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Apple's "Wall of Applications" developed for its recent developer conference did more to demonstrate the breadth and scale of its applications than any single static ad ever could. It's a great example of the power of data as a compelling form of communication. In Apple's case, it's all about the scale of the information to signify the size of the ecosystem.



While most experts are thinking of data visualization as a tool to explain data internally to diverse audiences and to help them better understand what's going on, data could easily be a pure communication tool.

If used correctly, data visualization could help audiences to better understand brands, either in the representation of large scale global interactions or focused on a more local level.

For Coca-Cola, imagine data revealing the scale of consumption on a real time basis examined globally or down to a local level where you could connect with others in a community like way.

Taking it further, complex interactions could be highlighted and data meaning could be presented from detailed analysis.

When you think of brands as media companies, data is now one of the valuable assets in the arsenal of communication tools.



Posted by Ed Cotton We are delighted to add Alan Dye to our Influx Curated (June 11th- San Francisco) speaker list. Alan is currently a Creative Director over at Apple and will be one of Chris Riley's guest speakers.

Alan's experience includes stints at Kate Spade, Ogilvy's B.I.G. and Landor.

Here's Debbie Millman interviewing Alan for Design Matters in January 2008.



Tickets for the event are $99 and can be found here along with more details about the event.


Posted by Ed Cotton While most of the leading applications on Apple's 30,000 plus store are games, the company is keen to inform us that there's lots of meaningful things you can do with your iPhone.



This ad? (below) does a great job at highlighting all the recession-busting applications that you can get for your phone.

It's a nice example of a brand not only connecting with the current zeitgeist, but explaining how their products can provide real utility and benefits to help.

Via Down The Avenue.


Posted by Ed Cotton The once great Dell is trying to re-invent itself for a world that's radically changed since it first came into being. As the company shifted away from it's focus on the customer, the social network and the blog rose up to call them out, a resurgent Apple has re-defined computing, not just for a small niche, but for masses and computers themselves have shifted from desktops to laptops.

Dell is trying to cope with this radical change and makeover the brand to be more relevant.

Throughout its history, the company has hardly been a champion of design, it's simply not part of the DNA for the very functional, custom built, price driven brand.

It appears, design is also on the change list at Dell who are making some bold moves upmarket with the Adamo sub-brand.



Can this shift upmarket work for Dell?

It seems like a complete case of Apple envy and a bad rip off of Apple's Air laptop. However, one could argue that it's a start and Dell needs to do radical things like this to pull itself from the mire.

BTW- Are there any American industrial designers?


Posted by Ed Cotton There's a great interview in Mobilecrunch with one of the members of the iPhone Dev Team.

This is not a unit inside Apple responsible for updating the phone software, quite the opposite; it's a team of unpaid renegades who are tearing up the phone and hacking it to pieces. These are a group of highly motivated, unpaid folks who just love the challenge.

Here are some of the key points I took out of the piece.

1. Real time transparent communication is key

The group use IRC and file serving technologies to make sure all team members are kept in the loop

2. Intelligent groups can self-organize

The group has no need for leaders, each person is smart enough to understand their role and find one that matches their expertise.

3. The group is unified by a core motivation

"The same interest that I had with tearing apart my Speak & Spell as a kid, then my Tandy CoCo, then my Atari ST. I want to see what is inside and see if I can make it better. If I find something cool I tell other people about it."

4. The core motivation has an additional edge

The attitude of the Apple brand to the way in which it restricts the way the phone is used.

"Apple places restrictions on what you can run on the device. They impose draconian restrictions on the type of application that you can run, they don’t allow applications to run in the background and they even restrict the applications by subject matter or if they compete with their own applications."


Posted by Ed Cotton MTV or Music Television built its brand celebrating the new art form of the early 80s, the music video. It gave the music industry just what it needed, the eyeballs of a young generation to promote its product which it made a buck a disc for.

Fast forward several decades to the emergence of MySpace as THE music brand and you see a radically different notion of the role of music. Music is given away and streamed, the value of this is to provide exposure and shared advertising revenue for bands and record companies. The money is not made in the music, but in the merchandise and concert ticket revenue.

As Techcrunch told us in October.

"But today the labels have all but given up on DRM, and users can now play virtually any song ever recorded on demand for free. MySpace has created the first ecosystem that has a shot of producing sustainable revenue streams for artists based on advertising, merchandise and concert sales.

If it works, the next step is the fall of per-stream fees and download fees. Instead labels will see music consumption for what it really is - free marketing. Labels will compete to encourage song downloads and streams to move those songs up the charts, attracting premium advertisers, merchandise sales and sold out concerts."

What's interesting to see here is the role music has played as a glue to generate revenue for media companies, but the context of that revenue generation has changed over time.

It seems that MTV has lost its way as a brand with television no longer being the dominant media of the youth generation, music video dying as a form and the network shifting focus away from music to regular television shows.

Apple became the next brand to exploit and dominate the music channel with iTunes and the iPod, but the software was always just there to sell the high margin hardware. iTunes has now being panned by the critics for not keeping up with the times and Apple has a few other heavyweight players including Nokia trying to take a big share of the hardware business.

Another player is MySpace, who came out of the gate in October with a relaunched music service that achieved incredible traction. Just a few DAYS after launch, the brand streamed one billion songs.

At the recent Web 2.0 conference there was all kinds of speculation about the potential for an MP3 player to be launched by MySpace.

However, this isn't really the game anymore.MySpace's core competence is all about community and from day one its community has been focused on music. This is something that can't easily be copied and Apple, Nokia and Sony will struggle to make this happen. The story here is not about an iPod rival from MySpace, but instead the arrival of MySpace as a formidable media player in the new world of music.

Posted by Ed Cotton