David Emery Online

I wonder what it’s like to be 14, to be watching this unfold and have Wikileaks as the base of certain assumptions you will make about media, news, government and information for the rest of your life.

I am proud to live in a world where this is possible.

WikiLeaks defines the effect the internet has on the world; information cannot be controlled anymore (once more then a small handful possesses it), and you just have to deal with it.

As Anthony says, WikiLeaks is like Napster, but for governments.

Watching Apple’s iPhone 4 FaceTime commercial again, it reminds me of something: Mad Men. The television show is starting its fourth season in a couple of weeks, but the commercial takes me back to the end of season one — an episode called “The Wheel.” I’ve actually talked about this episode before because it contains a scene that is perhaps the best in the entire series. In it, ad man Don Draper gives a presentation to Kodak showing why Sterling Cooper should be handling the account for their new picture projector.

I really like the FaceTime ad for the new iPhone; yes, it borders on (well, cannonballs straight into) over-sentimentality, but it’s an ad that actually makes you feel something and you can’t say that very often.

It feels old school, timeless, in way quite reminiscent to what Pixar achieve with their films.

If you haven’t seen it:

I hope ebooks usher in a world of ideal book lengths. I.e., detached from the burden of having to be "book-sized"; less filler, more focus.

A great idea – after having now spent a bit of time reading on the iPad (2 books so far) I firmly believe this is the future of the medium, and it’s a lot more adaptable then paper ever was.

Of course, whether the publishers will get their heads around this sort of thing is a whole different question…

Great new ad for Honda from W+K, love the photography style

Well isn’t this beautiful:

While we’re on the subject of adverts, I really like the new Cadbury’s Flake ad as well:

On the 18th of April, 2005 I posted this inauspicious post and brought this blog blinking into the world. Everything has to start somewhere.

It’s quite a strange thought to me that this blog is 5 years old.

5 years is a strange in-between length of time that somehow simultaneously a long time and not that long at all. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been doing this blog for a huge amount of time, but yet I’ve somehow amassed 1376 posts – not including this one – totalling 200,000+ words (it’s very difficult to get an accurate figure) which seems like a hell of a lot.

Not that quantity is any indication of quality, of course.

Looking back at the first few posts indicates that at the very least my writing has got a little better (although I could really do with a proof reader), but also that my focus has got a bit broader (and maybe deeper?) – certainly less of ‘woo Apple have a new thing out’ posts hopefully. I think I’ve hit a much more sustainable rhythm that’s been mirrored by much of the rest of the blogosphere (hey, we don’t use that word really anymore, do we? Not a big loss): lots of links, semi-daily, interspersed with longer articles every week or two.

For quite a while I stuck with a dogged ‘one post every week day’ regime which I’m glad I did; I think it made me think more critically about things; if you know you’ve got to write about something in the evening, you spend all day looking for interesting things to spark something. You can’t do that forever though…

There’s a few posts I’d like to highlight:

Choas – 07/07/05

Live updates of the 7th July bombings, going from irritation that the tube wasn’t working to shock as the reality becomes clear. The day after I went for a job interview which turned out to be the job I’m still doing now…

More Width – 27/11/06

The most popular article on the site so far, due to it being linked to by an A List Apart article, concerning flexible website design (and how fixed width sites are just born from laziness).

How To Be A Gig Photographer – 04/12/08

Some simple tips on how to take photos at gigs.

There is a fold – 13/06/09

More musings on web design, this time on the often ignored fluid page fold.

Collections of Tracks – 16/09/08

On the inevitable rise of shuffle as being a dominant way of listening to music (furthered more so these days by the popularity of shared Spotify playlists).

News Feed – 26/06/07

On the rise of news feeds – as popularised by Facebook, and now even more prevalent thanks to Tumblr.

Rainbow Day – 10/10/07

How Radiohead made recorded music interesting again (little did I know when I wrote this that I would end up working with them).

Dynamic Design – 10/11/09

Following on from the thoughts started in the ‘There Is A Fold’ post.

That’s a few choice highlights, or at least the least embarrassing ones anyway. Here’s to the next 5 years…