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information overload or addiction ?

Paul Hemp has written an essay outlining his concern over the unsettling side effects of our 24-hour, 21st century lives, and specifically the amount of information, emails and facts we are bombarded with.

He writes:

“The flood of information that swamps me daily seems to produce more pain than gain. And it’s not just the incoming tidal wave of email messages and RSS feeds that causes me grief.

It’s also the vast ocean of information I feel compelled to go out and explore in order to keep up in my job.”

In case you got sidetracked and didn’t get a chance to read the rest either so here are the cold, hard facts:

• A study found that once workers were interrupted by an email it took on average 24 minutes to return to the suspended task.

• 2,300 employees judged nearly one third of the emails they receive to be unnecessary, but spend two hours a day processing them.

• Research reported that the IQ scores of people distracted by email and phone calls fell from their normal level by an average of 10 points – twice the decline recorded for those smoking marijuana.

How we get anything done is a miracle.

Before your attention wanders elsewhere, please confess the tendencies you have noticed in yourself that may be symptoms of this very modern malady. Can you remember the last time you finished reading a novel ???

Hemp recommends limiting emails to five sentences, or setting virtual break times to force yourself to step away from the desk, as possible remedies.

But how do you stop yourself from completely drowning now the information floodgates are well and truly open?

Paul Hemp has written an essay outlining his concern over the unsettling side effects of our 24-hour, 21st century lives, and specifically the amount of information, emails and facts we are bombarded with.

He writes:

“The flood of information that swamps me daily seems to produce more pain than gain. And it’s not just the incoming tidal wave of email messages and RSS feeds that causes me grief.

It’s also the vast ocean of information I feel compelled to go out and explore in order to keep up in my job.”

In case you got sidetracked and didn’t get a chance to read the rest either so here are the cold, hard facts:

• A study found that once workers were interrupted by an email it took on average 24 minutes to return to the suspended task.

• 2,300 employees judged nearly one third of the emails they receive to be unnecessary, but spend two hours a day processing them.

• Research reported that the IQ scores of people distracted by email and phone calls fell from their normal level by an average of 10 points – twice the decline recorded for those smoking marijuana.

How we get anything done is a miracle.

Before your attention wanders elsewhere, please confess the tendencies you have noticed in yourself that may be symptoms of this very modern malady. Can you remember the last time you finished reading a novel ???

Hemp recommends limiting emails to five sentences, or setting virtual break times to force yourself to step away from the desk, as possible remedies.

But how do you stop yourself from completely drowning now the information floodgates are well and truly open?

Google to digitise millions of books … and take slice of the proceeds

The judge overseeing Google’s controversial agreement with American publishers to digitise millions of books has delayed a hearing into the $125m deal – effectively shutting down the settlement and sending it back to the drawing board.

Instead of proceeding with the internet giant’s plans to make millions of in-copyright books available online and take a slice of the proceeds – a deal first announced last year – the groups will now go back and renegotiate the settlement in way that satisfies critics including the US Department of Justice.

A hearing into the existing deal had originally been scheduled for early October, as the court prepared to rule on whether the settlement was fair or not. However, following objections posed by Washington, the groups involved in the deal had said they needed more time to re-work the agreement.

New York district judge Denny Chin, who is overseeing the case, said on Thursday that the parties would be granted their request to return to the negotiating table to work out more details.

“The current settlement agreement raises significant issues, as demonstrated not only by the number of objections, but also by the fact that the objectors include countries, states, non-profit organisations and prominent authors and law professors. Clearly fair concerns have been raised,” he wrote in a two-page order.

He added, however, that there was substantial public benefit to be gained from the deal and that future tweaks would be dealt with as quickly as possible.

“The proposed settlement would offer many benefits to society, as recognised by supporters of the settlement as well as the Department of Justice. It would appear that if a fair and reasonable settlement can be struck, the public would benefit.”

The case had proved one of the most controversial in recent memory, creating a tidal wave of criticism from a wide variety of groups, including authors, publishers, advocacy groups and Amazon and Microsoft opposing the deal as “susceptible to abuse”.

In Europe, concerns were raised since the deal could have significant global implications, despite only theoretically applying to the US.

Google had tried to head off those criticisms by assembling its own alliance of supporters, including Japanese electronics giant Sony and a number of groups who backed the wider availability of information promised by the book scanning project.

The Californian internet company said that it intended to continue pursuing a deal, while the Authors Guild – which was one of the groups that agreed to the settlement – said the details would eventually be thrashed out.

“We’ll continue to work on amending the settlement to address the Justice Department’s concerns,” it said in a statement on its website.

Twitter’s worth = $1 Billion

Twitter, the fashionable microblogging service that we all know and love – Here are bedroom we are tweeting away with the best of them.

Twitter has become virtual Marmite thanks to its love-it-or-hate-it status. That is unlikely to change with the news that it’s about to close another round of funding – perhaps as much as $50m.

The story, which was broken by Techcrunch earlier, has now been supported by a number of other reports suggesting that CEO Ev Williams has confirmed the deal to staff and that the money is just around the corner.

Who’s behind the investment? Nobody seems to be sure,  investors are said to include Insight Venture Partners, a New York venture capital firm, T. Rowe Price, the mutual fund company, and the current Twitter backers Spark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners.

But it would value Twitter at around $1bn – significantly more than the $500m that Facebook offered earlier this year. And while that might seem like a ludicrous sum for a service which still has no revenue of note, presumably the company’s investors believe they can sell it on for a significantly higher sum and make some cash on the deal.

