Thursday Morning

Journalism is going down the drain these days. Fast. Nothing new.

As being “social” moves from the Like, Tweet, and G+ buttons to more integrated “your friend read this article recently”, I expect to see even worse posts, news feeds and general babble that captures your attention with catchy titles and gives you a bad taste after reading. I call it the YouTube Title effect – “The best…,” The Greatest Catch ever…”, “10 secrets how to…”, and so on, which only serve to push the material to the top of the results page and serve you a false identity of being worthy for your time. One of the latest examples?

7 Tips to Wake Up and Get You Out of Bed Fast

The Washington Post’s Social Reader piece lacks the ingredients to engage the reader, to put it mildly. Not to mention the weird title positioning, the content of this article is a joke. It seems that somebody put together a hard-to-justify laundry list that is supposed to be easy to read, at the same time taking you the the page where you see enough impressions and ads. Being misled by the fact that a few of my friends “read” this article, I also fell for this trap. Good materials cannot always be the quality of Foreign Affairs, The Economist and the likes. But they should not be insulting the reader’s intelligence, the way the said article does.

7 Crucial Tips for Solid Sleep

Just to prove my point that a lot of today’s writers print for mileage, I decided to do a writing exercise (like the one you are reading now) of a general, 5-min-youtube-title-no-research topic, such some good practices to keep you sound asleep. Here it goes:

1. Try to go to bed at the same time of the day every day. It will help your bio clock and make your body accustomed to sleep at after this specific hour of the day.

2. Do not eat after 7 pm. You might find this surprising (really), but food digestion causes sleep problems.

3. Exercise regularly, or at least 3 times a week. It will put enough oxygen in your body.

4. Do not watch television 30 minutes before going to bed. It will allow your brain to relax from a an exhausting day and help you get in the zone.

5. Get some fresh air in your room and sleep at lower temperatures.

6. Avoid caffeine consumption after 4 pm (now, now – this sounds very academic. Let’s be blunt: Quit drinking coffee).

7. Stop reading bullshit articles that state the obvious, like the list you just finished.

Anyhow and anyway. I am really looking for some quality posts, even if it is paid content. After all, good work should be rewarded. However, media cajoling me to read what my friends mistakenly read just to attract enough eyeballs on the Social Reader page is seriously questioning the ideology of a world “more open and connected.”

CES 2012 will be marked this year by a lot of things: MSFT’s last voyage to the show, more than 2K exhibitors, $100 washing machines (a post on this will follow), and the new buzz word – the ultrabook. My attention, however, was captured by putting the word smart** in front of everything: smartTVs, smartCARS, smartTECH, overall, smartLIFE.

Now, I had this feeling that smart TVs simply allowed you to connect your social network accounts and browse the net, but smartness is coming to live with what we see from this show.

SAMSUNG super impressed me with the exhibited technology: no frames, voice control and face recognition. Here is my 2 cents for each one of the items. But watch the video first:

NO FRAMES

I always wondered why TVs, as standing/hanging units needed to have the painting-like frames of an inch and a half that polish the end of the screen. No frames is the way to go – your visual experience needs to move flawlessly from the room surroundings to a window of colors and light. So, I am super hyped that finally the frame is limited to a fraction of a hair. I hope to see a TV that doesn’t have one at all, with its structure being supported by the background panel.

VOICE CONTROL

Huge. Simple as that. Recognizing gestures and controlling the channels via voice simply retires the remote control. An innovation in itself, I cannot help but think that Apple’s personal assistant leads the way and I hope that when Apple releases it hyped TV set to have SIRI integrated natively. Now, Kinnect has done it for Microsoft and SAMSUNG is doing it now. But how we control things, beyond phones and TVs (think navigation systems and fridges) will change how we run our lives.

FACE RECOGNITION

Probably the most important aspect of all. Linking your Facebook, Google +, and Twitter accounts is one thing, but knowing who exactly from your household is watching the TV goes beyond “remembering your settings.” It gives you superb information about:

- what is being watched by whom (with all the stats coming into play – how long, what show, when you change the channel, how many people shared the experience with you, etc.)

- it could potentially allow manufacturers/TV producers to recognize eye movement and create instantaneous heat maps of what captures your attention

- it gives you the ultimate advertising power for TV! Imagine you and I watch a soccer game and there is the half time commercial break. Because the smartTV recognizes that it is you, and not me watching, you will have a different set of commercials running than me. Ultimate, personalized, TV advertising – I will get my tech gadgets spots, you will have your favorites as well.

In light of the last bullet point, I can finally see why Google is huge on smartTVs… cannot help but think: is BIG BROTHER (or Big G) already watching me?

I don’t know what it is so rotten about KØBENHAVN, but it seems the entire culture of the city (and the country by extension) is start-up-oriented and extremely enthusiastic. Not always you would find a nice crowd that gathers around impossible-to-use, beautifully-designed furniture pieces and ponders how to simplify all aspects of life, so that it looks similar to a Scandinavian minimalistic living room set up.

Visiting ML again, the white board drawings of business strategies and potential areas for development never stops. It also transcends what would be considered to be an outlier of ideation (ML’s house) versus the rest of the Danes – take a look at how the entire set up works – the non-driver cars of the metro or the simple, optimized taxi stands.

Maybe due to the optimization, the amazing social benefits, or the fact that there is enough meat and candy for everyone, it seems that the general attitude is one of positive inspiration, where society does not look bad on somebody who decided to take a year (or years) between high school and college or even college and work. In fact, such efforts seem to be encouraged.

Which brings me to my main point: I guess this is the third time I am trying to get my blog rolling (similar to my up-and-down desire to quit smoking). I pledge to post at least something every day and I will try to keep it at least till the end of the year (now, I hope you understand that this once a day is just an average, not an actual post per day). I feel inspired and encouraged.

Well, I created this video, trying to add a bit of spice and fun to the Friday post on the industry. Somehow Tnooz found it online and decided to run a post on it, which, just for gigs, is quite funny. Here is the video:

And here is the piece:

TNOOZ

Thursday Morning

The YouTube Title Effect: Big Words, No Content

Getting SIRIous about TVs

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