Rachel Sterne, CDO of New York City. Photo via papermag.com.
What do citizens want from their public offices?
Have to have to do less.
Citizen obligations such as filing taxes or needs such as requesting business licenses and permits are more conveniently and efficiently handled online without having to wait in lines.
We are a happy go lucky do it yourself bunch. Much like being comfortable with doing our transactions through online banking, or buying flight or train tickets through teller machines, we want to take care of obligatory civic tasks online and safe time with applying for needed certificates.
Welcome to GOV.UK, the best way to get to government services and information
A sporty challenge overwhelming governments, counties and cities until Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule has kicked in.
Right now, GOV.UK is winning the user experience race with its pilot scheme, while Directgov, remains the official web site.
Brits, well versed in promotion since the British pop invasion, have understood to feature the most needed funtionality up front whithout compromising brand building.
With Medienpuls Bavaria by the Bavarian Center for New Media (BLM) is playing catch up with current developments, a courageous first step though. A meeting calendar aiming to attract media companies with a central platform as starting point for social media activities. TED talkshas long demonstrated how this is done.
TED is not about a monkey stroking branch but is celebrated by a world audience, which in turn gets the industry’s attention. Medienpuls Bavaria seems to be taking a different route with help of local agency St. Elmo, they are focused on the media trade -if at all- they hope to attract a broader audience with trade insights.
No secret: experts and specialist are terribly boring.
Should you want to start up your business in NYC, you can check if your business is fulfilling the requirements with NYC.gov’s business express
.
NYC.gov claims to have 25 million visitors per year – as much as Central Park.
Mayor Bloomberg has hired an adorable and capable spokesperson, with whom Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule has kicked in at age 28, with bringing back the magic of Madison Avenue (MAD MEN ☛ Silikon Alley) with a difference, make it the capitol of the digital age. First results: collaboration with Facebook and Twitter. By way of a New York hackathon NYC.gov gets a makeover. All of which should become graspable within the next 45 days. All eyes on Rachel Sterne, who was called most influential woman in tech by Fast Company.
Remember the under construction sign occasionally pop up on websites back in the early days of the web?
Today it would send only one signal, the site owner has no idea on how communications works.
Sites had to put up the under construction sign, whenever a change was made to the format of the site or when anything was added to the content.
Useless, horrendously expensive, complex and complicated content management systems were introduced and companies who could afford them believed to have been sold on a dynamic website.
IT companies made a fortune selling Custom CMS.
Ad agencies and digital agencies made are fortune on selling dynamic websites.
Customer be warned you are still being sold on the same old lie.
Then social media demonstrated what dynamism really means.
Sold on dynamic
With the event of blogs (basically an off the shelf content management system with plugins bringing connectivity to the CMSystem), communications were democratized and made available at no or little cost to the rest of us.
Today the dirty truth is, websites in contrast to blogs, have no default way of communicating with one another or social media sites. The pings send out by blogs are not being picked up by websites and no consequent action can be taken.
75 years of Story Telling meets New Gen Comic Artist
DC Comics reveals new peeling back logo, new gen comic artist, Elizabeth Blue has revamped her web presence while back in England, her first comic book goes to press by Atlantic Press.
When you think about DC superheroes such as Batman, Superman, Superwoman, Green Lantern, there’s a secret identity. The new DC logo reflects a common denominating nature of DC characters as individuals and dual identities (read on here.).
Übermensch heroes yes, but with a difference. While conventional comics picture a fully developed hero with superpowers in place, the reader gets thrown right into pow wow action, new gen comic artists must start from scratch and have the story begin before superpowers have fully developed.
Both, their own and the superpowers of their heroes.
Leaving behind the anti hero of the 90s, heroes are the girl next door or the one successful Fables’ heroine, Frau Totenkinder (German for dead children) at around age 70.
A beautiful and most meaningful advantage for brand building and introducing a business to the market in our post-digital time, is taking confidence and comfort in interactivity. A purely psychological effort of not taking yourself too serious and superb accomplishment.
It separates the procrastinators from the believers.
No need to plan the outcome in advance. Get done with your first step already, rather than falling prey to the old word insanity as marketing planning suggested, since you can’t foresee the action or responses of your most important prospects, those you aim to turn into happy customers.
It matters most to get started and it does not matter what your initiative will be.
Thus development is a friend and happens over time.
There is a notion that nothing much happened. A bit of fresh thinking in tv sets with screens getting thinner and displays even larger, which reminds me of the development in the auto industry. No development that is.
Selling more rather than developing better replaced strategy with tactics in the old world.
What I am looking forward to is integrated design, where the inner makings and the shape of things make for something I really would want to have.
An A.I. baby-bot comes to the aid of easing depression symptoms with our elderly and lonely.
Babyloid is a therapy tamagotchi and was developed by Masayoshi Kanon, an assistant professor at Chukyo university in Japan.
Japan is beting their future on developing robots unlike us, the innovation nation for everything else (ideas, user interface design, package design…).
Babyloid is expected to be marketed at around £830.
Cute babyloid will not be taken serious before my guest country, expected to rise to having the oldest population in the world, will recognize its usefullness.
Emotions are expressed by minimal, cartoonish, facial expressions.
Puppet baby faces are creepy
A reductionist icon face assisted by a repertoire of up to 100 vocal expressions are aimed at invoking protective instincts and numerous sensors initiate unexpected, uncontrollable Babyloid behavior.
According to New Scientist, initial tests at a retirement community found that proponent are being helped, by the arising sense of responsibility, becoming occupied with babyhood and the illusion of being needed.
Steve Jobs Biography and the learning thermostat from Nest
Now that everyone in the industry has studied Steve Jobs biography over the course of the holidays, which part didn’t you understand?
It’s the product, that holds all answers to the near future’s hits and misses. If any good, it offers a direction for everything else needed for its proper market launch. Be it packaging, marketing, distribution or what have you.
If your product doesn’t hold all the answers, don’t bring it to market.
Move on to the next idea.
We don’t need more, we need better products.
The Nest thermostat demonstrates best practice on what to make of Steve Jobs legacy
Former Apple iPad manager Tony Fadell and former iPad developer Matt Rogers have caused a stir and vowed us all with a new business model of their own, the nest thermostat.
An early comment noted, someone wanted to join nest and develop a self-learning sprinkler system.
Way to go, now think of all the crap devices you have in your home. So yes people are long at it with ideas or extensions of their own (technically inclined have a look here).
One of the worst products I can think of are our landline telephones.
Hello?
Is there anyone out there? Can one of the big brand names please stand up and transform our landline telephone into something useful, something helpful?
Brigitte Food Blog Award:Courage of others leads with 6% on yesterdays closing date. Alas, the team of German woman magazine Brigitte have missed out on their own deadline or forgotten they had initiated an award. Nice demonstration of disrespect toward their readers.
The less one has to lose in an established systen, the easier it is to appreciate the value of anything new
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About me
I am Mark Sargent, I don't have ideas for advertising, I am advertising ideas. Much like Nicolas Roope, I do things, not advertise things. Your support is welcome:
I am Mark Sargent, I don't have ideas for advertising, I am advertising ideas. Much like 
