Lorem Ipsum; On the Other Hand

23Aug10

Familiar objects sometimes become invisible. Seeing something everyday, we sometimes accept it without looking into its origin. Printers and copy writers have used a section of Latin text, known as Lorem Ipsum, since the fifteenth Century. It is dropped into documents as a place holder, to indicate where the final words will eventually be positioned to appear in a text.

The Original Passage In Latin Text
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.”


The Original Source

Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words in the often repeated passage of text, consectetur, and discovered the original source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..”, comes from a line in section 1.10.32 of the text.

The English Translation
“On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.”

1914 translation by H. Rackham

Generate your own Lorem Ipsum text: HERE


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Art, photos and life in low res – Or where do all the pixels go?

11Aug10

Just a thought, but if Justin Ramsden, an enthusiast of building things with Lego, can create a recognisable and artistic representation of Amy Winehouse in only 3,000 Lego bricks; why do we need 12 million mega pixel cameras to take a decent photo?

Admittedly my main assumption is a little tenuous, in that I assume a Lego brick is like an individual pixel. So if 3,000 bricks create a dramatic and compelling likeness. Why are so many needed in digital cameras to produce realistic tone, depth of field and perception of distinctive colours?

While the human eye can differentiate between colours, the number of colours we may see at once is a somewhat debated topic. The starting point in recent years appears to have been 16.7 million colours, perhaps in part because we can make machines that see that many.

The study by Gunter Wyszecki established that humans see up to 10 million colours. However there is a degree of variability between the two eyes of each individual, let alone in the average per person.

David Myers Study in 2007 claimed that most people are lucky if they can discriminate between 7 million colours. But with a characteristic preciseness, for a person with a German sounding name, Kurt Kleiner commented on his extensive study “Humans, other apes, and Old World monkeys have trichromatic vision, with eyes containing three colour receptors; sensitive to blue, green, and yellow-red. They allow us and our Old World relatives to distinguish around 2.3 million colours.”

And so the difference in what we can actually see continues to tumble.

The near-urban myth seems to suggest humans may reliably distinguish between around 1 million colours at any one time, as this allows for recognisable graduated change in each colour represented. This has become a joke, but one with a degree of evidence and acceptance. From Google, an example:

“Every single pixel shown below is of a different color, but still, the human eye is capable of distinguishing ten times as many colors! (It’s really not practical to create a ten times larger image for this demonstration, as it cannot be easily viewed in full on most screens… So this example should fulfil demonstration requirements.”

A techy note: Saving this image as compressed but lossless PNG, the file size is only 11 Kb – while saving it in uncompressed TIFF, the same image is a whopping 3Mb! Saving in “artifacty” JPG would of course change the value of some pixels, some would describe this as altering the true intent of the image… But also note that most modern computers can display over 16 million colors (256 levels each of red, green & blue), while only 100 levels of each color are shown here.

But if the drop down to only 1 million sounds significant, think back. Only a few years ago images described as ‘Life-like’ used a system known as HighColor or HiColor. Many 16-bit colour photos used 5 bits to represent red, 5 bits to represent blue, and (as the human eye is more sensitive to the colour green) 6 bits to represent 64 levels of green; this was sometimes referred to as 5650 format. These RGB levels can be combined to give 65,536 (32 × 64 × 32) mixed colours. Computer screens, cameras and TV sets weren’t able to beat this level of detail for years – did we see what we thought were photo-realistic images at the time, but now change our minds to describe this as low-res images?

Before 16-Bit (described originally as photo-realistic), we had 8-Bit, and if you keep going back there are some who remember basic photo scans that reproduced an image in 256 colours. Not thousands, but hundreds of colours, for a basic photo in colour.

So when we think of Lego, a product with more than 100 colours (perhaps not all commercially available, but the number continues to expand), it perhaps becomes easier to think of an image made from Lego; using only 3,000 bricks, but still producing an image that may be called art and have a good likeness to its subject.

The artist, Justin Ramsden, aged 19, has said of his work “I really like Lego. It’s a different medium to express my art. I like the fact that although it is all bricks and angular, you can still create curves and artistic designs.”

Simplicity may still convey compelling truth, and realism. So why do we need 12 million pixels for a photo?


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Twitter set to launch official Tweet button for third parties

11Aug10

Twitter are about to launch an official Tweet button, with counter, for third party websites and blogs.

This will allow blog posts and web page url’s to be Tweeted with comments by Twitter users, while showing how many times the item has been referenced so far on Twitter.


