The magazine industry is falling over itself over a new shiny object. It wants to remake its product for a new class of digital tablets with color screens and touch screens. Today, a group of big publishers—Condé Nast, Time Inc., News Corp. Hearst, and Meredith—announced a joint venture to create standards for digital magazines to be read on tablets, e-readers, Web phones, and the like. The consortium will also create a digital newsstand to sell electronic copies of its magazines. These will be more like downloadable apps than Websites—think …

As 2009 draws to a close, the Web’s attention turns to the year ahead. What can we expect of the online realm in 2010?
While Web innovation is unpredictable, some clear trends are becoming apparent. Expect the following 10 themes to define the Web next year:
Real-time ramps up
Sparked by Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed, the real-time trend has been to the latter part of 2009 what “Web 2.0″ was to 2007. The term represents the growing demand for immediacy in our interactions. Immediacy is compelling, engaging, highly addictive … it’s a …

What will be Apple’s next super-product–its next spectacular, game-changing “one more thing”? We asked five Apple experts to brainstorm with abandon and then brought their ideas to life.

Apple doesn’t develop category-creating products. Instead, it enters categories that already exist, deconstructs the competition, burrows deep into R&D mode, and returns with gear so dominant, you’d think Apple invented the category in the first place. This approach doesn’t require rocket science. It only requires a commitment to push the boundaries of what’s possible–and not release a product until it …

The new year is approaching fast, so here are 10 trends that will help you to come up with some winning new products and services in 2010. Remember, you can’t shrink your way to greatness
P.S. For those of you who need to know ALL the trends that will excite consumers over the next 12 months, don’t miss out on our exclusive, full 2010 Trend Report.
Read more at: trendwatching.com
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{Photography by Pink Sherbet Photography}

There is a lot of hype surrounding the real-time web, and much of the feeding frenzy reminds me of the RSS space four years ago — though there is a lot of potential, there is also a lot of noise. How do you navigate through it all and which developments should you be paying attention to? What are the emerging trends for companies and entrepreneurs to watch for? Here are four real-time web trends that I’m tracking.
Please share in the comments any other real-time trends …

Deep fried chocolate cake, tacos wrapped in pepperoni pizza, the “fat bastard burger” … these are all reasons that America has an obesity problem, and the basis for a recent Internet phenomenon – the blog called “This Is Why You’re Fat” (TIWYF) that showcases excessive junk food items.
The blog recently joined a host of other Internet memes by scoring a book deal, and is celebrating its release by holding a very cool (and fattening) promotion in New York City today where fans of the site can enjoy the type …

We’ve been saying for a while that ‘local’ is going to be one of those ‘next big things’, and the win by Red Beacon at TechCrunch 50 has been something of a clarion call for this. Now a new study from TMP Directional Marketing has come out with some interesting data to back this up.
The study shows that the web generally, but in particular mobile and social network search, are increasingly factors fueling growth in the overall search market. This grew to 21.9 billion total US searches in June …

Ray Kurzweil was speaking at MIT today: WOW! and double WOW! One of the absolute best talk that I have attended in quite a while, he was humbly engaging a large audience talking about his approach to forecasting when technology will enable innovative idea to be both practical and marketable.
His talk seemed very linear and analytical, while Ray was indeed going from left brain to right brain, from the heart to the brain; his genius might be this uncanny ability to be a whole brain thinker, drizzle with a …

…at least according to an infographic by Information is Beautiful. The stats, compiled by Brian Solis from Google Ad Planner data, show that equal numbers of men and women use sites like LinkedIn, DeviantArt and YouTube.
Read more at: Mashable
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{Photography by Good n Crazy}

Niels Bohr once noted that “prediction is very difficult, especially about the future,” but then he didn’t have access to predictive loyalty metrics. Happily, we do. And, as they measure the direction and velocity of consumer values 12 to 18 months in advance of the marketplace and consumer articulations of category needs and expectations, they identify future trends with uncanny accuracy.
Having examined these measures, we offer 10 trends for marketers for 2010 that will have direct consequences to the success – or failure – of next year’s branding and …

