately, this is part of trying to do something creative that relies on public acceptance such as a film or game. You put all of your effort into your current project and hope that people like it enough that someone lets you do the next one. It can’t help but seem a bit pie-eyed.

The idea is to strike a balance between business and creative goals. I just hope we can live up to that.  

[profeshinal]

George Westinghouse: Profile of an Awesome Leader

I just finished reading Empires of Light, Jill Jonnes’ wonderful history of the birth of the electric age.In the book Jonnes recounts a story that’s stuck with me: the great inventor and industrial titan George Westinghouse, having just won the plum lighting contract for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, walks into his machine shop office and calls for his top draftsman, E.S. McCelland.

Jonnes recounts the following exchange:*

Westinghouse: I want an engine.

McCelland: Yes, sir.

Westinghouse: 1200 brake horse power.

McCelland: (with considerable trepidation) Yes, sir.

Westinghouse: 200 revolutions per minute. (Engines of this size usually run about 75 R.P.M.)

McCelland: (with considerable consternation) Yes, sir.

Westinghouse: Splash lubrication.

McCelland: Yes, sir.

Westinghouse: Must go in such and such space.

McCelland: Yes, sir.

Westinghouse: I will be in again at 2:00 o’clock to see what you have.

Exit Mr. Westinghouse

Now is that a power move or what?

At this point in his career, Westinghouse has a lot of reasons to be nervous. He’s just saved his company from the brink of disaster while simultaneously fending off public and legal attacks from Thomas Edison’s General Electric Company. Landing the World Fair contract is an incredible coup. On this grand public stage, Westinghouse has the chance to prove himself to the world—most of which has never seen an electric light. 

Westinghouse is obviously making a huge demand—asking them to do something that has never been done before. But he’s also showing a tremendous amount of faith in his team. In a situation like this it can be painful to relinquish control, even for a second, and allow others to take the creative reigns.

It’s a management style that stands in stark contrast to Westinghouse’s ideological and business rival, Thomas Edison, a renowned control freak who needed to be personally involved in every minute aspect of a project (the word micromanaging didn’t exist in the 1800s).

The jovial and good-natured Westinghouse had no compunction about being supported by others, often relying on the creative work of other great minds in the field. Edison, on the other hand, refused to work with equipment that relied on patents developed by other people.  That stubborn individualism proved to be his downfall. In the end, Edison was muscled out of control of his own company while Westinghouse went on to conquer the electrified world.

Westinghouse was known for being intensely loyal to his employees: in an era defined by worker exploitation, he was one of the first industrialists to offer a half-day off during Saturdays.

When it came time to do the hard work, Westinghouse was no stranger to rolling up his sleeves and helping with the (literal) heavy lifting.  When a leader gives a lot, it makes it easier to ask for a lot in return.

Today, 120 years later, George Westinghouse remains an inspiring example of strong. A strong leader recognizes that the whole team is in it together; they fail together and they succeed together. Westinghouse understood this. He also had an incredible gift for assembling a team—something that cannot be underrated.

In the digital industry, where any project given project relies almost solely on teamwork, managers can learn a lot from Westinghouse’s no-nonsense leadership style. His amazing career shows what can be accomplished when a leader combines strong vision, charisma and genuine trust in the people around you.** 

Westinghouse’s faith in his men proved to be well-founded. The day after he makes his dramatic request (Westinghouse magnanimously extended the deadline) the drafting team unveils to their boss sketches for “untried electrical machines and steam engines of totally new design.”

Westinghouse nods his head in approval. His first question: “How soon may I have four of them?”  

  *All quotes from Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

**Also incredible hard work. I don’t know if I’ve done enough in this post to underline just how ridiculously hard Westinghouse and his engineers worked to accomplish all that they did. The man got like 4 hours of sleep a night.

[profeshinal]

Gantt Charts Yay, Smartsheet Nay

I have gone on record about my distaste for Smartsheet, our introduction to the fabulous world of Gantt Charts. Though I found the experience of using that tool very frustrating, I’m willing to give organizational charts another chance.

