Art Exhibits, Black Holes and Laughter

Greetings loyal readers,

I wasn't too sure what to write about this week, my poor pea brain being otherwise occupied with proofing August and planning out my Sept. stories. I managed to dig up a few links though that you might find interesting:

At Louvre, Many Stop to Snap but Few Stay to Focus (The New York Times)
I'm not sure I agree with the article entirely, partially because it kind of comes off as an over-generalizing, old man's "get off my lawn you darn kids" rant, but it still raises an interesting thought. Even if you don't agree with the scale or accuracy of his claim, the idea of the perceptual shift he describes could certainly be pertinent to our industry.

If people are paying less attention per observation, even to things they presumably intend to examine, like the Mona Lisa, then what could this mean for promotional products, items largely dependent on corner-of-the-eye glances? Would they be more effective because people's attention is more fractured and fickle now, or less effective because we're losing the ability to focus? Should you plan to tweak your promotional campaigns accordingly, paying more attention to the supposed limits in attention span?

10 Gadgets We'd Like to Throw Into a Black Hole (Wired magazine)
Wired in general is a great resource for anyone involved in or considering tech promotions, but this article in particular I thought had some good ideas. What I took from it:

-Popular products may still have serious flaws, like the iPod with its earbuds, which could create opportunities for superior promotional replacements.

-New technology may seem really neat and interesting when it first comes out, but sometimes it pays to sit on the sidelines and see which way way the wind of popular opinion blows. It's true that getting in on the ground floor with something like the iPhone would be reasonably awesome, but it's also true that sinking a bunch of cash and time on something grossly over-hyped like Sony's MiniDiscs could be a failure of Y2K proportions.