Technology has a role in society of making life better, and while it does this it’s still an inconveinence to use. A whole set structure of systems and languages need to be adopted for someone to begin to use the technology. As a child my camera was point and click, now I’ve got a multitude of buttons and settings I need to navigate to take a photo. Technology is suppose to link the user with the required result as efficiently as possible, but we can never escape the fact that technology is always going to be a third wheel in an otherwise personal experience. Pranav Mistry presented his and his team’s progress in developing Sixth Sense Technology  at TED Global last year, and considering Mistry’s humble attitude towards his initial foray into the field, it’s incredibly exciting to consider just how much would be possible in the near future once their initial research is complete and they begin to develop commercial products. Based on the video above, below are in my opinion 5 of the most exciting possibilities.

1 Photographs Become Personal

It goes without saying because of just how natural it is to make the framing hand gesture to signify a view. It seems as though we were always meant to take photos this way, we just had to go through a process of holding a box of plastic and metal in the area first. One of the most difficult things about taking photos is the de-personalisation of the photographer. Fair enough they’re not hidden under a black hood like in the old days, but they’re still completely on the other side of the camera. For such a personal moment, it’s always an inconveinence to have an inanimate object like a camera dictate where you sit, how you smile and inevitably be the object which records you. But by using your hands to take the photo it’s now the user who is responsible for recording you, in the same way that being sketched by a friend is much more comfortable than having a stranger analyse the contours of your face.

2 Sharing Your Digital World

As much as social media has done for connecting the world, it’s still a very remote experience. It’s ironic that such a social activity is usually done in isolation, with retweeting or tagging taking prescidence over calling someone over to your screen. Sixth Sense Technology would allow social media to become social in the offline environment too – photos could be shared naturally and intuitively rather than in a method more akin to long distance mail. Remember crowding around a photo album, laughing and smiling with friends and families as you chat about the pictures? It’s a distant memory to the frequently inane comments we find left on our Facebook photos that we’re beginning to get used to today.

3 Overlay of the World

The advantages of performing tasks in a digital manner  have been great enough to justify sacrificing some of the natural benefits we have been used to. Instead of reading the free paper on the bus, I’ll check my RSS feeds for up-to-date and filtered content, but it’s just not as natural a way to interact with the written word. Also the enjoyment of purchasing a new item is lost when done so remotely online, but the added benefit of product research is enough for us to go without the full thrill of the purchase. But maybe the uses that Mistry and his team are investigating may be able to give something back to the offline world. Could the web’s murderous relationship with printed media and high street outlets actually just be a phase?

4 Dispensable Computers

It’s a shame that technology is always so expensive, because it holds it back from really being integrated into the user’s life. How many pens do you own that you actually paid for? There’s an unspoken system of pen exchanges connecting the entire world which means you may be using a Biro which has had many, many other owners in the past. Imagine if iPads were as frequently passed around – you would maybe find one sitting on the bus or ask to borrow one and never give it back. My point is that the more expensive the technology and the more protective you are over it, the more it becomes a block to the task at hand. You should be playing a game, booking tickets or listening to music – not using an iPad. If you can take away your relationship with technology, then you can begin to get on with the real aspects of your life.

5 Merging Hardcopies with Digital

Now this the real clincher, and something incredibly beautiful I think. In the past 50 years so many of us have been forced to adopt a very respectful relationship with computers – speaking in their language, following their rules and generally doing things there way. While it certainly speeds up some processes, as soon as we’re away from a computer we immediately go back to how we intuitively work, and the systems exist entirely separate from one another. The intuitive way that humans work is the most efficient and enjoyable, but we’re being squeezed into a way which suits the computer. As much as GUI and usability specialists are trying to imitate the experience, we still have a long way to go before we can say we’ve really reclaimed dominance over the computer and made the computer work for us. Sixth Sense Technology is a tantalising tease that we might be about to make a significant step closer towards this moment of singularity.

Technology has brought with itself almost as many problems as it solves, it’s just they happen to be the lesser of two evils. But could technology be noble enough to accept it wasn’t invited in the first place, and begin removing itself while continuing to solve the problems it was designed for?

