Europe’s VCs outpacing U.S. [Red Herring]
Venture firms in Europe triple fundraising for investment while U.S. fundraising drops 44 percent. Read full story
Venture firms in Europe triple fundraising for investment while U.S. fundraising drops 44 percent. Read full story
Michelangelo Pistoletto and his foundation Cittadellarte present “The Third Paradise” at the Biennale of Venice. They will occupy the entire island of San Servolo, which is located between the Giardini and Lido all through the summer. The opening events are on Wednesday 8 and Thursday…
Many of the largest European economies are casting about for a blueprint to remain competitive in the 21st century, as the forces of globalisation and technology shift the fault lines of economic power across the globe. Read full story
While we in the real world labor over the small screens of our mobile devices, trying to figure out which menu button gets to our contact list and which key makes an exclamation mark, researchers and sociologists in assorted ivory towers are contemplating how…
Marco Boglione and the Chinese threat to Italian manufacturing. Read full story
In October 2005, the Interaction Design Institute will leave Ivrea and move to the new premises of Domus Academy in Via Watt in Milan. Read full story
The global economy requires a new way of thinking about how technology, R&D, human resources, and management need to combine. Read full story
John Markoff’s “What the Doormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer” makes the case that the personal computer is intimately bound up with the growth of the counterculture in the 1960s. The personal computer’s origins in the counterculture, he argues, continue to…
Aside from the many (sometimes older) projects, the website showing Philips’ design research projects also contains an interesting movie on foresight (Delphi movie). It seems that the most recent projects are under “Smart Connections”. Go to website
NextBillion.net brings together the community of business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers, and academics who want to explore the connection between development and enterprise. Their goal is to identify and discuss sustainable business models that address the needs of the world’s poorest citizens.…
Creative directors, market researchers, brand strategists and experience designers built the AIGA Center for Brand Experience in order to pool their knowledge and skills to educate the business and design communities about building successful and innovative brands. Go to website
An evolving glossary of experience design. Go to website
To some, the notion of outsourcing work to India conjures up stories of American and European software programmers being reduced to stocking supermarket shelves to make a living. To others, it evokes legions of fresh-faced Indians willing to do intense, high-skill work for low…
By building social issues into strategy, big business can recast the debate about its role, argues Ian Davis of McKinsey. Read full story
‘Go out and play’ vs. ‘de-naturing of childhood’ Read full review
Anatole Gershman, global director of research at Accenture Technology Laboratories, interviewed about Accenture’s vision for the future of technology, which includes interactive grocery carts and the ability for your wardrobe to communicate with stores. Read full story
BBDO Worldwide in New York, General Electric’s longtime advertising agency, was not getting the message. The agency had been offering G.E. its panoply of traditional marketing ideas, leaning heavily on the standard 30-second television spot. But Judy Hu, general manager for global advertising and branding…
It’s a transformation as significant as when we went from black-and-white to color—and it’s already underway. The promise is that you’ll be able to watch anything you want, anywhere—on a huge high-def screen or on your phone. Read full story
Mobile TV has been talked about for ages, probably since the first mobile phone with a colour screen became available and certainly since the launch of 3G, the faster networks that allow video to be accessed at a reasonable speed. Now, Orange has announced a…
Vodafone is launching a back-to-basics mobile phone in response to customer demand for simplicity. Read full story
A technology conference takes cues from nature. Read full story
Working across borders, designers Reed Kram and Clemens Weisshaar create a new strain of furniture. Read full story
Stephen Bayley takes a pit stop in Turin, and finds the hometown of Fiat is fuelled by fast cars and fabulous food. Read full story
“So how do you feel about e-mail?” asks Simon Roberts, a social anthropologist. “How has it changed your workload?” This is not what social anthropologists are usually expected to ask: they observe courtship rituals, try to interpret ancient chants, analyse gift-giving or tribal cosmology.…
Cell phones. Memory chips. Plasma TVs. How Samsung made Korea a consumer electronics superpower. Read full story
Between 15 and 20 years into the future, Korean people’s long-time wish of living longer and healthier lives will come true and Korea will enter an era of space travel by completing the development of manned spaceship. Such predictions came from a study conducted by…
Silvio Berlusconi’s unfulfilled promises may trouble Italians – but in Europe they add to the prime minister’s reputation as one of the most unloved continental leaders in recent memory. Read full story
The Dalai Lama and a host of Nobel prize winners have joined actor Richard Gere for a conference aimed at righting the wrongs of modern humanity. Read full story
The Industrial Technology Research Institute thinks it has a way to turn the country into an innovator, rather than just an improver. Read full story
Consumer-electronics giants are using their music, TV and game savvy to build hot new models. Read full story
In 2003, roughly 500 Chinese workers arrived in Dortmund to deal the final blow to the city’s former status as a heavy-industry heartland in Germany’s Ruhr River valley. Working by day and sometimes by night, the Chinese dismantled Dortmund’s last blast furnace, which the steelmaking…
Samsung’s new phone for Sprint can take two-megapixel photos, scan in business cards, record 90-minute videos, play TV shows and even transcribe dictated speech. But how well? Read full story
Interesting essay by Paul Graham on why setting up a company is now better than getting a job in a big company. Read full story
Yoshio Taniguchi’s project for the expansion of the Museum of Modern Art is the fifth major reorganisation of the institution in its 75-year history. It embodies both a departure in scale and an organisational and stylistic reinvention that will surely set the character of the…
Klaus Wowereit, the mayor of Berlin, has a gargantuan task. He wants to make this formerly divided metropolis one of Europe’s most attractive places to live. But Berlin is bankrupt. Read full story
Yahoo’s multiple business units, each containing decentralised user experience teams, have a natural tendency to design different solutions to similar problems. Left unchecked, these differences would weaken the Yahoo! brand and produce a less usable network of products. This case study describes a project that…
The Social Computing Symposium 2005, sponsored by Microsoft Research, will take place April 24-26 in Redmond, Washington. The goal for this event is to foster an awareness of research and innovation in social technologies, and create new lines of communication between research and industry. We…
Around the globe, scientists are racing to solve a series of mysteries. Unsettling transformations are sweeping across the planet, and clue by clue, investigators around the world are assembling a new picture of Earth, discovering ways that seemingly disparate events are connected. Crumbling houses in…
Europe gave the world Linux, GSM, and the web, but got little of the fortune and less of the glory. To get what it is due, some old world ways will have to change. Read full story
While luxury products still benefit from a “Made in France” label, more mundane industries are vulnerable to foreign competition. Read full story