As developers for tablets and smartphones we like to keep abreast of the latest mobile technology developments . This is a daily digest of mobile development and related technology news gathered from the BBC, the New York Times, New Scientist and the Globe and Mail to name a few. We scour the web for articles concerning, iPhone, iPad and android development, iOS and android operating systems as well as general articles on advances in mobile technology. We hope you find this useful and that it helps to keep you up to date with the latest technology developments.
VIDEO: Apple to team up with IBM
Apple and IBM have announced a business partnership that will see the two firms co-develop business-centric apps for iPhones and iPads.
Apple and IBM to co-develop apps
Apple and IBM – once bitter rivals – announce a tie-up that will see the two firms co-develop business-centric apps for the iPad and iPhone.
Verizon adding LTE support to Allset prepaid plans on Thursday
Verizon announced on Tuesday that it will start offering LTE “4G” support to customers of its prepaid division, Allset, starting on Thursday, July 17. New customers can bring their own LTE-capable devices or purchase a handset through Verizon. The spin-off division supports any device that can use Verizon’s CDMA-based network, and offers unlimited talk and text with 500MB of data for $45 per month, contract-free. Those who set up autopay will gain another 500MB of data per month for a total of 1GB.
Why Amazon Isn't Afraid Of The Occasional PR Disaster
A bitter public feud with a book publisher, eviscerating segments by Stephen Colbert and reports of terrible warehouse working conditions don’t seem to be having much effect on how Americans feel about Amazon, according to a new survey.
Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, kept its spot as America’s favorite brand in YouGov BrandIndex’s semi-annual ranking of how U.S. consumers feel about some of the biggest global companies. The market research firm released the rankings on Wednesday.
Amazon was already number one, having bested Ford at the end of last year, when BrandIndex last released what it calls its U.S. Buzz Rankings.
But a lot has happened since then. Amazon and Hachette, the fourth-largest book publisher in the U.S., have been locked in a dispute over the share each company is to get from e-book sales. According to The New York Times, Amazon is responsible for 60 percent of Hachette’s e-book sales.
As negotiations have faltered, Amazon has tried pressuring Hachette by removing presale buttons from some Hachette titles and delaying shipping times on others.
This has enraged many Hachette authors, including Stephen Colbert, who said last month on “The Colbert Report” that “because of Amazon’s scorched-earth tactics, more people are getting screwed than in Fifty Shades of Grey.”
All of this bad publicity doesn’t seem to have hurt Amazon. At least not yet.
Ted Marzilli, BrandIndex CEO, called Amazon a “Teflon brand,” immune to bad press.
“People tend to focus more on the good aspects that they hear about Amazon and are perhaps more forgiving of any negatives they might hear,” Marzilli told The Huffington Post.
But as Amazon continues to grow — and as more disputes with suppliers and reports of terrible working conditions become public — the company could risk losing popularity.
“As you become bigger and people no longer look at you as the underdog or the upstart, but rather as the established player and the big guy on the block, that’s when they start to look for the next upstart or underdog to cheer for,” Marzilli said. “And as a consequence, they might be a little bit more likely to focus on the negatives or remember some of the negative things they’ve heard.”
The latest rankings — which BrandIndex determined by asking more than 4,000 people in the U.S. each weekday if they’ve heard in recent weeks anything positive or negative about certain brands — are a mixed blessing for Amazon. “Kindle,” Amazon’s brand of e-readers and tablets, fell off the top 10 list in the latest survey.
This is sure to upset Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s notoriously cantankerous founder and CEO. At the launch of the company’s first smartphone last month, Bezos boasted that Amazon had two spots on YouGov’s BrandIndex.
“It’s not easy to get two brands on this list,” Bezos told a crowd of journalists, analysts and Amazon customers.
Turns out it’s just as hard to keep two brands there.
YouGov conducts daily polls for The Huffington Post, but the BrandIndex research was not part of that partnership.
