Killing the PC

Obsessed with touch screens and portability this week. It’s all I’ve seen at Ingram Showcase: iPads on our stand. A me-too Motorola tablet running an Android OS. Other companies showing beautiful drawing tablets which stand alone or link with a standard PC/laptop.

So I’m not surprised to see suggestions that PCs are on the decline. (Note for the purposes of this post I am talking about desktop PCs.)

It’s inevitable when you consider the trend towards increasingly mobile workplaces (and schools). Take your laptop/tablet/iPad/work-enabled smartphone, add connectivity of your choice, and you can work anywhere. It’s expected.

Really in NZ at least, it’s been a long while coming. The technology and infrastructure (e.g. cloud computing and 3G networks) needed to create flexibility are now widely available, and at a low enough cost, coupled with enterprise investment in those technologies.

Matthew Brown at Forrester points out that the “workplace experience” created by these technologies has an additional benefit: increased engagement and performance. (This is so interesting by itself that it deserves a separate blog post.)

employers who support their employees with the technology tools, effective leadership, information, and human networks perform better than those who don’t.

So the desktop PC as we know it is under threat because it’s static. By its nature, it’s tied to a single location. But most portable devices aren’t there yet either – they are physically uncomfortable to use. New hybrid devices may be the answer, as Adam Turner of the Sydney Morning Herald explains:

When you’re looking to create content, a physical keyboard makes life much easier than tapping away at a slab of glass.[...]While tablets attempt to strike a balance between portability and usability, the new wave of hybrid devices take a different approach. Some let you hide away the QWERTY keyboard when it’s not required, while others let you rip the keyboard off completely.

A combination of portability, physical comfort /usability and enterprise-level support will finally kill the desktop PC as we know it. Maybe not for another five years, but it will happen.

Original source: via Engadget

Internet power! Aaron Biber, the London riots and good causes

In all the drama of the London riots recently, something heartwarming to come out of it. It’s horrible hearing about rioting in the suburbs where we were visiting friends, only a year ago.

Aaron Biber is an 89 year-old man whose barber shop was ransacked by looters in Tottenham. They even took his kettle… adding insult to injury in a country where a good cup of “builders’ tea” solves most minor ills. (That this is included in the news report is not insignificant.)

Some love from the Reddit community and some interns at agency BBH.

Edit: They raised £35,000. Incredible.

Scenes from my life this week

I’m a big fan of having the camera out all the time. Not everyone shares my love of documenting my life, however. 

Skiing with my brother. This is what a real mountain looks like!

Not so good: the 4.5 -hour drive each way.

Rediscovering the joy of using beautiful things in daily life. (And the familiar.)

The view from my office window. How stunning is that?!

Comments, conversation and online “noise”

One of the main tenets of Social Media was the reality that brands could join a conversation (to quote my good friend, Joseph Jaffe), but by the looks of things there aren’t really any conversations happening at all.

Mitch Joel, from: http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/the-end-of-conversation-in-social-media/.

I’ve been thinking this for a while subconciously, and wondering if it was just that I couldn’t make my conversations scale beyond the actions of one or a few individuals. But it seems like the issue of ‘conversation’ vs. ‘noise’ might be universal – one only has to look at the multitude of inane comments and “trolling” on YouTube to wonder, is this the best the web has to offer? We know that’s not true. When social media thinkers such as Mitch Joel talk about this lack of conversation, there’s an additional legitimacy.

But as a company attempting to engage with people on a more personal level, what other options are there? Because it’s easy to return to the ‘broadcast’ model as a marketer when there’s no conversation anyway.

I tell people that digital media is still new, and there’s no roadmap – both a blessing and a curse. I’m slowly experimenting and building strategies that work, though. And that’s all I can really ask for.

Link-love!

Three stunning days in a row here in Wellington. Conversely, Southland is having the worst snow in  50 years. I hear the Auckland vs. Southland rugby game is still going ahead tonight, though, because the Southlanders arrived with shovels and wheelbarrows to remove the 10cm of snow covering the field.

