We hosted the most recent mashup* Event a short while ago where we discussed the joys of the new open source mobile platforms - Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android, and Symbian (pushed by Nokia). 100 industry developers, investors, entrepeneurs and ad men attended and contributed to the event but there was one recurring theme - privacy and security. Is this really the most important part in mobile development? Or should we be paying attention?

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Came across this wonderful quote from Eric Hoffer the other day while investigating the origins of play for a client brief:

“the pattern of unfinishedness should be the most pronounced in the authomous individual…the retention of youthful characteristics in adult life endows man with a perpetual playfulness so fruitful of insights and illuminations.” (Hoffer, 1952, p. 153)

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- Jonathan Macdonald points us to the Kodak’s new brand utility site Ski Guide 

- iPhone Gloves over at Mashable

- Jerimiah posts about the Air Force’s approach to responding to blog posts

- Guys over at Hyper Happen talk about the BBC’s rebood project

- Another one from Mashable about the future of Augmented Reality

Enjoy!

The economist have released this presentation about managing a client’s temptation to slash their marketing and advertising budgets in times of recession. This sort of response is not unusual for these unsettling times and as an argument it makes a lot of sense. But I’ve been thinking, not necessaily how we can persuade clients to maintain budget levels, but why clients feel they can make the cuts in the first place. They know the arguments better than anyone, they probably agree with the thinking, but yet they still cut them. Why?

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Plenty of brands have been experimenting with Crowdsourcing over the last 2 years…Best Buy asked people’s views on how they could improve Toshiba and HP laptops, enacting the changes through their Blue Label brand; while Dell and Starbucks both set up community platforms to source consumer’s thoughts on how to improve their services. But 2009 looks set to be the year the potential of the crowd is tested even further; rather than simply listening to the crowd a few brands are turning to the crowd to actually create their ware from scratch. 

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