The 'Putter'

This short, wordless documentary about 'putter'—short for scissor putter-togetherer—Cliff Denton has been making rounds today and it's easy to see why. Filmmaker Shaun Bloodworth does a nice job of capturing Denton's attention to detail with this visually poetic treatment of the dying art—founded over a century ago in 1902, Ernest Wright & Sons has been producing handcrafted shears for five generations and is among the last scissors-makers of its kind. - via Core77

 

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Disruptive Innovation

Disruptive innovation is a theory about why businesses fail. It’s not more than that. It doesn’t explain change. It’s not a law of nature. It’s an artifact of history, an idea, forged in time; it’s the manufacture of a moment of upsetting and edgy uncertainty. Transfixed by change, it’s blind to continuity. It makes a very poor prophet.

THE DISRUPTION MACHINE What the gospel of innovation gets wrong. BY JILL LEPORE

GoPro: Beyond Hardware & Into Media

The industrial designer of today would have much to explain to the industrial designer from 50 years ago. Back then, if you designed a successful product, you'd be expected to regularly design subsequent updates to that product that consumers would want to continue buying, thus growing the company you were working for. It's simple math: Move More Product, Make More Money. While that phenomenon of course exists today, what's different is that now companies can grow by moving beyond physical devices and enhancing the user's experience through technological, networked means that then emotionally tie you to the device. The hardware, the physical object, is meant to draw you into the company's larger world of diversions and thus become an indispensable gateway. Consider the iPod followed by the development of the iTunes Music Store. Or look at the X-Box, and ask yourself if it would be a success without connecting you to millions of strangers you can play Call of Duty with.

So perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised to hear that GoPro, the inventors of a bad-ass little camera, are seeking to expand beyond the physical device and into the realm of media. While you've undoubtedly read news of the company's recent IPO, you may not have read the fine print on the filing:

To date, we have generated substantially all of our revenue from the sale of our cameras and accessories and we believe that the growing adoption of our capture devices and the engaging content they enable, position GoPro to become an exciting new media company.

Read the whole article on Core77.

 

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Content is Context

"The defining experience of any new technology today is all about context. The software interfaces we use to perceive, access, and engage digital workflows are evolving to be more simple and direct. Until recently UI was expressed as an abstract enclosure (or “chrome”), but now it is recessive and getting out of our way to expose the plain fact of physical place or network node. There can no longer be an abstraction: the content is the context and the context defines the interface." Pretty great article, read it here: http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/chromeless-the-content-is-the-interface.html

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HandUp

HandUp is a relatively new service that lets you donate directly to homeless individuals in your neighborhood. VentureBeat first covered the startup back in August. 100 percent of the donations go to the essentials, like food, clothing, and medical care. What stands out about HandUp is the human touch: Individuals can share their stories and ask for specific items, like dentures or a new phone. - VentureBeat

 

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