Ads get blurbs in the table of contents! Copywriters everywhere clap excitedly. Like sea lions.

I downloaded Wired for iPad the other day. I wanna say it was for research, lulz or because I just love Wired that much, but the truth is Gary gave me a gift certificate and told me download it.

As it turns out, it was the most thought-provoking issue of Wired I’ve ever read.

My first thought was that the price really has to come down. Charging the checkout aisle price is retarded and everyone knows it. I might – might – pay that for National Geographic, sometimes, but not for Wired. Except just this once.

I seriously never thought I would spend this long learning about sauce. This kind of story would have been ungainly and kinda stupid in print, but here it seriously wins.

First impression on opening: “It looks very nice.” I found myself interacting with some very well-designed pages, but also getting lost in some questionable layouts. There’s a blue ribbon graphic that attempts to both tie together the overall design and subtly guide the viewer on where to go next – down for multi-page articles, right for the next feature – but it’s a little too subtle in parts and took me awhile to even realize what it was doing. I can see how the layout method could easily become second nature after browsing through a couple of issues, however.

See those navigation buttons in the corner? Frustratingly not navigation buttons at all. Just a random design decision.

One surprising thing that happens in this medium: as soon the brain realizes it can actually interact with things that were just design elements in print, it wants to interact with all of them. Random shapes that were just put there to look pretty get tapped on, and then frowned at when nothing happens. It requires design justifications that print never dreamed of. (Not unlike the, um, internet.)

One thing you’ll never see other mediums do is switch layouts from vertical to horizontal. It’s one of my favorite things about the iPad, and the way this design challenge was handled throughout was fascinating and at times even fun. We’re definitely entering a new age in which everything has to translate seamlessly from horizontal to vertical and back again. It’s exciting and potentially a very rich space to explore for the undaunted creative.

It spins. That's all I can say for it.

The technical limitations (read: no Flash) are like having your girlfriend’s parents show up to your kegger. SAD. The Mars feature tried so hard to be cool and failed so completely miserably. It was totally unusable and un-navigable. Which especially sucks because it looked pretty and made me want to use it and navigate it.

The most fascinating part for me was by far the way in which each advertiser uniquely approached the medium. It’s many an advertiser’s wet dream: print that can do everything a commercial or banner can. The potential level of engagement is absurdly superior. It’s like having a full-site takeover, but thanks to some nice foresight, it can be flipped through just as fast as a print ad, giving intuitive, physical control back to the viewer and reducing the amount of obnoxiousness back down to print levels. I’d love to see how more advertisers approach this, and I even found myself eager to start concepting.

This is the horizontal version. Did no one tell them it was going to be on an iPad??? I sincerely hope no one told them it was going to be on an iPad. In that case, only the media buyer gets fired.

Sadly, many of the advertisers in this first issue just don’t get it. The copy is too small, the layout is only designed vertically, it’s an obvious copy-paste from the print spread (with faux page seam showing – really, Dockers??), or it’s just boring.  For the ones that I did notice or interact with, there still seem to be some technical limitations. (Again – the F word. You know which one.) I found myself actually watching some of the embedded videos in the ads, but I know if I wasn’t in the industry I’d be unlikely to take even that extra step. The videos should start playing automatically – actually, screw that. The whole ad should be animated and fully interactive as soon as you see it.

What's even better than a boring, ugly ad? A boring, ugly ad with ten other boring, ugly ads inside it!

Many of the ads linked to what I can only assume was a landing page – but as soon as the cue box to open Safari popped up I got inexplicably lazy and changed my mind. This isn’t the internet – you’re about as likely to want to leave in the middle of your article as you would be to get up from the magazine and type in a URL. (Not at all likely.) To make matters worse, there was a profusion of “click here” buttons. Seriously?

Some advertisers took a cue from a magazine feature I really liked – the interactive tab-through copy block – but it tended to be completely uninteresting and apparently just an excuse to squeeze in every single company talking point into one ad. I can see how this tool could work if anyone bothered to make it engaging in any way, but sadly no one did.