While trying to avoid any unconstructive bashing of Myspace (I want to make valid points here not just have an unfair rant), it’s quite hard to articulate just how much of an epic fail I think the new logo really is. To avoid the easy rant, I’ve listed below the reasons why I feel disappointed in the new design, but just in case you don’t get to the bottom, I should point out I’ve not given up hope for them just yet.

Old logo:

New logo:

1. It’s vacated - The logo instantly says ‘vacant’ – this is where Myspace used to be. It seems almost like an inside joke from Facebook employees, with the new logo representing Myspace’s sudden absence from people’s thoughts, social lives and media schedules. In fact, as the logo is no longer recognisable as Myspace, it even suggests the joke ‘My-who?’

2. It’s not Myspace - In fact, they’ve physically removed the significant part of the brand name. Most brands wanting to reaffirm themselves would shout their names from the rooftops, but Myspace seems to have relaunched by pretending it never existed in it’s former self.

3. Is the removal symbolic? – At a time when Myspace are being forcibly removed from the internet by competitors, it seems crazy to do the same to your brand logo. It’s almost an admittance Myspace is just about evaporated, and they’re trying to symbolise that with the logo. Are they repositioning themselves as a fringe service, one where they don’t even have the opportunity to fully introduce themselves before being cut off by the bigger players?

4. It’s thoughtless, not simple – Simple is always better, you should always try to convey only one thought and then you’ll have the highest amount of people understanding you, but that doesn’t mean it has to be void of any thought. The new logo is merely a visual representation of the word. Imagine if Facebook redesigned their logo to an icon of a face and a book – it’s the lowest form of wit.

5. Where’s the music? – The original logo really wasn’t that bad. It was identifiable, the figures symbolised the network and the easy addition of headphones instantly represented what Myspace is good at – music. As Myspace’s only saving grace, I would have thought the obvious choice would be to continue this theme.

6. Reliance on UGC – The thought behind it is that the space will be populated by user generated content in a kind of Google Doodle way. Considering the extreme level of moderation and strict selection process required to do this, it will be more like an art feature than UGC. But apart from that, Myspace are effectively saying that the best thing they have to offer are it’s users (and their content) – but that’s not Myspace’s offering, that’s the user’s, which exist outside of Myspace too. What I want from a social network is functionality and ease of use – something Myspace don’t seem to be addressing by focusing on the mishmash of UGC that was almost once their downfall.

7. There’s a bad design stigma – bad design has already been represented by Myspace since it’s early days, with far too much creativity over the structure of the profile’s navigation to allow for a worthwhile user experience. Surely the new logo, which of course will attract more bad design comments anyway, only amplifies this by suggesting that it’s the UGC that will make this logo great?

8. Lack of synergy – Even a brand like Google is criticised for it’s constant recognition of significant dates by changing it’s logo – it goes against what a logo is suppose to be (a recognisable point of reference) but as Google keep it only to their homepage it’s generally agreed they can pull it off. Certainly on the Myspace domain the varying logos will be acceptable, but outside of that they’ll have to stay consistent. Meaning the vast majority of time, and certainly the times when the logo is suppose to be doing it’s most significant work, the logo will no longer be a platform for UGC and simply be a vacant space – losing the main reason behind it’s concept.

9. Open to abuse – Obviously all logos are – just look at the recent BP fiasco, but the the new Myspace logo is a gaping invitation to abuse as much as it is a platform for promoting user’s artwork. It’s only a matter of time before Myspace get the same treatment as Gap did and users can mash two images together to create their symbolic interpretation of Myspace.

10. Lost their way? – Lastly, as I think this won’t be very significant to many people, but I almost feel sorry for Myspace as I kind of feel they’ve really lost their way, and are maybe flailing a dead horse with a broken stick. It’s so different from the textbook company rebranding that I’m concerned they may actually have gone a bit mad. The Myspace offices must surely be a frightful place with reports of the company being worthless, big names walking out the door and Rupert Murdoch leering over your shoulder demanding an answer as to why his investment isn’t working. As bad as it sounds, is it possible this is a last ditch attempt by some Myspace execs to keep themselves in a job a little bit longer?

