Meredith Vet Charged with Boosting Tribune Publishing Digital Marketing Revenues

According to Chicago Tribune media reporter Robert Channick, 2014 was a decent year for the digital marketing side of parent company Tribune Publishing. Revenues topped out at $24.8 million, a 55% increase over 2013.

But also, per his report, Tribune Publishing CEO Jack Griffin is hoping to see a lot more come in from that side of the operation in 2015. In December, he hired an old Meredith Corp. pal, Dan Hickey, to consult. A month later, Hickey came on board full-time and has been making major changes:

While Hickey’s hiring wasn’t announced publicly, his presence has certainly been felt. He has executed a complete overhaul of the sales staff, recruiting a smaller team of “specialized” salespeople to act as digital consultants and refocusing efforts on Tribune Publishing’s largest 200 clients.

Hickey also has folded the newspaper’s content marketing team under 435 Digital, a simple yet innovative move.

Hickey, who spent more than a decade in the senior ranks at Meredith, was most recently working for the Telegraph Media Group in London. Read about the rest of his plans for 435 Digital, which has offices in Chicago, Los Angeles and five other U.S. cities, here.
 
[Image via: 435digital.com]

Soma 10-Cup Water Filter Pitcher: Sustainable, stunning and now fit for a full household

Soma 10-Cup Water Filter Pitcher

Every so often a design for a common object resonates and forces us to rethink items often dubbed basics. The water pitcher is a common ware for interpretation, with memorable iterations by designers from Tom Dixon to Antonio Aricó. Fewer stunning……

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The Magic Rabbit of Asia

Li Weidong, un grand défenseur de l’environnement, est l’homme qui a découvert et capturé le « Ili pika » (Ochotona iliensis) : une sorte de petit panda brun adorable qu’on peut observer dans les monts Tian. Surnommé le « lapin magique », cet animal de 20 centimètres de long est en voie d’extinction.

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Rare Chinese Panda
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Kouichi Kimura's Cozy House is a family home in a busy Japanese neighbourhood

This grey-rendered house was designed with strategically placed windows to create privacy for residents in a densely populated area of Japan (+ slideshow).

Cozy House by Form/Kouichi Kimura Architects

Japanese architect Kouichi Kimura, founder of local firm FORM, designed Cozy House for a restricted plot in a densely populated residential area of Japan’s Shiga prefecture.

He proposed creating an largely inward-facing house filled with a variety of spaces, from quiet nooks to more open family areas.

Cozy House by Form/Kouichi Kimura Architects

“The house is built at one of the small sites crowded with houses and surrounded by narrow roads,” said Kimura. “With such conditions, we suggested the beautiful and compact house that includes enriched inner spaces.”



“The comfortableness, which is produced by the small space and would hardly be realised by a broad space, was my major fascination of this house,” he said.

Cozy House by Form/Kouichi Kimura Architects

Externally, the walls of the house are coated with a layer of muted grey render. The upper storey is larger than the lower floor, creating a lip that overhangs a porch at the front, while a sheltered parking space has been recessed into the lower volume.

Cozy House by Form/Kouichi Kimura Architects

Two bedrooms and a hallway take up the remainder of the ground floor plan, while an open-plan living area occupies the upper storey.

“The second floor is protruded toward the front road to the best possible extent allowed by the relevant regulation so that the maximum volume can be secured for the use of the living room, dining kitchen, small versatile room, and wet area,” said the architect.

Cozy House by Form/Kouichi Kimura Architects

A white staircase with a slender grey handrail leads from the entrance hall directly into the main living space. Small alcoves set into the enclosed balustrade provide storage and display areas for plants and ornaments.

Cozy House by Form/Kouichi Kimura Architects

Furniture is integrated into the architecture, including a padded bench set into the back of the balustrade.

Cozy House by Form/Kouichi Kimura Architects

A thick, timber-clad wall separates a playroom and hobby space from the living room. An unglazed opening at one end of this room allows natural light from the windows to travel through to the dining area.

