MarCom Professional

No big spiel today, just a sexy piece of interaction work from Microsoft on the Engadget site.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/02/skinput-because-touchscreens-never-felt-right-anyway-video/

Skinput allows you to touch your arm to interact - a way of allowing sign language to be used as an input method, perhaps?

Anyway, another exciting and totally overlooked way of moving interaction forwards that is swamped by the mania for unresponsive, non-haptic and really quite irritating touchscreens…

And who’d have thought I would say the words sexy, interaction and Microsoft in the same sentence without being on drugs? More...

Please shout, clap and cheer as we announce that Speed’s Ruth Jones has taken up a new role leading a team focused on Fast Growth Technology markets. We’re also delighted to make room at the boardroom table for her straight talking brand of Yorkshire comment.

Ruth’s five-person team will be focused on developing communication strategies for companies moving into the next hot technology cycle, including areas such as virtualisation, cloud computing and unified communications.

Congratulations Ruth. Bring it on. More...

Based on these two examples, the new era of transparency might not be too far away and has serious implications for the claims you might be occasionally tempted to drop into your copywriting.

‘iPad sucks’ – 644,00 Google hits

Following the success of the iPhone, it’s no wonder people were expecting something special when they heard rumours about Apple’s latest gift to the world of technology. More...

Sarah Blow has put together a neat search using the Google Labs’ News Timeline service to do a 10 year review of the instance of news items about women in technology.

It makes depressing reading – seemingly no matter how hard we try, fewer women want to work in tech.  I’m in no position to comment, but if you have the chance to hire or mentor someone – please do so.

 

Where's the primary opportunity of new consumer demand for broadband services? According to the latest market study by Informa, global fixed-broadband subscription numbers will reach half a billion this year, driven by continued growth in the emerging markets.

Although the fixed-broadband markets of many developed countries are saturated, tens of millions of homes in China and India are still without broadband. These under-served markets are poised to drive yet another wave of broadband growth -- creating opportunities for service providers and equipment vendors.

"Overall the number of net new fixed-broadband subscriptions grew in 2009 to over 480 million, largely as a result of accelerating growth in emerging markets and we expect this number to reach 500 million this year. More...

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