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Futurist Ray Kurzweil (@KurzweilAINews) was interviewed on Jimmy Kimmel Live about his vision of humans merging with technology in the coming years to create The Singularity. The above videos are Part 1 and 2 of that interview. If even a tenth of what he predicts comes true, it will further revolutionize the world.

You’ll also want to read our previous blogpost “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal.”

And you’ll want to listen to this On The Media (@onthemedia) segment, “Our Future with Technology.”

What do you see as the implications of these possibilities from a Christian point of view? From a publishing point of view? Add your comments below.

Join Somersault (@smrsault) in keeping an eye on how today’s technology will influence our future by reading the Somersault Futurist Daily News and using the SomersaultNOW dashboard of more than 300 articles and RSS feeds designed for publishers and marketers; especially note the Future tab. And tell your colleagues. Thanks!

Creativity (@creativitymag) reports that The New York Times (@nytimes) has launched beta620 (@beta620), a site that highlights experimental and ongoing projects at NYTimes.com. It’ll also be a crowdsourced venture, where Times readers can offer feedback and ideas – taking, essentially, formerly live events and making them virtual. The "620" refers to the Times' street address on Eighth Avenue in New York.

It’s similar to Google Labs, Google's experimental playground that shuttered last month, where users could suggest projects and Googlers could share what they were working on. At the Times, just like Google, some ideas may be turned into real products.

Read the Creativity coverage in full.

Nat Ives (@natives), media editor at Advertising Age, describes the 7 projects beta620 has launched with for consumers to try out and comment on:

• The Buzz, which shows how much traction Times articles are getting on social media
• Times Companion, which lets you summon information on topics in the article you're reading without taking you away from the page
• TimesInstant, a search page that shows results as you type
• Smart Search Bar, which sorts results and displays them without taking you away from the page you're on
• NYTimes Crossword Web App, an HTML 5 version of the puzzle's aging digital versions
• Longitude, which plots the day's Times articles on an interactive Google map
• Community Hub, a dashboard featuring stats on your comment history, a feed of comments on Times articles and, soon, Facebook friends' comments.

Read the AdAge coverage in full.

Should your website host a crowdsource section to test new publishing ventures?

An article in The Daily Beast / Newsweek (@thedailybeast) by Malcolm Jones profiles the fabulous new children’s ebook The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (@MorrisLessmore) by Moonbot Studios LA, LLC (@moonbotstudios). It says the ebook “embraces the potential of the iPad like nothing else.”

Dumped into a black-and-white landscape littered with wreckage, Morris Lessmore encounters a savior of sorts, who tosses him a flying book that leads him to a library set out in the countryside. Here he takes up residence, learns to care for the thousands of books he lives with and begins to write down his own story, an effort that takes him all his life.

In every scene, the viewer has to help move the action along — speeding up the wind that carries Morris away, spinning the house on which he flies through the storm, spelling out words in the cereal bowl with which Morris feeds the books (cereal like Alphabits, of course). But the interaction is not merely some computer form of a pop-up book. Besides spelling words, you can play a piano keyboard and make the books dance, and if you don’t want narration, you can mute it, and if you don’t want text, you can remove that, too. You can’t change the story, but the app designers have nevertheless found ways to make you feel very much a part of the story.

On the Morris Lessmore website it says

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is a poignant, humorous allegory about the curative powers of story. Using a variety of techniques (miniatures, computer animation, 2D animation), award-winning author/illustrator William Joyce and co-director Brandon Oldenburg present a hybrid style of animation that harkens back to silent films and M-G-M Technicolor musicals.

Read this in full.

A one-paragraph summary of the article is here.

Is this a game-changer in the production of ebooks? How will your publishing plans change as a result? Let Somersault help.

Tim Carmody (@tcarmody) of WIRED’s (@wired) Epicenter (@epicenterblog) in a commentary on CNN.com (@cnn) bemoans how ebook innovation is being stymied by big business. An example he sites is Push Pop Press (@pushpoppress), an e-publishing startup founded by ex-Apple engineers Mike Matas (@mike_matas) and Kimon Tsinteris (@kimon), being acquired by Facebook.

Push Pop published one multimedia book for the iPad, Al Gore's Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis [see Somersault’s blogpost about it, “A Next-generation Digital Book”]....

At that time, Push Pop...sought to create a ‘publishing platform for authors, publishers and artists to turn their books into interactive iPad or iPhone apps -- no programming skills required.’

Facebook has no interest in publishing interactive ebooks. According to Push Pop, ‘there are no plans to continue publishing new titles or building out our publishing platform that was in private beta.’ ....

We sorely need independent innovation in digital publishing. We need talented people who are willing to try things. Meanwhile, all of the money, attention, and technological skill is marching in the opposite direction.

Most big media companies with plenty of capital and deep technical talent see few if any reasons to innovate or invest in books....

The ideas are there; the talent is there; the readers are there. But when the three come together, inevitably someone else can figure out a way to use the technology for a different end. The better and more experimental it is, the more likely this is true.

Read this in full.

Do you agree or disagree?

