Perry

Hewitt

Tag: iot

Friday 5 — 10.30.2015
1. 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.
2. I’m a longtime fan of Nuzzel, a useful service to see what your friends and colleagues are sharing online. Pro tip: try the dropdown that allows you to sort content by timeframe. This week Nuzzel rolled out a new automated newsletter to attract audiences other than superusers (the polite term for addicts) of Twitter.
3. How (and where) are we using the internet of things? A study by Accenture found security (hello, dropcam!) and quantified self apps topping the list of applications. A bigger takeaway comes at the end — rather than connect just our homes there’s a greater opportunity to connect ourselves to the context of the physical world as we move through it.
4. Organizations are adjusting their tactics as digital capabilities become more broadly distributed. Hence the New York Times recently shut down its City Room blog, citing DNA [that] has spread throughout the newsroom.
5. 68% of U.S.. adults now own a smartphone — double the number who did back in mid-2011. And iPhone growth naysayers be damned: Ben Thompson explains that the ever-increasing importance of smartphones in people’s lives means that the market size of people willing to pay a premium for their smartphone is actually growing.
Weekend fun: If the pumpkins weren’t enough of a tipoff, the sheer number of inbound Snapchats of costumes remind us that it’s Halloween. Spruce up your digital self with Halloween icons from the Noun Project, and check your actual costume’s popularity using Google search data. But if Halloween is just not your thing, hide at home this weekend watching all of Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting on Twitch (well played, Adobe!).

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
October 30, 2015
Friday 5 — 8.29.2014
1. 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. Click to view on Instagram.
2. A few weeks back, it looked like Google was going to buy Twitch, the livestreaming platform for videogames — much to the consternation of the site’s 55 million users. This week, Amazon picked up Twitch for just under $1 billion. Here’s why.
3. One way to visualize the impact of the Napa Valley earthquake is to take a look at how many people woke up. How would you do that? By charting anonymized user data from the Jawbone Up API.
4. What makes the most shareable content on social? KISSmetrics’ marketing blog shares useful specifics including word count for various platforms, and the optimal length for Facebook (just over 4 minutes, apparently). Longform content can spread, but articles must be formatted in a way that’s easy to read, with lots of visuals interspersed with the text.
5. This clever project meets a need we didn’t know we had: one pagers for tech trends. Each one-pager comes in both a long and a compact version, with useful charts and must-reads.
Weekend fun: How can you make Game of Thrones even geekier? Add in some old school video game sound effects. You’ve been warned: serious nostalgia trigger for gamers over 30. Fun fact: there are now more adult women gamers than teenage boys.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up to get a weekly email.
August 29, 2014
Friday 5 — 6.20.2014
1. 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.
2. What will wearables mean for the workplace? Salesforce releases code libraries to inspire app development, with potential impact on both in-office productivity and lifestyle/fitness.
3. Content management systems and their admin interfaces aren’t usually the sexiest of web topics. But this comes close: the Nieman Lab’s look under the hood at the New York Times’ CMS.
4. Amazon this week launched its long-rumored Amazon Fire Phone. Of note: multiple front-facing cameras to offer 3D perspective and Firefly, which enables you to scan products for additional information. The phones ship next month on AT&T at $199 (32GB) and $299 (64GB) price points.
5. A step-by-step look at Twitter’s cumbersome signup process shows why the company is struggling to grow. But on the bright side, Twitter finally supports GIFs to add a little fun to your timeline.
Weekend fun: OK, Jon Stewart! The Daily Show takes down Google Glass in inimitable style. Fear not: no Glassholes were harmed in the filming of the segment.