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Signs of confusion or the unexpected

10Aug10


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Imagining the Tenth Dimension

08Aug10

Part 1 of 2

Part 2 of 2


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Table football viral from Nokia

05Aug10

See the video: HERE


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The purpose of research

29Jul10

The purpose of marketing research is to gain insight that is commercially informative and valuable; helping to identify issues, enhance business decision making and improve competitive performance.


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Resize images free online

23Jul10

I’ve just used a useful image optimisation tool that allows you to upload and instantly download a resized and reformatted version of your image for free. As I didn’t have Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop to hand, it made a quick and useful alterntive.

Try Image Optimizer: HERE


Filed under: 2010, July   |  1 Comment
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Skype launch updated app for the new iPhone 4

22Jul10

A review of the latest Skype app, which takes advantage of the new Apple iPhone 4′s multi-tasking feature, has appeared on CNET. The app provides free WiFi and 3G phone call connectivity.

Read the review on CNET: HERE


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41st anniversary of the first moon landing

20Jul10

Today is the 41st anniversary of the first moon landing. Apollo 11′s successful mission was carried to the moon via a Saturn V rocket, still believed to be the most complex item ever assembled in the world. The Saturn V was comprised of some 3 million individual parts.

The Apollo 11 mission was the first of six successful lunar landing missions.


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You’ve got to explore everywhere. You’ve got to explore the sky too

16Jul10

“You’ve got to explore everywhere. You’ve got to explore the sky too.”

Source: Mick Jagger, discussing his dissatisfaction in making Exile on Main St., arguably the greatest Rolling Stones album ever.


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Faultless Pitching

13Jul10

I recently enjoyed working on a pitch for a Caribbean island tourism account.

Research provided some useful insights. The creative concepts produced were more differentiating and appealing to consumers when compared to the the existing campaign. The media plan was clearly very cost-effective, and the team genuinely worked and presented well together.

Coming second in a competition is of course never the result that one wishes for; just ask The Dutch football team. But, having come second, the extra source of frustration in the case of the pitch is the lack of feedback that might help next time.

The client’s comments were quite minimal and frustratingly positive. They said the pitch was so close they couldn’t fault us on any area!

I guess I’m left hoping that the pitch, which was part of a statutory review and included the existing incumbent agency, wasn’t simply a process to justify keeping the existing agency. I don’t yet know if this has been the case.

Sometimes it would be easier to learn your work had a fault somewhere, so there was a focus for improvement. But maybe that needn’t always be the case?


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Heard it all before

08Jul10


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Stimulated by diversity; planning in a round-about way

30Jun10

I know a lot of planners generate ideas through reading stimulus that is characterised by its obliquity (some would say irrelevance) to the subject directly at hand. But I’ve just caught myself working along a train of thought that has leapt from a problem in a brief I’m tackling to remembering a point made by Millward Brown in a presentation 3 years ago, to a search online for 3 TV ads from 1974 – 2010 to the point I’ve just reached.

The names below:

Ian Feighery
Sam Baker
Michael Mayne
‘Milky’ Harris
Peter Rowe
Paul Lyttle
Anthony Walker

Who are they? Well there is a clue in there somewhere. These are the names of all the actors who played The Milky Bar Kid from 1961 to the present day. At least I think that’s all of them.

The thing I never quite understand is why, by travelling through a circuitous route, I arrive upon the answer to my problem quicker than if I attack it directly. My current problem to solve has nothing to do with Milky Bars. But that 2 minute diversionary journey allowed me to identify a solution to the problem.

I wonder if chocolate bars provide the solution to all problems? Perhaps a field test is called for?


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Pedestrian Power

30Jun10

Over the last few years several innovations have suggested light may be generated for buildings or streets through man-made power. The child’s see-saw designed to power schools in Africa, or the street lighting (mostly ambient or art installations) readily come to mind.

But another use for pedestrian power, where human movement is used to generate electricity, is illustrated more colourfully in the Toulouse nightclub shown below.

Read the story about the Sustainable Dance Club: HERE

Photo: Robin Utrecht


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Jellio: Fun By Design – more new work posted

30Jun10

Jellio, the designers behind the Gummi Bear lamp and lots of fun home and office furnishings have added some more design work to their site.

Take a look: HERE

As well as selling designer furniture and household accessories to the public, they also take on bespoke design briefs for companies.

Take a look at some of their custom corporate work: HERE

Google asked for some lava lamps for their office. These lamps aren’t the most innovative pieces of Jellio’s design work, but they gives an indication of the sort of company Jellio keep.