The Business & Books (@businessnbooks) section of the International Business Times reports on "Harry Potter" series author J. K. Rowling announcing she will release for the first time the Harry Potter works in ebook form.

Ordinarily, that would not be big news, an author releasing traditional books in ebook format. But Rowling is taking a different path, releasing and selling the books herself through a new website she named Pottermore (@pottermore). In other words, Rowling, one of the bestselling authors in the history of the world, is bypassing not just one traditional channel with her plan but two -- the publisher and the retailer…. Rowling will be bypassing leading ebook distributors Amazon and Barnes and Noble with the direct, do-it-herself model.

All of Rowling's 7 "Harry Potter" books will be released on Pottermore.com in the fall. She's even giving fans who buy the digital books direct from her site a magical treat -- 18,000 more words that will be distributed throughout the series. So it's not just the Harry Potter of old she's selling, but also the new and revised Harry Potter fans can find at Pottermore.com.

Read this report in full.

Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) says "Although some are likely to see Rowling's decision to be her own publisher for her ebooks as a significant one for the industry at large, Potter is a unique franchise. 'Everything is different with Harry,' says one person involved with the Potter books."

Read the Publishers Weekly article in full.

Shelf Awareness (@ShelfAwareness) reports what other media and booksellers are saying. And Fast Company (@FastCompany) has this Infographic about the Potter empire.

In this trendwatching.com (@trendwatching) article, dozens of innovation (#innovation) examples are displayed, along with the (mini) consumer trends that spawned them. Trendwatching.com defines innovation as “anything that will get consumers spending, and preferably the kind of spending that involves *your* products, services, and experiences.” And it says “trends are only good for one thing: inspiring you to innovate, to come up with new goods, services and experiences for (or even better, with) your customers.” Innovations are showcased in the following trend categories:

• hAPPiness
• Cash-less
• Embedded stories
• Life: subscribed
• Now-or-never commerce
• Extreme charity
• Pop-up 4.0
• Professional
• RepYOUtation
• Choice cuts
• Gifting galore
• Real-world Liking
• Bidconomy
• Hyper-personalization

Read the article in full.

Join Somersault (@smrsault) in keeping an eye on innovation and where it’s taking the publishing world by reading the Somersault Innovation Daily News and using the SomersaultNOW dashboard of more than 300 articles and RSS feeds designed for publishers and marketers; especially note the Innovation tab. And please tell your colleagues. Thanks!

Edmund Whitehead (from Schweppes ads), Ogilvy, and George Wranell (from Hathaway ads)

watch video

This is the centennial of David Ogilvy’s birth (read his brief bio). A spy during WWII, he channeled his acute social sensitivities into marketing and public relations following the war, becoming the most familiar brand name in advertising (Ogilvy, @OGILVY & @OgilvyWW). His ads continue to be iconic (the bearded gentleman for Schweppes, the eye-patch for Hathaway shirts, etc.). Read about (and see) a few of his successes on Adweek’s (@Adweek) “Past Perfect: Considering the highlights of David Ogilvy’s revolutionary work in context.”

Ogilvy quips to remember (from the above video):

• Be more ambitious; don’t bunt. Try to hit the ball out of the park every time. Compete with immortals.
• The consumer is not a moron. She is your wife. Don't insult her intelligence.
• Inject into every ad a touch of singularity; a burr that will hook on to the consumer’s mind.
• The more story appeal you have in a photo, the more people will look at your ad.
• Advertising shouldn’t be tricky or cute.
• Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.
• You can’t bore people into buying your product, you can only interest them into buying it.
• Use facts copiously, adjectives sparingly. Be specific.
• The more you tell, the more you sell.
• The advertising business is all about big ideas.

NewScientist (@newscientist) reports a robot has the flexibility and accuracy to play pool, completing 400 shots with an 80% success rate.

The robot, designed by Thomas Nierhoff, Omiros Kourakos, and Sandra Hirche at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, has two arms that can move in 7 different ways. Cameras mounted above the table track the position of the balls and cue, and feed this information to the robot's computers. It can then decide on the best move and calculate how the arms should be oriented to complete the stroke. To get into position, it rolls around the table using predetermined coordinates.

See the video.

Join Somersault (@smrsault) in keeping an eye on how today’s technology will influence our future by reading the Somersault Futurist Daily News and using the SomersaultNOW dashboard of more than 300 articles and RSS feeds designed for publishers and marketers; especially note the Future tab. And tell your colleagues. Thanks!

It turns out you can do more with a printed book than read it (ebooks eat your heart out). My Modern Net (@mymodernmet) features Brian Dettmer who uses knives, tweezers, and surgical tools to carve one page at a time and create stunning works of art. Nothing inside the out-of-date encyclopedias, medical journals, illustration books, or dictionaries is relocated or implanted, only removed.

Dettmer manipulates the pages and spines to form the shape of his sculptures. He also folds, bends, rolls, and stacks multiple books to create completely original sculptural forms. A totally different approach to editing a book!

See the amazing photos.

An article at UsTelevision (@goustelevision) displays logo art you’ve never seen before in one place. Viewing all 9,000 TV channel logos may help you break through your own creative block in designing that new logo you need for you or your client!