By Sabrina Sandalo - September 9, 2011
This November 2nd, frog Chief Creative Officer Mark Rolston will explore the transition to third wave of computing at the Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco.
By Andrea Bebber - August 24, 2011
Urban environments hold many promises for a better future, simply because of their massive scale and density. Cities generate jobs and incomes, they can provide education, healthcare and other services more efficiently than less densely settled areas, thus giving more opportunity for people to climb the steep social ladder.
By Kristina Loring - August 18, 2011
Summer is coming to a close, but the season for geeking out has just begun. It’s that time of year when the Technorati reveal their latest theories on the impact of social media, technology, and design on culture and business. That’s right: SXSW Interactive has published this year’s ‘panel picker’ submissions, asking the Internet to vote on their favorite panels and presentations they hope to see at the conference in March.
By Andrea Bebber - June 13, 2011
In the age of information overload and data glut, where Americans consume about 1.3 trillion hours worth of data on a yearly basis, it is crucial for the field of interaction design to evolve. The Frontiers of Interaction conference in Italy has become the Mecca for interaction designers to converge and explore the latest trends and challenges in their field. The event serves as an inspirational hub for thinkers and doers alike and brings together innovators, academics, early adopters and loyal geeks.
By Various frogs - May 24, 2011
Welcoming a Unicorn Theatre jammed with 250 TEDsters old and new, host and TED's European director Bruno Giussani promised "possibly one of the most eclectic programs we've ever put together" on Wednesday night in London at the spring TED Salon. The Salon was hosted in collaboration with TEDGlobal partner frog. And eclectic it was, covering design, education, synthetic life, contemporary art, flowers, child marriage, and the sound of space, among others, under the theme "Beauty/Complexity".
"Grace and magnificence often hide intricate realities, while elaborate systems frequently express themselves in captivating and comely ways", Giussani said laying the stage for the two-sessions event.
By Elizabeth Roche - May 10, 2011
Social media amulets in Cairo
Aboard this Air Egypt flight from Cairo to Munich, I am grateful for five hours in limbo before being deposited back into Western life. After a week on the ground in Cairo with Jan Chipchase and other colleagues from frog design, I have a sharpened understanding of how little I know about this region. Anyone who has spent time talking to people on both sides of "the line" in Egypt is struck by the monumental gap between those found in the poor, illiterate corners of the city and the fountain-ringed office parks filled with the savvy Egyptian businessmen educated in the best schools the West has to offer. Our research traversed much of this continuum. While we were not in the poorest of poor areas (meaning, communities living in and mining garbage dumps), our interviewees ranged from the latte-sipping, shisha-smoking students wearing designer clothing to the tea peddlers in dusty, goat-filled alleys. When I asked, with the assistance of my translator, if they used Facebook, faces lit with a smile and a nod—even in the goat-inhabited corners.
By Kristina Loring - April 13, 2011
“We are human beings, not human doings” Andrew Pek, CEO of ivibe global and author of Stimulated! said during his keynote, Enlightened Innovation: A Mind, Body and Soul Approach to Creativity and Adaptation. Andrew explained that we should give pause to the constant chatter that we have with ourselves, the overlapping thoughts, and the idea that we need to constantly produce. It is in this frenzy of thought, Andrew argues, that we miss the “thoughts between thoughts” that help us tap into our creativity.
By Kristina Loring - April 12, 2011
Marco Beghin, president of Moleskine, delighted the FUSE conference audience in Chicago today when he skirted the traditional and, often tiresome, power point presentation and moved towards an overhead projector. He placed his small moleskin notebook on top of the clean white screen to begin his talk “The Analog Digital Continuum.” Storytelling in the most nostalgic way, Beghin flipped through his notebook to unfold pictures and script that were tucked between the pages. This underscored his narrative about the importance of artifacts in human identity, highlighting a 3,500 year old skeleton of a nomad found among his knives, bowstring, and copper axe as an example of how the objects that we carry with us can tell a story of our experiences. But Beghin wasn’t arguing for us to bury our experiences in notebooks. He explained the obvious: the possibility of sharing analogue experience is amplified by the digital experiences we have through online storytelling. At the Salon di Mobile this week in Milan, Beghin announced that Moleskin would display the reverse phenomenon by capturing all online data happening around the event with a 3ft high robot and transcribing it on pieces of paper to create a physical expression of the conversations happening digitally.
By Andrea Bebber - March 31, 2011
The European Union recently published the Innovation Union Scoreboard 2010, a performance assessment of innovation in EU member states. It investigates relative strengths and weaknesses of the research and innovation systems per country along related indicators. The monitored categories cover enablers, firm activities and outputs. “Enablers” investigate the essential ingredients to the activity such as HR, Finance, and Research Systems. “Firm activities” comprise indicators like investments, linkages and entrepreneurship, and intellectual assets. “Outputs” monitor indicators that translate into actual benefits for the entire economy, such as innovators and economic effects. However, member states are clustered into categories like innovation leaders, innovation followers, moderate innovators and modest innovators. A brief look into the results reveals that Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Germany are grouped as innovation leaders. The second cluster indicates innovation followers ranking above EU average, while a third cluster sums up countries that are weak in innovation. Norway is ranked “moderate innovator” performing below the average of the 27 countries monitored.
By various frogs - March 16, 2011
For the 13th year in a row frog hosted the official opening party for SXSW Interactive, the geek-love tech fest in Austin, Texas. This year's theme was “Playing with the Time of Light" and that's just what we did with a number of interactive Microsoft Xbox Kinect hacks, including a Human Tetris knock off and an Angry Birds mash up.