Firstly, the top 10 differences between Germany and the US, apparently. I love this post because it’s very similar to our experience in Germany a couple of weeks ago. (Was it really that soon? According to the calendar, it was less than a month ago that we arrived back in Germany just in time for our flights to Hong Kong.)

Secondly, personalised advertising based on facial recognition. What happens if there are too many people / multiple possibilities? How close will you have to stand? For how long? And on a related note, when will my Snapper Card integrate with my mobile? (That’s what I want to know. I seem to have a lot  more issues with it than I did with Oyster Card, which I put down to having-t0-hold-it-very-still-for-two-whole-seconds-on-the-pad-before-it-works. Which is less useful when you’re also carrying shopping et. al..)

Thirdly, CERN discovers new particle results, called a “ridge-like structure”… so there may be something there! We went to hang out at CERN in Geneva back in early August. It was amazing wandering around the exhibits, even if the tours are booked out two months in advance!

Things I like…

Some recent examples of marketing done well.

1.) Kia Motors does a parking hack on Wired. Associating something useful (the parking hack) with their brand, which isn’t that well-known in the US. And on the website’s front page banner, no less. Well done. Worth however much you paid for it.

Great magazine, especially if you’re a tech geek like me.

2.) Wellington City Council does good PR in this instance – explaining what is happening with the new bus route and acknowledging that it’s a bit of a pain in the meantime. They’ve hit exactly the right tone of voice here.

3.) A new energy drink. Packing doesn’t normally work on me (I am wise to your sneakiness, oh packaging designers!) but in this case, we both liked the branding enough to try all three.

The death of Digg?

My other half is using [site content aggregator] Reddit. Instead of Digg, his favourite website for the past 4+ years. This action, combined with the number of comments I’ve heard recently about the changes to the Digg interface, and subsequent un-usability, make me wonder: is Digg doomed? How much damage can one bad interface do when your audience numbers geeks in the millions? The answer seems to be, a lot.

Complaints in the Digg comments abound: the confusing interface; not being able to get stories to the front page by following certain “power users”; and most of all, being forced to “follow” your friends to get news related to them. As far as geeks are concerned, this violates the basic tenet of my Media and Political Studies 101 class: that a democracy only works when voters are informed, and by forcing users to specify their interests by “following” other users, they narrow the news available to them to only those which fit their worldview. Sort of the equivalent of Republicans watching Fox News, or Democrats watching CNN. Except more confusing.

Digg users have reacted by making the top news stories all link to Reddit pages, a direct competitor. (At the time I posted this link – only two out of 16 stories on the monthly first page were not links to Reddit stories. Ouch. Here’s a graph of the stat counters for both sites over August.)

The Oatmeal, I love you

A comic that explains when to use “i.e.” instead of “e.g.”? That’s awesome.

(For bonus time-killing amusement grammar education, check out the rest of The Oatmeal. More recently, this has been my life. Especially frame two. But not the last frames. That’s just gross.)

It’s official: the Kiwi is returning to the nest

This is my last week at work – my partner and I are heading back to New Zealand in August/September. I’m very sad to leave such an awesome office with amazing people, and my manager is “in denial”. (As are some of my lovely clients, I think!)

However, this does mean I’m actively looking for marketing or internal comms work in Wellington, starting in Sept. We’ll be travelling around Europe for a while before returning, so email is probably best as I’m not sure how much reception we’ll have on our mobiles. (But you can try anyway… )

Doing your best work vs. “good enough”

What’s the difference between  ”good enough” and “amazing”? My colleague said today he felt he hadn’t done his best work on a design. I was satisfied with the work, and the client loved it. He felt disappointed as it didn’t represent what he was capable of, given more time to work on the project.

I sometimes think that creating work which is  amazing and that you’re extremely proud of (110%) versus that which gets the job done (70%), requires about double the time taken. True genius is being able to get 95% of the way there on the first pass.

Copywriting can be this way – you can write something which does the job first time around, but to really work magic, each word must be carefully considered in the sentence alongside the overall messages, and earn its place. That said, often simply a second/third/fourth reading can do wonders. (This blog post is a good example. Guess how many revisions have taken place…?)

Would you agree that doing your best work takes twice as long as “good enough”? Or is this just me?