December 27, 2010

Is this the coolest iPad magazine around?



















Richard Brandson's much anticipated iPad Magazine 'Project' lives up it the hype. I really enjoyed the content, the visual effects and how it was conceived to use many of the wonderful features of new technology. I've been downloading many publications in the past months but I have to admit this one was a joy to read.

I particularly enjoyed the article "3D Tour of Secret Tokyo - The Inside Track to Japan's Mega-City from Five Key Creatives". It made me think of how this is the perfect type of application for people who love to travel like myself.

The next issue will be in the App Store Jan. 7th.

December 23, 2010

A Christmas message of hope from Colombia

How can the Colombian Army motivate guerilla fighters to demobilize... and find their way back home?

Take a look at a beautiful campaign being aired called 'Operation Christmas'. Colombian Special Forces infiltrated in the Macarena Mountains and set up a 25m Christmas tree with 2,000 lights that lights up by motion sensors. Other trees were set up in nine other rebel zones.

Christmas certainly has different meanings in different parts of the World.

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December 14, 2010

Making it easier for people to read in poorly-lit places

Recently, I've been having difficulty reading small print in poorly-lit places, specially in the evenings when I feel my eyes tired after a long day wearing contacts. This happens often at restaurants with menus, reading the ingredient list of a product at a supermarket (which I do a lot of) and it happened a few weeks ago trying to read a newspaper on a late flight from Mexico City to Lima (which I know I'll be doing a lot of in my new assignment).

With a radical change of demographics in many markets around the World, what I'm going through is probably becoming a growing trend. This certainly opens the door to marketing opportunities in products and certainly in services. One of Brazil's top-selling newspapers, Folha de São Paulo, was recently redesigned with larger easier-to-read fonts. Last week-end, my wife and I were in Buenos Aires having dinner at Sushi Club Palermo and the waitress seeing that we were struggling trying to read the options, came out with a back-lit menu. Sushi Yuku, a new restaurant in Blumenau created by my good friend Juliano Mendes, was Brazil's first restaurant to use iPads as menus.

With a bright screen, great photography and adjustable fonts, the iPad is not only great for re-thinking the restaurant experience, but it also makes it easier to be able to read on a night flight or in bed with the lights off. I love it.