Cozy House by Form/Kouichi Kimura Architects

A long concrete bench runs along the front of the dark wooden wall, providing a storage area. At one end, the neck is topped with a action of upholstered padding to create that a bench for the dining area, which features a table covered in the same timber as the wall.

“The furnished fixtures make the space effective, to create a cosy but expanding place,” said Kimura.

Cozy House by Form/Kouichi Kimura Architects

Sliding doors enclose a toilet and wet room along one side of the space, while a closet area is concealed behind two doors in an adjoining wall. A small balcony is set into one corner of the living room, between the bathrooms and storage spaces.

Cozy House by Form/Kouichi Kimura Architects

Narrow windows are set at ceiling and floor level to provide daylight while maintaining privacy, and a skylight brings in extra light from above.

Cozy House by Form/Kouichi Kimura Architects

“The ceiling height is varied to produce visual expansion, and several openings are designed so that light comes in from various positions,” added the architect.

Photography is by Yoshihiro Asada.

Cozy House by Form/Kouichi Kimura Architects
Ground floor plan – click for larger image
Cozy House by Form/Kouichi Kimura Architects
First floor plan – click for larger image
Cozy House by Form/Kouichi Kimura Architects
Section one – click for larger image
Cozy House by Form/Kouichi Kimura Architects
Section two – click for larger image

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in a busy Japanese neighbourhood
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Domino's launches world's first driverless pizza delivery vehicles

UK pizza chain Domino’s has launched the world’s first fleet of driverless delivery vehicles (+ movie).

Starting today, pizzas ordered by UK customers via Domino’s website and mobile app will be served by the two-wheeled vehicles, which are called Domi-No-Drivers.

Equipped with heated compartments, the autonomous scooters are able to carry four times as much pizza as traditional pizza delivery bikes ridden by humans.

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Render of prototype Domi-No-Driver

“Whilst driverless vehicles once sounded like science fiction, it’s now within our grasp,” said Domino’s Pizza UK marketing director Simon Wallis. “Harnessing this innovation for pizza delivery opens up a new world of opportunities for us.”

The vehicles navigate via GPS technology and feature an onboard Pizza Interface (PI) that calculates the fastest route to the customer.



While in motion, a proprietary system called HUNGAR (Hunger Detection And Ranging) identifies potential obstacles and other road users, allowing the vehicle to flash messages of apology via an LED screen mounted at the front. Messages include “Sorry”, “Apologies” and “What am I like?”

When it reaches its destination, the Domi-No-Driver automatically sends the customer a unique passcode that allows him or her to unlock the correct pizza compartment on the vehicle.

“Due to its patented driverless technology, the vehicle is able to carry 400 per cent more pizza thanks to 100 per cent less driver,” said the company in a statement.

Several companies are exploring driverless delivery systems. Both Amazon and Google have experimented with drones to transport parcels and supplies while in 2013, Australian company Flirtey claimed to have launched the first-ever drone book-delivery service.

However Domino’s fleet of self-driving pizza bikes is thought to be the first use of autonomous road vehicles by a mainstream brand.

“Working with the latest technology helps to ensure our customers have the best possible experience,” said Wallis. “We’re really excited to bring these amazing vehicles to streets across the UK.”

The Domi-No-Driver service is available to UK pizza-buyers from today, April 1.

The post Domino’s launches world’s first
driverless pizza delivery vehicles
appeared first on Dezeen.

Designing a Solution to Stop Drunks from Falling Off of Subway Platforms

If you were asked to design a preventative solution to people falling onto subway tracks, where would you start? I imagine most folks would focus on the platform’s edge, perhaps adding safety rails that aligned with the non-doored portions of incoming trains, or maybe glass walls with secondary doors like some airports have for their shuttle trains. A recent study in Japan, however, has the West Japan Railway Company focusing on the center of the platform, not the edge.

First, a closer look at the problem: The two-year study was commissioned because there is a troubling rise in drunk people falling off of subway platforms—more than 200 incidents in 2013, about twice the amount as happened ten years earlier. Thus JR West dug up all of the security camera footage to watch the few seconds before each fall, to see how they happened. According to Spoon & Tamago, which translated the study:

Ninety percent of falls are the result of people, in a drunken stupor, getting up from a bench they were sitting on and walking straight off the platform.