Report: iPhone 5s single best-selling smartphone worldwide
Though it will not come as surprising news to industry watchers, a new report compiling sales channel data from 35 countries puts Apple, Samsung and China-based Xiaomi as the only three companies really selling smartphones. What may be surprising to some, however, is just how well the iPhone line is doing overall; in addition to the iPhone 5s being the clear winner as the top-selling model, the much-maligned iPhone 5c took fifth place, followed by the two-and-a-half-year-old iPhone 4S in sixth place.
Volkswagen said to be talking to Apple about CarPlay
One of the few remaining major carmakers yet to embrace Apple’s CarPlay technology is said to be getting on board, holding talks with Apple on embedding the iOS-based technology into its 2016 models, according to an unnamed source with “knowledge of the discussions.” The Beetle maker was an early adopter of iPod compatibility with its vehicles, but has done little with Apple since then. The two companies are expected to announce an agreement later this year.
The Convergence of Medical and Consumer Health Apps
By Paul Bennett
[CAPTION: Image via Shutterstock]
Consumer healthcare apps linked to smartphones or wearable devices are growing in popularity, and forthcoming offerings from Apple and Google are likely to draw more attention to the field. These systems allow users to monitor a range of information–heart rate, calories burned, distance walked–but they don’t guarantee a change in behavior, much less an improvement in health.
Still, many doctors and clinicians see great potential for mobile medical apps. According to an April article in Modern Healthcare, 2013 “saw the beginning of convergence between devices and apps used by clinicians and those used by consumers.” In the future, experts see the integration of consumer apps and devices into “a comprehensive healthcare and wellness information system,” that could enable medical professionals to help patients manage their health, according to the report.
The ubiquity of smartphones and tablets is creating opportunities for that to happen, but hurdles remain, including the as-yet-uncertain regulatory demands on those who create and deploy apps that not only take measurements but actually prescribe a course of action for a patient.
When used in a clinical setting monitored by physicians, mobile apps are already leading to improved health. In a recent cardiac rehabilitation program at the Mayo Clinic, patients who used a smartphone-based app developed by the clinic to record daily measurements such as blood pressure, weight, blood sugar levels, minutes of physical activity, and dietary habits over a three-month period were less likely to be readmitted to the hospital within 90 days of discharge, compared with those patients who followed a traditional regime. The app also provided educational materials that would formerly have been provided via books, CDs, and DVDs. The interactive nature of the process led to improved results.
The cardiac rehab app was developed by the Clinic’s cardiology team in tandem with Dallas-based Healarium. “They had the proper platform already set up,” says R. Jay Widmer, an M.D./Ph.D. who oversaw the program at the Mayo Clinic. “We were able to integrate our requirements, so the task of setting it up wasn’t onerous.”
“Physicians are embracing the trend,” says Widmer, “but there still isn’t enough data on digital health. This program was very specific to the Mayo Clinic and to what we do. I knew it would be successful because of that. But I don’t have the same level of trust for mainstream apps.”
The Mayo Clinic’s digital health efforts extend beyond cardiac rehabilitation. Doctors there are working on digital health efforts in internal medicine, general health, musculoskeletal, and pediatric care. “The trend is likely to keep expanding,” says Widmer. “Digital certainly has the capability to do a lot, but we’re going to need more data to have widespread implementation.”
Among the many benefits digital medicine confers is the ability to extend the reach of doctors. The Mayo Clinic has a number of satellite offices, and mobile apps allow patients even hundreds of miles away to check in with physicians. This isn’t just a matter of rural areas; even urban areas can be underserved, says Widmer–but increased use of smartphones and better outreach from hospitals is beginning to change that.
More innovations are emerging at the Center for Digital Health Innovation at the University of California, San Francisco. It is “an oasis of agility,” created to spur a range of innovations from sensor development to consumer-facing self-management apps, enterprise technologies that support research and clinical care, and Big Data analytics, according to Aenor Sawyer, M.D., Associate Director of Strategic Relations.