Pimpy3wash just finished doing a round of laundry. Hacklab.toilet just flushed and mattsoffice tweeted that the temperature is 83.3° F.
It might seem like just another day in the Twitterverse, where prosaic, personal updates stream throughout the day. Except @Pimpy3wash, @hacklab.toilet and @mattsoffice are not real people: They are a washing machine, a toilet and an array of home light and temperature sensors. Each of them, with help from some microcontrollers, wires and Arduino boards, have been rigged to answer Twitter’s basic question: “What are you doing?”
“It started as a …

In recent weeks, the Apple tablet has transitioned from “longtime rumor” to “practical inevitability”. In particular, a story in the Financial Times last week said the device may be announced as early as next month. Today Barron’s has ramped up the excitement by quoting an analyst who claims to have seen the device “first hand”.
The “veteran analyst”, whom Barron’s does not name, claims to have seen a prototype of the tablet. Commenting on the device’s playback of hi-def video, the analyst is quoted as saying: “It’s better than …

If you follow me on twitter you would probably know that in the last couple of weeks i’ve been having a debate with myself if I still like twitter and the way it works or not. And the saga hasn’t stopped yet. I follow some well know social media “guru’s” and internet marketing “experts” and over the last two months they have been having the same debate that I’m currently having.
@JohnReese and @MikeFilsaime have recently unfollowed about 80,000 people between them on their respective twitter accounts because they are …

http://www.youshouldhaveseenthis.com/

Are investment banks run for employees or shareholders?

IT WAS once famously asked of Wall Street: “Where are the customers’ yachts?” Shareholders of investment banks have not seen much of the spoils either, given the events of the past two years. As business booms once more, rather than reward their owners with an extra big chunk of profits, most investment banks seem likely to favour their employees again. In the case of Goldman Sachs, shareholders received $4.4 billion of profits during the first half of this year while staff were …

Best Buy Co. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. are among a dozen companies sued over dashboard mounts for navigation devices in a rare case of a Chinese company seeking to enforce patent rights in a U.S. court.
Changzhou Asian Endergonic Electronic Technology Co., based in Changzhou, China, claims the retailers are infringing its patent on a design for the dashboard mounts by selling products made by a competitor. It wants cash and a court order to prevent further use of the design. The patent was issued in March.
The complaint, filed July …

A camera that takes photos with an invisible flash of infrared and ultraviolet light points to a smarter way to take photos in the dark.
Dilip Krishnan and Rob Fergus at New York University created the camera in an attempt to do away with intrusive regular flashes.
To make their “dark flash” camera, they modified a flashbulb to emit light over a wider range of frequencies and filter out visible light. The pair also had to remove the filters that usually prevent a camera’s silicon image sensor detecting IR and UV …

Why are we so fat?

One of the most comprehensive data sets available about Americans—how tall they are, when they last visited a dentist, what sort of cereal they eat for breakfast, whether they have to pee during the night, and, if so, how often—comes from a series of studies conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Participants are chosen at random, interviewed at length, and subjected to a battery of tests in special trailers that the C.D.C. hauls around the country. The studies, known as the …

This is the full copy of the research note written by Matthew Robson (aged 15 years and seven months), an intern at Morgan Stanley, which caused a stir after it was published by the bank

Radio
Most teenagers nowadays are not regular listeners to radio. They may occasionally tune in, but they do not try to listen to a program specifically. The main reason teenagers listen to the radio is for music, but now with online sites streaming music for free they do not bother, as services such as last.fm do …

In April 2005, the World Food Programme and the Chinese government jointly announced that food aid shipments to China would stop at the end of the year. For a country where a generation ago hundreds of millions of people were chronically hungry, this was a landmark achievement. Not only has China ended its dependence on food aid, but almost overnight it has become the world’s third largest food aid donor.
As noted in Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, the key to China’s success was the economic reforms in …