It is said that, when the Titanic went down the cold seas, the ship took with it innumerable treasures. Among these, £200 millon in diamonds. 

The location of the Titanic's wreck is known since 1985. At no more than 450 miles before the coast of New York, it rests quietly, waiting to be relieved of her treasures. Yet the booty remains unreachable; too deep, too far, too costly. 

Unless of course, an earthquake would stir up the sea floor, and bring the treasure into divers' reach.

Quake 

In many respects, such an earthquake hit us recently, figuratively speaking then, with the financial crisis that marked the end of the 2000's. 

Erupting with unexpected violence, the quake buried certain businesses completely, uncovered opportunities for others, and forced entire tribes to new grounds. 

Of these tribes, advertising's Mad Men were among the more badly hit. Suddenly gone was the budget for an extra witty commercial at Christmas. And all of a sudden, clients required accountability. Gone was the comprehension for the fuzziness of the link between gross rating points and sales.   

The earthquake had made means short, and so clients sought to do more with less. 

Sometimes that was as  straightforward as reposition, upgrade, or offshore. Other times, serious data foraging was required. And since market studies are expensive and take time, some thought of re-analysing or combining existing data.

in the meantime, the quake had changed nothing to Moore's law. Computer power had gone up, and IT prices had come down. Serious ERP, or the management of  resources through better data analysis, became affordable to small and mid-size companies.       

Did the crisis then, lead to better data analysis? In a way it did, but it led to something else as well. The quake made data warehouses interested in data interpretation. 

New kids on the block

It's usually the IT department who are keeping data, and they don't always have the staffing to provide at the same time data mining, Windows maintenance and to guard the network from intruders.

No short way thus, for marketing to get at its data. It required a friendly smile and a dedicated IT-officer. And it didn't take long for smart IT-companies to spot the opportunity smiling at them. 

The increased need for better access to data was noticed by data warehousing companies, traditionally providing exclusively high-end computer architecture. 

And since they already were managing the inflow and merge of customer data, their next logical step was to provide data analysis as well.  

From that idea, the newt one followed just as swiftly; "While we are at it, why not expand our analysis offer with marketing communications advice?" 

And so it's finally the quake and IT understaffing, that are bringing new opportunities today for media and communications professionals, or at least those with a knack for data, to help small and medium sized companies build campaigns from data that was sleeping on the ocean floor. 

Pinterest, an online service catering to scrapbookers and hobbyists, has been in the spotlight recently for its staggering growth. Up to the point of Mashable pondering: "How Pinterest Is Changing Website Design Forever", referring to the service's patchwork page layout. Eureka? Yes and no. 

Pinterest's layout has absolutely nothing new, nor is there a universal truth hiding behind its page design concept. But there is a conclusion to draw. 

Pinterest's success shows that sometimes all users need, is a spot to put their stuff, quick and dirty. Which leads us to the discussion of functionality overkill.
 
Offering extra functionality online has a price. You require it if your business is, let's say, selling data. You would then like to offer users something like an "advanced search" functionality. 

This keynote by the übersympathetic Pablo Defendini focuses on technicals mostly; in this case clever CSS to make comics readable on iphones as well as on monitors, without reworking code or visuals.

However, something more interesting is happening here. The issue with making comics digital experiences, are their boxes. Yes, comics are a essentially a sequence of frames, through which a story is told.

In a traditional comic experience, our eyes jump from box to box, our mind stiching the story together as it develops. On screens however, in some way, that doesn't work.

It seems screens hinder our minds in making those fluid, natural jumps.      

In Pablo's work however, the box frames are dissappearing, making frames blend into one another, and making comic reading somewhat of a "sliding" experience. Check 07:05 in the vid to get an idea.

It's kind of simple and rudimentary, I agree, but it does provide very interesting online design perspectives, even more so when combined with parallax scrolling effects.

Designers, at your machines :)

Original vid via Jenn at O'Reilly and Bart at Netlash  

Doug Haslam of Voce Communications (a Porter Novelli company) discusses the latest round of Facebook changes and The Ragú Incident of 2011 (featuring C.C. Chapman). Via Media Bullseye.