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Can Jeff Bezo’s re-Kindle Amazon post Apple iBooks’ new chapter in book retail?

29Jun10

An interesting Jeff Bezos interview, courtesy of Fortune Magazine is: HERE

Given the recent sales levels achieved by the Apple iPad (3 million in under 3 months) and iPhone 4 (I forecast as 4 milion in under 4 weeks), and their inclusion of the iBooks app. I believe Kindle sales and Amazon profits may struggle to continue to enjoy the same level of growth they’ve recently enjoyed.

The Fortune article:

Jeff Bezos’s mission: Compelling small publishers to think big
Posted by JP Mangalindan
June 29, 2010

Jeff Bezos has been dismissed before. For most of the dot-com boom, he was assumed to be a one-shot wonder, inches away from having his bookstore, Amazon.com, (AMZN) extinguished by Wal-Mart (WMT). Now, with Apple’s (AAPL) mad rush into books and readers, people are starting to wonder again. But Bezos, judging by a sit down interview with Fortune last week, isn’t sweating.

So far, the numbers show he doesn’t need to. Last quarter, the company reported a profit of $299 million, up 68% from a year ago. Its ebookstore, which started with some 60,000 titles, now offers upwards of 600,000. And though the company won’t disclose hard numbers about its Kindle user base — Bezos has said Kindle owners number somewhere in the millions — its visibility in the hands of executives, soccer moms and twenty-something professionals reinforces its high-profile status as a go-to device for voracious readers.

But last week, Amazon slashed the price on its second-generation Kindle from $259 to $189 to undercut Barnes & Noble (BKS), which dropped the price of its own eReader, the Nook, from $259 to $199, and announced a Wi-fi-only version for $149. Earlier this week, Barnes & Noble reported a larger-than-expected loss totaling 89 cents per share, eight cents more than what analysts had predicted. It significantly lowered its earnings forecast for 2011 but indicated it would shift more of its resources to the growing ebook market.

And while Bezos doesn’t view the iPad, and tablet devices overall, as a threat — “It’s really a different product category” — the iPad’s overnight success, along with Steve Jobs’ announcement that users had downloaded 1.5 million books in less than 30 days is a sign that the competition for eReaders’ dollars could be heating up – and soon.

One day after Amazon slashed the price on its Kindle, Fortune met with Bezos at Amazon’s new headquarters in downtown Seattle, a sprawling 10-building campus of glass, steel and concrete, to discuss the company he built from scratch and where it’s going from here.

Fortune: Obviously, the Kindle’s price drop was in response to Barnes & Noble’s price cut on the Nook. Did the iPad and its overnight success play a role, too?

Bezos: No. The iPad… I think there are going to be a bunch of tablet-like devices. It’s really a different product category. The Kindle is for readers.

Fortune: So far you’ve been capturing consumers. Amazon accounted for about 80% of all electronic book sales last year. How has it grown so fast, and can you keep it up?

Bezos: It’s hard even for us to remember internally that we only launched Kindle a little over 30 months ago.

Our strategy with the ebookstore is ‘buy once, read everywhere.’ If you want to read on your iPhone, if you want to read on your BlackBerry. We want people to be able to read their books anywhere they want to read them. That’s the PC, that’s the Macintosh. It’s the iPad, it’s the iPhone. It’s the Kindle. So you have this whole multitude of devices and whatever’s most convenient for you at the moment.

We think of it as a mission. I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it’s not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that’s not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.

Fortune: As the devices mature and the market grows, do you think the idea of what a “book” is will shift?

Bezos: I think the definition of a book is changing. It’s getting more convenient. Now you can get a book in less than 60 seconds.

But in some ways, books are also staying exactly the same. The whole narrative isn’t changing. The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It’s the thing that people create.

There’s another way that it’s not changing, and that’s that the book — the physical book — is designed to disappear and get out of the way so you can enter the author’s world. So when you’re reading a physical paper book, you’re not thinking about the ink and the glue and the stitching. All of those things vanish so you can focus on the author’s words. The Kindle’s designed to be the same so when you’re reading, the whole device vanishes, so that you’re left with the author’s world.

Fortune: In the past, you’ve been a big proponent of lower prices for ebooks and an open opponent of the book publisher agency model, which allows the publisher to set the final retail price whether there’s an intermediary retailer or not. Now that you’ve switched to an agency model, will ebookstores like Amazon’s get hurt?

Bezos: No. First of all, there are a bunch of publishers of all sizes, and they don’t all have one opinion. There are as many opinions about what the right thing to do is as there are publishers. So you’re seeing that some of them are being very aggressive on prices, pricing their books well below $9.99.

