Finding a new book to read isn’t always easy. People on Twitter are always asking for recommendations and it is a great place to get them. Now there’s a little help at hand courtesy of this online project from the team at Knight Lab, the news media innovation group, called BookRx.

BookRx scans your Tweets and on the basis of a number of key words it recommends books for you to read in a number of categories from fiction, business, sport and science fiction.  Read More »

I foresee two key opportunities for the industry creative this year. One is that ambient will become a key battleground for brands trying to disrupt audiences’ daily routines. The other is the move towards the big, the bold and the simple. Both these trends may well converge of course and I look forward to exploring their possibilities.

While Minority Report’s retina-scanning six sheets may not arrive in 2013, I think the drive towards mobile-first advertising and the arrival of 4G will have brands clamoring to become even more visible in our everyday lives. Using insight to identify where ambient opportunities exist will be imperative … so we may see sports drinks advertised on treadmill screens (available in a vending machine near your locker) or footwear retailers offering discounts on sturdy boots with graffiti on snow-covered pavements. Read More »

After a rocky 2012 for technology companies coming to the market, which left Groupon, Zynga and Facebook bruised, no one wants to rush towards an IPO in 2013 and particularly not Twitter, which finished the year strong after its role in the US presidential election.

When it does make the leap it could well be, as some have put it, the IPO of the decade. It is currently valued between $8bn and $11bn and  could easily accelerate beyond that figure if 2013 continues in the same vein as 2012 and it continues to follow the revenue trail and build its social advertising business on the web and crucially in the mobile space. Read More »