Possibly the coolest-looking thing in here, but it's completely static. Massively wasted opportunity.

I’m positive the whole medium will evolve into something completely different, and soon. One major thing I’d like to see is the ability to have the ad act as a storefront so customers can make the purchase right there without even leaving the page, and charge it to their iTunes accounts. The less work it is to actually spend money on something, the more likely people are to do it. Ditch the whole notion of a landing page – it’s rarely successful in it’s native medium and  is only a barrier in this one.

To sum it all up: say whatever you want about the magazine itself, this is a whole new world for advertising. And I wanna explore!!

But not for five bucks an issue.

If you have about half an hour, I strongly encourage you to watch this talk by Jesse Schell. It’s fun. (Also, embedded at the bottom of this post.)

But if you don’t have half an hour, let me sum it up for you:

Games are spilling into reality, and reality is becoming more like a game. More and more actions in your daily life are rewarding you with experience points.

It basically ends there, with a nice note about how your grand kids will be able to find out just exactly how much of a loser you were, because your entire life is being recorded.

I don’t think Mr. Schell went far enough. What happens when people realize they can trade points for real things? What happens when the guy who sucked at regular, money-earning jobs finds out he’s really, really good at getting points for stuff he was already doing anyway?

What happens when we realize we no longer need money?

What are the implications of a currency that, instead of being printed in limited supply by the government, is infinite and generated by our own actions as individuals?

Just some thoughts.

Instead of making ads, I would like to see you:

1. Add value to the product.

2. Add value to the experience the user needs the product for.

3. Make it really, really easy for people to find and buy the product.

That’s all. Thank you.

1. Ban all Christmas songs in public places. We all have headphones. If you have to do it, pipe in a custom Internet radio station that customers will hear or not hear according to their preferences.

You've head of color therapy? This is whatever the horrible, soul-crushing opposite of that is.

2. Ban the colors red and green from ever appearing together. For anyone. Ever.

3. Consider the local climate of the place you’re bringing your Christmas-themed whatever to. If it never snows there, don’t bring up snow. It makes people sad and angry when you do that.

4. Limit the holiday marketing season to a more appropriate time period. I’m thinking no more than a week. There are two very practical reasons for this. Firstly, drawing out the expectations for one day over the course of 3-4 months has seriously damaged the reputation of that one day. Can you say “oversell”? Not even the effing Superbowl has that kind of hype. And secondly, just because you have a media buy/ship date/new store opening/whatever between Labor Day and New Years, does NOT mean you automatically have to make the ad/packaging/grand opening/whatever holiday-themed. If a holiday theme is the most creative thing you can think of to catch people’s attention during the season when every single other jerkwad out there is doing it, you need to find a new line of work. Now. (If the client is demanding it, I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry. Here, have a rum and eggnog. Don’t worry there’s no eggnog in it.)

5. Give more. Christmas used to be about giving – not about buying. Instead of hawking your crappy products with pre-Christmas, pre-pre-Christmas, and post-Christmas sales, keep merchandise at regular price (which, if it’s any good, people will pay), and then donate to a cause that your customers will appreciate. Or give away the batteries. Or offer to wrap their purchase for free. Think of Christmas less as a chance to temporarily bump up the profit chart, and more as an opportunity to invest in the consumers who’ll keep your sales up for the rest of the year.

6. Personalize. Not everyone celebrates Christmas. That doesn’t mean we all have to go around saying “Seasons Greetings” to avoid offending people. If Facebook ads know that I love cupcakes, it can’t be that hard to figure out what frakking holiday I celebrate.

Ficuses love attention.

7. Leave trees alive. Besides the fact that pine trees are highly social and probably feel some version of extreme discomfort when we chop them down, no one likes watching them rot out on the sidewalk for the entire month of January. Real trees are fire hazards, dangerous to pets, messy, sticky, and ridiculously carbon-intensive. Fake trees aren’t much better. Get a live, native tree and plant it somewhere when you’re done with it. Or decorate your ficus. Less guilt, less danger, less chance of a massive pine tree revolt against humanity.

