The Thinking Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Fridays, covering the ideas The Mechanism is thinking and talking about with our peers and clients.

• Hashtags: worth a thousand pictures, good for branding and ready for the mainstream?

• What happens when a geeky comic meets a funny geek? They upstage all the suited, corporate talk at NExTWORK and in 45 minutes provide an irreverent and insightful view of technology today. Watch and you'll see Jimmy Fallon in conversation with Sean Preston. You know it is going to be a good conversation when Fallon, having just met Preston, opens with "how did you write Sexyback?"

• And speaking of NExTWORK, two new words heard during the conference: #intercloud and #intracloud.

• Everything is a remix.

• Do you remember these 12 designs that changed the web?

• We want one of the world's first QR coins.

• JK Rowling announces Pottermore.com and possibly changes book publishing and reading (again.)

• Dutch lawmakers adopt Net Neutrality law: "The Netherlands on Wednesday became the first country in Europe, and only the second in the world, to enshrine the concept of network neutrality into national law by banning its mobile telephone operators from blocking or charging consumers extra for using Internet-based communications services."

• And lastly, developing your creative practice with some tips from Brian Eno.

The Thinking Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Fridays, covering the ideas The Mechanism is thinking and talking about with our peers and clients.

The week in quick links:

• The Atlantic releases The Ideas Report issue with the 14 Biggest Ideas of the Year.

• An interview with Dieter Rams, The Greatest Designer Alive by Co.Design.

• Data point: which countries are most social when mobile?

• Understanding copyright and licenses by Smashing Magazine.

• Bill Gates: A rare interview with the World's second richest man.

• The 2011 Idea Execution Audit by The 99 Percent.

• And lastly, The Jedi Path presentation box.

The Thinking Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Fridays, covering the ideas The Mechanism is thinking and talking about with our peers and clients.

This one is going to be short.

On Monday, at the WWDC, Steve Jobs introduced to the world Apple's vision for the future of computing by revealing what Mac OS X Lion, iOS5 and iCloud will be like. It was a relentless, software-focused 2 hours of demo after demo showcasing improvements, enhancements, new features and computing innovations in what most tech followers have agreed was an overwhelming show of forward thinking. Those looking for new hardware announcements had to settle for the new massive data center, not what they had in mind but hardware nonetheless. When taken as a whole, what is coming out from Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook (The Gang of Four) is defining what the future of technology is going to be. Apple's announcements on Monday will certainly change how we work day to day, but also the kinds of work we can produce. We are at the threshold of a very exciting future.

• If you can, you should watch the keynote via stream or podcast.
• Listen to John Gruber's reaction for insight from an Apple commentator.
• Listen to Marco Arment's perspective as a developer affected by some of the new features announced.
• Do you agree with Bob Cringely's assessment that iCloud's real purpose is to kill Windows?
• Has the PC really been demoted?

• If you don't have much time, here is everything you need to know about WWDC 2011 in one handy list.

The Thinking Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Fridays, covering the ideas The Mechanism is thinking and talking about with our peers and clients.

This week members of our London team have been working out of the New York office leading to many interesting conversations about technology, development and the future of creative digital work. Mostly because during this week, and next, a lot of industry changing announcements are taking place. This week the D9 Conference is happening and next week is Apple's World Wide Developers Conference.

Here are some of the things we've learned so far:

• In a rare and unexpected break from their absolute secrecy Apple pre-announced the content of their WWDC keynote. We now know Steve Jobs will be back for the presentation. There will be no new hardware, certainly no new iPhone announcement. The keynote will focus on software, specifically Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5, and will introduce iCloud, a potential replacement for MobileMe and music locker. They also released iPhone versions of the iWork suite of apps ahead of the conference. They have certainly gone out of their way to manage expectations. If all the rumors floating about are to be believed Apple is up to something big.

• Microsoft demoed Windows 8 (video) which introduces a new tile-based interface based on the Windows Phone.

• Twitter introduced the Follow button, which allows one click follows without having to leave the page you are in. It also introduced photo and video sharing within Twitter (video,) a full of potential extension to the service that transforms hashtags beyond keywords and trends into galleries. Twitter may even be baked into iOS 5.

• Google releases the +1 button to the web. One more button to add to pages, to blogs, to the online ecosystem. Although it comes late to the social media party the +1 button has the advantage of actually influencing the Google search algorithm, possibly leading to improved SEO. For that reason alone it may be embraced.

• Former Google CEO and current Board member Eric Schmidt introduced the phrase "The Gang of Four," or how he refers to Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook. This cabal of frenemies has highly successful partnerships in some areas and aggressively competitive pursuits in others. And together they are inventing the future. Notably absent from Schmidt's "Gang" - is Microsoft...

• If you were in Jonathan Kaplan's shoes and experienced Cisco buying your Flip line of consumer cameras only to abruptly discontinue them, what would you do? He is going into high-tech grilled cheeses.

• And speaking of dairy products, is White Power Milk a joke, performance art, political satire, a student project, a viral for Yakult? Only Nate Hill knows for sure.

The Thinking Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Fridays, covering the ideas The Mechanism is thinking and talking about with our peers and clients.

In the U.S. this weekend is Memorial Day weekend, the official start of summer. Many people travel to visit family and friends or just to take their first trip to the beach. In the spirit of the holiday weekend we are going to do something different. Instead of sharing the items we've been talking about we are going to introduce you to two services we love and share items that you could enjoy while commuting to your destination or while taking some deserved time off.