Four large projects underway at the center include: CareWeb, a “Care-team collaborative platform that uses social and mobile communications technology built on Salesforce.com;” Tidepool, which is building the infrastructure for a new generation of smart diabetes apps; Health eHeart, “a clinical trials platform using social media, mobile technology, and novel real-time sensors to revolutionize heart disease;” and Trinity, which provides “precision team care by integrating patient data with multidisciplinary input and evidence” via secure online collaboration for virtual tumor board and case conferences.
“With Health eHeart,” says Sawyer, “we’ve been able to leverage social media, data aggregating platforms, and remote activity and physiologic sensing, to extend the reach of clinical research. Participants can go online, create a profile, provide their history, and update their outcomes. They can also send genomic information back to us through a ‘spit kit.’ It has rapidly increased patient recruitment by magnitudes over traditional methods, at a fraction of the cost.”
For the Health eHeart, which combines a Web-based program with a mobile app, the center partnered with sensor maker AliveCor to offer remote access to electrocardiography; physiological sensor company iHealth; and Ginger.io, which helped create an aggregating dashboard and patient portal.
The center’s CareWeb “is putting into a single secure platform all the ways we communicate as a care team in the hospital–phone, e-mail, voice, text, medical records,” says Sawyer. “There will also be a portal so the patient and designated family can access the information, making them part of the care team.”
Many of these projects ultimately become products, available to other centers and consumers, says Sawyer. “Our frontline innovations undergo extensive evaluation during development and after implementation.” Once we have shown, through proof-of-concept testing, that they are effective in care and cost, I feel we are obligated to get these solutions scaled up and out of the university, into the world to provide greater benefit.”
Original article published on Techonomy.com.
A World Future Society Conference Speech: Everyone Faces a Transhumanist Wager
Last weekend, I had the honor to give a speech at the World Futurist Society’s 2014 conference in Orlando, Florida. The World Futurist Society is the largest nonprofit organization of its kind with over 25,000 members in nearly 100 countries. Its yearly conference is a mecca for thousands of futurists looking to hear the latest forward-looking news and ideas. Hundreds of speeches, workshops, panels, meet-the-author sessions, poster presentations, and luncheons occurred. My three favorite presentations were made by Chair of the London Futurists David Wood, Serious Wonder.com founder Gray Scott, and Singularity University professor Jose Cordeiro and his former graduate student Bj Price.
My own speech at the conference was loosely based on an essay I recently wrote titled Everyone Faces a Transhumanist Wager. I wanted to share a condensed version of the talk because it presents a fundamental dilemma every human being on the planet must confront. Here’s the shortened speech:
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a problem. Each one of us has a problem. In fact, no matter where you go on the planet, no matter who you find, every single person on Earth has this same dire problem.
That problem is our mortality. That problem is called death.
The reason it’s a problem is because human beings love life. We all love the precious chance of existence. Even in one’s darkest psychological despair, or one’s most exhausting hardship, or one’s most catastrophic tragedy, the thing we call life is still always miraculous. We cherish life and we don’t want to lose it or have it end.
But end it will. No matter how much we wish otherwise. The stark truth is right before our eyes–that nothing in today’s world can save us from death. The obviousness of this overwhelms us every time we see a loved one or a friend whose body is lifeless, never to reach out, touch, and communicate with us again. Death is final.
The great irony for our species is that we don’t just have this one problem–but two problems. The second problem is nearly as vicious as the first. The second problem is the fact that most people around the world are just not worried about the first problem–they’re not worried about dying. They’re either religious and have the supposed afterlife all worked out, or they just don’t care, or they just don’t think conquering human death is possible. Whatever people’s reasons, they just don’t see the first problem as serious enough to warrant immediate concern–especially in a meaningful, tangible way that makes them not die. And by not recognizing death as a problem, many people have no reason to attempt to defeat it.
I have made it a mission in my life to make people aware of these two problems. It is why I wrote my philosophical novel The Transhumanist Wager. The concept of the Transhumanist Wager in the book is simple. It explains that in the 21st Century–the age of unprecedented technological innovation–it is a betrayal of ourselves (and the potential of our best selves) to not tackle and solve our two most pressing problems using modern science. More importantly, my book explains how we can solve these two problems.