That’s all I got. I’m curious what changes everyone else out there would make. Leave something in the comments if you feel so inclined. That’s really all we’re asking Santa for this year – comments.

Physical currency is filthy. It’s fragile. It gets lost. It gets stuck in the dried, sticky coffee crust in the bottom of your car’s cupholder.

Square, as well as being amazingly convenient-sounding and brilliantly obvious, looks like it might also be the herald of the eventual, necessary, death of cash. I can’t wait to try it out.

Basically, you plug a card reader into your audio jack (on any device), and swipe away – your camera phone identifies you to prevent fraud. Not sure how it can tell the difference between me and a picture of me someone holds up in front of the camera… but I’m sure they’ll get that worked out. All in all, it looks “like the future” as Dustin Curtis put it earlier today.

Oh, and what really impressed me was this nice little addition:

“Square will donate a penny of every transaction you take to a cause of your choice. Working together to better the world, one small step at a time.”

‘Cause we all have a cause.

Here’s what I predict for the next ten years:

1. Augmented reality will become as commonplace and useful as the internet became in the 90s, as consumers buy more smartphones and early experimenters find out what works and what doesn’t. Remember when the first few URLs started showing up in ads? We’re there now with augmented reality.

"I could really use a cold one! Anyone else down for the fresh taste of the Rockies?"

2. Brands will embrace the new emphasis on social interactions, sometimes to extremes – think robots you can hang out with in bars who casually suggest Miller at every opportunity.

3. 90s fashions will dominate. No, not those 90s. The other 90s.

4. We’ll finally get a space elevator. It’ll be made out of carbon nanotubes. It’ll be 100% privately funded.

5. Near the end of the decade, the whole “authenticity” thing will be played and we’ll want fake stuff again.

6. Nanotech will be used for evil. Also, good. Also, marketing.

7. We’ll discover conclusive evidence of life on a another planet. It will be related to us.

8. There will be fewer, and less deadly wars, thanks in large part to communication between citizens via the internet.

9. Social games and gestural user interfaces will totally pwn traditional consoles and controllers, annoying some but finally making the industry “culturally relevant” via deep, meaningful interactions. Later in the decade, the cool kids will finally get into console games for the retro factor. Irony will win the day.

10. Social media, geotagging, augmented reality, security concerns and chronic over-sharing will join forces to completely destroy what little privacy we had left. Surprisingly few people will complain.

And to the last ten years: good riddance, I hope you burn in hell.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The main thing that got me thinking is their goal that, ideally, the shop will be something new every time you go to the airport. Surprise ftw. Why aren’t more places/websites/videogames/hairstyles like this?

via Leo Burnett.

Metromix sneaks a look at Madpoison Lounge from madpoison on Vimeo.

Thanks to ReadWrite Start.

Augmented Reality Texture Extraction Experiment from Lee Felarca on Vimeo.

There are a million possible applications for this awesomeness, most of which are probably also completely awesome. But, being a consumer whore, I decided to write about just one seriously consumerrific use for being able to upload the volume and texture of a product: making sure ____ perfectly fits _____ body part/hallway/dining room color scheme before you buy it. (With your AR mobile PayPal account.)

Take that, stupid Ikea coffee table that I’m always stubbing my toe on.

Extra thanks to zero point nine for being rad and showing me awesome stuff.

1. Yes. You guys rock.
2. Touchscreens everywhere = serious OCD germaphobia madness. I already use hand sanitizer after looking at the 38 Geary. Movie posters that have probably been pissed on are not going to be my preferred point of sale.
3. Good luck getting this concept in practice before anyone else. No I mean it. It’s probably the only thing that will save PayPal.
4. A more practical but less cool-looking scenario would be an augmented reality program for existing devices with ad and product recognition. Paypal could partner with advertisers to put an AR marker – or just a bar code – on any physical ad, menu, or even the product itself for an instant online mobile purchase. “OMG I love your shoes! Can I scan them???” Also, fewer germs.

Thanks to EVB for getting my thinker thinkifying.