Historical Barbies & Jurassic World Alive AR

By David Erickson | March 8, 2018

Beyond Social Media Show, Episode 220

BL and David discuss Mattel’s new line of historic Barbies; made up holidays; the Philando Castille crowdfunding effort that fed a school district; brilliant billboards; Techmeme’s new Ride Home podcast; how to write good error messages; the Jurassic World Alive AR app; Mall of America’s mallbot; Amazon’s creepy, laughing Echo; thought transfer technology; facial recognition in interviews; a brainwave-powered exoskeleton; voice optimization for Amazon Alexa; and much, much more.

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Best Digital Cases

Inspiring Historic and Living Legend Women Are Being Made Into Barbie Dolls

Kids around the world will soon be able to own a Barbie doll bearing the likeness of Frida Kahlo, Amelia Earhart, Katherine Johnson and Olympian Chloe Kim. Happy #InternationalWomensDay.

Made-Up Holidays

There are literally thousands of holiday, some very obscure, such as National No Socks Day and National Dance Like A Chicken Day. Then there’s the branded holidays, like National Barbie Day.

#NationalPoutineDay ~ you know you want some! 5th annual observance. pic.twitter.com/IAzehqdR1P

— Chase's Calendar (@ChasesCalendar) March 5, 2018

Jurassic World Alive AR Game is The Next Pokemon

It’s like Pokemon, but with giant dinosaurs whose DNA samples you collect.

Jurassic World Alive looks like Pokémon Go but with giant dinosaurs

Brilliant Billboards

These cleverly creative billboards will make you smile.

13 Funny Billboards That Make You Want To Salute To Designers’ Creativity

Philando Castile’s Kindness Lives On

To honor his memory, a diversity and ethics college class at Metropolitan State University in St Paul, Minnesota, raised money to pay the lunch debt of students at his former school, J.J. Hill Montessori in St. Paul, MN. He regularly used his own money to buy lunch for kids who couldn’t afford lunch.

How To Write A Good Error Message

There’s an everyday type of failure that doesn’t get much attention in the product development process: The humble error message.

Here’s how you write a good error message for your product
Web Form Best Practices [INFOGRAPHIC]

Techmeme Launches Daily “Ride Home” Podcast

Techmeme Ride Home will be released Monday through Friday at 5pm Eastern, and will feature a roundup of the day’s tech news that should last about 20 minutes. It’s part of a trend to daily podcasts.

Techmeme Ride Home on iTunes

Mallbots

Mall Of America is employing technology to improve customer service, and keep people coming to the mall.

Mall of America tests robots, chatbot as it looks to improve visitor experience

Worst Digital Cases

Amazon Echo’s Alexa is Randomly Laughing and It’s Creepy As Hell

You’re reading in bed at night. The house is dark. Your Alexa is in another room. And she’s laughing a creepy, loud, human-sounding laugh, randomly. It happened to a lot of people.

https://twitter.com/CaptHandlebar/status/966838302224666624

Thought Transfer Technology

We’re one step closer to being able to broadcast our thoughts to a screen, thanks to artificial intelligence.

This exoskeleton can be controlled by your thoughts pic.twitter.com/HPPv2Sls4U

— Futurism (@futurism) October 17, 2017

AI Is Now Analyzing Candidates’ Facial Expressions During Video Job Interviews

Echo Is Leaving Brands Speechless

Brands need a new strategy for dealing with voice-search assistants. If brands aren’t in the top of voice-activated search results, they will never be chosen.

The Next Big Threat to Consumer Brands (Yes, Amazon’s Behind It)

Shiny New Stuff

ReShot

This is a good source of non-stock, original, quality images by emerging photographers. You can download them and use them, free, on personal or commercial projects.

ReShot

Afterlight 2

A very flexible and intuitive photo editing app.

Learn Digital From Google

Work at your own pace to complete each of the 26 digital marketing topics. You can unlock badges and also earn a Digital Garage Certificate of Online Proficiency.

Google Digital Garage