In the early 90s, corporate marketing departments produced physical brand books, illustrating dos and don’ts for print, TV, signage, trade shows, etc. Fast forward a couple of decades, and the digital world requires a wide-ranging brand treatment that enables variations in volume, and concepts like stacking. See this gorgeous Netflix brand rollout for a best-in-class example. I’m a longtime …
Friday 5 — 8.29.2014
It didn’t take long for Hyperlapse, a new, stand-alone app for time lapse videos, to reach the #3 spot in the app store. Created by the team at Instagram, the app has a sleek, simple user experience that belies the sophisticated capabilities under the hood. At right, my first attempt to magically speed up traffic in Harvard Square. …
Friday 5 — 6.20.2014
Email subscriptions can be pernicious — almost every online interaction bullies you into adding another. Try Unrollme to clean up your inbox by unsubscribing from the mail you never quite get around to reading. What will wearables mean for the workplace? Salesforce releases code libraries to inspire app development, with potential impact on both in-office productivity …
Friday 5 — 5.23.14
How does your LinkedIn profile rank? LinkedIn taps into inherent narcissism by exposing your percentile in profile views compared with that of your connections, or with others in your company. Disappointed in your results? LinkedIn suggests that you beef up your summary, add more skills, and join more groups. There’s a big opportunity for native mobile …
Friday 5 — 5.16.2014
Foursquare begets Swarm, a mobile app that enables users to keep up and meet up with their connected friends. The check-in experience is largely the same, but new passive tracking allows for Neighborhood Sharing — which you can enable or disable with a swipe. Techcrunch describes the larger trend represented by Swarm and other invisible apps, …
Friday 5 — 5.9.2014
You likely don’t need a set of graphics and stark statistics to remind you how much work email has encroached on our personal lives. Also: thoughtful essay on how excessive corporate email promotes burnout rather than productivity. Email marketing is a staple of corporate and nonprofit outreach, but how do you get those overloaded recipients …
Friday 5 — 4.11.2014
Twitter is going all Facebook with new, expanded profile pages. The new profile pages offer a wider banner, a larger profile image, and the ability to “pin” a tweet to the top of your profile. The profile pages will now emphasize your tweets with the most engagement by making them larger. First Lady Michelle Obama …
Friday 5 — 3.21.2014
Medium has released its first mobile app, bringing its elegant, curated reading experience to your iPhone. Login requires Twitter, and they made the somewhat curious decision not to “bog users down” with a homepage. Still to come: more robust search and a mobile writing experience. The internet of things garnered a lot of attention in January …
Friday 5 — 2.21.2014
Facebook forked over $19 billion for WhatsApp, and the internet is full of articles explaining why. Among the most compelling is Buzzfeed’s take that WhatsApp posed a significant threat. WhatsApp is growing fast globally, consumes a great deal of young users’ smartphone time, and fills that critical “staying in touch” niche that Facebook would like …