Thinking Differently from 1955 to 2011

Here’s to the Crazy One.

The misfit. The rebel. The troublemaker. The round peg in the square hole.

The One Who Saw Things Differently.

He wasn’t fond of rules. And he had no respect for the status quo.

You can quote him, disagree with him, glorify or vilify him. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore him. Because he changed things.

He pushed the human race forward. And while some may have seen him as the crazy one, we saw genius.

Because the man who was crazy enough to think he could change the world, was the one who did.

The Blog Icon 45,000 Downloads and Counting!

Ever since I created the blog icon I’ve been pleasantly surprised  by where I’ve discovered it’s been used and encouraged by the responses I’ve received from those that have downloaded it and are using it.

In April this year web designer Mark Hesketh wrote a blog post about the blog icon… a couple of weeks ago Northern Events wrote an amazing blog post about their search for a blog icon and how they’d ended up using mine… a couple of days ago Carol Katona from AssurX informed me that Constant Contact are using it in their customer facing systems, as you can see from the video below (starts at 30 secs)… and today I received this message on the Facebook wall from Jessica LaShawn Payton “Thanks! I’m going to use the blog icon in my social media presentation. I didn’t want to use the orange B since we’re not using blogger and the tumblr badge looks too much like the twitter badge and would be too confusing to a novice social media user. This works just great!!”

I’ve also been surprised by how popular it’s become and the number of people using. I get around 120-130 people a day visiting my personal blog after searches for “Blog Icon” (that’s about 45,000 people a year!)  below are yesterdays statistics. Compared to this time two years ago when I was surprised to get around 20 people a day

so if you’re looking for a blog icon that’s completely free to use, you can stop looking

http://www.theblogicon.com

Please like the Facebook page and follow on twitter @theblogicon

New Truth

I was having a conversation just now and it reminded me of a sketch from the BBC Three animated series entitled Monkey Dust

In this sketch the Advertising Agency Labia, are pitching “New Truth” to a Government Ministry that has to deliver some bad news!

“By reclassifying things that aren’t entirely bad as things that are very nearly very good, you can achieve a significant re-emphasis of the good / bad ratio. We call it New Truth … it’s up to ten times better than old truth.”

eBooks Are For Weirdos

According to a new survey by Harris Interactive 1 in 6 Americans now use an eReader with 1 in 6 likely to purchase one within the next 6 months. That’s 15%, which is almost double what it was this time last year, 8%. Also eBook readers purchase more books and read on average more than paper book readers!

I should know, since I purchased my first Sony eReader I started reading more, and now with the books from my Kindle available on my Mac, iPhone, iPad I purchase and read more than ever!

A case in point, Seth Godin released a new book today entitled, We Are All Weird, but rather than purchase the hard back and wait for it to be delivered (which I’ve not done in many many years!), I clicked the link to the Amazon Kindle store, clicked the “Buy now with one click” and had it on my Kindle before my kettle boiled this morning! Two Clicks and I had the book, why would anyone purchase a book in any other way, and why would an author sell their book any other way?

I’ve been saying this for years, it’s part of my no paper mantra, but it would appear Seth believes the same:

My new book, We Are All Weird goes on sale today. We only have 11,000 hardcover copies on sale at Amazon, with no plans to print more. I wanted you to have first dibs. (PS, Outside the USA? click here). Why limit the number printed?

Conventional publishing wisdom says that the first 10,000 copies are the hardest. In fact, you don’t make money until after that. The goal is to prime the pump and then, if you get lucky, sell millions and millions of hardcovers, day after day, year after year. That’s what pays the bills at all the large publishing houses. The thing is, digital is better at infinity than paper ever will be. Digital is easy to keep in stock, easy to replenish, easy to connect with. Paper, on the other hand, benefits from scarcity.

iPad Movie Mount

I’ve posted info on iPhone mounts and lenses previously (Glif, Owle, Olloclip, SLR adapter) but this is a first, an iPad 2 mount!

This has been really well thought through, and at $70 / €50 it’s not a bad price either.

