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Still trying to find the difference between Foursquare, Instagram and Pinterest?
Social media sounds more complicated than it is. I like it when someone demystifies it. I like it better when someone uses a ‘dumb screen’ instead of gratuitously holding up some tablet (as do too many TV news reporters today, notice?) to make a point. Thanks to Douglas Ray for this.
This might help!
Speaking of white boards, this feels like an homage to the late Tim Russert (of NBC’s Meet the Press) who was a master of the white board when trying to simplify an idea in a story.
I sometimes wonder if Tim would have ever clutched at an iPad to make his point as he did here, during the last election.
If you’re interested here’s the video of his explanation to Brian Williams.
In 1815, more than 2000 people died at the Battle of New Orleans. Two weeks before. a peace treaty had been signed between Great Britain and the United States at the Treaty of Ghent.
But information had not still reached the US –it took two weeks for the news of the treaty to travel from Belgium.
But there’s an interesting counter to why slow news could be good news. Some trends are not understood by the hourly trickle of news updates, as Alan Durning writes. He cites big issues such as pollution and urban sprawl as examples where slow news provides deeper knowledge of underlying issues. He uses a great quote from Ben Hecht to define this:
“Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second-hand of a clock.”
John Kestner reminds me of Steve Wozniak. He’s always tinkering with a gizmo that could potentially change lifestyles, even incrementally.
There was the Tableau, a coffee-table-like device that was a connected dashboard for your home. Basically an ‘anti-computer experience’.
There was his digital wallet –not a new idea, but it was packed with easy-to-figure out features. You could see his ideas here.
But this latest one, also developed at the MIT lab with co-inventor David Carr, is called Twine. It is a potential killer app, to use the term a bit loosely. It is, in their words, a way for people who don’t know how to program or solder, to be able to listen in on your (digital and analog) world, and talk to the web.
John and David are looking for funding, and on Kickstarter, have already raised over $556,00. Take a look, listen to the simplicity of how it works. I’m not saying all of us want to be this connected, or need to talk to the web.
BUT, if this is just the first iteration, it could end up simplifying anything from digital due diligence (painstakingly carried out with expensive software), to becoming security sensors (miniaturized and embedded in shipment containers). Or, who knows it could be a plug and play box from Best Buy that makes the average soccer mum –the ones who don’t yet know PHP or HTML5– less complicated.
If only there was an Easy button for raising capital!
Twine : Listen to your world, talk to the Internet from Supermechanical on Vimeo.
If you’ve been following the Edelman Trust Barometer over the past few years, you’ve known that this the value of this ingredient has had impossible to predict. The 2012 Trust barometer did, however throw some surprises.
Government is the least trusted institution. What else is new?
Trust in the media actually rose in the past year! (That has to be impressive, considering that two years ago, a Pew Research study found it to be at an all time low, with Americans who were aghast with inaccurate and biased news.). Gains were in India, UK, the US and Italy. Which is counter intuitive, considering how the Murdock scandal tainted much of the British media last year. Not surprisingly, social media, recorded the biggest gains in media trust.
More details here from Edelman Insights
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