Now blogging at http://www.thepreparedmind.com/pm/

Although I really like WordPress.com, I’ve decided to go back to the WordPress install on my server, at http://www.thepreparedmind.com/pm/. You can find updates there.

@chrisgee

Better Late Than Never. A kudo for SPAM!

A late kudo for the fantastic work done for the redesign and relaunch of the SPAM website! The new design is not only more closely aligned with their offline branding and new advertising campaign, it also allows SPAM to more easily and effectively keep site content fresh and engaging. Great job all around!

.chris{}

The Day Design Conversation Died…

Goodbye, Speak Up

I mentioned it earlier in the week but didn’t have time to post. I’m really bummed about the recent demise of the design blog Speak Up.

Founders and husband/wife team Armin Vit and Bryony Gomez-Palacio this week decided, after 7 years, to close down the popular design blog in part because they said they simply can no longer find the time to write the kind of insightful, provocative entries that made the blog influential when it first launched.

Goodbye, Speak Up

This is really sad news to me. Today I visited one of my favorite design blogs, only to learn that it is being discontinued. By this time next week, Speak Up will be no more.

More about this later.

.chris{}

Even more kudos!

It’s been a while since my last entry but the theme will be similar. More kudos for our incredibly talented team! The Mercury Awards were recently announced for the USA Corporate and Food Products websites categories:

Hormel Brand: Silver Award winner.

Jennie-O Turkey Store: Silver Award winner.

Hormel Foods Recipes site: Bronze Award winner.

BEP Money Factory site: Bronze Award winner.

Hormel Foods site: Honors winner.

Kudos

Kudos to the Jennie-O Turkey Store team, again, for snagging the iNOVA Grand Award in the Food and Beverage Websites category. I’m proud of the work our entire team did on this project and am happy to work with such a talented team every day!

Jennie-O Turkey Store: Grand winner.

.chris{}

Some Props to the NYT

OK, so in my last entry I was pretty hard on the NYTimes.com site and how “slow, plodding and innovation-averse” it — and almost all other similar newspapers — tend to be in an increasingly digital era. Well now I need to give them a few props.

Today, I just found the Times’ “Inside the Playbook” section, where it offers original, 3-D generated videos that break-down certain key plays and strategy in NFL football games. Now those of you who know me, know that I’m a pretty passionate (embarrassingly so, sometimes) Philadelphia Eagles fan, so this was a pretty interesting find for me, personally. See the video grab below:

This is actually a very cool feature. As shown above, it gives step-by-step insight into the strategy employed, as well as a very realistic 3-D rendering of the play itself. The video shown above is the “Explanation” view.

There is also an “Aerial view”:

Aerial view

as well as “Player’s view”:

Player's view

Most of what I said regarding the NYTimes.com site, as well as the rest of the newspaper industry and their sites, still applies. But I wanted to post this because I am very impressed by the use of this interactive technology! Kudos!!!

.chris{}

Steve Jobs Buys Ailing New York Times!

Steve Jobs holding a copy of newly-acquired New York Times

OK, not really. But imagine if you woke up this morning, glanced at the headlines and saw that this HAD happened? If Steve Jobs HAD purchased the New York Times. Now imagine what kind of changes we’d expect to see at the New York Times (or insert any large, ailing newspaper). One thing is for sure, we would cease to see business as usual.

The New York Times would change. And not only would the paper itself change, the industry in general would change with it.

I got to thinking about this after I published my entry The End of Print, As We Know It as well as after publishing Mobile Phones FINALLY Get Smart — Kinda. Think about the backwards, plodding, change-averse U.S. mobile industry before the iPhone was released 1 1/2 years ago. Mobile technology had made shockingly little progress when compared to the pace of technological innovation in most other industries and certainly when compared to the mobile industries in Europe and Asia. The iPod was a jolt to the system of the plodding mobile industry, much as the iPod had been to the portable digital music industry in 2001.

The newspaper industry is every bit as slow, plodding and change-averse as the U.S. mobile industry was. Maybe more so. Faced with substantial changes or death, it would seem that the industry has chosen the latter, as the steep dive in U.S. circulations may only be rivaled by the steep declines in newspaper profits.

Mobile Phones FINALLY Get Smart — Kinda

Apple's iPhone has inspired a flood of next generation smartphones

It’s almost, as Yogi Bera would say, “deja vu all over again”. 7 years ago, after Apple first introduced the iPod, there was a rush of “iPod-killers” that flooded the market in order to compete. However, few of these devices ever caught-on long enough to realize any real commercial success and mount a serious challenge to the dominance of the iPod.

This time around, with the mobile market, Apple is something of a late entrant with its iPhone. In 2001, MP3 technology was still relatively new and no MP3 manufacturer had yet created a device — or desktop music management software — capable of establishing it in a dominent position. Not so with the mobile phone market. Last summer, when Apple first introduced the iPhone, it immediately faced stiff competition against entrenched and established manufacturers such as Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Nokia.

That said, since the iPhone was released in July 2007, it has enjoyed a remarkable climb in market share, skyrocketing from 4% at the time of its debut to 23% to date. It therefore comes as no surprise that, once again, the popularity of Apple’s device has spawned numerous immitators from RIM/Blackberry’s Storm to LG’s Voyager.

The End of Print, As We Know It.

In the year 2009, is this what newspapers SHOULD look like?

Newspapers are dying. Magazines are very, very sick and have a very bad prognosis. How bad is it? Mike Elgan of the site Datamation sums up the grim situation in his recent article Media Companies Have Only Themselves to Blame:

The Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy Monday. The company publishes the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and other daily newspapers. The New York Times Co. intends to pawn its shiny new Manhattan building to borrow a quarter of a billion dollars just to stop the bleeding. Other major dailies are either for sale, or rumored to be so, including the Rocky Mountain News, the Miami Herald and others. The Cox newspaper group is closing its Washington bureau. Most newspapers have announced layoffs, or will do so soon.

Magazines are faring a little better than newspapers. But the industry is all doom-and-gloom, and everyone is predicting a bloodbath in 2009. Newsweek has reportedly lost between half a million to a million subscribers from its 2.6 million rate base and has announced layoffs. TIME layoffs may total 600. National Geographic, The Economist Group and Doubledown Media are all laying off staffers.

Even books are suffering. Simon & Schuster has laid off 35 people. Random House, Inc. killed its Bantam and Doubleday divisions. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced that it would not take on any new authors.

How bad is it? Bad. Newspapers and magazines are getting hit especially hard during the economic downturn. But why? How did we get here? I remember the parade of “The End of Print” articles that were written two booms and 10 years ago. Didn’t newspapers and magazines have ample time — and money — to get their collective acts together? Or did the digital revolution, which we ALL knew was coming, sneak up only on them?