The over-riding theme here is that it’s different – it’s very, very different from anything that anyone would ever recommend. My opinions above are based on a limited education and personal taste, not on experience of what works, but I have to assume that the execs who decided on this rebranding do know what works, they just haven’t been lucky so far. Nobody can deny that in the age we live in anything can happen, and anybody can have a successful company.

Myspace isn’t trying to be a Facebook replica, they’re trying to carve out their own niche which will be into the unknown, and they’ll have to take a path that nobody has been along before – so no wonder we’re laughing at the tools they’re using to get there, I just hope they manage to see their effort through, whether they make it to the end or not.

Read the full TechCrunch article on the unveiling here.

The Wilderness Downtown by Chris Milk is in my opinion one of the most interesting creative developments from the world of Digital this year. It’s a fantastic example of what can be achieved by the passionate resistance, who are fighting against the juggernauts like Chris Anderson for the belief that browsers do still very much have a future with the web.

In short, it’s an interactive browser based music video for the song ‘We Used to Wait’ by Arcade Fire -  nothing new there, but there’s no Flash buttons to toggle here. The scene is of an external setting with only a lone, unidentified figure running through the environment. However, by using multiple viewpoints, the video/ app/ experience populates the area with content fed straight from Google Maps and Streetview. After selecting the address of your childhood home at the outset, it becomes apparent that the protagonist is you, running home and stopping outside your old home.

After a short interlude were you draw a postcard (more info on the postcard here), ‘you’ begin to be chased by birds and rapidly appearing trees – which I gather to be an artistic metaphor. The multiple viewpoints each contribute just enough to fill in the gaps, including a very impressive display of 3D animation being overlaid onto Streetview.

It’s a beautiful, new and truly inspiring piece. I find it a fantastic standard bearer for the power of Chrome and HTML 5. Sure the browser is losing more and more of it’s purpose to apps which suit the menial tasks better, but it’s making way for more new and exciting possibilities.

The Microsite Curse

In spite of this, there is still the argument that these sort of productions rely on microsites, which are in essence a waste of space and time – cut-off from the rest of your online content and seemingly existing in a bubble from the rest of the web. They’re a nice gimmick, but they’re like the kid in school nobody wants to be friends with, in spite of his efforts to draw as much attention to himself as possible. Could this be shared? Could it be passed through Facebook as something more than just a link to the microsite, or hosted on Youtube without having to leave the page you’re on? Maybe browsers will forever exist as the explorers and distributors of new found ideas, always being the first to burden the new technology. Or maybe they’ll just be the stop-gap these developments use while they get themselves sorted out and ready for a proper launch to the wider internet.

Malcolm Colmes pointed out yesterday the slight update to Google Instant which allowed the use of keyboard shortcuts. After hitting return, a user can navigate the results by pressing the up and down keys. With the PPC ads at the top and highlighted first, this means many more users may click through on the paid for ad rather than the organic listings.

This could prove a problem for many advertisers who bid on their own brand terms. While the benefits of this strategy included reiterating the message from the organic listing and preventing competitors from appearing as an alternative, there was always a concern that to some degree it was a waste of money as many users who would have clicked through via the organic listing instead clicked on the paid for ad. Fortunately though, bidding on your own brand terms has always been incredibly cheap, and so in most cases the benefits outweigh the cost.

Lazy Users

However users are already inherently lazy, and will often search for brand terms of sites even though they know the url -  incase they make a typo and because it’s marginally quicker. Now with the arrival of keyboard shortcuts, a quick double-tap on the Return key will take the user straight through to the site via the paid search.

So the balance of traffic between SEO and PPC brand terms can be expected to shift in the favour of PPC, and many advertisers may have to reconsider how efficient bidding on their brand terms are.

Even Lazier

Now I might be taking it a bit too far, or showing how I’m a prime example of a despicably lazy user, but I think that for at least the users that do adopt the use of the keyboard shortcuts, there may be an even bigger impact on the way they use the paid for ads.

With your wrists resting in front of the alphabetical keys while typing a search query, it’s easy to hit return with your right pinky. Once the results are displayed, to navigate the results means adjusting your right hand enough to use the arrow keys. While this seems a small effort when we’re used to lifting our hand fully to operate the mouse, I think that to a user who has adopted this method of using Google it just might be that tiny bit of subconscious incentive to just settle for the first link and hit return with their pinky, even though the link isn’t the one they would have naturally chosen.

