Well ok this has nothing to do with photography (i'll admit to not updating this section in some time) but it brings together fashion, business, innovation, marketing, and agency life into one succinct presentation.

The premise is simple:

No copyright laws (in fashion): allow for greater creativity, stronger innovation, and greater return. F'ing brilliant.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html

Awhile back, perhaps a long time ago in the digital age I used to run a BBS. I used the Telegard BBS software and ran it with a 9600 baud modem, rocking a 386sx (the sx was for slow xtreme) cpu.

Doing some research for command line game mechanics I was trying to recall some of the earlier games that one would play on the boards; Yankee Trader and such. These game mechanics tend to be the basis for the popular Mafia Wars and Farmville that we see today trending within the social communities; some things never change perhaps.

Interestingly enough a quick search of "Telegard BBS" within Google landed me in a frozen moment in time. Most of these sites were last updated in 1999. Some of them claiming, soon to be released, y2k updates (oh yes remember this? Cobol guys are still lamenting the end of the gold rush I suppose). There was / is something almost eerily depressing about it all. The Telegard main homepage, last updated on Christmas of 1999, talks about the newly redesigned website and how the creator, Tim Strike, will be releasing new software shortly. Yet there it is, hasn't been touched since and a historical Wikipedia article probably usurped its top ranking on Google a few years back.

Again I trolled Google trying to remember the name of a maintenance RPG that I had installed on my BBS (Which BTW was called Prophets of Rage; a friend of mine tried to convince me to rename it to Profits of Wage at the time. I didn't see the humor/cleverness in this until many years later). So I entered in the search terms "Telegard BBS games cyborg"; I was thinking the game had "cy" or "sy" in it, just can't remember...still don't. The results came back, so many phreakers and sysops named cyborg brought up usenet entries for random BBS's; their names, phone numbers, endless chatter. Large elite BBS phone lists came back promoting Lunatic Fringe and Yankee Clipper, ones that I personally used to belong to (zero day warez people). All frozen moments, seemingly petrifying right before the new millennium; we can only glance in and see the artifacts left over. Perhaps a search or some field work within Google will bring to the surface more of these ruins.

So I ask, somewhat lamely I admit, will we soon have a major for digital archeologists? In theory I guess we have already experienced a bit of this with data. The Rosetta Stone is still able to be translated yet a floppy and or punch card from the 1900's is perhaps almost lost, as the media erodes over time. But what about all this information, content now being liquid will soak into the tubes (cheers to Alaska) and get stuck in the corners like the fat within the arteries of a middle aged American. Who will explore this? Scrape it out and paste it on a wall as artwork? 

"Look at this late 1900's artifact from the early Arpanet period. So beautiful." She said.

Fire Escape's 314 Area Code BBS Directory - July 1995

Well I had to get your attention somehow, didn't I?

Has the mobile device killed traditional branding? Arguably, for the time being, it has. Currently brands and agencies are trying so hard to get iPhone applications out, mobile sites, blackberry apps, that what has fallen to the wayside of late is the initial overall object; branding. This of course isn't done on purpose but it is almost as if the technologies / platforms that are used to deliver the content are speaking more to the brand than the brand itself. If a company wants to suggest they are "cutting edge" (yeah well...I used it, f off) or "innovative" (christ...can I get a shout out to "leverage" while I’m at it) they have more of a shot by using a specific technology, then trying to ‘design’ around it. If a major brand has an app in the iStore (??? iStore - can you blame me?) that is brand enough for them.

Look around at all these mobile applications, all these sites; so simple, straight to the point, clutter free... breath it in cause it feels pretty good if you ask me. I jumped to the American Express mobile site the other day and it actually looked good, it was honest and naked. Go to their current debacle of a website and watch as they try to squeeze AJAX into a 20th century framework and it oozes pain...you want to get in and out so bad it reminds you of a ....hmmm not going to go there...but it was bad and probably had something to do with porn...

So what is it that I am rambling on about...yes...currently mobile is so fresh and new that the actual platform speaks more to the brand itself than the brand. Next time you visit a mobile site enjoy the simplicity of it all...and perhaps ask yourself if you can pay this forward into the traditional webspace (which is dying anyway but we'll chat later on that)... content truly is king at the moment; you either have something I want or need or don't...let's hope that, for now, it stays that way.

The ADA within the commercial space for non brick and mortar commerce is an opaque area. Most litigation related to the ADA and commerce tends to be settled out of court; so currently there are no laws or rulings established. For those of you familiar with Target and perhaps Southwest you may argue otherwise but they too were also settled out of court. The closest I have seen so far is the suggestion that for whatever product you sell within an actual brick and mortar store it must be just as accessible online as well; of course this completely removes Amazon from any responsibility towards ADA compliance.

As consortiums, councils, and unions gather together to discuss the endless details of compliance within aging technologies, yes I'm talking about WCAG, there might, perhaps, be another way, at least in the short term, to satisfy many ADA requirements.

The screen reader technology should focus more on the mobile version of a website vs. the .com experience. I have found through testing of various screen readers (JAWS, SuperNova, ZoomText) that there is an endless array of useless information that needs to be given through voice (yes I'm specifically talking about users with a visual impairment here - not all people with disabilities). It doesn't allow the end user any particular way to scan this information (now I have an answer for this too but that's not the point of this piece). However, for whatever reason, we recognize this with mobile. For mobile we instantly say, we can't present all this BS, or let’s limit the results to 5 instead of 100, let’s build some quick filtering and allow the user to determine what they need, or let's just put up search/product/pay as 3 easy steps...

