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June 21, 2013 - Comments Off on Inside Digg’s Race to Build the New Google Reader

Inside Digg’s Race to Build the New Google Reader

Look, the Internet is made of fast. You go fast or you die. But lost in the Clouds of bullshit and hype there’s this true thing: The internet is a technology that can connect us instantaneously to all sorts of information. That instant access lets us learn and connect and transact in entirely new ways. It’s what drives everything online–from I need to know about the Peloponnesian War right now to who is nearby that will take a couple of bucks for a spot in their back seat, sharing economy, #YOLO. It’s just impossibly fast. Even so, few things move faster than they do at the new Digg. This is the team who, in just six weeks, took a dying brand that collapsed under the weight of its own spam and made it something vibrant and vital: a place you wanted to go.

 

So in April, when Google announced it was shutting down Google Reader on July 1, it was almost unsurprising that Digg replied–that same day–We’ve got this.

 

This is the story of how a tiny team took 90 days to pull off the impossible.

 

via Inside Digg's Race to Build the New Google Reader: Wired.com.

That is but a taste of the fantastic article by Mat Honan for Wired. A true behind-the-scenes of what modern day development is like, you should check out the whole thing. It reminds me of the famous Marcel Proust quote "The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it; and habit fills up what remains.'

 

 

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism
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June 20, 2013 - Comments Off on How Technology Has Changed The Idea Of The Brand

How Technology Has Changed The Idea Of The Brand

At PSFK CONFERENCE 2013, a panel of experts discussed how brands can make best use of technological advancements moving forward, and how new technology is driving brand innovation. The panel was comprised of David Rosenberg of IPG Media Lab, Eddie Rehfeldt of Waggener Edstrom,Catherine Balsam-Schwaber of NBC Universal, Tim Voegele-Downing of Avery Dennison, and moderated by Scott Lachut of PSFK.

The questions covered a range of topics, including how technology is giving rise to new types of consumer behavior, in what way brands are creating immersive experiences for consumers, how to create new brand experiences through emerging technological platforms, and what defines meaningful engagement in todays marketplace. Overall, the expert panel offers insight on what are the big opportunities for brands to fully harness the power of tech moving forward.

 

 

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism
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June 18, 2013 - Comments Off on Project Loon: Balloon-powered internet for everyone.

Project Loon: Balloon-powered internet for everyone.

The idea does sound crazy, even for Google—so much so that the company has dubbed it Project Loon. But if all works according to the company’s grand vision, hundreds, even thousands, of high-pressure balloons circling the earth could provide Internet to a significant chunk of the world’s 5 billion unconnected souls, enriching their lives with vital news, precious educational materials, lifesaving health information, and images of grumpy cats.

 

via Exclusive: How Google Will Use Balloons to Deliver Internet to the Hinterlands.

Once again Steven Levy is granted exclusive access to the world of Google and Project Loon. This redefines the concept of mobile computing.

 

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism
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June 17, 2013 - Comments Off on Cognitive Science and Design

Cognitive Science and Design

This session will provide an in-depth look at human perception and cognition, and its implications for interactive and visual design. The human brain is purely treated as an information processing machine, and we will teach the audience its attributes, its advantages, its limitations, and generally how to hack it. While the content will provide a deep review of recent cognitive science research, everything presented will also be grounded in example design work taken from a range of Google applications and platforms. Specific topics will include: edge detection, gestalt laws of grouping, peripheral vision, geons and object recognition, facial recognition, color deficiencies, change blindness, flow, attention, cognitive load balancing, and the perception of time.

via Cognitive Science and Design — Google I/O 2013.

From this year's Google I/O conference. Well worth the 35 minutes.

 

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism
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June 14, 2013 - Comments Off on The MechCast 209: Rituals, Routines & Repercussions

The MechCast 209: Rituals, Routines & Repercussions

On our last podcast, recorded last December, we promised that we would kick-off 2013 with a podcast on productivity. As it happens we've been very busy and very productive. So, after a deadline-induced hiatus, The Mechcast is scheduled to make a return in the near future.

In preparation for the podcast we are all reading Mason Currey's Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. The book is a compilation of 161 inspired — and inspiring — individuals, among them, novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians, who describe how they subtly maneuver the many (self-inflicted) obstacles and (self-imposed) daily rituals to get done the work they love to do.

You can read along and look for the podcast in a couple of weeks, where we'll discuss the many peculiar things we've learned about the people we admire.