Once you discover Instapaper you wonder how did you manage without it. Created by Marco Arment, co-founder of Tumblr and coffee aficionado, Instapaper is a simple tool to save web pages to read later. The text is stripped out of any web page and becomes available, via apps on most mobile devices, for you to read when you have the time. It is also available online through the Instapaper website. Instapaper is time-shifting for text, TiVo for words.

Longreads is the perfect compliment to Instapaper. Founded by Mark Armstrong, Longreads posts links to new stories every day — they include long-form journalism, magazine stories from your favorite publications (The New Yorker, Esquire, The Atlantic), short stories, interview transcripts, and even historical documents. The site has a brilliant search feature that allows you to filter articles based on length, so you can find the perfect article to read in the amount of time you have available.

In the age of Twitter and Facebook status updates, these two services encourage long-form reading. Here are some of the articles we'll be reading this weekend, as discovered through Longreads:

Error Message: Google Research Director Peter Norvig on Being Wrong
(Kathryn Schulz, Slate, Aug. 3, 2010)
Time to read: 16 minutes (4,050 words)
Norvig explains what happens when a company (in this case Google) takes an engineering-centric approach to its products and business. First, it means that errors are actually a good thing.

Apple & Design: The Man Who Makes Your iPhone
(Frederik Balfour and Tim Culpan, Businessweek, Sept. 9, 2010)
Time to read: 21 minutes (5,204 words)
Foxconn founder Terry Gou might be regarded as Henry Ford reincarnated if only a dozen of his workers hadn't killed themselves. An exclusive look inside a postmodern industrial empire.

Later: What Does Procrastination Tell Us About Ourselves?
(James Surowiecki, The New Yorker, Oct. 11, 2010)
Time to read: 14 minutes (3,574 words)
Take comfort in this exploration of the “basic human impulse” of putting work off.

Master of Play: Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo's Man Behind Mario
(Nick Paumgarten, The New Yorker, Dec. 13, 2010)
Time to read: 37 minutes (9366 words)
Jamin Brophy-Warren, who publishes a video-game arts and culture magazine called Kill Screen, told me that there is something in the amplitude and dynamic of Mario's jumps—just enough supernatural lift yet also just enough gravitational resistance—that makes the act of performing that jump, over and over, deeply satisfying. He also cited the archetypal quality of Mario's task, that vague feeling of longing and disappointment which undergirds his desperate and recurring quest for the girl. "It's a story of desire," Brophy-Warren said.

Twitter Was Act One
(David Kirkpatrick, Vanity Fair, March 3, 2011)
Time to read: 18 minutes (4,543 words)
"The Facebook Effect" author David Kirkpatrick on another Silicon Valley superstar—Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey. In submitting to his first in-depth profile, we learn about the events the led to him stepping down as CEO [since then he has returned to Twitter as CEO], his long-term goal (to become mayor of New York City), and his earliest career experiences.

Cranking
(Merlin Mann, 43 Folders, April 22, 2011)
Time to read: 12 minutes (3,068 words)
A disappearing dad with a looming book deadline examines his priorities, and promises changes.

The Thinking Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Fridays, covering the ideas The Mechanism is thinking and talking about with our peers and clients.

• After more than 3 years of development, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) HTML Working Group has voted to move the HTML5 draft specification to Last Call status.

• Ad Age looks at the demographics of social media.

• This week Facebook began allowing brand tagging on photographs shared on the site. This reminds us of IKEA's Showroom campaign implemented in 2009 (see a case study video here.) Think about what they'll be able to create next using this new functionality.

• However that's not the most significant Facebook news of the week. After four and half years Facebook has been granted a patent on image tagging.

• LinkedIn's very successful IPO, launched Thursday, is seen by many as a watershed moment for Social Media.

• Another must see Google Labs Chrome Experiment Film: Rome's 3 Dreams of Black.

• WordPress.com has dropped support for IE6.

• Macworld has a great collection of articles taking a close look at the 10th anniversary of Apple's first retail stores.

• Put the ritalin down: In Praise of Shortened Attention Spans.

The Thinking Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Fridays, covering the ideas The Mechanism is thinking and talking about with our peers and clients.

• We are very curious about Google's introduction of the Chromebook (with their typically great animated demo video.) We've known that a laptop that runs on Chrome and executes everything within the browser was in the works. What's more peculiar is the introduction of laptop rental services for business and education. With Adobe also introducing a subscription service for their Creative Suite 5.5, is leasing the future of hardware and software? Most likely it is a way to ensure that cash-strapped college students can afford the hardware and software to begin forging a brand bond as early as possible.

• And speaking of college students, a new study finds they are addicted to media.

•  On the same week that it releases a Best Practices Guide for Marketing on Facebook, the company is in PR hot water. Facebook paid a PR firm to smear Google. Leaked emails reveal Burson-Marsteller attempted to get USA Today and other titles to write criticizing Google's privacy policies. This from the company that is constantly telling us what we should think privacy is.

• We loved this week's Google Doodle, created by Ryan J. Woodward, paying tribute to Martha Graham. The Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance has annotated the works behind the doodle and knowing that many people would be searching for more information has cleverly incorporated fundraising campaigns to the page.