We welcome international entries. Entries will be judged on their beauty, originality, functionality, sustainability, and depth of user insight. Designs must have come to market between June 1, 2011 and May 31, 2012. Concepts must have been made public in that time. The fee for each entry is $100 for all categories except student, for which the fee is $50. You may enter as many products and projects as you like. Each entry should be accompanied by a statement of no more than 500 words describing the design and explaining why it's better than what has come before it; 5-7 images; and one video, less than 3 minutes long, explaining the product and how it works. You should upload that video to Youtube or Vimeo, ... Continue reading →
Unsurprisingly, The Associated Press won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting early this week, for articles about the New York Police Department’s surveillance of Muslim neighborhoods and organizations in the wake of 9/11. Also unsurprising was fresh controversy that the award stirred, given the sensitive subject. Curiously, that clamor proved to be but a warmup for more hullabaloo over the A.P., on an issue that is dearer to some people’s hearts than police spying. This is about language. Language, of course, is the soul of a culture. Interestingly, in an e-mail sent to online subscribers on Wednesday, the A.P. affirmed what it had already revealed in a tweet on Tuesday and in an announcement to a society of copy editors days earlier. From now on, ... Continue reading →
Thanks for debating me this evening at Fast Company's Innovation Uncensored conference here in NY! Like I said on stage, I wanted to offer a solution to help make right what the music industry did to members of The Band. It reminded me of the story Lester Chambers told on reddit a little while back: "I am the 99%. Screwed by the industry." I'm hopeful that innovations like the ones I discussed tonight and the others that are being worked on by entrepreneurs right now will continue to do right by artists and cut out those who'd mistreat them. Please take a look around kickstarter and reddit and you'll quickly find that the former is already crowd-funding projects in the millions and the latter does ... Continue reading →