Smartsheet has a nice clean look and was relatively intuitive, but there were a few roadblocks that will put me off from ever using it again.

For one thing, you can’t schedule a deadline during the weekend, a friendly concession to those wanting a work/life balance. However this is a world where projects are done during strange hours. There are going to be times (I hope) when I’m working on my own projects during my free time and during those times I will probably be working during weekends.

More troublesome is the problem of stacking deadlines. Like a house of cards or a poorly constructed Jenga tower, the whole thing falls apart when you pull out one piece. The whole architecture of Smartsheet is meant to keep track of the tasks you have to complete before you can move on to the next one. But let’s say the deadline for one task changes and you adjust your chart to reflect that fact: the rest of the chart architecture stays in place, only now it’s running on an incorrect timeline. It means you need to know the exact layout of a project before you start, and how often is that the case (really, I want to know)? I think it’s more likely you’re going to have a rough outline that will change and evolve as the project does.

Still, I’m open to the idea of giving Gantt Charts another chance. We certainly could have used one for our term project. It would have made keeping track of deliverables and assigned tasks a whole lot easier, giving people a hard deadline to aim for. I can see how they would be useful as an organizational tool, especially for a team. However, I’d like to see what other kinds of products are out there that offer a better experience. I may even be willing to pay for it.

[profeshinal]

The SCP Experience

Intro

I am interested in the way that emerging technology can power creative storytelling.

I’m talking about more than just making a traditional film or video-game using 3-D animation—though I am a fan of both those mediums.

Following the thread of this project I started to think about wiki generated projects. It’s not necessarily an emerging technology, but it does follow the same kind of rubric of creative freedom, of opening things up to the public and allowing for collective evolution.

So I started thinking about the SCP Foundation (Special Containment Protocols).  It’s essentially a mechanism for creative storytelling, a user generated archive of objects that do not exist. It takes the form of fictional government database full of bizarre and supernatural items that need to be protected from the public. Imagine if the warehouse at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Arc’ had an inventory.

Think of it as a kind of massive short-story project. This community of writers have built this wiki and populated with these weird little stories.

It’s an experience that works best on the internet because it’s about discovery.  It’s organized like Wikipedia:  you click on something and then see a link that catches your eye else and then click on that.   

It’s full of weird little discoveries like the Desert-In-A-Can.

I want to create an experience that takes this idea and expands it without diminishing the creative spark that makes it unique.

I want to create an interactive experience that takes these creative threads and follows them to their fullest extent. I want to take these great ideas and make them tactile. And I want to do this using 3-D Imaging, social gaming, transmedia storytelling and augmented reality.

The SCP Experience

Essentially, it’s a social media experience that brings together writers and designers in a collaborative space. You create a profile and sign up as an “Archivist” or a “Technician” (or both).

Archivists are writers they continue to do what they do which is to create the content. A technician’s job is to search the archive for interesting items and then they really create these objects: making 3D templates that get shared with the SCP community—they are then fair game to be downloaded and printed on 3D printers.

The technicians can create their own mockups from scratch or, if they’re neophytes, they can use our in-house 3D animator to pick from a library of shapes and create something a bit more simple. The point is that it is completely open-source and free-as-in-beer.

For the animation tool, I picture a software similar to Google SketchUp. A simple out-of-the-box 3D modeling software that allows the user to see vector lines and stretch 2D shapes into 3D

There’s no limit to how many images can be associated with a given entry. There could be 10,000 blueprints for Desert-In-A-Can. The SCP community can rate and share the designs, with the most popular one becoming the article’s featured image.

Don’t have a 3D printer. That’s ok, you can use augmented reality to manipulate a digital representation of the object. Done using an HTML 5 canvas. You use a toolkit to create a series of AR markers that correspond to a transformation matrix that you design or create using a generator. You can see an example here.

Another way to take advantage of the key story points offered by SCP is to think about how we can use emerging technology to bring these fictional objects into the “real world.”