But first, some of you are asking: What is a transhumanist? What does such a person want? What are the main goals? Some people around the world still don’t know what transhumanism means. When explaining the term to people, I find it easiest to use the Latin translation. “Transhuman” literally means beyond human.
Transhumanist goals are broad and varied, but mostly they revolve around human beings using science and technology to radically improve and enhance themselves, their lives, and society. Transhumanists often concentrate on stopping or reversing aging–we are sometimes called life-extensionists or longevity advocates. Many transhumanists also focus on robotics, bionics, artificial intelligence, biohacking, and other similar fields of study. Transhumanists are often, but not always, nonreligious. They find meaning in their own lives and possibilities, without a divine creator. The philosophies of transhumanism make it possible that in the future–using extreme science and technology–one may become a so-called divine creator if they wanted. In almost all circumstances, transhumanists prefer reason over any other method of understanding to guide themselves in life.
Every transhumanist comes to their own realization of why they feel they are a transhumanist. Each path is unique, personal, and totally different than another. I want to tell you briefly about my path. I was first introduced to transhumanism as a philosophy student attending Columbia University in New York City. For a class assignment, I was told to read a magazine article on some of the recent breakthroughs in cryonics. The article described a small but passionate group of scientists who believed that science and technology would be able to bring frozen patients back to life in the future if they were preserved properly. The article also discussed the transhumanism movement, which it described as a community of reason-based futurists who wanted to use science and technology to improve their lives and live indefinitely. I was deeply intrigued. I finished that article and wanted to know more. I spent the next ten years reading everything I could find on future technologies, human enhancement, and transhumanism. I discovered the writings and work of Max More, Aubrey de Grey, Ray Kurzweil, and futurist FM-2030.
However, it wasn’t until I was in the jungles of the demilitarized zone of Vietnam as a journalist for the National Geographic Channel that I came to dedicate my life to the field of transhumanism–that I came to the powerful conviction that human life should be preserved indefinitely. While in the jungle filming Vietnamese bomb diggers searching the ground for unexploded ordinances to recover and sell, I almost stepped on a partially unburied landmine. My guide pushed me out of the way, and I fell to within a foot of the mine. Tens of thousands have died from landmines in the DMZ in the last forty years, and I was lucky I was not one of them.
For me, nothing was ever the same again after that moment. The landmine incident permanently stamped into my mind how fragile the human body was–how precious our minutes alive on this planet really are. Upon returning to the Unites States, I began writing The Transhumanist Wager. The reason I tell you my personal story about becoming a transhumanist is that every one of us has their own story. But the two main problems we each face: death, and general apathy of death–and the choice we must make regarding them: a Transhumanist Wager–that is not just for some people. It is for every reasonable person in the world.
Indeed, in the quickly advancing 21st Century, making a Transhumanist Wager approaches us now as an ultimatum–the most challenging one we may ever face. Luckily, given how fast modern science is growing and changing our lives, making the wager is also the only reasonable option. If you love life, you will dedicate yourself to finding a way to preserve that life. Transhumanists do not want to preserve their life via heaven-promising religions, false hopes, an unconscious mystic super spirituality, or otherwise. There are only rational ways transhumanists will do it: through the tools they can create with their own hands; through the reason their brains can muster; and through the conviction their being prompts of them by not wanting to die and disappear. To do otherwise in today’s world is to remain irrational and, as my novel discusses, to be masochistic and even borderline suicidal. In a world where we have the technology to travel to Mars, where we can video chat on our cell phones to someone 10,000 miles away, or we can triple the lifespan of mice with biotechnology, it’s our evolutionary destiny to significantly extend our lives and to be transhuman.
Once you have identified the human race’s two main problems, and you understand that you each face a Transhumanist Wager, the question is: what to do? How can you solve these problems and make the right choice in the wager.
