Nick Tadd

Mass customisation in 2012 – the old new kid on the block.

By Nick Tadd | Published: January 6, 2012

No two iPhones are the same, in the world, ever. No Android and no MacBook or PC.

One thing we can guarantee is that no two points of access to the digital age will look the same.

Because we all want different things.

Essentially an iPhone is part plastic, metal, chips and batteries and much like any computer really only serves one purpose, and only one – it’s an interface between you and binary.

It’s an API. All a keyboard does is make sense of what you’ve got to say or do and translate that into a digital piece.

And we all have different thing to say, do and interact with. No two humans are the same, therefore, no two ‘interfaces’ can be the same.

So what we have left is a ‘thing’ (digital interface) that we will buy, take then customise it to what we want. We will add apps that give us information that we want – information that makes our days sensible, efficient, fun and informative – chatty as well.

Mass customisation. Because we all want different.

This means something. It means that we all need to receive different things at different times, we want, nay need things that fit our niche – because our niche is important to us. After all we spend more time on our niche that anyone else’s.

Web 3.0, the defragmentation of the information streams.

Web 2.0 was a good thing. It woke the world up to digital. It empowered us to see that we own the web and that it’s there for us not the platforms. The platforms gave us an excuse to ‘play’ but now that we have got used to it we need to customise the experience. After all that is what we have been doing for all of time – we customise our lives because they’re our lives, not anyones else’s.

Mass customisation. Digital dashboards that make sense of our days.

Inspired by Joe Pine

Posted in Digital, Mobile, Technology, The Internet of Things, The Web, Weblogs | Tagged api, mass customisation | 2 Comments

2012 – The year that social media became exhausted.

By Nick Tadd | Published: January 5, 2012

About bl**dy time too. According to Mashable 2012 is the year we exhaust social media.

The irony of it being that it came via social media!

But that’s the problem. If social media is ‘the conversation’ then the platforms they are on can’t be.

Facebook is not social media as much as a cave wall is not social media – the painting on it is. Platforms cannot be social media, digital cannot be social media, they can only be a place where social media, at some level, takes place.

Therefore, if 2012 is the year that we become exhausted with social media (platforms), and i hope we do, then what is it people have been doing?

Having a conversation methinks – it just happens that it was on something like facebook or twitter.

But I think facebook and twitter were too ‘wide’ a platform, i.e not niche enough. We know humans herd, and we know humans subscribe to specific uniforms such as golfing or mountain biking. Therefore, what we need are ‘dashboards’ that allow that subscription to be fulfilled.

In an offline world we gather data on a specific niche, this is normal. But the method of the ‘gather’ is fragmented – e-mails, books, magazines, conversations etc. But a digital dashboard will change that. An ‘app’ that gathers the information for you would fit our hungry lives.

Apps, dashboards and niches, these are the things that will get attention in 2012. we will see the demise of the poorly termed ‘social media’ and we will see the rise of the aptly termed ‘dashboard’.

2012, the rise of the digital world for the niched masses – and not the ego driven, poorly termed, social media, a term designed by the few to try and be-dazzle the masses.

Social media should have never been a term that fulfilled what it has become, that action belongs to the term ‘the social web’ then the reason would be easier to grasp.

12 years ago the fundemental change that has become the information age began – this has been and always was ‘the social web’, because no one owned it, we owned it and it was social by nature.

I think what 2012 will bring is the understanding that social media is not the answer to all but digital will be. The action of understanding, at a fundemental level, that digital has, is and can change politics, economies GDP’s of countries, volcabulary, language, and social interaction (amongst others).

2012 will bring digital as a recognised method to the masses.

Posted in Digital, Social Media, Technology, The Web | Tagged 2012, digital, rip social media | 19 Comments

Optimism – a disease of the mind.

By Nick Tadd | Published: January 4, 2012

It’s a new year and new hopes abound. “This is my year” is the call to action. Optimism is the staple fare.

And why not? It’s a good thing.

But if pessimism is the opposite of optimism then we have a ‘swing’ in mood and method.

This is bipolar by definition.

Happiness and unhappiness.

Depression and encouragement.

Bipolar ‘appears’ to be part of normal existence for most of the world and yet for some it’s called a disease of the mind.

Which begs the question ‘are we all diseased’?

I don’t think so. I think we’re all human and humans are happy before they’re sad and if this is a disease then we all suffer from life – the ultimate disease that ultimately leads to death.

Optimism.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines optimism as having “hopefulness and confidence about the future or successful outcome of something; a tendency to take a favourable or hopeful view.” The word is originally derived from the Latin optimum, meaning “best.” Being optimistic, in the typical sense of the word, ultimately means one expects the best possible outcome from any given situation. This is usually referred to in psychology as dispositional optimism.

This year is going to be a great year, after-all 12 years ago the world changed and now it’s woken up to it. Some of us have been aware of this for a while now and have been putting things into place to take advantage of this change.

I have noticed a huge ‘up-swing’ in method of the masses towards the change. The digital change.

Digital. 01101111 01110000 01110100 01101001 01101101 01101001 01110011 01101101

We can all feel 01101111 01110000 01110100 01101001 01101101 01101001 01110011 01101101 why? Because we all deserve it, we all can feel safe in the knowledge that the world is changing as it always did and we will change with it. We can feel satisfied that the new year gives us a chance to take a control, to give us something to measure against, to achieve, to succeed.

01101111 01110000 01110100 01101001 01101101 01101001 01110011 01101101 a disease of the mind that I, for one, would never change, would never want to change and will always strive for.