Heads up: Friday 5 is taking a break next week to celebrate the World Cup, and resumes on the 4th of July.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
June 19, 2014
Friday 5 — 5.23.14
1. 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.
2. There’s a big opportunity for native mobile apps to take advantage of your handheld’s hardware from camera or accelerometer. This week, Facebook announced an imminent mobile app feature that uses the microphone to identify ambient TV shows, music, or movies. The app then offers up the content to be approved for inclusion in a status update.
3. In a surely wholly unrelated initiative, Facebook changed the default privacy setting for new users to be “friends and family” versus “public” and announced a new privacy check up tool to be rolled out in the coming weeks. Here’s hoping your new privacy settings will keep your mobile device microphone from reporting you are home in your pajamas watching Veep, rather than at the Childish Gambino concert featured in your status message.
4. The internet of things means, sadly but inevitably, ads running on all those connected things. Like on your thermostat. Or your refrigerator. See the full list as well as a couple of clarifications from Google.
5. Why did that video go viral? Success can be attributed to eliciting strong, positive emotion. Be sure to keep it upbeat — people want to see the daring rescue attempt, but no one wants to know that the kitten actually died.
Weekend fun: Speaking of viral video, here’s a slick maneuver from a clever young man who caught a foul ball — and perhaps tried to win a heart.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
May 23, 2014
Friday 5 — 5.16.2014
1. 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, as they move from a battle for the real estate on your home screen to just-in-time surfacing of contextual offers. Fun detail: your friends are defined as “right here” (500 feet), “a short walk away” (1.0 miles), in the area (20 miles), or “far, far away.”
2. Do you have people you like to follow on Twitter, but whose streams become insufferable during Bruins playoffs, Game of Thrones finales, or SXSW? Or people you feel professionally obliged to follow? Now you can mute them, because Twitter really, really wants to retain its user base. Here’s how.
3. Digital thinkers opine on the internet of things. Most agree on the inevitability of a “global, immersive, invisible, ambient networked computing environment …in a world-spanning information fabric known as the Internet of Things.” Opinions vary more on the benefit of ubiquitous data collection versus the associated risk of surveillance and tracking.
4. In case you missed it, Jonathan Zittrain wrote a compelling editorial on this week’s ruling that Europeans have a limited “right to be forgotten” by search engines like Google. Bottom line: it’s a bad solution to a real problem.
5. Pinterest begins its “tasteful” and “transparent” rollout of Promoted Pins, aka ads. With over 750 million boards and 30 billion pins, even a slow rollout represents a huge revenue opportunity for Pinterest (as investors behind its brand-new $200M round would agree).
Weekend fun: Watch P.J. O’Rourke offer his hilarious, skeptical view on the “dark, Satanic mills” that exemplify our current state of technology.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
May 16, 2014
Friday 5 — 5.9.2014
1. 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.
2. Email marketing is a staple of corporate and nonprofit outreach, but how do you get those overloaded recipients to open it? See these five tips for email subject line that attract readers.
3. Here’s a comprehensive rundown on LinkedIn strategy for evolving from a resumé parking lot to an online newspaper. Growth plans include investments in mobile, international expansion, and “delivering massively personalized experiences.”
4. WordPress.com parent Automattic closed $160M in funding on a $1.16B valuation. Known for its robust developer community and emphasis on clean user interface, WordPress now powers an astonishing 22% of 10 million websites today. The investment’s a strong bet on WordPress to continue its growth beyond niche blogging to become the best publishing platform in the world.
5. Smartphones, smart watches, smart toothbrushes are now all available to contribute to our families’ personal data exhaust streams. These data streams are loyalty cards on steroids, providing a live feed of behaviors which when aggregated are a potential goldmine for retailers. Prediction: myriad law suits to emerge over parents’ use of their children’s personal data in return for discounting.
Weekend fun: Perhaps amusing only for soccer fans, Arsenal players respond to mean tweets. Extra credit for gratuitous Vorsprung door Technik joke.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
May 9, 2014
Friday 5 — 4.11.2014
1. 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 is already up and running — soon you will be, too.
2. Good explainer post on the difference between the card design proliferating across the web and emerging card architectures. The former reflects a design aesthetic, which may be a more ephemeral trend. The latter supplants embedded media, and enables third-party and first-party content to co-mingle — potentially delivering more value to the user.
3. Speaking of cards, the explanatory journalism startup Vox launched this week with a lush, card-enhanced look. Bright yellow highlights tease explainer cards that act almost like dynamic FAQs. Topics range from “what is marijuana” (really?) to “is it the Ukraine or just Ukraine.” GigaOm broke down the benefits and challenges of the new site.
4. Internet of Things was canonized as the biggest new thing when John Chamber at Cisco referred to it as a $19T (t, as in trillion) market back in January. This Business Insider scrolling presentation walks you through examples (smart TVs, connected cars, wearables), venture capital investments, and security questions.
5. A new report from mobile analytics and advertising firm Flurry tracked mobile behaviors from January to March 2014. Findings confirm that native mobile apps (versus mobile web) continue to dominate, commanding an astonishing 86% of the average U.S. mobile consumer’s time. HTML5 and CSS3 were the mobile web darlings of 2010 — today, not so much..
Weekend fun: Turns out, Game of Thrones is more than a blood-thirsty way to spend a delightful Sunday evening with the family. The show’s popularity has ensured that there are now more baby Khaleesis than Betsys, and has spawned a veritable spike in female baby Aryas. But cheer up — weekend is coming.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
April 11, 2014
Friday 5 — 3.21.2014
1. 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.
2. The internet of things garnered a lot of attention in January when Google shelled out $3.2 billion for Nest, its patents, and its people. Is the next step for IoT consumers an app store for hardware? NEX band is making an early foray, counting on the viral sharing behaviors of youth to attract developers and ideas.
3. If you manage a Facebook page for a brand, you might want to double-check those reach numbers. With an upcoming algorithm change, the organic reach for a brand page may fall to as little as 1-2% of the fan base. Facebook is looking to migrate organizations to a paid acquisition and retention model.
4. Why do people edit Wikipedia? Here’s a quick explanation — part of a useful short series on the who, why, and how of Wikipedia editors.
5. Is Twitter ditching @ replies and hashtags? Sounds as though they will keep the functionality, but lose some of this “visible scaffolding” around user behaviors. Expect to see ongoing evolution of the user experience as Twitter seeks the user growth needed to buoy its newly-public stock.
Weekend fun: Ever wish you could go back and erase or edit your early online ramblings? For better or worse, Twitter is breathing new life into them by featuring “my first tweet” for its eighth birthday. Here’s how you can look up your own very first tweet.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
March 21, 2014
Friday 5 — 2.21.2014
1. 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 to own.
2. The visual social network Instagram, another Facebook purchase, is looking like it might be living up to its relatively modest $1 billion price tag. Explosive growth and high engagement mean that Instagram is increasingly attractive to brands. It has exceptionally high engagement with affluent, young women — a demographic particularly attractive for retail.
3. If you’re an online publisher — and pretty much all brands are these days — you might be interested in Echobox. This analytics package offers data-driven insights about your content’s performance both on site and as shared across social channels. The end result is fewer charts and numbers, and more specific recommendations for your content.
4. LinkedIn this week entered the realm of “platisher” — the dreadful coinage for part platform and part publisher — as it opened up its content marketing Influencers program to everyone. Like Medium, LinkedIn will cultivate brand names and high-quality submissions, but sees value in building a broad-based content empire.
5. Just where will we wear the internet of things? We’re easing in with wristbands and the stunningly awkward Google Glass, but there’s more to come. Quartz provides a list of body parts likely to be adorned with tech in the near future.
Weekend fun: Jimmy Fallon took over The Tonight Show this week with a celebrity-studded vengeance, but the #hashtag2 performance sealed the deal.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
February 21, 2014