Sam Michel's blog

A researcher at 3D design software firm, Autodesk is championing a new way of visualising how organisations change and evolve using a company's internal graph.

James Mayes, investigated the Autodesk experiment, chatted to the man behind it and discovered a fantastic offer for those wanting to run the same experiment for their organisation.

In a new research 'Social media litigation: How prepared is your business?' nearly 35% of respondents, most of whom work professionally in social media have little or no knowledge of the law.

Perhaps the most glaring legal hole is confidential data. Whilst 76% of companies worry about their secrets slipping out through social media, only 61% aren't confident that their sensitive information is protected on social media platforms.

Immediate Future who published the research have published an infographic with the key findings.

Government backed IC tomorrow, part of the Technology Strategy has launched its latest competition, Digital Innovation Contest 2013, with up to 7 awards of £25,000 up for grabs.

Backed by HarperCollins, Constable & Robinson, MediaCom, Ogilvy Mather UK Group and JCDecaux, FremantleMedia UK, Samsung, and YouTube, it focuses on media, publishing, mobile content and outdoor media.

The Develop in Brighton conference have launched a live pitch competition for game developers to grab £10,000 each to develop a high-impact pitch for their game to help secure a distribution platform and funding.

Launched in partnership with the Wellcome Trust, developers are invited to apply for a spot at the live pitch at the event on Wednesday 10 July 2013. Development funds can be used to develop a game prototype, demo or mood reel.

Eulogised, mythologised and other -oligised, South by South West Interactive (SXSW) is hard to ignore, even if you're not a fan. Tens of thousands of delegates flock to Austin, Texas for five days of conference, networking and not to be forgotten the parties.

For the several thousand international delegates, the UK being the largest group, it can be a little daunting. The official schedule alone will take several hours to navigate. So, we've pulled together thirteen - it's lucky, right? - handy resources to help those intrepid travellers to Texas navigate SXSW.

Big data is big, obviously. It’s huge, in fact with the amount of information pouring out of social networks, ecommerce systems let alone those that run our ‘real lives’ the challenge of figuring out what’s happening is almost insurmountable.

This time last year we started to explore how the worlds of psychology, neuroscience and machine learning could help techno-numpties like me to apply some of this high-fallutin’ brain science to business. From influence to behaviour to understanding emotions, there’s plenty to take on board.

Chinwag Psych was born, bringing together the leaders in this emerging world where academia and business combine in large part powered by digital and social media.

The war on cookies is over, or at least the rhetoric has been turned down a notch. Back in June when the ICO, who enforce the Data Protection Act, implemented the strictest interpretation of the law, their website traffic dropped 90%.

We dubbed it Cookiepocalypse. However, it looks like the war on cookies has just ended, or at least the ground offensive is over. On 31 Jan, they updated their website with the softer interpretation of the law which assumes implied consent.

"Married people who like Prostitutes", "Single women who live nearby and who are interested in men and like Getting Drunk" are just two of the searches unlocked by Facebook's new Social Graph Search. For that first search, there's even the option to list their spouses.

As the saying goes, "with great power comes great responsibility". Safe to say, opening the endless mountain of personal data on Facebook to user search is a bold business move, but as programmer Tom Scott proves, there's mischief to be made.

What a bizarre couple of weeks for the image conscious, or at least the photographically-minded, first Instagram severs it's close ties with Twitter, then ratchets up user anger with a dramatic changes in its terms, enabling it to sell users' photos.

Meanwhile, over at Flickr, the once beloved haunt of pictures the product development wheels have cranked into high gear with numerous updates including a well-received and surprisingly snazzy mobile app.

"Snow is falling all around me.
Children playing having fun.
Trains are cancelled. Shops are heaving.
It's the season of MacBooks and shiny iPads. 
Merry Christmas everyone."

I'm in a musical mood, so sue me ;-) And those Applistas everywhere are struggling to resist the urge to splurge on a shiny new metallic toys from the wizards in Cupertino.

But, I hear you cry, who put the "i" in iMac, iPhone, iPad? And did you know that Steve Jobs hated the name originally? And had an alternative...

Ken Segall (@ksegall), the ad-man Apple turned to, talks about his naming fame and his book, Insanely Simple about the principles that guides the company and makes it stand out from its competitors, in this video from Thinking Digital 2012.

It's an issue, a challenge, an opportunity that's been highlighted during today's Enterprising Fashion conference - just how are people finding, trying and buying? What is the future of the bricks'n'mortar store and where's the innovation coming from?

One of today's speakers, Paul Bay, founder of citizenbay has produced a mindmap of thinking around the topic. And you know how we like an infographic, especially when there's some smarts involved.

Good news fellow screen addicts, turns out those endless hours spent in front of the desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphone aren't likely to wreck your eyesite, as long as we don't start too young.

According to Professor Harrison Weisinger, Chair in Optometry at Australia's Deakin University, writing in the Epoch Times:

"Once we reach the age of ten years or so, it is practically impossible to injure the eyes by looking at something–the exception, of course, being staring at the Sun or similarly bright objects. Earlier in life, what we look at–or rather, how clearly we see–can affect our vision because the neural pathways between the eye and brain are still developing."

One of the themes that emerged from the recent Social Media Week London was the importance of content as a marketing tool. Whether it's being used to drive traffic, sell stuff, engage users, building brand equity the brand's hopeful quest to create a meme is a challenge for plenty of marketers.

A campaign doesn't have to be pretty to work. Throw in a little social, make it local and you have a winning formula, surely? Maybe this is the carefully planned strategy behind the marketing for comedian Howard Read's latest tour or he's a prodigious songwriter with a penchant for small town Britain.

For each town Howard and his cartoon side-kick, Little Howard, visit, they're creating a song, complete with local facts, history and irritatingly good ear-worms, "I'm a fool for Poole". Songs include: Hymn to Telford, The Daft Half of Bath, All Will Be Revealed in Sheffield and Song for Poole.

IC tomorrow, part of the Technology Strategy Board, have launched a Digital Innovation Contest for Music.

There's £150k up for grabs in this contest to encourage digital innovation in the music sector. The contest has six challenges under three themes: rights and monetisation; digital and live music; and linking digital to physical.

We're delighted to announce the line-up for what promises to be an insightful panel at this Wed's Chinwag Live: Webs of Influence event.

The panel spans the worlds of psychology, neuroscience and behavioural economics and there'll be plenty of time for audience Q&A, featuring Sarah Wood, Co-Founder of award-winning social video platform Unruly, Dawn Smith from Digitaria, the driving force behind KONY 2012's viral campaign, Jon Murphy from Oban Multilingual an expert in country-specific SEO and cultural insight and Rob Tezska, Cognitive Pyschologist and Science of Magic PhD student.

The debate is chaired by Nathalie Nahai, The Web Psychologist and author of Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion. Nathalie will kick off the session with a whistlestop tour of some of the highlights from her book.