Twitter does not necessarily need the capital. It previously raised $55 million and says it has only spent $25 million of that cash.

But the company has big plans to expand the service from its roughly 50 million current users and to ultimately catch up to Facebook — which recently reached 300 million members.

Both of these companies believe they can one day reach a billion users around the world — nearly the entire current population of the Internet. The extra cash, this person said, will help the company keep up with demand and build out the service.

Social Media services to take over the world … we better watch this space.

Congratulations to Paul Smith …. awarded London Design Medal

Fashion designer Paul Smith has been awarded the 2009 London Design Medal.

Really well done … some good happy news.

The medal is awarded every year as part of the London Design Festival to a designer who has made a significant contribution to British design and achieved international acclaim for their work.

The medal was established in 2007, and the two previous winners are architect Zaha Hadid and designer Marc Newson. Smith says, ‘I am really honoured to receive the London Design Medal, especially following such brilliant designers as Marc Newson and Zaha Hadid. Design is a wonderful way to earn a living and it means that every day is full of innovation and excitement.

Receiving a medal for something which is such a joy, is brilliant.’ Smith was selected by a judging panel chaired by LDF chairman John Sorrell and also featuring Jeremy Myerson, from the Royal College of Art, and Alice Rawsthorn, design correspondent of the International Herald Tribune.

Will you pay for a Digital Britain?

This morning, the Digital Minister Stephen Timms confirmed that one of the most controversial measures would go ahead:

a 50p per month tax on landlines to fund superfast broadband.

There had been speculation that it would be shelved because of a convention that any tax introduced shortly before an election should have cross-party support, but Mr Timms said the broadband levy would be in a Finance Bill before Christmas.

Cue another row. The government may have seen this as a sensible way of pump-priming investment in the fibre-optic network that many believe is vital to Britain’s economic future – but it seems nobody is satisfied especially with all the hassles people have been encountering all over the UK.

The lobby which believes we’re already way behind our overseas rivals in building fast broadband says the money is too little too late.

But just about everybody else – including the Conservatives – seems to believe that it will be an unjust tax, hitting elderly people who may have no interest in broadband and poorer people who will pay the same as the rich.

But it’s clear that this tax is going to be a hard sell – after all, the public will start paying for a fast network some time before it’s delivered to homes across the country, and will be cynical about whether the money will really be spent where it’s needed.

Mind you, amid the rage about the telephone tax, its critics also need to address some questions. Do you believe that it is vital for the UK to build a next-generation broadband network? Are you confident that the market alone will deliver that? If not, how do you propose that we fund it?

Your comments are most definitely wanted for this little topic !

… finding a logo for London – what a palaver

The Greater London Authority is understood to have shortlisted Studio Conran and one other group in its tender to find a logo for London.

Outgoing Studio Conran managing director Sebastian Conran says he was expecting to hear whether or not his consultancy had won the Brand for London competition last Thursday, but the GLA failed to get in touch.

The tender has attracted heavy criticism from the design fraternity for asking groups to submit free creative work at the first stage.

Lambie-Nairn announced it would boycott the tender, and other groups expressed disquiet about the way it was being run.

However, Conran claims that Studio Conran merely ‘showed how we would work a concept’, preparing its bid over just three days.

Conran is also advising the Mayor’s office against a ‘splash launch’, and wants to make sure the public see the logo in context. ‘What makes a logo is how it’s implemented,’ he says.

Moving Brands published its rejection letter from the GLA on its blog on 7 September. In addition, The Partners has failed to make the shortlist, according to Conran.

The GLA declined to comment.

Money that can only be spent in Brixton

A Brixton Pound note, featuring an image of the political activist Olive Morris

How exciting to have ‘One Brixton Pound’, as the new denomination is called, is worth exactly one pound sterling – and can be used to pay for goods and services at a range of local shops and businesses.

The are saying that the aim of the scheme, the first in an urban area, is to keep more of residents’ money in locals’ pockets.

People will be able to exchange their sterling for Brixton Pounds at designated points and ask for the special notes in their change from participating businesses.

Lets see if we can get our hands on a few …

Our top 10 most useful sites in motion graphics

1 – Motionographer | Motion graphics, design, animation, filmmaking, vfx and bombastic banter
A blog and community to showcase and discuss inspiring and outstanding motion design, graphic design, animation, visual effects, graphic design and digital filmmaking.
www.motionographer.com

2 – VideoCopilot.net Video Tutorials & Post Production
Video Copilot offer high quality Video Tutorials and training for motion graphics and visual effects.
www.videocopilot.net

3 – The Art of the Title Sequence
Art of the Title honors the artists who design excellent title sequences. We discuss and display their work with a desire to foster more of it.
www.artofthetitle.com

4 – www.psyop.tv

5 – Adobe After Effects Tutorials – Aetuts+
ae.tutsplus.com

6 -  VideoCopilot.net Video Tutorials & Post Production
Video Copilot offer high quality Video Tutorials and training for motion graphics and visual effects.
www.videocopilot.net/tutorials

7 – S T A R D U S T
www.stardust.tv

8 – xplsv.tv // it’s showtime!
movie graphics portal where the user can promote his productions, discover other movie graphics producers and their movies.
www.xplsv.tv

9 – Adobe After Effects Tutorials, Tips and Training
Motionworks is the website of John Dickinson – broadcast designer and After Effects tutor.
www.motionworks.com.au

10 – Digital Kitchen
Digital Kitchen is a digital agency and production company.
www.d-kitchen.com