On specific brand terms this is unlikely to be a factor (though my first point would), but when browsing generic terms such as ‘mens shirts’, the user has to pass up three options before reaching the organic listings, and while it won’t happen every time, I’m pretty confident I would more often that now just settle for one of the closer links.

New Importance of Top Position

The important thing here though is that the closer links are also the top position ads. While many advertisers have taken comfort in knowing they’re bidding on the most cost efficient ad position rather than the most expensive, this may no longer be the case and Google Instant may prove the catalyst of a bidding war where suddenly everyone wants to be the top position.

Whether or not we find the top position to be the most efficient, as the new behaviour of Google keyboard shortcuts takes hold across the user base, I’m quite certain that Google will see the revenue begin to pour in as panicking advertisers test the higher ad positions.

Back in 2006 I took part in a student competition to produce a piece of work for the NSPCC which would encourage men not to treat child abuse as a taboo subject, which often only added to the harm.

Peer pressure coupled with historical indoctrinating as to what it means to ‘be a man’ was to blame for a lot of men being reluctant to talk about their experiences, and reluctant to engage others with opening up about theirs. Reaching this audience would be very difficult, as the whole problem is that they are intentionally avoiding the subject. Deep down though they do want to engage, so a clever use of media coupled with engaging creative would be needed to capture their attention long enough for them to consider the message.

A DPS in a men’s title would serve as a way to reach men during a personal and contemplative time, and a textless infographic would serve as a puzzle to challenge them into engaging with the message. A related article including the full DPS for the NSPCC.

As I was technically on a TV & Film Design course at the time although in my final year my work focused around Graphic and Web Design, I felt obliged to continue the exploration of the idea in film. 3DStudio Max allowed me to envisage the infographic in 3D, which actually served as a fitting medium due to the message that the indoctrinating part popular TV has played in conditioning men to feel it inappropriate to discuss sensitive matters.

It’s a really beautiful new ad from Mother for Ikea, and it works very simply by positioning the Ikea products from the curious and comfort-inducing point of view of a cat.

Ikea’s no newbie to being open-minded though, and at the end of last year they uploaded photos of the showrooms to Facebook, and allowed friends of Ikea to win the pieces of furniture by tagging themselves on it first.

So it’s not surprising that the Herding Cats ad is only part of a bigger integrated campaign including another competition and further documentaries.

Besides, Mother are on to a winner here anyway, as we all know how much the internet loves cats.

I think it’s a bit early to speculate how Google Instant will affect user behaviour, and there’s certainly a lot of buzz that it could fall out of favour like so many other recent Google endeavours, but could Google Instant stupefy search? I don’t mean in the same sense as auto-spelling corrections, but couldn’t users decide to just settle for semi-relevant results instead of seeing their actual search query all the way through?

Take for example the VisitCalifornia.co.uk PPC ads. In the past, users searching purely for ‘California’ were served a generic ad driving users to the VisitCalifornia.co.uk homepage, while more specific search queries such as ‘California weather’ took them further into the site to a more relevant page.

Google Instant could inadvertently distract those more specific users by serving them ads too quickly. A long-tail user may only get half-way through typing their ‘California weather’ query before deciding to click through on the more generic ad, and as the landing page will be less relevant this will ultimately lead to an overall lower conversion rate.

Fortunately the actual letters typed will also be passed through to Analytics in a parameter in the URL string. While q= is the guessed search query, oq= shows the actual letters typed. Comparing these two parameters in Analytics may be the only help available in ascertaining if some of your traffic is being misdirected.

While the concept of Instant is fantastic and truly a great way to navigate the web, there’s a risk that users may try to take a bit of a liberty with it’s ease and inevitably receive a poorer service.

5. Dr Pepper

April Fools Day 2010, and a hot cheerleader promises a dance if the viewer performs embarrassing tasks. Only, the dance they receive isn’t quiet what they expected. It’s fun, cheeky and in keeping with the brand and the spirit of the day. Shame Dr Pepper couldn’t restrain their sense of fun across the rest of their social media activities this year.

