Designing Innovations
Todd Walker's design, innovation and creative strategy ephemera. Read, enjoy, share, discard.
thefanboys.com redesigns the XBox Live interface to reclaim screen real estate for the player. Major change is to knock down screen real estate for advertising from 22% to 8%. Thing about this is that the gamer is Microsoft’s product and the real customers are the advertisers. Under a scheme like this, I wonder what sort of price increase you’d see in XBox Live monthly subscription fees to cover the assumed loss in advertising revenue.
Google to Start Distributing Content via AdSense - NYTimes.com
“Google will syndicate the program using its AdSense advertising system to thousands of Web sites that are predetermined to be gathering spots for Mr. MacFarlane’s target audience, typically young men. Instead of placing a static ad on a Web page, Google will place a “Cavalcade” video clip.
Advertising will be incorporated into the clips in varying ways. In some cases, there will be “preroll” ads, which ask viewers to sit through a TV-style commercial before getting to the video. Some advertisers may opt for a banner to be placed at the bottom of the video clip or a simple “brought to you by” note at the beginning.”
Technovia: In ten years time, will Apple be the new Microsoft - an abusive monopoly?
In the end, I agree with the post. Actually, in the beginning, since I’ve always thought of Apple as a benevolent dictator of design. But I also paused to think if this was really possible, since Apple seems to be structured in such a way as to favor niche adoption, even if 20% share could be described as niche. Then I thought of iPod, which has something on the order of 75%+ marketshare for digital audio players, at least in the US, and I thought, no Apple is not designed or desiring to stick to niches. I’d say some of the rancor caused by the Microsoft rivalry in the 80s and 90s was specifically because Jobs and Apple wanted the whole pie. Funny that their greatest chance to achieve that largely came by giving up on that goal.
Capital One launches customized photo credit cards. You can use preselected images (shown here), images from Flickr, or an image you upload. I see copyright problems down the road. (via swissmiss)