It’s quite simple, really. The journey of the transhumanist requires no ritual, no prayer, and no spiritual sacrifice or payment. It requires only your ability to reason. Ask yourself how you can best dedicate yourself to a specific cause of transhumanism and its various fields: aging research, cyborgology, stem cell science, suspended animation, singularitarianism, genetic engineering, machine intelligence, or the dozens of other areas. Then do it. For some, this may mean going into science or technology as a new career. For others it will mean volunteering in transhuman groups that need support. For some it will mean going into politics and pushing for more science-friendly laws. For others, it will mean donating resources to scientific centers and struggling innovators. For some, it will mean creating transhumanist art and using it a vehicle to push for a more scientific-minded society. For others it will mean just talking with friends and family about why you think science and technology are the best drivers of civilization.
Whatever it is that one can do, be transhumanist-minded. Be a people that belongs to a bright, rational scientific future, not one dogged by the old ways of archaic institutions, apathy, fear, or primitivism. Be transhuman, and let us all embrace our evolutionary destiny and the joys of perfect health and being that science can help us reach.
Houzz shakes up UK home renovations
Silicon Valley shakes up home design and architecture
Apple, IBM announce collaboration on big data, analytics apps [U]
[Updated with text from Tim Cook's memo to employees] In a surprise move, Apple and IBM have announced a new partnership that will see the enterprise giant working with the iPhone maker to bring more than 100 industry-specific enterprise solutions to the iOS platform as native apps for iPhone and iPad, as well as see IBM selling and leasing iOS devices pre-loaded with industry-specific solutions to its business clients. The exclusive deal also includes new AppleCare service and support plans tailored for enterprise, and IBM enterprise cloud services optimized for iOS.
Europe's combat drone challenge
Will Europe produce an unmanned combat aircraft?
The importance of being a 'normal'
Why tech giants should pay attention to the new ‘normals’
#AOLBuild Meets Founder Reshma Saujani @GirlsWhoCode
“We live in a society that says to girls ‘Don’t play too hard, don’t build, don’t create.” – Reshma Saujani
Reshma Saujani didn’t listen to society back then and her stellar career is proof of what happens when you block out the naysayers and continue to move forward. A graduate of Yale Law School, the Harvard Kennedy School and University of Illinois, Saujauni’s efforts to champion women is both impressive and inspiring. “We need to start a girl’s club, and start uplifting each other,” Saujani is looking to women to proactively empower each other.
Saujani is already doing her part as the founder of Girls Who Code, an organization that encourages girls to pursue a career in the computer science fields. Her hope is to increasingly fill future positions with hard working, determined and talented women, with the ultimate goal is to fill the widening gender parity gap in the very much male-dominated tech space.
AOL supports Saujani’s initiative and has partnered with Girls Who Code on a #BuiltByGirls summer program. Five graduates of the GWC program have taken over Cambio and are mentored through the creation of their own product as AOL interns.
Saujani is a self-proclaimed “Feminist with a capital F” and while she asks “Where are the women?,” she definitely knows where they should be: EVERYWHERE.
A go-getter, Saujani is tenacious (from her early days as a lawyer turned politician) and bullish, she recognizes that her greatest moments of opportunity have stemmed from personal failures. She encourages the audience to “Get back up and dust yourself off”–a mantra she uses in both her career and life.
Check out the BUILD segment below to hear more about how we can achieve it all.
Watch the MAKERS segment as part of #AOLBuild: Reshma Saujani, Founder, Girls Who Code.
Google Creates Elite Team To Fight Hackers — And Maybe The NSA
Google said Tuesday it had created an elite team of researchers to find and report major Internet security flaws, potentially thwarting both Chinese hackers and U.S. intelligence agencies.
In a blog post, Google security engineer Chris Evans said the team, dubbed Project Zero, will hunt for bugs in widely used software and report them to vendors so they can be fixed before hackers exploit them for malicious purposes.
Evans said sophisticated hackers have used software flaws to spy on human rights activists or steal trade secrets from major companies. Hackers also sell knowledge of such previously unknown bugs to other hackers or foreign governments for thousands of dollars.