One way to do this is with the use of augmented reality. Say part of the entry on the site includes a specific location you can download onto Google maps. When you visit the location in person you take out your phone or Google Glass and point it at the specific location mentioned in the article: a deserted warehouse on the edge of the city. You instantly get an augmented reality image or experience. Imagine a photorealistic picture of after-effects of a Desert-In-A-Can experiment overlaid on that very spot (done using Unity a 3D development tool used for gaming). Though many Augmented Reality apps use AR codes, more complex ones use your phone’s internal GPS, digital compass and motion sensors to detect where you’re pointing.

With no financial or technological barriers it would be cool to find a way to create an augmented reality experience without the need for AR markers in order to create a truly surprising and spontaneous (as I mentioned, they are already here some extent, but I mean a really fluid reliable method of panorama mapping and tracking) .

My aim here is to merge new technologies in an engaging transmedia storytelling experience.

Challenges

The most obvious challenge here is cost. The experience is asking a lot from users at this point, their time, their money, their 3D Printing Materials.

I actually think that the demand for effort is the least costly thing here. People already devote a huge amount of effort to SCP for no recompense. With 3D printers becoming more common (and more affordable) the era of template artists—people who sketch the raw data and allow the printers to do the manufacturing-- is about to begin.

With regards to augmented reality: that is a sketchy proposition because the current mechanism for object manipulation is not great (at a consumer level anyway). It requires a great deal of programming knowledge to create a good experience.

I feel like the aspect of this experience that would be cost-prohibitive is pure man-hours, not technology.

I don’t think something like this is truly outside the realm of possibility. Brands are experimenting with a variety of media for multiplatform storytelling. There is a market for this type of thing. According to a Guardian article people are already starting to bootleg templates for gaming figurines (Warhammer, or whatever) and my experience scratches a very similar itch for sci-fi storytelling.   

People want to be told engaging stories. That will never change. It’s important as interactive designers and producers that we always remember that technology is always there to serve the story, never the other way around.

Sources

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/jan/26/pirate-bay-3d-printing

http://www.wired.com/insights/2013/11/augmented-reality-real-world/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEFH_r_X7kY

http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webgl/jsartoolkit_webrtc/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev7PN04D56M

[profeshinal]

Something Significant

I can safely say that pretty much everything I learned in this class was something new to me. I never really thought of myself as someone who would ever learn to do even the most basic coding. "Computers make websites with magic and pixie dust," went my line of thinking. The idea of even breaching the subject was so completely imposing.

I mean, obviously I had seen lines of code before. But I guess I always imagined that a developer built a website the same way an artist draws a painting. I think it's really interesting that a website is essentially built of tiny instructions you give to the computer.

The artist analogy still holds up, I suppose. But it is a vastly different set of tools serving both function and form at the very same time. That has been something I've found difficult to wrap my brain around.

A lot this hasn't come easily. Learning to see the basic building blocks of a website has been a real challenge for a luddite like me. I think it's significant that I can look at the code for a site and see the basic structural elements that put it all together. It helps a lot to see tags and elements that were heretofore unknown to me like header and footer (like I said, I was pretty much starting from zero) and recognizing them as pieces of the whole. It might not be a lot, but at least I have a foundation for understanding.

I mean I still find the Bertrand Russell logic-ese of the PHP delimeter completely impenetrable, but I've found myself kind of fascinated by the straightforwardness of that logic all the same. A computer does exactly what you tell it to do, not necessarily what you want it to do.  

Seems significant to me.

[profeshinal]

Social Media: Give 'Em What They Want

As a consumer, I don’t usually find myself engaging with brands on social media. As we discussed in class, many companies have a presence on twitter or Facebook not for any meaningful reason, but because it’s the thing to do (a good example of this is the twitter account for Fanta).  Social media is meant to connect people on a one-to-one level, but (also like we discussed) social media campaigns are merely a part of a company’s overall PR strategy. As consumers, we know this. That’s why it comes off as so transparently dishonest when companies try to approach us on social media like they’re our friends (another bizarre twitter phenomena, documented by comedian Joe Mande, is faceless corporations responding to tragedies). Social media campaigns are often meant to humanize these companies, to soften their cold corporate image. But when a heartfelt message comes from an account whose profile pic is a logo it just estranges them further.

