on the shore of the ultimate sea

Over the last two years I’ve watched my father, an automotive engineer who toiled in the Metro Detroit area for ~40 years selling parts and systems to the Big Three, negotiate and produce a job he admits is the most complex of his career.

His company supplies the motors that circulate the coolant around the Volt’s batteries, which are uncommon because they are required to be on continuously for the entire lifetime of the car: when it’s running, when it’s charging, until it fails.

The process has been fraught with uncertainty. They’ve been at the job through the GM bankruptcy, through the ups and downs of the economy, designing, prototyping, negotiating, testing, retesting. All the while, it’s still a paradox to me as to how you engineer and test something in four years so it’s designed to last for 40.

It’s his last big project before he retires. And I’m sure there are a lot more folks like him attached to the car, Boomers who have invested an uncommonly large amount of personal pride and care in developing it thinking “this one will be different.” People who know it could be the biggest revolution in American auto manufacturing in recent history.

So it makes me really happy and grateful to read someone like Gene W start skeptical and experience the bits of delight and wonder that can change your heart. I can’t wait to drive one, because I know it’ll make me happy and hopeful too.

Gene and the Machine: The shocking truth about the electric Volt.

For the moment, it’s London having all the fun. Our team over there’s relocated to a fine new office in Farringdon and are welcoming two fine new brains to the bunch (bushel?), Dan Southern and Ed White.

Dan’s via Xtreme Insight, where he was a kick-ass analyst and consultant, while Ed comes via The Future Laboratory.

Prior to TFL, Ed was at ‘boards (of Canada) when it was dealt an ignominious blow and shuttered; he’s one of the international cabal of advertising journalists I’m pleased to call a pal and even more pleased to be working with.

Contagious / Starting 2011 with a Bang! / Contagious Magazine.

ps., There’s been a bit of a facelift around here; we can’t let the digital flesh sag. What do you think of the new font?

In the wake of Gawker’s snafu (which has been a major disappointment, a decidedly dinosaur mistake from what I, and many others, had considered a nimble and smart company) I was pleased to get an email from Linkedin saying this:

Dear Nick,

We recently sent you a message stating that your LinkedIn password had been disabled for security reasons. (Note: If you have more than one email registered with us, you will receive more than one password reset message. You only need to act on one of them.)

This was in response to a security breach on a different site, Gawker.com, where a number of usernames and passwords were exposed. We want to make sure those leaked emails and passwords were not being used to attack any LinkedIn members.

There is no indication that your LinkedIn account has been affected, but since it shares an email with the compromised Gawker accounts, we decided to ensure its safety by asking you to reset its password.

If you haven’t done that already, now is a good time to follow these steps:

1. Go to the LinkedIn website.
2. Click on “Sign In”.
3. Click on “Forgot Password?” and follow the directions on the website.

Please keep in mind that the best defense against these types of attacks is to have unique passwords for each site you use. You can always search our support site and our blog for more security tips.

We apologize for the inconvenience, but we feel this action is in your best interest. Thanks for your immediate attention to our request.

Sincerely,

LinkedIn Privacy Team

Way to get your users’ backs. And rub it in to the other guys.

Read the rest of this entry »

Most Contagious 2010.

Hello and welcome to Most Contagious 2010: a free round-up of the biggest global trends, technologies, and campaigns of the year, pulled together by Contagious Magazine, the advertising industry’s monitor of creativity and innovation. This year’s Most Contagious is supported by our friends at Yahoo!
A round-up of the global trends, technologies, and campaigns of the year from Contagious Magazine, an early warning system for the advertising industry. This year’s Most Contagious
is supported by Yahoo!

Please enjoy; it’s a true labor of love. Thanks to all of you for supporting us this year, and every year, to make Contagious as successful (and fun) as it has been. More end-of-year stuff to come, provided I complete a big stack of work.

…if there is any political group in America that has a right to be outraged, it is the Progressives. They bought into Obama’s message of change and hope, believed that the criminals of the Bush dictatorship would have to answer for their crimes, and naively dreamed that America’s respect for peace, justice and human rights would be restored.

But, as Wikileaks and the antics of Obama’s “Justice” Department have shown, the Progressives were deceived. Yet, as in the past, they are forced to be supportive of Obama’s duplicity because the alternative is worse.

I want to believe that the Wikileaks documents will change America for the better. But what undoubtedly will happen is a repetition of the past: those who expose government crimes and cover-ups will be prosecuted or branded as criminals; new laws will be passed to silence dissent; new Liebermans will arise to intimidate the corporate-controlled media; and new ways will be found to conceal the truth.

via Valerie Plame, YES! Wikileaks, NO! – English pravda.ru.

It’s fairly indicative of the NYT’s own brand of ostrich-in-sand journalism that this story on a massive publishing supply problem focuses entirely on physical books and neglects any interesting data (or at least mention) of ebooks. I guarantee Kindle users aren’t having a difficult time finding this title–or lugging it around.

Mark Twain’s Autobiography Is Flying Off the Shelves – NYTimes.com.

I’m kind of a nut for ephemera like this, and think the best way to make connections between artists is to follow what influenced them.

So when I read in this Newsweek article that around 300 ‘heavily annotated’ personal books were part of the David Foster Wallace archive the University of Texas’ at Austin’s Harry Ransom center bought and recently revealed, I felt inclined to make a big list of them to see if there were any things that seemed interesting and unknown.

So here they are, in case you care too. It ain’t pretty, but it’s all in one place rather than having to page through a lot at the library site. (All these are listed as belonging to the ‘Harry Ransom Center David Foster Wallace Library‘)

Oh how I’d love to spend a few weeks in this archive. Maybe when I finally get that comp lit Master’s this’ll sway me to UT.

check out the whole list

There are a lot of reasons to love this, and the rest of the Kinect-hacking going on by a bunch of awesome like-minded types (@openkinect is doing a great job of aggregating) around the world. It’s open-source software iteration at the speed of human resourcefulness. I’d reckon the Microsoft engineers that built Kinect are chuckling to themselves at how quickly people are solving problems they had themselves.

But the reason I love it most is it feels like only a matter of days before someone puts together a fairly accurate motion-tracking airsoft turret to keep the cats off the couch.

(Also watch Theo & Emily’s Interactive Puppet Prototype.)

XBox Kinect running on OS X with source code on Vimeo on Vimeo

Boss Paul sez:

Contagious devotes a lot of attention to the intersection of brands and technology, so we’re extremely excited to be curating The Hive at Eurobest. Our aim is to create a dynamic, experiential space where delegates get to play with the latest gadgets and gizmos as well as learning how technological innovation will shape the marketing campaigns of the future. Paul Kemp-Robertson, Editorial Director, Co-Founder, Contagious

In 2010, Eurobest has teamed up with Contagious to gather together the most exciting technological innovations and innovators to engage, entertain and stimulate visitors to the Festival in The Hive. Discover a whole range of technology from interactive art works, to apps, robots and augmented reality. Companies already involved include Dentsu London, Prime & Strip Digital, metaio, and Total Immersion. Plus Google Creative Lab and Freestate

If you are interested in showcasing your product in The Hive, please get in touch.

via Eurobest – Europe’s Creative Advertising Festival and Awards.