Posted via email from Kathy’s posterous

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Kathy’s posterous

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Kathy’s posterous

Inspired by a poem by Victor Keegan:

Autumn begets Winter

The leaves of Summer are rotting fast
The die of Spring is already cast
Insects feast on the year’s shed skins
And the banquet of the birds begins.
Leaves shed their camouflage.
Nature’s strip-tease, writ large:
They sink back into the earth
To prepare for next year’s rebirth.
Would humans feel such elation
To be in continuous creation?

We too will join in this ritual dance
When we the earth ourselves enhance
When we take our leaves
We will become them.

Posted via web from Kathy’s posterous

Posted via web from Kathy’s posterous

Autumn begets Winter

The leaves of Summer are rotting fast
The die of Spring is already cast
Insects feast on the year’s shed skins
And the banquet of the birds begins.
Leaves shed their camouflage.
Nature’s strip-tease, writ large:
They sink back into the earth
To prepare for next year’s rebirth.
Would humans feel such elation
To be in continuous creation?

We too will join in this ritual dance
When we the earth ourselves enhance
When we take our leaves
We will become them.

Posted via web from Kathy’s posterous

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Kathy’s posterous

Today, Mangahigh (www.mangahigh.com) launched the first curriculum-compliant, games-based learning site focusing on maths for secondary school students. Led by Dr. Marcus du Sautoy (maths professor at the University of Oxford and Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science) and Toby Rowland (co-founder of King.com, one of the world’s largest casual games companies), Mangahigh has already been acclaimed by Vic Keegan in The Guardian as leading the revolution in formal teaching. John Humphries on Radio 4’s Today program also welcomed the launch of a company that is making great efforts to help reverse the downturn in the standard of UK maths education.

As a parent, I wholeheartedly welcome this launch. My 10 year-old son has no problems sitting for hours playing games on his computer, yet ask him to focus on maths homework for 10 minutes and his focus wanders. So, by engaging him with maths through a medium that he enjoys and at a quality that he expects, I know he will learn and have fun doing so. It sounds so simple, maths and games – why has this not happened before? Many companies, individuals and institutions have tried and failed, but the reason Mangahigh will succeed, as identified in The Guardian, is due to the heritage of the two leaders of the company. The result of bringing together a games expert and a maths visionary is games that are worth playing for their own sake, with maths at the core.

With the UK behind Tunisia, Belgium and the Czech Republic in the international performance tables for its maths standards, some new thinking was overdue. Mangahigh has certainly bought that new thinking and its warm reception by the media is proof of this.

When I was in advertising, they used to tell me that in order for an ad to get noticed, it had to have at least three impressions.  In order to convince people your products are great in a presentation, repeat impressions are useful too.

Repeat after me – Apple is great, great, great, awesome, awesome, awesome, incredible, incredible, incredible (well, watch the video and you’ll see what I’m talking about)

Posted via web from Kathy’s posterous

Sent from my iPhone

The team descended upon GigaOm’s Mobilize conference yesterday and was surprised to find the press attending had swollen to about 200, which is quite impressive given I heard the overall attendees were around 800.  Why so many press so suddenly?  Motorola announced a new phone at the conference called the Cliq, which utilizes Google’s Android operating system.  The whizz factor of the phone is the visually stimulating screen packed with pictures and text bubbles that illustrate social media conversations come alive.

“I can’t imagine in five to seven years’ time, consumers not thinking of this” (cut to Motorola’s co-CEO Sanjay Jha shaking his phone at Om Malik, founder of GigaOm) “as their primary computer.”

I agreed with Jha.  I too believe the phone is heading in the direction of the PC and can’t wait for the day I can go through an airport security line and not have to lug out my behemoth Dell and then get electrocuted when I pick it up after it’s gone through the x-ray scan.

Another highlight of the day for us was supporting CEO of Flirtomatic, Mark Curtis, at the conference.  He spoke on the “Monetizing Mobile Apps” panel and had some great stats to share:

“A mobile user is 3 times more likely to spend money on our service than an internet user.”

“Mobile advertising has a great future ahead, but it’s currently only 25% of Flirtomatic’s current revenue.  Flirtomatic sells mobile advertising to it’s users so that users bid the most exposure on Flirtomatic. Flirtomatic gets the most exposure: 4x CPM on user-based-advertising vs brand-based advertising.”

When asked how do developers monetize mobile web apps, Mark responded:

“I think they need a 3-5 year plan. It’s possible to monetize mobile web apps, but it’s not easy.  “When the [carrier] revenue share on billing gets to a more reasaonable level, I’m going to be doing handsprings.”

Posted via email from Kathy’s posterous

Related articles

• GigaOM’s Mobilize 09 – the 100-word version (venturebeat.com)
• Mobile Ad Spend to Rise, But Still Leave Room to Grow (gigaom.com)
• Motorola announcing Android plans today, but what’s coming? (engadget.com)
• Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha: “Motoblur is a differentiator” (dailyfinance.com)
• Motorola Unveils Phone Focused on Social Networks (nytimes.com)