Others are trying to do everything they can to make prices as high as possible. And what you’re going to see is a share shift from one group of publishers to this other group of publishers.

Fortune: Do you expect a significant share shift? When do you see that happening?

Bezos: It’s a significant shift and we’re seeing it already.

Fortune: What about your work continues to “rev you up”?

Bezos: When I wake up every morning, during my shower time, what I’m thinking about is new things that we can do.

We’ve got Amazon Prime. Customers love that. How can we make that program even better? What kind of inventions can we do to reduce our cost structures and our fulfillment centers so we can afford to sell products for even less? Those kinds of things are incredibly motivating for me, and I like the rate of change, I like the opportunity, the “canvas” upon which we can invent new things. And I am not alone in Amazon in that regard. We have a big team of people who are genetically predisposed to have fun while inventing new things. It’s sort of in our DNA.

Fortune: If you stopped someone on the street five years ago and asked them what Amazon was, they’d probably say it was an online bookstore. What do you expect people will say when asked about Amazon five years from now?

Bezos: I would hope people would say that Amazon is earth’s most customer-centric company, and that we work backwards from customers. Many companies sort of look at what their skills are and they work forward from their skills. They say this is what we’re good at, and this is what we’ll do. It’s a very different approach from saying here is what our customers need, and we will learn whatever skills we need.

Fortune: Speaking of picking up new skills to address consumer needs — you’ve addressed some customer needs by making substantial forays into cloud computing with S3, Elastic Compute Cloud, and the Relational Database Service. What’s next for cloud?

Bezos: One of the things you’re seeing is that companies without any legacy are no longer building any data centers. They’ve already stopped. So that’s a testament to how powerful this model is. That the only people still building these data centers are the people that are temporarily corralled into that model because of their legacy. That model is more expensive, less flexible. It’s not just more expensive, but it’s also capital expenditures instead of pay-as-you-go variable costs like it would be if you were using Amazon web services.

And what we’re starting to see now — and we’ve been seeing it for the last couple of years — is big enterprises starting to use Amazon web services. So that if you ask what’s coming over the next five years, you’re going to continue to see that transition where even companies with legacy are starting to use Amazon web services. I think it’s very exciting.

Fortune: Of course, you’re also starting to go head-to-head with big enterprise with this business, right? Companies like IBM (IBM) see themselves in this space.

Bezos: We started working on Amazon web services six years ago. People forget because it’s grown so much, it’s more on our radar screens now, we’re doing it an innovative way. It’s not a me-too product. It’s a leader in this new industry, and so we don’t think of it as we’re entering this industry with all these big companies. We look at it as we’re doing something completely new.

Fortune: It’s come a very long way in a very short period of time.

Bezos: The right analogy here is the electricity grid. A hundred years ago if you wanted to run your factory, and you needed electricity, you had to become an expert in power generation. You had to buy your own electric power generator. You had to maintain it. You had to make your own electricity. And today, because of Amazon web services, you don’t have to be in the power generation business.

It’s not a differentiator for companies. So if you’re going to build your own data center and buy your own server hardware and manage all your own networking gear, and all of the things that you have to do, it has to be done at an A-plus quality level. But it’s just the price of admission. It’s not your secret sauce. It doesn’t help you differentiate from your competitors.

Fortune: In the past, you’ve said that a company learns just as much as by its failures as it does by its successes. Do you still believe that?

Bezos: Well, the key is that the company has to experiment, and what you want to try and do is reduce the cost of experimentation so you can do as many experiments per unit time as possible so you can do as many experiments per week, per month, per year as you can –and they’re not experiments if you know they’re going to work.

So you want to do a lot of these experiments, and many of them will fail, and that’s okay. Because if you’re doing enough of them, there will be some winners. That’s the only mindset you can have if you want to invent. At Amazon, we’re very focused on invention. If you look at the things we focus on, we’re never trying to create a “me-too” product offering.

And by the way, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with “close following.” It’s a very common business strategy. You just say we’ll wait. Let all of our competitors do all the experiments. Most of them will fail, but we’ll watch very carefully, and as soon as something looks like a success, we’ll follow very closely. There’s nothing wrong with that, it just happens to not be our strategy.

Fortune: It’s certainly a safer route to take.

Bezos: It’s safer, but in a fast-moving arena like the Internet, it also can be difficult. It’s not easy to follow closely. It also can be a challenging strategy. I just happen to think the exploration and inventing strategy is more fun. It’s got its own strategies, but it’s way more fun.


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