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First Google made iPhone-specific Gmail pages and now Facebook has gotten into the act with an iPhone enhancement. Everyone who accesses the site through an iPhone will be automatically redirected to http://iphone.facebook.com. It doesn’t look like much when seen through a normal browser, but the iPhone brings it alive,
It’s simple, easy to use, and hopefully will inspire more companies to create similar sites.
Facebook Blog
BoingBoing has a great post on a 1978 60 Minutes feature on VCRs and the piracy threat they pose to motion pictures. It’s amazing to imagine that the film industry once feared this technology, which has basically saved their skin for the past 25 years,
Watch for how they talk about how they consider it illegal to tape shows off the air.
We at Schematic are big fans of innovation, so naturally we got pretty excited about this next item. For all those situations in which we think “I need both hands, but I’m not going to put my cup on the ground,” there is, at long last, a solution.
The Urban Cup Holder clamps to posts and lets you keep your drink safely suspended above the grime and filth of the common city street, freeing your hands up for texting, smoking, or reading an alternative newspaper.
Unlike most bands, which try desperately to get their music distributed through any channel they can find–MySpace, eMusic, blogs, media, and for a scant few, a record label–Toronto band The Craft Economy decided simply to staple free copies of their music to as many telephone poles as they could find. It’s hard not to feel affection for any band that literally takes to the streets to distribute their craft, but hopefully this will not lead all of our telephone poles being covered in CD-Rs from every garage band in town.
Media Defender, a private company that works with associations like the RIAA and MPAA to combat online piracy, has just suffered a massive leak of internal emails.
A group calling themselves the Media Defender-Defenders released the massive emails onto a number of torrent sites and their contents reveal some interesting reactions to interesting practices.
The company recently set up a video sharing site called “MiiVi.com,” hoping to have users upload copyrighted content and then promptly prosecute/sue them for infringement. But when they changed a domain registration, the eagled-eyed folks at Digg put it up and essentially forced them to shut it down.
Getting a look at the piracy battle from the perspective of the protectors provides a fascinating insight into a battle that is becoming increasingly difficult to win.
Remember when cellphones were only for the super important (executives and Zach Morris)? Then they got a little cheaper, and a little cheaper and soon everyone—even you–had one. Once the adult market had been saturated, the cell phone companies started marketing directly to teenagers and kids. And now Rover and Fluffy can have one, too.
From the website: “Combining industry leading GPS technology with the ability of 2-way communication, the PetsCell™ delivers consistency and quality of locates across a spectrum of encompassing conditions that existing pet tracking devices simply will not match. ”
Our shop that grew into a big shop has been bought by one of the biggest shops. WPP has agreed to purchase Schematic and bring it into their family of companies.
Normally the when a company gets bought out, the offices are filled with dread and anxiety about downsizing or being merged into a larger conglomerate. But thankfully, the deal we’ve struck with WPP means, as our President put it: “No one gets fired, there will not be a new dress code, no storm troopers.”
It is definitely an exciting time for Schematic.
We even made The New York Times.
Inside the Box is an open forum for Schematic’s employees, partners, and friends to discuss the things that matter most to them. Be it strategy, design, technology, user experience, content, products, services or digital innovations. Here, is where we analyze, proselytize, theorize, ponder and debate. Here is where we share, collaborate, and grow from collective ideas and thinking.
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