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I may be a bit late on this since they’ve already won various Webby Awards but I just love it. Every now and then you see someone who takes it to a different level. Also note they’ve worked with the Polyphonic Spree which would seem like a match made in heaven. Check out their site/games here

I hate this term but interesting to see the range and volume of Apps knitting together digital threads.

Full Directory here : http://www.go2web20.net

John Maeda’s thoughts on Simplicity in all aspects of design. MIT prof. Very cool

Dutch UI designer with some interesting perspectives. Check out poperly

http://www.peterboersma.com/

Collecting my thoughts (and links) for a small piece of work I’ve been doing for an agency reviewing their internal planning resource.

General Planning Resources

• http://www.apg.org.uk/ - the ‘official’ site for UK planners. Offer courses and some online resources.
• http://www.psfk.com/ - excellent all-round resource for trends and advertising (NYC based but don’t let this put you off) subscribe for $12.50/month.
• http://www.russelldavies.com - a kind of planning anti-planning Guru. Nike Run, those Honda ads etc…
• http://www.accountplanning.net/ – a John Steel affiliated blog, but barely navigable. Occasionally some interesting posts and includes some info for newbie planners
• www.brandtarot.com/blog/ - blog by John Grant (planner author and a wealth of links and interesting thought pieces on planning and the creative process. Well worth checking out if you’ve got a tricky brief and looking for some new perspectives on how to crack it
• Rory Sutherland – not strictly a planner as he’s Creative Director at Ogilvy (depends on your definition of planning and what you think the future of planning is) but an under rated visionary and he regularly covers planning on his campaign magazine blog. I love this

Here’s a list of agency planning blogs (the best ones tend to be from Digital planners!)

• http://thehiddenpersuader-english.blogspot.com/   – general planning/ marketing blog. Pretty good tho’

• http://www.i-boy.com/weblog/ – ‘personal ‘ blog from George Nimeh who works for Iris (one of my favourite new agencies because of their no-nonsense approach to business and excellent creative output).
• Mark Earls - Big Dog Planner from Ogilvy and published author of a couple of planning/consumer books.
• http://www.holycow.typepad.com/ - Mark Hancock, Strategic planning Director at Proximity London, well linked/ referenced so worth checking out time to time.
• http://joymachine.typepad.com/northern_planner/ – ‘nothern planner’ Publicis planners who’s very active online so a good reference point
• http://farisyakob.typepad.com/ – Naked’s Strategic dude Faris Yakob’s blog
• http://www.hyperhappen.com/index.html – Naked and Fallon’s digital specialists, Hyper Happen
• http://loweinteract.blogspot.com – not great but worth a peek from time to time

Been thinking about Joost for a while now and although I have to admit that I’ve only seen a quick demo of it, I have trawled the net for reviews and spoken to quite a few folk who’ve used it more extensively than I and/or been involved in signing content deals with them.

Please enlighten me, as I just don’t get it. I know it’s the darling of the VC crowd but feels more like the one to burst the bubble a la Boo.com in the last wave.

• It’s Free – I like this bit, and if there’s one business model on the internet that’s got an excellent track record then it’s ‘free’
• But there are ads – ummm, interruptive advertising in the middle of my favourite show I dislike. I thought I managed to dodge these since the advent of Tivo…or ?
• Channel / content line up – seems to be okay at the mo which will no doubt improve as they sign more deals. But for someone like me it seems to lack that can’t get anywhere else/ I must have content, like Premiership football (which was a significant factor in making BSkyB the UK’s dominant pay TV provider)
• Watch stuff on my computer – I love watching YouTube clips (note the word : clips) love listening to music and love reading about movies on my computer but watching a full length movie on my inferior laptop screen? Right so I need to buy a cable and link to my real TV…okay that makes more sense. But is this technology readily available?
• Advertising Supported – I thought I managed to dodge these since the advent of Tivo…or ?
• P2P / Distributed Content delivery – now this does seem ‘interesting’ from a broadcaster technology standpoint. But does the consumer care? They just want it to work like their telly currently does.
• Interactive features and Community – Great that they’re opening up the system for widget developers, cool that I can (if I wanted to) discuss my fave programmes with a fellow fan but I can do this already on my computer.

Call the world free of charge using Skype, buy and sell anything in confidence on eBay, paid for search links with ads ordered according to effectiveness. Now these instinctively feel like very powerful propositions and have proven to work.
Watch telly on my computer with loads of interactive features paid for by advertising…? Can someone please help me.

Rory Sutherland, an ex-colleague and in my humble opinion a visionary has a not all that different perpective here