The following is a collection of articles and thought pieces highlighting interesting trends and changes in the world you and I live in.
Benedict Evans looks at which organisations can really benefit from a mobile app based digital strategy:
Do you have the kind of relationship, and proposition, that people will want to engage with enough to put your icon on their phone? If the answer to this is ‘yes’, then you should have an app – if only because the app store is the way to do that that people understand, and they’ll look for you in the app store.
Nielsen figures point to 30 being the ceiling for the number of mobile apps typically used by consumers:
GlobalWebIndex figures point to Pinterest and Tumblr’s rapid growth globally, albeit off a much smaller base than the likes of Facebook:
Providing a more flattering view for Facebook are figures from the UK published by Ofcom in its Adults’ media use and attitudes Report 2015. The report also has plenty of coverage of UK consumer’s use of other media and devices:
There has been a lot of coverage in the media press on Facebook’s launch of Instant Articles. The service sees consumers access content on Facebook’s servers rather than being directed onto the publishers own platforms. This represents a further strengthening of Facebook’s position, but as Vox points out, has a certain inevitability to it.
Eugene Wei contrasts minimalist and frictionless design, suggesting that we should typically be aiming for the latter:
Minimalist design is about reducing the surface area of an experience. Frictionless design is about reducing the energy required by an experience.
Evolutionary biologist Josh Roseneau has looked at the correlations between faith groups in the USA and their attitudes towards evolution and environmental regulations:
The Longform Podcast has been a recent discovery, with journalists interviewed about the story behind the story. A recent episode profiles reporter Sarah Maslin Nir coverage of the New York nail salon industry and the brazen exploitation of its workforce. You can find Nir’s story over on the New York Times.
Well renowned journalist Seymour Hersh wrote a valuable article in the London Review of Books pointing out major inconsistencies in the United States’ account of the killing of Osama bin Laden. Unfortunately some commentators have chosen to attack the journalist rather than the story as Trevor Timm details in an account for the Columbia Journalism Review.
In an interesting interplay of film and gentrification, Nick Carr provides an account of life as a location scout in New York trying to find a quintessential New York which increasingly doesn’t exist.
Chip Rowe looks at the different design flaws in the human body and suggests some hacks to rectify them:
Evolution constructed our bodies with the biological equivalent of duct tape and lumber scraps. And the only way to refine the form (short of an asteroid strike or nuclear detonation to wipe clean the slate) is to jerry-rig the current model. “Evolution doesn’t produce perfection,” explains Alan Mann, a physical anthropologist at Princeton University. “It produces function.”
The featured image is Vegan To’ona’i by Askew One in Auckland, New Zealand and the photo was published in StreetArtNews.