More info at Makayama

The Cosmonaut is The Write Stuff

I posted about the Scribbly a while ago, but I just stumbled on the Cosmonaut by Studio Neat, the guys that created the Glif, which in case you missed it is a cool iPhone tripod mount and stand, that had a very successful Kickstarter launch. Well it looks like they’ve done it again with another great idea, the Cosmonaut, as it rocketed (sorry about that), past it’s goal of $50,000 to secure $134,236 in funding!

I can’t wait to grab one myself (actually it’s given me an idea for a no paper add on)

Do You Know Where You’re Going?

Alice asked the Chesire Cat, who was sitting in a tree.
“What road do I take?”
“Where do you want to go?” the cat asked.
“I don’t know” Alice answered.
“Then, it really doesn’t matter, does it?” said the cat.

If your destination or goals are vague, then the decisions you make will reflect that.

You can apply this philosophy to numerous aspects of your life, be it your job, your personal life, your retirement plans etc unless you’re clear on what you really want, then you’re unlikely to make informed decisions that will help you achieve something truly fulfilling, you need a compass to point you in the right direction.

In Branding terms, these are referred to as your Core Values… as I’ve written before “Your core values are the very essence of what you or your company stand for, strip away everything else and the core values remain, they become your compass in good times and bad times, they guide your decision making process” more on that here

Applying this sort of branding technique to your personal life may seem a bit strange at first, but it could really help, especially if you’re stuck in a rut, or find it difficult to make decisions. Core Values are a reflection of who you are, your essence, you don’t make them up, you discover and refine them.

As David Eagleman explains in his book Incognito, “The next time a friend laments that she cannot decide between two options, tell her to flip a coin. The important part is to assess her gut feeling after the coin lands. If she feels a subtle sense of relief at being told what to do by the coin, then that’s the right choice for her. If instead, she concludes that it’s ludicrous for her to make that decision based on a coin toss, that will cue her to choose the other option”

Why? It’s all to do with the fact that the unconscious mind has already made the decision, it’s just that your conscious mind, which is much slower, hasn’t caught up yet, in this instance, your unconscious mind represents your Core Values. So if you’re someone that usually goes with your gut feeling, great, but wouldn’t it be good to refine the process!

Don’t Build It and They Will Come, 90k Of Them!

That appears to be Martin Hasek’s philosophy, the creator of Noteslate, and it appears to be working. I posted about the Noteslate back in January, I was sceptical then and unfortunately my scepticism was founded, as this CNN report confirmed shortly afterwards, but that doesn’t appear to have stopped 64,000 people clicking the like button on their homepage, 10,000 following them on Twitter, plus over 17,000 optimistic hopefuls liking the Noteslate Facebook page (there were only 500 when I hit the like button!), most of which are keen to see a real noteslate in production, although some are flagging a bit now on the Facebook page, and posting negative and frustrated comments.

So why do this? Surely Martin is going to anger a lot of people when he comes 100% clean, or will he? After all he’s proven without doubt that his college industrial design project (apparently that’s where it all started) has a market, one that may make investors very interested in the concept, although without any IP protection, I’m not sure how interested they’d be… although if you do the maths, based on the original price of $100 per unit (highly unlikely), that’s still 90k fans & likes x $100 = $9m… not bad for vapourware! Plus if Noteslate don’t release it, someone else undoubtedly will.

Either way, I’d personally love to see a noteslate type of device, without doubt I’d use it everyday, it dovetails perfectly with our no paper philosophy, we’d certainly look at ways of communicating with it and automating syncing with our own systems.

One thing Noteslate highlights and proves to us at no paper, is that people have no problem imagining a world where they don’t use or rely on paper, of course we’ve believed that for a long time, but it’s nice to know others believe and feel the same!

more dis-information at noteslate

more information at no paper

Vizualize.me, LinkedIn Infographics

You know me and data visualisation, but here’s something cool, it’s a website that creates an infographic of your Linked in profile, it’s an invite only Beta at the moment, but it looks promising.

more info at vizualize.me

you should follow me on Twitter

Freaky!

What were the chances of that happening!! Some would say it’s a sign, “Double Rainbow, what does it all mean?” Others will tell me to do the lottery today, some won’t even notice and will have to have another look at the image above… as for me, oh it’s just coincidence, but freaky nonetheless! (although doing the lottery today won’t hurt will it, maybe I can turn that coincidence into serendipity!)