4. French Connection

As part of the ‘Man’ campaign, FCUK challenged men everywhere to seduce a woman using Chatroulette. While there was a large variety of different approaches, they all seem a bit lackluster and I don’t think they ever really found what they were looking for. A good and engaging idea and highly commendable as they were one of the first brands to step up, but the campaign itself never really took off.

3. Condomerie

Seeing as ads on porn sites are of the worst kind possible and have a LOT of competition when trying to compete for a user’s attention, relevant advertisers are going to struggle to reach their audience at this time. The Dutch condom company Condomerie used Chatroulette to target some of the more adventurous users of the site with a simple reminder about sexual health.

2. Harley Davidson

Not that I’m really a fan of the Harley Davidson genre of ads, but I do respect the massive institution they have become. Brand advisers could be wary of using Chatroulette in this way as it pretty much says “I’m better than you” to the audience, but then again that’s what they’re selling – superiority (or at least the illusion of it).

1. The Last Exorcism

Sex, voyeurism and shock tactics all play their roles in this campaign for the upcoming film The Last Exorcism. The campaign is so suited to the medium you could almost question which came first.

Bonus: If You Turn Your Head

And finally a brilliant campaign that was only missing an associated brand to have made the top 5 list above. It’s simple, it’s funny and it seems to work every time.

The Boohbah Zone is without a doubt the funnest Flash based site I’ve ever seen. I’ve got no idea what the hell it’s about, and it certainly doesn’t seem to have any ultimate goal such as showing off developer skill’s or promoting a corporate product – it’s just plain stupid fun.

The site is entirely audio and visual based, and has a bunch of random sub-games with no instructions. You might work out the objection of the sub-game, or you might decide in the end that actually there’s no objection, and bouncing cut-outs of people off comfy chairs until they fall between them is enough fun for the game not to warrant a conclusion.

At a time when Flash seems to be treading water before it’s inevitable submersion into the history books of the internet, it’s nice to see an example of Flash being used for something it’s really good at, rather than a splash page (yes, they still exist). Although like most people I’ve been drifting away from Flash in favour of more SEO friendly alternatives, the Boohbah Zone site has reminded me why Flash really does have a place in site design – it’s just a small, weird, and purely for fun kind of place.

NB: Boohbah was a 2003 UK kid’s TV show.

Didn’t command prompt computing die with the birth of Windows like, in the 80′s even before ‘the Internet’ was a word in our vocabulary? So why does such a huge portion of what we do on our computers start with us typing a location command to pull code from someone’s server?

It seems crazy that so many tasks we do with a computer need to be filtered through a middle-man; if I want to write a document I use Word, if I want to make a chart I use Excel, but if I want to do some banking or find out some news I (used to at least) have to use a web browser to run the service. It reminds me of being a kid and opening and running some code in Qbasic – it’s what developers do when something is still a work in progress. Why are we still living in the computer dark ages – downloading hobbled together pieces of code to our computer and running it in our code-interpreting web browsers just so we can do a simple thing like get a weather report?

The web browser is nothing more than a document viewer with a whole tonne of add-ons and plug-ins piled on top – it’s not an operating system (Chrome OS excluded) so it’s about time we stopped treating it as one. I know there’s technical and user behaviour reasons why it’s taken so long for the idea of a web browser to be ditched, but I do think it’s something we’re going to look back at and cringe thinking ‘God, do you remember when you could just right-click and ‘view source-code’?‘ – It seriously seems like we’ve been smitten by the wonders of the Web and giving the Internet far too much leeway. It’s about time it grew up, straightened itself out and began acting like all the other, serious computer systems out there.

The chart is from Wired‘s new cover story on the Death of the Web, but there was a much more interesting article (IMHO) from The Next Web back in March.

Below is a good ‘day in the life’ taken straight from the Wired article:

“You wake up and check your email on your bedside iPad — that’s one app. During breakfast you browse Facebook, Twitter, and The New York Times — three more apps. On the way to the office, you listen to a podcast on your smartphone. Another app. At work, you scroll through RSS feeds in a reader and have Skype and IM conversations. More apps. At the end of the day, you come home, make dinner while listening to Pandora, play some games on Xbox Live, and watch a movie on Netflix’s streaming service.

You’ve spent the day on the Internet — but not on the Web. And you are not alone.” – Wired