Flopstarter, Kickstarter for Bad Ideas: Coconut Shampoo for Coconuts, Moleskin Notebooks Made with Real Mole Skin and Disposable Tissue Pillows are just some of the horrible ideas you can crowdfund at Flopstarter, a Kickstarter for really bad ideas. Created by designer-provocateur Oli Frost, the platform actually does allow you to fund these bad (joke) ideas – but we don’t recommend actually funding them. Except maybe MORT, a vintage fashion line of clothes people have died in. Seems like that could be popular. (LINK)
Architecture of Radio: We are surrounded by an intricate network of wired and wireless signals. It’s an invisible system of data cables and radio signals from access points, cell towers and overhead satellites that we take for granted. This week we’re testing out the new Architecture of Radio app that lets you “see” these invisible signals using GPS location and showing the data from 7 million cell towers, 19 million Wi-Fi routers and hundreds of satellites beaming data all around you. Video example. Download it here.
Apple’s WWDC Preview: At next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple will be talking about using their devices less, not more. To address new findings about smartphone addiction, Apple engineers have been working on “Digital Health,” a series of tools to help users monitor how much time they spend on their devices and inside of certain applications. We’ll also be on the lookout for new updates to iOS and augmented reality capabilities. (LINK)
Internet Trend Report 2018: Every year analyst Mary Meeker drops a few hundred slides with her insights into the state of digital. They are the worst-designed, best-analyzed trends ever. Here are some of the highlights:
- People with internet (51%) now outnumber people without it and feature adoption is growing, like online payments (60% of sales are digital) and voice recognition (30m+ use Alexa).
- User say they want privacy but 79% will give up personal information for good services or product improvements.
- S. adults spend 5.9 hours per day on digital media, with an increase coming from mobile. But “Time Well Spent” movements are starting to put the focus on meaningful interactions.
- Mobile has 29% of time spent but only 26% of ad dollars, which is a $7 billion gap. Google and others are working to close this gap.
- More U.S. product searches start on Amazon over Google, but Amazon is over-reliant on social media to drive demand
We’ve summarized Meeker’s 294-slide presentation into a shorter, summary presentation we would love to share with you. Let us know if you would like us to set up time!
GREG SWAN 
