We Tell Stories - Digital Literature from Penguin

Penguin have just launched an interesting project named 'We Tell Stories'. Each week over the coming six weeks they are launching a weekly digital fiction story told through various interactive media. The first story, 'The 21 Steps' by Charles Cumming is told by following a path over a Google Map, with each location in the story telling a new part of the story. This weeks story 'Slice' by Toby Litt is told across two blogs, each written by the main characters in the story. Readers can follow the story in real time through Twitter. Innovative story telling through digital media while still young has been explored often, especially as part of elaborate marketing campaigns. What is interesting here is that these are six stories written specifically as digital literature. While the stories are 'read' in a very different way, what will be interesting will be to see if the reader will have any influence or input into the story iteself. The second story, allows the readers to comment on the blog posts, but it does not appear that they are being replied to by the character in the story, or that they are influencing the story.

Steve Jobs Interview

Interesting interview with Steve Jobs in Forbes this month. On marketing consultants...

"It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't. We figure out what we want. ... "So you can't go out and ask people, you know, what the next big [thing.] There's a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, 'If I'd have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me "A faster horse." ' "