Our friends from the Norman Lear Center, one of the world’s leading think tanks and research institutions devoted exclusively to entertainment, is celebrating their 10th anniversary in style – with a list of ten good reasons why TV, the last remaining mass medium, is good for you: “We've heard the arguments: How TV is bad for us, how it's linked to violence, the obesity epidemic, the dumbing down of culture. At the Norman Lear Center we've made it our business to study entertainment -- televised and otherwise -- and believe that whatever its downsides, TV also has much to contribute to a healthy, connected and well-informed society.“
I tend to perceive gender divides as a negative thing, and have seen inclusive design as a tool to lead us in a direction towards closing these gaps. On a recent trip to Mexico, it was clear that gender differences are both more apparent and more acceptable, so I was keen to experience one example of this; a physical Gender Divide on the Mexico City subway system.
frog partners with ECOtality for a new family of smart EV chargers.
The future is now. Electric vehicles (EV) are no longer a figment of your science fiction imagination. With the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt soon to appear on your local neighborhood streets, a sustainable future of alternative energy in mass transportation is just around the corner. But for electric vehicles to succeed, they must become widely adopted and accessible.
"They have become a filter for our world," writes PSFK in a post on the "History of Apps," and points to this great infographic from Online MBA that at least gives us a sense that this fast-growing genre is somehow manageable.
“I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay.” - Bob Dylan
Here are some photos I took at the TEDx Taipei event which occurred yesterday. It was a great event, super well organized, with excellent speakers all around. Congrats to Kevin, Jason and the whole team for putting on a terrific show. There were many people I didn't get photos of, this is just a small selection of what was on offer.
The event was held in a renovated space that is now an arts/culture center
Silver Fish Hand Catch! As the social web’s echo chamber is gushing about Wieden+Kennedy (W+K)’s masterful Old Spice campaign (actor and former football star Isaiah Mustafa wowing viewers with his smooth-talking delivery in video replies to hundreds of online queries or comments tweeted to him by web users), first spoofs are manifesting its pop-cultural credentials, and the meta-story is increasingly becoming the story ("how did they do it?"), both practical and philosophical questions arise. The jury is still out on the campaign’s commercial impact (various news sites and blogs are reporting that sales have fallen by 7%, which various other news sites and blogs dispute). I’m more interested in the campaign as a cultural phenomenon and its lasting implications: Is it a one-off nifty idea or are we witnessing the emergence of something bigger than that, a whole new paradigm for marketers and content producers, as Mashable claims?