The results are surprising because conventional reasoning and logic assumed that drunks would wander closer and closer to the ledge and eventually fall off. The data, however, showed the opposite. Only ten percent of drunks gradually drifted towards the ledge, while an outstanding majority briskly walked off the ledge as if they knew exactly where they were going.

That being the case, the proposed fix focuses on the center of the platform where the waiting benches are. JR West is experimenting with rotating the benches 90 degrees, making them perpendicular to the tracks rather than parallel; the thinking goes that a drunk lurching to his feet and walking straight forward, as is apparently their wont, will have to eventually stop and coordinate a turn to make his way towards the tracks.

Some of you are undoubtedly thinking: Ought we really be designing a solution to save 200-something drunks a year? After Gizmodo picked up the story, one commenter pithily wrote “I do not approve of this at all” and signed it “Darwin.” But whether you sympathize for the boozers or not, there is an economic cost to each incident and the ripple effect of delayed trains (and possibly a gory clean-up). If this works, paying a handful of maintenance workers to rotate benches will seem a bargain.

RD Recap: Changes at WaPo; NY Daily News Up for Grabs

Revolving DoorThe New York Times promotes strategy and innovation editor Kinsey Wilson to executive vice president of product and technology. He joined the paper’s masthead in November after a stint as chief content officer at NPR. Meanwhile, Sulzberger family member David Perpich is the new senior vice president of product and Paul Smurl is saying goodbye after 10 years to join a startup… The Washington Post decides “to internally transfer or eliminate certain non-Newsroom positions, where appropriate,” while simultaneously touting the 17 journalists it hired in the past three months. The paper would also like you to know that Fast Company recently named it the “Number One Most Innovative Media Company in the World.”…

Would you like to buy the New York Daily News? You’ll have to outbid Cablevision’s James Dolan, which shouldn’t be too difficult as he’s only in for $1. Some of the other suitors are looking to spend more, but far from the $150 million to $200 million owner Mort Zuckerman was hoping to get.. Meredith Corporation hires Kim Martin as chief strategy officer. She previously served as president and general manager of WE tv for nine years and also held positions at AMC-owned Rainbow Media and Discovery Networks… Read More

Daily Mail Showbiz Editor Moves Over to People.com

PeopleMagCover_FeaturedIt’s a brand new position at people.com. Occupying it, as of Monday March 30, is Sara Nathan.

From today’s memo by People editorial director Jess Cagle:

I’m very pleased to announce the arrival of Sara Nathan as people.com’s news director. Sara is a widely respected journalist and editor with 17 years of experience in media. Sara, who reports to Will Lee, comes from dailymail.com, where she was U.S. show business editor-at-large.

Born and educated in London, Sara relocated to New York in October 2012 as part of dailymail.com’s expansion into the U.S. market. Prior to joining the Daily Mail in 2009, Sara worked at The Sun, the UK’s biggest-selling daily newspaper, for 10 years, rising through the ranks to TV editor and running the successful “TV Biz” column.

In today’s lightning-fast world of 24/7 competition for celebrity scoops, mistakes are easier to come by. While at the Daily Mail, one of Nathan’s such moments famously involved George Clooney.

Previously on FishbowlNY:
Daily Mail Does the Lena Dunham Math
The Daily Mail Breaks Some Anna Wintour News

ListenUp: Zayn Malik: I Won't Mind

Zayn Malik: I Won't Mind


While plenty of music snobs have dismissed One Direction as saccharine pop for tweens (who many also like to believe have terrible taste), the recent departure of 1D member Zayn Malik—and the news that he has been working on solo material—has intrigued……

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Link About It: Coachella and Lollapalooza Ban Selfie Sticks

Coachella and Lollapalooza Ban Selfie Sticks


Like many museums, arenas and other public venues around the world, US music festivals Coachella and Lollapalooza have both banned selfie sticks from their premises. Lollapalooza’s website states that no “GoPro attachments like sticks, selfie sticks……

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