[originally intended as an email, hence the laziness in the links]
Google Quarterly
Google bring out a people focussed issue of their magazine Quarterly. As per always, it should be an interesting read. And people… Yep, that is Google talking about people, not algorithms. And that hot on the heels of them buying Zagat, the people powered restaurant review guides. Interesting to see where they’ll take this people-focus next. Google Quarterly: http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/quarterly/people/note.html and check out in particular the article on Kickstarter and Making Things.
Kindle Fire
Kindle releases the Kindle Fire, at a lower price point than the iPad. This is probably the first real contender to rival the iPad, it runs Android, and is cheap! No news yet on when it’ll launch in the UK or for how much. A good overview of the new Fire is here: http://www.the-imagazine.com/in/index.php/2011/09/28/kindle-fire-amazon-cloud-table-ipad-music-movie-newstand/ and a good commentary of what the Kindle Fire might mean for the tablet industry is here: http://elliotjaystocks.com/blog/the-kindle-fire/. Even the Apple fan blogs are loving it! http://www.cultofmac.com/116164/not-only-is-the-kindle-fire-the-first-real-alternative-to-ipad-it-foretells-the-ipad-mini-opinion/
Iphone 5
Get your seatbelts on for another big product announcement: Apple will announce their new iPhone 5 (at least, those are the rumours) on October 4th.
Firestarters
And another piece of note from Google: they host an irregular series of provocations/talks called Firestarters, which are curated by Neil Perkin. They’re gatherings of planners, strategists, thinkers on topics such as design thinking and new operating systems for agencies. Firestarters #3 happened earlier this week, and for more, check out the #firestarters on twitter here: http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23firestarters which contains links to people’s presentations, quotes from the presentations etc and a handy blogpost summarising and giving links.
[edit on Oct 3: Neil’s written up a nice blogpost capturing thoughts, presentations and in general giving a good overview.]
Power of Making at the V&A
Exhibition not to miss: Power of Making at the V&A, free exhibition about how people make things. Brilliant stuff, on til the end of the year. Brilliant and inspiring catalogue too: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/power-of-making/ (and coincedentally, this forms part of a much bigger trend, heck, even in the Google Quarterly mentioned above one of the pieces is about making things).
Wolff Olins’ new website
Website to check out: Wolff Olinshave redeveloped their website, and no prizes for guessing where they got their inspiration from: http://www.wolffolins.com/
Blogpost of the week
And finally, if you only read one blogpost this week, let it be this about Minimum Viable Personality: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/09/minimum-viable-personality.html which boils down pretty well why personality matters:
“MINIMUM VIABLE PERSONALITY
MOST IMPORTANT STEP FOR BUILD PRODUCT IS BUILD PRODUCT.
SECOND MOST IMPORTANT IS BUILD PERSONALITY FOR PRODUCT.
NO HAVE PERSONALITY? PRODUCT BORING, NO ONE WANT.
PERSONALITY BETTER THAN MARKETING
WHEN CHOOSE PRODUCT, HUMANS ONLY CARE ABOUT DOES WORK, AND IS INTERESTING.
WORLD ALREADY FULL OF THINGS DO WORK. MOST BORING.
PERSONALITY = INTERESTING. INTERESTING = CARE. CARE = TALK.
EVERYONE CARE AND TALK ABOUT PRODUCT? YOU WIN. ”