“You should be able to use the web without fear that a criminal or state-sponsored actor is exploiting software bugs to infect your computer, steal secrets or monitor your communications,” Evans said.
“Our objective is to significantly reduce the number of people harmed by targeted attacks,” he added.
The mission of Project Zero appears to run counter to the work of the National Security Agency, which has reportedly exploited software bugs as part of its controversial spying programs.
Earlier this year, President Barack Obama created an exception that allows the NSA to take advantage of security flaws to collect intelligence, but only when there is “a clear national security or law enforcement need,” The New York Times reported.
In April, Bloomberg News reported the NSA knew for at least two years about the so-called Heartbleed bug — a major Internet security flaw disclosed in April — and exploited it to collect intelligence. U.S. officials denied the report.
Google already offers security researchers as much as $20,000 for finding and reporting security bugs in its own software. But Evans said Project Zero’s mission would be much broader. The team also will hunt for bugs in other companies’ code and report them to vendors.
Evans said Google was hiring “the best practically-minded security researchers and contributing 100% of their time toward improving security across the Internet.”
Project Zero will have 10 full-time researchers. So far, the team has enlisted several experts with some measure of fame in the security world. The team’s intern, for example, is George Hotz, according to Wired. As a teenager, Hotz became well known for being the first person to hack AT&T’s iPhone. He later hacked Sony’s Playstation 3.
New Mexico Prisoner Faced 90 Days In Solitary Over Facebook Page [UPDATE]
The New Mexico Corrections Department told HuffPost Tuesday it was reviewing its policies after an inmate faced a 90-day stretch in solitary confinement because of a Facebook page.
Eric Aldaz is serving a sentence at the Northeast New Mexico Detention Facility for offenses including aggravated assault on a peace officer, fleeing the police and possessing a firearm. A Facebook page dedicated to him recently aroused the disgust of a mother who said he killed her son in a separate incident when he was a juvenile.
A New Mexico Corrections Department rule prohibits “third parties” — in this case, it appears, Aldaz’s family — from providing indirect Internet access to inmates. Prison disciplinary proceedings regarding the Facebook page began on March 11. According to disciplinary records released to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online-rights group, Aldaz was recorded after that asking a relative in a phone call “to post a new picture of him or an old picture of him and to put on there about people keep on hating him.”
Prison officials alleged that by failing to convince his relatives to take the Facebook page down, Aldaz was guilty of violating corrections department policy. A prison hearing officer gave him 90 days in solitary confinement on March 31.
But New Mexico Corrections Department spokeswoman Alexandria Tomlin told HuffPost on Tuesday that Aldaz’s punishment was thrown out on July 1.
“We have already denied that discipline and he didn’t serve the discipline,” she said. “We are reviewing the policy.”
Earlier on Tuesday, the EFF, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, the Human Rights Defense Center and Prison Legal News sent a joint letter to the New Mexico Corrections Department asking it to reconsider its punishment. “No one should serve 90 days, or even a single day, in solitary confinement for simply having a Facebook page,” their letter said.
An EFF spokesperson said that at the time they sent their letter, the groups had not been notified that the punishment had been denied.
Aldaz may not seem like the most sympathetic civil liberties poster boy, but the EFF’s Dave Maass pointed out in a blog post that the language of the no-Internet rule is “so broad that it could be used to punish inmates for innocuous acts such as asking their family to pay their outstanding credit bills through online banking or to send print-outs of medical information from health websites.”
This story was updated to reflect the news that the New Mexico Corrections Department had thrown out the punishment and was reviewing its policies.
Netflix Quietly Stopped Saturday DVD Deliveries, And You Didn't Even Notice
R.I.P., DVD.
The U.S. Postal Service is still continuing Saturday deliveries, but Netflix doesn’t plan on following its lead. In the same manner the subscription movie service started rolling out new logos, the company has quietly stopped processing Saturday DVD orders. A Netflix spokesperson confirmed to Engadget that Saturday shipments were discontinued in June.