 With so many brands using bad social media badly, it’s important to document the ones who do it well. A friend of mine works for the Scotiabank Scene program so I have a tiny bit of insight into their social media strategy. So far I like what I hear.

Scene’s social media engagement is purely promotional. All social media, whether done for personal or business use, is inherently promotional. But Scene is explicitly promotional. That’s what I like about it. Scene works with some of the biggest brands in Canada and are constantly holding prize giveaways. Scene gives away CDs, concert tickets, hotel stays and a lot more. The caveat is that you need to be a registered Scene member.  

Since a large portion of Scene’s products and activities take place online their Facebook page also works as a de facto help section, fielding questions from the community.

Scene has engendered a wildly active fan-base: even a simple post by the company such as, “What movie are you going to see today?” gets hundreds of responses.  

Admittedly Scene is a great product to begin with. Its association with film assures an almost built in audience of moviegoers. But with their social media campaign Scene’s marketing people have appealed to people’s twin love of movies and free stuff—the same love that got them to sign up for Scene in the fist place. It’s paid off in the form of a large vociferous community, and an increased number of eyeballs on their partners’ brands.

The success of the Scene program has allowed them to experiment with consumer engagement. On gaining their 5 millionth member, Scene launched their own social media platform. “5 Million Scene Stars” allows users to create a profile (or star) where they can list their favourite movies. They then have access to a navigable interactive “universe” of these stars/profiles.

It’s a neat experiment, but Scene couldn’t have done this if they didn’t already have a strong base of both loyal customers and engaged social media followers. If they had started their campaign with The Scene Star platform—absent all the good will built up by their contests and giveaways—would have been a disaster.

Scene is successful because they recognize that there’s no point in pretending something to be something they’re not. They don’t pretend to be their followers’ best friends clutter their feeds with cornball jokes. Their posts are specifically and explicitly promotional and that’s all well and good for one simple reason: they’re giving people what they want.  

[profeshinal]

Emerging Tech UX: Three Dreams of Black

Three Dreams of Black is an interactive music video site driven by HTML 5. You can check it out here (needs Google Chrome to work properly).

Created as a promotional tool for Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi’s album ‘Rome,’ the site gives users access to an interactive 3-dimensional world.

On entering the site, the user is pulled into a first-person view of a navigable 2-D landscape. The camera moves throughout the space objects on rails, but the user is given agency to explore their surroundings as they pass by.

Almost every object displayed in the video are somehow interactive and respond to user input, changing their colour and texture. The user can also use the mouse to change the direction of the first-person camera.

Dynamic music videos are starting to become more common, but this site distinguishes itself by creating a fully interactive user experience dependent on 3-D animation rendered entirely on a standard browser.

To achieve this, the site’s programmers used WebGL, an emerging online technology that allows the browser to display hardware-accelerated 3D images without the need for additional software. It’s a javascript language that works in HTML 5 canvas to create beautiful interactive 3D landscapes. The combines aspects of of WebGL and HTML 5 also allows for interaction with objects in three-dimensional space using a mouse’s two-dimensional plane. 

[profeshinal]

The Long & Winding Road: Researching my Emerging Technology Final Project

I'm really interested how emerging technology is going to affect storytelling and narrative.

I'm already seeing cool things happening online w/r/t communal storytelling. Specifically this site that acts as a kind of wiki-generated encyclopedia of strange and mysterious (fictional) objects:  

- http://www.scp-wiki.net/

I like this idea of digital technology being used to harness a wellspring of hive-mind creativity. I'd like to explore what would happen if you introduced emerging technology into the mix.

