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An article in the Los Angeles Times (@latimestech) says brands such as Kraft and Adidas are considering making use of facial recognition technology in a bid to provide shoppers with more targeted information in stores.

Technology company Intel is one of a number of firms that has created software capable of scanning the faces of consumers, and then determining the approximate age and gender of the person concerned.

Christopher O'Malley, director, retail marketing, of Intel's embedded and communications unit, says, “You can put this technology into kiosks, vending machines, digital signs. It's going to become a much more common thing in the next few years.”

Read this in full.

The above video is a clip from the movie Minority Report, in which the character John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, walks in a mall in the year 2054 while his eyes are getting scanned by sensors connected to 3D screens that call to him directly by his name to get his attention to display “personal” advertising messages.

The following video demonstrates the reality of what’s already here.

Is this type of advertising personally invasive or strategically helpful to consumers?

On O’Reilly Radar (@radar), Jenn Webb (@JennWebb) interviews Rochelle Grayson (@RochelleGrayson), CEO of BookRiff, (@BookRiff), a publishing start-up going live at the end of September. Jenn asks, “Ever want to compile your own cookbook, travel guide or textbook? Has your publisher edited out sections of your book you'd like to share with interested readers? BookRiff aims to solve these problems by creating new ways to access and compile content.”

Her interview explains how BookRiff works and how it can benefit publishers and consumers. Rochelle says her company is based on an open market concept, allowing publishers to sell the content they want at prices they set and consumers to buy and customize that content as they see fit; each getting a percentage of sales along the way.

A Riff is a remix of chapters from published books, essays, articles, or even one's own content. The concept behind BookRiff is to create an online platform that allows consumers and publishers to remix and to resell content, while ensuring that all original content owners and contributors get paid.

BookRiff’s target audience is “domain experts” who can curate — and perhaps even create — content that is of interest to a specific reading audience. This could include things like cookbooks, travel guides, extended “authors editions,” and custom textbooks.

Read this in full.

How do you foresee this effecting your publishing/sales/distribution plans for the next 12 months?

In The New York Times (@nytimes) Janet Maslin reviews Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield (@simongarfield), saying, “This is a smart, funny, accessible book that does for typography what Lynne Truss’ best-selling Eats, Shoots & Leaves did for punctuation: made it noticeable for people who had no idea they were interested in such things.”

Knowledge of fonts is essential to advertising, book publishing, professions (like law) that require thoughtfully chosen stationery and any written work that can be done on a home computer. Personal computers are the main reason that font fandom and do-it-yourself design have snowballed in the last two decades. Had Steven Jobs not taken a shine to calligraphy as a college student and decided to include a choice of fonts in computer software, we might not be having this conversation.

Mr. Garfield’s book overlaps with Gary Hustwit’s (@gary_hustwit) 2007 documentary Helvetica, which concentrated entirely on a single, unstoppably popular typeface. Is global proliferation of the very Swiss, clean, antiseptic Helvetica a welcome phenomenon, or is Helvetica the weedy, unstoppable kudzu of the design world? Mr. Garfield takes a somewhat jaundiced view of Helvetica mania, but he hardly limits himself to one narrow school of fontificating. A full look at font history, aesthetics, science, and philosophy could fill an encyclopedia, but Just My Type is an excellent gloss. Mr. Garfield has put together a lot of good stories and questions about font subtleties and font-lovers’ fanaticism.

Just My Type covers phenomena including how the fonts on road signs are tested for legibility and what the fonts used by various political campaigns subliminally communicate about candidates. It explains relatively arcane matters like kerning (the science of spacing letters)....And if it does nothing else Just My Type will make it impossible for you to look at logos, road signs, airports, magazines, and advertisements indifferently any longer.

Read this in full.

Let Somersault help you in the page and cover designs of your books. And stay informed about publishing best practices with the SomersaultNOW dashboard, such as the content in the Editing and Innovation tabs.

Warc (@WarcEditors) reports on a new Cisco (@Cisco_Mobility) study that says US families are engaging in an increasingly diverse range of digital activities, and are using more wireless devices than ever before.

·         The most popular digital pastimes among the respondents are browsing the Web and accessing email, logging a total uptake of 92%.

·         Regularly downloading music and video score 67%; consumers are turning to user-generated content platforms like YouTube, video-on-demand services, and properties such as iTunes.

·         Two-thirds of respondents often use a tablet or smartphone via their wireless network at home.

·         Devices connected to in-home WiFi: game consoles (66%), smartphones (41%), and wireless printers (36%).

·         62% of adults use the Internet in this way on a daily basis; 71% do so between 5-7 days a week.

·         Based on parents’ estimates, 46% of children log on to the Web in the same fashion every day, and 54% participate in this activity at least 5 days per week.

Consumers are now embracing a wireless connected lifestyle for the entire family.

Read this in full.

Good leaders are good communicators. Susan Tardanico, executive in residence at the Center for Creative Leadership (@CCLdotORG), suggests 5 necessary communication characteristics leaders must exhibit to be successful:

·         Beware of the “say/do” gap: align your actions with your words

·         Take the complex and make it simple: distill compound thoughts and strategies into simple terms for quick clarity.

·         Don’t fake it: let your values come through in your communication.

·         Be visible: let your key stakeholders feel a personal attachment to you and the work that you believe in through face-to-face relations.

·         Listen with your eyes as well as your ears: Stop, look and listen. Effective communication is 2-way. Ask good questions.

Read this in full.

Hone your leadership skills and knowledge by using the SomersaultNOW dashboard, especially the articles and links in the Leadership tab.

Using three iPods like magical props, magician Marco Tempest (@virtualmagician) spins a clever presentation on truth and lies, art and emotion. Along the way he demonstrates a creative use of synchronized video.

Does this prompt you to think outside the box for content creation?

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High-profile, best-selling author Tim Ferriss’ (@tferriss) signing a deal with Amazon (@amazon) to publish his next book is causing conversation among traditional publishers. Jeffrey Trachtenberg (@JeffreyT1), book reporter at The Wall Street Journal (@wsj), discusses it in this video.

Social Media Marketing by the Numbers Infographic by Mashable (@mashable)

How does a medical facility in the middle of nowhere become so well known and respected that world leaders want to be consumers of it? According to Lee Aase (@LeeAase), director, Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, word-of-mouth (WOM) fueled by social media is the driving force. Watch (1 and 2) his relaxed case-study presentation from a few years ago and adapt his success principles (see the above pyramid) to advance your brand.

Let Somersault help you achieve success.

The business journal of The Wharton School, Knowledge@Wharton (@knowledgwharton) interviewed Wharton professor Marshall Fisher, co-author of The New Science of Retailing: How Analytics Are Transforming the Supply Chain and Improving Performance. Among the biggest challenges retailers face is matching supply with demand. Fisher says retailers have the data they need to manage supply chains more efficiently and increase sales and profits.

Watch the video to learn the types of data that are most important for retailers to collect, how they can use this information to identify home-run products, and why the retailing industry might be missing as much as one-third of potential sales.

See the interview on the Knowledge@Wharton site.