information

An experiment by students at MIT has shown that they were able to ’successfully’ predict the sexuality of people based on their friends on Facebook. The so-called ‘Project Gaydar’* showed that by looking at information that a person’s friends share online (in this case, their gender and sexual preferences) they were able to learn something about an individual themselves, even if their profile had high levels of privacy.

It WAS bold of marketing directors to invest in digital and social media campaigns a year ago. In revisionist marketing thinking, if you hadn’t done it, you’d be crazy. If you’re the least bit curious about how digital and social media is impacting your brand, I’ll call your attention to a weeklong series about media growth in the F.T. (see link below).

Have been talking to a couple of very senior design practitioners this week and sharing my thoughts on the future of information design. Information design was never considered an important aspect in our societies or businesses. The digital revolution has changed our everyday lives with the constantly increasing volume of information in all shapes an forms. As new behaviors emerge as social technologies advancements in an unprecedented was resulting in the overall changing of our communication patterns and attitude towards privacy.

by: Iqbal Mohammed

Recently, much discussion online (and offline) has centred around the impending doom of journalism and the news industry. As an enthusiastic cheerleader of all the disruptive effects of the Internet, my opinion until of late has been that the changes couldn't have come about sooner.

by: John Winsor

David Armano has a wonderful post on becoming a Digital Anthropologist.

by: John Winsor

I've been hanging out here at the 4A's Account Planning conference in Miami. One of the presentations that was inspiring was from Mark Earls and Domenico Vitale. They allowed for a lot of co-creation in their session and started with this provocative video, above.

by: Jonathan Salem Baskin

A future for newspapers?

The French government has announced a ten-fold increase in its support for the country's print media, in an effort "...to make sure an independent, free and pluralistic press exists," according to President Nicholas Sarkozy.

by: David Armano

by: David Polinchock

Growing up on Long Island, there was a store that I think was called JGE's. Long before Costco, it was warehouse shopping if you belonged to a union. The commercials starred a kinda' big guy -- Jerry -- and it was a VO asking What's the story, Jerry and he would say something like You come to JGE's, so them your union card and get the best prices... or something like that. At the end,he'd raise his hands in the air (showing off a huge beer belly!) and say That's the story!

by: Iqbal Mohammed

In a recent blog post, Neil Perkin notes the adoption of Twitter to announce major scientific discoveries.