Specifically:

3D Imaging - This article explores the history of 3D and how storytellers wield it to create new and interesting forms of narrative.

User Generated Content- This is a really interesting company that's democratizing game-building by investing in tools that facilitate  user generated content

Shodan - I've cited this article before. But I think this really amazing technology. One of the things I like about SCP is how it uses the language of search engines to encourage creative discovery. Shodan is all about the act of discovery and I think it fits in well with my (still murky) UX.

Peter Molyneux - A legendary game designer who's doing big things in the world of social gaming. His game 'Curiosity' is a massively communal experience that blends interactivity, social gaming and mystery. Definitely a source of inspiration.

[profeshinal]

What's Next: 3D Printing & The Internet of Things

1) By far the most innovative uses of 3D printing are the advancements they've made for prosthetic limbs and, cooler still, medical implants. Like this: http://www.psfk.com/2013/09/3d-printed-heart.html

or this: http://unclutteredwhitespaces.com/2013/09/3d-printed-heart-valve/

2) Maybe it will take longer then 20 years. But I really feel like going to the store to buy "things" will become a thing of the past. More likely you'll be able to browse product designs online, purchase some kind of digital license and then print it out using your personal 3D printer.

3) Three Biggest Challenges facing Internet of Things:

- How will we create "smart" products people will actually want to use?

- How will we actually improve connectivity so that products made by different companies can effectively communicate with each other?

-Following that last question: is Apple just going to have a monopoly on every industry? They already make lightbulbs. 

[profeshinal]

Building Your Brand Online

My last two paying jobs have been in the world of social media. For my summer job I compiled a 30-page document on mobile technology the importance of social media for building a company’s brand. Because of this, I found that these articles really resonated with me.

A common thread that emerged throughout the articles is the idea that digital technologies are giving companies unprecedented opportunities for one-to-one interactions. Of course this opportunity means that companies have to work doubly hard to be heard above the social din.

The odds of you working in an industry where you’re the only game in town are slim to nil. More likely you’ll be competing with other companies for ever-shrinking customer attention spans.

Luckily, as the articles all hint at. The direct communication between brands and consumers can mean a vast improvement in brand loyalty. If a consumer is engaging with a brand, chances are they are going to keep coming back. This means more opportunities to reel them in with quality content.  

I know how useful one-to-one branding can be. But I also know that turning followers into actual paying customers can be an uphill battle. I spent a lot of time looking at analytics, tracking retweets and facebook likes and sending personalized responses on social media. I would get a good feeling knowing that we had 31% more “engagement” than last week, but I never really knew if what I was doing translated to actual dollars for our company.

The Edelman deck has some interesting slides about converging content. We always worked to put our content on as many platforms as possible. Promoting a concert or sharing a good review through all our social media platforms (I worked for a small orchestra). While I was working there our response level grew, but I had no idea if all the effort turned out to be worth it. Of course a company would always prefer growth over shrinkage, but learning to capitalize on that engagement is the next step. I’d like it if the deck went into more detail about that subject.

I did appreciate seeing the different ways a company builds its brand through different kinds of initiatives: extending the conversation through live-tweeted events, brand interaction and the like. These days winning people over takes more than a flashy ad campaign.  Consumers want to have a voice. The more companies cater to that want, the more engagement they’ll receive. All that’s left is the hard part of actually turning buzz into sales.

The answer probably has something to do with creating dynamite content. I appreciated the Edelman deck’s proposal that the internet is a creative newsroom with myriad opportunities for brands to share content in the form of video, text, podcasts, apps and IRL events (just to name a few).

The more a company embraces new technologies and platforms, the more they widen their social net by speaking through different digital mediums, the better chance they have at attracting new eyeballs and starting the process of turning observers to followers to customers.

[profeshinal]

Voice v Marketing: Advantage Voice

Voice and tone. Tone and voice. They may not be interchangeable, but the two are closely linked.