 

Published by: antonioortiz in The Mechcast, The Thinking Mechanism
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June 13, 2013 - Comments Off on John Maeda on Simplicity

John Maeda on Simplicity

I have always believed that simplicity is about doing both: subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful. The question, of course, is what is meaningful? — and the answer indeed depends on the cultural context and constraints of the decision being made or product being rendered.

via How Jony Ive's Apple iOS 7 Hinders the Future of Design: Wired Opinion.

If you've not read John Maeda's The Laws of Simplicity, now is the time to do so.

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism
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June 12, 2013 - Comments Off on Exclusively Modern

Exclusively Modern

Apple has set fire to iOS. Everything’s in flux. Those with the least to lose have the most to gain, because this fall, hundreds of millions of people will start demanding apps for a platform with thousands of old, stale players and not many new, nimble alternatives. If you want to enter a category that’s crowded on iOS 6, and you’re one of the few that exclusively targets iOS 7, your app can look better, work better, and be faster and cheaper to develop than most competing apps.

This big of an opportunity doesn’t come often — we’re lucky to see one every 3–5 years. Anyone can march right into an established category with a huge advantage if they have the audacity to be exclusively modern.

via Marco.org.

One of the most astute observations I've seen about iOS7 from Marco Arment, former lead developer of Tumblr, creator of Instapaper and The Magazine.

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism
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February 25, 2013 - Comments Off on Nova: Ancient Computer

Nova: Ancient Computer

ancient-computer-vi

PBS' Nova goes an a deep exploration of our favorite, the Antikythera Mechanism. Do not miss it, airing April 3, 2012 at 9pm on PBS.

In 1900, a storm blew a boatload of sponge divers off course and forced them to take shelter by the tiny Mediterranean island of Antikythera. Diving the next day, they discovered a 2,000 year-old Greek shipwreck. Among the ship's cargo they hauled up was an unimpressive green lump of corroded bronze. Rusted remnants of gear wheels could be seen on its surface, suggesting some kind of intricate mechanism. The first X-ray studies confirmed that idea, but how it worked and what it was for puzzled scientists for decades. Recently, hi-tech imaging has revealed the extraordinary truth: this unique clockwork machine was the world's first computer. An array of 30 intricate bronze gear wheels, originally housed in a shoebox-size wooden case, was designed to predict the dates of lunar and solar eclipses, track the Moon's subtle motions through the sky, and calculate the dates of significant events such as the Olympic Games. No device of comparable technological sophistication is known from anywhere in the world for at least another 1,000 years. So who was the genius inventor behind it? And what happened to the advanced astronomical and engineering knowledge of its makers? NOVA follows the ingenious sleuthing that finally decoded the truth behind the amazing ancient Greek computer.

 

Watch Ancient Computer Preview on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism
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January 11, 2013 - Comments Off on Have You Already Given Up On Your New Year’s Resolutions?

Have You Already Given Up On Your New Year’s Resolutions?

Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever. We shall also reflect pleasantly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. However, go in, community. New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion.

A letter from Mark Twain to Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, January 1863. ( via Exp.lore.com)

We are now reaching that point of the year where resolutions made have begun to fade, giving way to the ease and comfort of routines that accommodate for realities lived. In the past couple of weeks I've seen family, friends, colleagues, all intelligent and capable in their own ways, surrender to the shortcut for caring that is New Year's resolutions.

Making resolutions is a way of pretending, of fooling ourselves into thinking that we are taking steps towards becoming a better version of ourselves. Resolutions are a dream.

See that video? That is Australian-born Berlin-based designer and illustrator Rilla Alexander, at the 99u conference, brilliantly exemplifying the simple truth that without the doing, dreaming is useless.

We all have an idea we want to execute on and yet don't know how to begin. Take the time to figure out what that idea is. What do you really want? Really. Think it through. Pursue it.

What do you care about?

I don't mean what you tell yourself you care about, I mean what you actually care about. You know, that thing that takes the most of your time. Take a close look at your week, and whatever takes the most of your time, be it email, Facebook, Twitter, meetings, family, friends, working out, television, video games, work and so on, that is what you care about. That is what you are making a priority every day.

Is that time-consuming thing what you really want? If it is, then it is time to really focus on it and give it the attention it deserves. If it is not, then it is time to change.

 

 

 

 

The Thinking Mechanism is a series of posts exploring the things we are talking about, usually written by Antonio Ortiz. This edition of The Thinking Mechanism appeared originally in the blog SmarterCreativity.com.

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism
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