Andy Polaine
PayPal, A Customer Service Nightmare
Companies like PayPal are basically all service and no product, so it makes sense that they should spend a lot of their time on it as do First Direct. Sadly, …
Writing & Thinking
A mix of essays and commentary about design, innovation, technology, society, coaching, personal and leadership development. Since 1996.
Is your cellphone company evil?
Mine certainly is. No Evil is a great viral microsite for Net 10 that plays on the idea that cellphone companies are a bunch of money-grabbing evil madmen. …
re/act 4th International Student Festival for Media Art
Monika tells me this is a great festival for student media-arts work. It looks good to me and I think I saw some work from it last year. It’s a good …
Track Yourself and Friends with SportsDo
Ever wanted to track your training route and activity or just remember where you skied? My brother, Matthew, was given a SportsDo account and kit for Christmas …
BeatBearings and the Wisdom of the Tube
This BeatBearing project on YouTube by Peter Bennett is one of those physical interaction ideas that sounded great on paper, but is a bit useless in the flesh. …
Jiggling Icons on the iPhone
There are plenty of big announcements and coverage of Steve Jobs’s Macworld keynote. I’m happy to see the new AppleTV, movie downloads and rentals, …
From the Archives: Jonathan Harris - Man of the Hour
I have been promising that I would like to upload all of the articles I have written over the years so that they might be of use for people rather than them …
Hulger Sale
My mate Nik, the man behind Hulger, just mailed to say that they’re having a sale and phasing out some of the older colours. So if you want the super …
Moving Between Consulting and Academia
Jon Kolko’s article, Out of the Frying Pan, into the Fire: Life lessons from consulting to academia, and back again over at Core77, was a particularly …
OLPC versus Nintendo DS
Alexander Stojanovic makes an interesting comparison between the Nintendo DS and the OLPC. Having bought both for his five year-old daughter at Christmas he …
Wii remote for a head tracking display
Here’s an interesting video of inverting the Wiimote and infrared sensors to create a surprisingly realistic optical illusion for a single user. A lot of …
20,000 Processing Particles
I’ve played with Processing a fair bit over the years, but never really got stuck into anything solid - most of my time has been spent fixing up my …
NetX Digital Cardboard Christmas
It’s nice to see digital agencies do non-digital (sort of). My German pal, Tim Buesing, who now lives and works in Sydney at NetX just sent me the …
Social Learning Masterclass
A few of weeks ago I presented at a Social Learning Masterclass at Northumbria University to an invite from Stephen Farrier from the e-Learning Innovations …
Manamana
Here’s something nothing to do with interactivity, quite a bit to do with play. It’s Christmas after all. Video loads from YouTube on play — …