Full disclosure: I’m not entirely convinced by this piece that the distinction between voice and tone are all that important. I imagine an exercise in a first year marketing class where you’d have to look at different pieces of content and try to divine whether they fall into either category. It doesn’t seem particularly helpful to me. Anyone can understand that you want to remain consistent in your language while tempering it to different situations.

Both concepts essentially define how you interact with your audience, the language you use to try and persuade your audience, to call them to action and help them when they’re in a jam. They also determine the types of language you use and the mediums you employ to speak with your audience. I don’t see the need to overcomplicate things by dividing things into categories. The important thing is that a company’s voice remains consistent. A cursory glance through ‘Mailchimp’s Voice & Tone’ page reveals that they don’t seem to pay too much attention to the distinction either. What they care about is making things easy and stress-free for the user. That’s their voice. They use a casual tone but it’s all in service to the convivial and helpful voice that they have cultivated. In all cases tone is subservient to a company’s overarching voice.

I need to reiterate here, in case you think I’m being flippant, that of course I think that the writer needs to pay attention to context when he/she is creating content.  Of course, like Katie Kiefer Lee says, mailchimp should leave out the corny jokes when it comes to the payment page. It’s just common sense. I’m just arguing that what she calls “tone” I would simply call it modulating the brand’s voice. Maybe it’s just a semantic thing, but I had a hard time getting something useful out of this article. I certainly didn’t feel like I was learning anything new.

The article does offer useful tips on avoiding talking down to your audience and avoiding messy business jargon in favor of plain speaking. I also appreciated the way the MailChimp guidelines use colour coding to reflect the user’s state of mind when reading a particular piece of messaging. It’s important for the content writer to try and put themselves in the user’s shoes, but I can’t help but feel like the distinction between voice & tone is just the type of jargon Kiefer Lee is cautioning us to avoid.

In her piece, Kate Kiefer Lee writes that a voice and tone evaluation “should be built into a company’s content strategy.” I’d argue that process can be simplified even further just by allowing room for common sense.

[profeshinal]

Controlled Chaos: My Expererience at Fall Tour Interactive

"I'm gonna say something a bit controversial: I don't think producing programs are really that worthwhile."

And with those words, a response from a speaker to a question I had about game producing, began day 2 of Fall Tour Interactive. Not the most heartening advice for someone two months into this program, but in retrospect I'm happy they came after a full day of touring, rather than before.

If there's one thing I took away from FTI it's there are different paths to success. Everyone we met during our tours and speaking sessions had a unique story for how they ended up where they did. Saying there's a wrong path is ludicrous. Suffice to say I remain happy where I am.

Some Highlights:

-One of my favourite things about the tour was getting to see the wide range of digital shops: from more traditional advertising firms with Chicago branches and seemingly limitless resources, to the smallest of startups operating out of a bungalow with a broken heater.

-Lamin Martin: Talk about someone who made their own lane! Concept artist Lamin Martin talked about the importance of taking stock yourself and recognizing that if you do something well, you have inherent value. Companies will often try to pressure you into giving away your talent for free...don't let them. Really inspiring.

-Playground Studios: Not only does playground have an amazing office full of gorgeous art, they also have a really inspiring stories. Starting from the ground up. They've built a really impressive shop that's now starting to branch out from digital marketing into gaming. A neat example of the 'one for them, one for me' creative model.

-Hailo: Another really inspiring story, and a great talk about entrepreneurship and what it takes to get a business off the ground.

Advice for Next Year: Don't be discouraged if you don't see something that speaks to your interest right away. I saw a lot of duds (pardon the expression) on my tour, but if I'd walked away early I would have missed some amazing things. FTI is a full day for a reason. Something that resonates with me might be of no interest to someone else and vice versa.

Keep a list of people who spark your interest, and don't be afraid to contact them for a follow-up. (Now I just have to make sure I listen to my own advice.)

[profeshinal]

Exploring the Internet of Things

For this assignment I decided to research the Internet of Things.

Like a lot of stuff in this course, the term is an unfamiliar one to me, but something about the name caught my eye in a way that something like ‘Cloud Computing’ or ‘Big Data’ couldn’t.