Business Insider reports Netflix’s DVD customer base was around 8.2 million at the beginning of the year (about one-third the size of its streaming customers), so the move makes sense from a financial perspective; some of the disgruntled customers, however, have already begun airing their grievances over the Internet, with many shocked by the clandestine nature of the service change.
Only time will tell if this is Netflix’s first move toward totally phasing out DVDs, but that would probably concern you even more if you didn’t have another episode of “Breaking Bad” to watch in 15 seconds.
[h/t Uproxx]
Intel shares rise on strong profit
Shares in chip maker Intel rise 4% after the firm reports profits rose 45% in the second quarter to $2.8bn, driven by stronger-than-expected PC sales to businesses.
What Type of Selfie Are You?
Quick!
Are you the kind who combs your hair before a selfie or do you just go for it?
Image, looks, and the selfie have never been bigger. From the “hot mugshot guy” Jeremy Meeks to the woman who has tongues wagging after spending $30,000 to look like Kim Kardashian to the selfie revolution that now racks up over 1 million self-snaps a day; the old adage that image is everything has never been more true. But while many have said that this growing phenomenon has caused us to become even more concerned about our looks than in previous times, there may actually be something a bit deeper going on beneath the surface.
Sure, on the one hand, beauty and sex appeal will never go out of style. We’ve all seen the pouting would-be model splattered across Instagram with just the right hair and make-up during #wcw (that’s woman crush Wednesdays, for those who might not know). But there seems to be an interesting cultural tug-of-war going that’s brewing between the crafted image camp and the natural image camp. In fact, a recent study by Techinfographics, indicates that only 13 percent of females admit to actually retouching their selfies (34 percent of men say they retouch), and just put whatever is natural out there. Look at your own timeline, and I’m sure you’ll see many a pudgy face or unflattering outfit getting likes upon likes upon likes, validating the image that’s been captured. Celebrated designer Marc Jacobs (though under fire for financial reasons associated with the situation) is even using Instagram to cast genuine people as part of his upcoming campaign to add “fresh faces.”
So, is real the new hot?
Could be, but it seems to come with a bit of a caveat. The realness has to be that which the image owner controls and sanctions. Case in point? Just last week “Confused Face Meme Girl” launched a suit against Instagram because its users were posting images from what she felt was an unflattering still lifted from a news report in which she appeared. Similarly, the “Sleeping Baseball Fan Guy” is now suing ESPN, Major League Baseball and others for capturing his image in an unflattering light while dozing in a stadium.
What we have going on here is the rise of the personal brand, that may not only soon have even more legalities around using “likeness” and “image” than a Hollywood star’s contract; but more importantly demonstrates that the images have to be authentic — not necessarily beautiful — to whatever you want to project your as your personal brand.
And right now the personal brand as projected across selfies seem to be demonstrated in 3 main ways:
1) the repeat offender (i.e. always lying down, always smirking the side smile. They’ve found what works for them, and they stick with it in monotonous fashion)
2) the selfie-shy (i.e. never caught without a friend or two in the photo, this person is just not yet comfortable with the self on its own, just yet)
3) the perpetrator (i.e. rarely actually in the scene but offering carefully placed props and scenes to represent the aspiring or actual self. )
If you’re a Millennial and reading this you are probably more of the star of your own show. If you are a Gen Xer, you may rely more heavily on #2 and #3. But, of course, any mix is possible.
Watch for even more variations to come as the phenomenon continues, but they will be utilized differently depending on the situation. Animated avatars, voice overs, and more are on the horizon. Bitstrips is only the beginning.
This is all part the larger shift to the rise of the individual voice and decline of traditional norms and authority.
So, get ready for your close up as you decide, just what kind of selfie are you?
Yahoo profit declines on ad sales
Internet giant Yahoo reports that profit decreased by 18% to $270m after sales of digital display advertisements plunged by 24% during the period from March to June.
Thanks for reading our digest. Opinions in the articles above are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Digital Workshed ltd.