The Shape of Samsung's New TV; Meet the Macphone; Apple's Retail Secrets & More
Welcome to CaT Trax: January 3, 2013!
Published: Jan 03, 2013
We have no idea what it's going to be, but Samsung is teasing us with a new kind of television the company will show off at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week. Gizmodo reports that the company might be unveiling a television with a new shape. Could it possibly be a circle? And if so, what will this mean for TV design in the future?
Meet the part-mythical Macphone, a prototype by Frog Design founder Hartmut Esslinger from the early 1980s. The Atlantic shows us pictures of this old contraption, a stylus-operated tablet/telephone combination that basically is the "centaur of gadgets."
When you walk into an Apple Store, you're usually amazed at how seamless the experience is. TechCrunch reports that a new patent application filing offers more insight into how the tech company manages its retail operations, and keeps customer experiences the same, whether in New York City or Hong Kong -- creating a "hive mind" of sorts that directs everything that's going on.
Kraft/Mondelez has tapped nine startups that will participate in a new mobile-tech initiative to help drive impulse purchases and in-store marketing. The program, which is called "Mobile Futures," will let the startups create applications for brands like Oreo and Trident and may result in a couple of new mobile tech companies Mondelez plans to launch at the end of the project, reports AdAge.
Josh Miller at the Medium knows that when his 15-year-old sister tells him SnapChat is the next Instagram, she's probably right. Here, he puts together trends in tech and production design culled from a conversation with his teenage sister. For one: Tumblr isn't a blogging platform.
Speaking of Tumblr, Forbes has a detailed cover story profiling CEO David Karp -- including a look inside his spartan Williamsburg home and his minimal lifestyle, which has informed so much of the design of Tumblr, and its very reason for existence.