“Hm, ‘Internet of things.’ That sounds funny,” I thought. “Like what if there was an Internet for everyday objects.”

After doing some digging around, I discovered that I wasn't far off. I also learned that the  preposition ‘of’ is really the most important part of that description. The Internet of things, as I understand it, refers to the fact that objects in and of themselves can be imbued with connectivity and be made to interact with users and even with other objects.

The need for this probably arose out of our increasing need for connectivity. The Internet of Things allows objects to become more than leaden things that sit on your desk. Imagine a ‘smart home’ where our appliances and furniture can communicate with one another.

Another possibility is something like like Shodan, which uses search engine technology to browse the the internet for ‘stuff’ like webcams, pool controls and GPS receivers. Searching on Shodan allows you to access little windows into the connected world--literally taking a peek through webcams.

We've already given other people so much access to our lives, the Internet of Things is just another step down that road.

Obviously once our fridges and toilets have the capacity to record video, privacy is going to be a huge issue. That’s definitely something that needs to addressed.

At this point I’m cautiously optimistic about the prospect of The Internet of Things. My feeling is there’s no stopping it, so I might as well embrace some of its cooler aspects: such as objects that learn my habits and adapt to suit my needs. Or stuff like Phillips Hue brand wireless lightbulbs which use less energy, can changing shades and be connected to a system that be programmed to respond to different parameters.

At its very best, The Internet of Things unlocks crazy unforseen potential of everyday objects.

Research:

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/07/shodan-search-engine/

http://gigaom.com/2013/10/17/whats-driving-the-internet-of-things/

http://gigaom.com/2013/10/17/lower-prices-openness-will-bring-internet-of-things-to-the-masses/

[profeshinal]

Big Data and Analytics

5 Analytics Platforms

Vertica Analytics Platform

- Captures the "time value" of data

- Runs nonstop on the cloud

Greenplum

- Integrates structured and unstructured data

- Creates a virtual sandbox for data exploration

Sumall

- Good design

- Allows you to know which posts are having the most impact 

-Promises to "crack" the formula

Facebook Insight

- Easy to read charts and graphs showing follower traffic

- Shows you what time of day you are most widely read

- Allows you to track how well you're doing compared to last week

Social Crawlytics

- Allows you to track the popularity of links. Shows you the way they are most likely to be shared.

-Dashboard Summary of social media "shares"

- Features the "Sunburst Chart" The sunburst chart shows the amount of shares relating to the site's URL architecture (what this means, I have no idea. But it seems important)

Big Data Visualization

1. Wired Article of Cool Visualization

2. Map Showing Popularity of Facebook

3. Better World Flux

[profeshinal]

HTML & CSS

HTML makes up the site's content. It's a specific language used to determine how content will be displayed on web-browsers. Essentially HTML tells the browsers how the information will be displayed. 

The purpose of CSS is to create the visual design of a webpage. You apply selectors that set the rules for how everything is going to look. Later on when you plug in the code you can be (mostly) sure that everything will look the way you want it.

There are a couple of reasons why you keep HTML and CSS separate.

For one thing, it makes intuitive sense to keep the content of the site separated from the aesthetic design. It just makes things less confusing.

For another thing, it saves you time: when you're working with multiple HTML pages it just makes more sense to have each page link to one style sheet rather than copy and paste the style sheet to each new page. It just keeps things straight for the developer.

Another reason, also to do with saving time, is that you might some day like to change the way your website looks. It's going to be a lot easier to change one style sheet than to go through each page of HTML replacing the instructions. 

By keeping CSS and HTML on separate pages you are saving yourself from a giant headache.

[profeshinal]

My 5 Most-Used Mobile Apps

1. The Leonard Maltin Movie App - Native 

2. GoodReads App - Native (Might be a Hybrid, I'm not sure)

3. Apple Podcast App - Native 

4. Pitchforkmedia - HTML5

5. Cookie Clicker - No Client