Do you know what the future of social media holds? This week we sent two members of our team (Dave B. and Dave C., a.k.a. "the Daves") to ReadWriteWeb's annual 2WAY summit at Columbia University in search of insights about digital technologies and social media.
In many ways, we're on the threshold of a new phase of the social media boom. 71% of the US population is on Facebook. 89% of US adults are using some form of social media, and 88% of companies are communicating with them. As this technology nears saturation, brands will need to find new ways to stand out from the crowd.
We recently sent a team member to the Food 2.0 conference, a daylong series of panels here in NYC that looked at the growing relationship between food and technology. With all that we learned, "growing" might be too gentle a word - the relationship between food and tech is booming!
It’s nearly February, and for many of us memories of well-intentioned New Year’s resolutions are already fading. Add that to the fact that bathing suit season seems far away (winter’s grip is still holding tight...it’s snowing in New York right now!) and the time seems perfect for a little comforting alcoholic indulgence. There’s nothing more comforting than beer - or is there?
It's safe to say that everyone has a memory or two of 2010 they'd like to bid farewell. That's the idea behind Good Riddance Day, a new tradition in New York's Times Square in the days leading up to the big New Year's Eve party.
A few weeks back, MAKE magazine (the quarterly bible for the do-it-yourself crowd) held their first East Coast fair, and Consumer Eyes had a front row seat. Entitled Maker Faire, it was a sort of free-for-all festival of DIY, celebrating every sort of creativity, from conceptual art to homemade robots to good old arts and crafts. The festival was huge, featuring over 300 exhibitors and performers. Popular Mechanics had a booth. So did Martha Stewart.
Lately, when something cool is happening on the New York food scene, it usually turns out to be happening somewhere in the vicinity of Madison Square Park (at 5th Avenue and 23rd Street). The park is the annual home of the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party – which brings together the country’s top pitmasters and over 100,000 die-hard barbecue enthusiasts every June – and every week seems to bring fresh proof that this unassuming corner of NYC is at the forefront of many current culinary trends.
Americans' love of chicken recently seems to have morphed into a love for chickens. As in raising chickens. Over the past few months, we've seen home chicken coops popping up in the most unlikely – read urban – places, indicating that a trend that started on the fringes of the locavore, sustainability and eco-consciousness movements is now moving into the mainstream.
When you hear “moonshine,” you might think of 1920s Appalachia or the Dukes of Hazzard – but for a growing group of foodies, the practice is anything but stuck in the past. From Brooklyn to San Francisco, enthusiasts are embracing the underground art and have taken to making their own whiskey, gin and even absinthe.
Living in a world of flashy smart products – smart cars, smart phones, smart TVs – it can be easy to lose sight of how much the new technologies can bring to even utterly prosaic items. A perfect example? The lowly parking meter.
©2013 Consumer Eyes
