The price of failure?

"Amazon sells almost $12 billion each year. A design change that doesn't go right, even for a day, could be worth millions of dollars to them".
UserInterfaceEngineering.com

PM v's UE (Part 1)

"General consensus on top issues: managers, non-managers, designers and non-designers all had highly similar scores".
Why designers fail: the report

"If you want to become the kind of person that any company would kill to have as an employee, you need to be the kind of employee that's really picky about who you align with".
Seth's Blog

GObama!

Photo by korrileigh04

Facevote.com

BofE Liquidity Index Overview - 92' - 08'

More here at Bloomberg

Financial Climate...

Damon condemns Palin...

JOG - New Concept Gaming Ltd

Two of my ex-colleagues at Voda have created an awesome new product for gaming. The JOG product is an innovative in-game motion-sensing controller that measures the steps you take in the real world and translates them to movement on screen. Currently supporting the PlayStation, the unit promotes more active participation in gaming and encourages previously couched-potatoes to move about and get energised. A Wii version is coming soon...

The Reverse Graffiti Project

Push Facebook

A downloadable Facebook Push application from BlueWhaleMail, and in the vid, a nice example of Ambient Intimacy.
More here at ReadWriteWeb



BlueWhaleMail Interview with Michael Maguire - video powered by Metacafe

Intel's "Technology Metabolism Index"

more here at Wired

Mobile Survival Kit

A number of mobile start-ups have teamed up to offer their services to 'revellers' (i've always wanted to use that word) heading off to muddy fields for tunes and camping at this years calendar of music festivals. The Mobile Survival Kit highlights 3 services that are extremely handy:


"Texperts has a team of music and festival experts on-hand 24/7 to help you with all those burning festival questions!
What is the name of the singer from the Ting Tings?
Where’s the nearest clean loo?"



"Mobyko enables you to backup your mobile online, so if you lose your mobile dancing in the mosh pit your life doesn’t go with it. Snap away at the festival and share your mobile photos and videos using the Mobyko gallery". (You could also use my photo-blogging service Snapzone for the last bit ;-)



"Zygo gives you and your posse your own group messaging service that makes staying in touch a cinch. When any of you sends one SMS to your Zygo group then we send it out to everyone else - instantly".

The MSK site is a really neat way to package and promote a set of services that address real customer needs.

Wifi Anywhere

A couple of months back, i mentioned a Series 60 software download called Joikuspot. Provided you have a Series 60 device that has WLAN, Joikuspot creates a wireless hotspot using your phones 3G connection, and you get wireless internet access on your laptop, pretty much anywhere provided you can get a 3G signal.
I was using Joikuspot for a while. but then came across another download; Walkinghotspot. Walkinghotspot from Taproot Systems is similar to Joikuspot, the main differences being that it's available for Windows Mobile devices, and it supports all internet services (not just Htttp as Joikuspot does). Walkinghotspot has proved to be more reliable as well, providing me with wireless internet access for my Mac, all included in the monthly contract price I pay to 3 for my X-series Nokia.

Wired: Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web

Great article in Wired about Androids creation, plans and potential future.

Also, FYI, Google have recently created a Google Group for the mobile community here

Naked grief :-(

Techcrunch caught wind of what had happened at Naked and on Wednesday, Mike wrote a thorough post [Naked stripped bare,startup runs out of cash, enters liquidation] about what's been going on. David @ thenextweb wrote a follow-up to Mikes post [Why we did not publish The Naked Truth] , and Mike wrote back today addressing the points raised in thenexweb story [Disecting Naked, when and what to publish about a failing startup].
It's sad that Naked is unintentionally causing more grief, when so much has been created already :-(

Vodafone Station

Here's a great new product from Voda, recently announced by Vodafone Italy for launch this summer. An ADSL gateway with a detachable HSDPA dongle, it gets us one step closer to a personal connectivity solution from a single provider with a single bill.

It also has a huge USP in they way it solves the typical horrid broadband provisioning experience - you normally have to sign up to a provider and wait a number of weeks or months until your connected. The VF Station includes a detachable HSPA dongle so you can be up and running immediately with connectivity, and when the fixed-line connection is activated, the remotely-managed backhaul switches from HSDPA to ADSL. And when you need to be out and about, you simply detach the dongle from the gateway, and pop it in to the side of your laptop. Very neat, and a great FMC product solution.



More info here

via TeleGeography

Naked update...

Naked has had a tough few days - we've run out of cash and are facing some very disappointing consequences. And all this comes at a time when we were literally a few weeks short of opening up the service as a full Private Beta.
I'm therefore exploring all options to see what can we can do. No-one ever said start-ups were easy ;-)
theNEXTweb appreciated our update to our current beta members.

Economist Special Report - Mobility

This week's Economist has a great report on the social impacts of mobile technology. There's a lot of ethnographic evidence to support various views on how we are adapting and changing as a result of the wide array of mobile technology available to us.

Sony Foam City

more here
Angency: Fallon, UK

10k images on Snapzone!

A couple of years ago, I set up a mobile-photo-blogging site. It was a (relatively) low-cost experiment to test offshore development, demand for moblogging, and something to keep me busy at weekends. I found a developer in the Ukraine and on and off over the course of about 12 months, Olexiy and I put together Snapzone. At one point I was toying with the idea of trying to raise some $ to grow it, but I then got involved in Naked, and Snapzone has been somewhat neglected. The encouraging thing though is that without any marketing (except for a mention in Mashup), a few people have found it and are using it. Today, it clocked up its 10,000th photo! Not exactly the big league, but not bad for a couple of grand and a few Sunday afternoons!

Ofcom Social Networking Research

Ofcom have just released a quantitative and qualitative research report into attitudes, behaviours and usage of Social Networking in the UK.
report here

CommonCraft Plain English Videos

I'm loving these animations from CommonCraft - they are such a neat visual way to desconstruct and explain complexity.

28 Million Mobile Subscribers Responded to At Least One Mobile Ad

"According to a new report from The Nielsen Company, twenty-three percent (58 million) of all U.S. mobile subscribers say they've been exposed to advertising on their phones in the past 30 days. Half (51% or 28 million) of all data users who recall seeing mobile advertising in the previous 30 days say they responded to a mobile ad".

Full article at The Center for Media research

Mashup* Innovate

We're demo'ing Naked at Mashup Innovate this afternoon - it's being held at the offices of Nesta, 1 Plough Place, London, EC4A 1DE. Event info here