If we could get businesses to design mobile sites, and get screen readers to point to mobile or be detected as mobile we might be able to solve a few issues quickly and efficiently and most importantly using modern and relevant technology (WCAG that's you again).

This is obviously an incomplete thought but I wanted to get it out there for potential discussion. It's interesting because I now make almost 50% of my purchases through mobile for various items that range from an MP3 to furniture. Yet currently, and I have no statistics to back this up, I doubt many .COM commerce sites allow for a user with screen reader to purchase anything with ease, if at all.

Look for more on this topic; I'll present some research into this field within the next few months.

The foundations of GUI interfaces (and some NUI) have been built upon the metaphor of the desktop. This existed because they needed to help users understand the "new" interface they were working within. Throughout the years we have supported this metaphor as if it was some sort of axiom that all HCI / UX / IA / UXA (geez really - so many more too) followed. You can see it in almost every website (file cabinets), every application (spreadsheets), and most Operating Systems (recycle bin). For the new generation of apps, sites, and systems this metaphor should disappear altogether. It is no longer relevant.

For Babyboomers they will cling to the desktop because they grew up around it; it was in their home, in their office, it was the way they organized their work life (arguable not many played in their office). However for Millennials, Gen Yers and even Gen Xers their world isn't limited to this metaphor. As pervasive (ubiquitous) computing becomes commonplace the desktop metaphor holds us back. We no longer work in a singular office, we take everything to go. The "office" is an extension of our body (so to speak - not trying to be dramatic here), your mobile device could be considered your main office, the laptop an extension of it. The desktop, with its singular categorization of files and structures and limited interface potential, holds us back.

The visualization of information and content, the 140 char scanning of content, context awareness and geolocation, all yearn for smarter applications and environments to work within. To this day I see sites go up that still support a "main navigation" ; yet everyday it's search, scan, skim, save, and traceback. Why are we making the users work so hard? Implicit and explicit information choices should drive the structure. Use the models of attract and repel to display information (this also works well within a gesturing environment).

I was chatting with someone, just the other day, that perhaps a site should be a stream (like Twitter) of 140 char content, since it supports the model of scan and skim as a user behavior. This content could be backed up by a 'blog' when users want to search deeper within their selected content. Show the relationships to other content, as a user navigates forward (always forward) the experience attracts and repels content based on their implicit / explicit choices.

Embrace the search, it's a place to start. As a brand try a stream of information (backed by search) and once a user selects a 140 char item of interest build the display content around it. With a mobile device you can obviously add in location awareness, and perhaps take a guess as to context but always allowing the user to "flick" content away or drag content to a stream.

Of course what is this site I'm talking about here? An office or central location hub of information that people go to? That is dead as well. We are currently working with a Fortune 500 on what I like to call "freeing the content" - essentially turning all content into custom feeds of choice that vendors, dealers, and users can do with as they please; content syndication on distributed system. The next brand sites should be feeds, supported by scaffolding that allows for flexibility and choice in the presentation. I shouldn't have to go to the "office" to see what you are up to...i just need to check my "stream" and start the journey from there.

Welcome to the current.

The New Yorker had an article that ran awhile back titled "How David Beats Goliath: When underdogs break the rules." by Malcolm Gladwell. I'm glad to see that the New Yorker has made this piece available for free.

How David Beats Goliath

I'm not planning to get into all the details here about the article itself. He talks of many instances where people come at a problem with no predefined ground rules or expectations. They look at it with a completely fresh and open mind and take a different approach. For example:

"It isn’t surprising that the tournament directors found Eurisko’s strategies beyond the pale. It’s wrong to sink your own ships, they believed. And they were right. But let’s remember who made that rule: Goliath. And let’s remember why Goliath made that rule: when the world has to play on Goliath’s terms, Goliath wins."

Lenat was in a tournament for military navel strategy and he ran some scenarios into a neural network to see how AI might approach them... He won this tournament twice before they created rules around the strategies used, to essentially kick him out of the tournament. On a side note these winning strategies resembled similar tactics used by terrorists.

Malcolm speaks to real-time processing of information to then determine the strategy. Typically this is done in batches, or batch processing; you analyze the situation by the current set of rules stated and then deploy your "new" strategy. Real-time processing allows you to take in the information with little or no context and roll out a strategy that suits the needs as you see fit. Often times this results in innovative winning approach that otherwise would never have been uncovered. He uses David as an example because if he played by Goliath's rules; strength and brawn, things might have turned out differently. Instead he did the unexpected, by running towards Goliath and using a slingshot. This both surprised and ultimately defeated Goliath.

Malcolm also uses his own experience with his daughters basketball team. None of the girls had ever truly played basketball. He ran them to get their endurance up and then played full court press against all the teams in the league. This resulted in an almost undefeated season until a ref on an opposing team started calling heavy fouls and the team had to go to half court press.

So what is it I'm talking about here? Perhaps I ramble a bit but the underlying theme here is to always do the unexpected; don't over think, over analyze or over research. Agency's always tend to come heavy with the process; a process built on old fundamentals, old ideas, traditional thoughts. Take a step back and try to unlearn the expected. Analyze everything in real-time; keep iterating in small steps and evolve.