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Design Education Globalization Innovation Reading Technology

Latest read: Cognitive Surplus

Remember the last time you read a great story that you caught yourself peaking at the remaining unread pages because you didn’t want the story to end?  That’s how I can best describe Clay Shirky‘s book Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.  His stories were coming to a close before I was ready to put the book down.

cognitive surplusThis is a great follow-up to his first book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.  Shirky is right on target with engaging, connecting stories to share his ideas about our new ability today to share collective knowledge.

Over 1 trillion hours of TV is watched per year. Imagine what can happen when people turn TV off and begin contributing.  And Shirky elegantly shares the shifting nature of professionals vs. amateurs in the age of the internet.  Pretty amazing reading.

I believe there have been attempts to move in the direction he outlines but a tipping point has been the mass availability of consumer devices at very affordable price points.  I recall Peter Gabriel‘s interview on the Today Show in 1988 talking about the efforts of Amnesty International and their attempts to videotape human rights abuses with large, analog cameras.
Today we know all to well from the murder of Oscar Grant that cameraphones have made their efforts real.

The Napster thing
IMHO Clay’s single oversight in the book surrounds Napster.  I think he was trying to communicate a holistic answer to why people (not just Gen Xers) were stealing music.  He called it sharing — it was stealing plain and simple.

Categories
Design Innovation Reading Tablet Technology

New Kindle from Amazon

new_kindleTonight Amazon introduced a new Kindle. Set to ship August 27th, the new revision is 21% smaller and 15% lighter than its predecessor.  The new unit will ship with an display E Ink that has a 20% faster refresh rate.

The unit will also have two wireless options: a $139 WiFi only version and a $189 3G version.  Storage has been increased to 4GB.

Let the eBook price wars continue!

Tags: Amazon, Kindle, ebook, price war, ebook sales, reading, trends

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BMW Design Education Innovation Technology

BMW 6 Series Exterior Design

BMW’s official video regarding design-futures of the 6 Series Gran Coupé concept.

Anders Warming, Head of Exterior Design BMW, provides the overview about the exterior design and the future of the 6 Series and BMW design directions.

Tags: BMW, BMW 6 series, innovation, design directions, concept, ideas, business, trends

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Design Education Innovation Network OpenSource Technology

FireFox’s Tab Candy

FireFox is set (soon I hope) to launch an innovation called Tab Candy.  This will permit Firefox to act more like a OS.  Kinda Chrome like if Google has their way.  The focus of Tab Candy is multitasking and sharing. Tab Candy is managed by Aza Raskin, the Head of UX at Mozilla Labs. Raskin is the son of Macintosh creator Jef Raskin.


Tab Candy features:
Organize tabs into groups that you can name and position on a desktop-like view
Search and Save tab groups to look at later
Have multiple profiles so that you can sign into the same site with different logins in two different tab groups
Share tabs or tab groups between users, computers and devices (Smartphone supported)

Categories
BMW Design Education Globalization Innovation Rich media Smartphone Technology

BMW supporting Apple’s iOS4

Yesterday BMW announced it will support Apple’s iOS 4 in their BMW and Mini product lines.  By integrating iPod Out in iOS4 users of iPhones 3G/3GS/4 & iPod Touch 2nd/3rd generations to output and display Apple’s iPod interface on the vehicle’s dashboard display and controlled by the vehicle’s controls.


To no surprise BMW’s controller is called the iDrive….a perfect fit for Apple’s iProducts.  Drivers will be able to control music playback and browse playlists, podcasts, and Genius mixes.

Tags: BMW, Apple iOS4, innovation, product launch, interface, ideas, business, trends