Your daily mix of foresight & futures

You can scour the Internet in search of the latest consumer trends and cultural shifts, or you can let us do it for you. T&T provides a daily snapshot of the world’s most intriguing happenings and what they mean for the marketplace tomorrow.

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An initiative that started in Mexico and Madrid has been taken to a whole new level in Buenos Aires by Sol, a mother, a graphic designer and a socially conscious woman. It works like this: every time someone goes into a café to buy a cup of coffee he or she can pay for another cup for a person who can’t afford to buy one. Sol set up a Facebook page to gather volunteers and created stickers to mark which places had joined the initiative. This shows how social media can facilitate global initiatives on a local level.

Link: www.sophiaonline.com.ar

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space

Facing a pretty lean budget, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has come up with a clever way to get images of Earth from space. NASA launched three smartphones into orbit to snap pictures, then tapped amateur radio geeks back on Earth to decode the information from the “satellites.” The mission could be a sign of things to come for “Citizen Science” as people figure out higher uses for consumer-grade technology.

Other good news: the phones are much less dangerous space junk than older satellites.

Link: mashable.com

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spanish ad

A Spanish charity has created a new anti-abuse billboard with a message only kids can see. A lenticular layer to the poster shows different images to people looking from different angles—so only people at kids’ height can see the secret message. Adults can see the tagline “sometimes, child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it” and an image of a child’s face, but it is only kids who can see the bruises and cuts on the child, and the helpline number to call. This case is great for empowering kids, but the same tech could reach much further—for instance showing the “boring” health credentials of snacks only to parents, or avoiding advertising sensitive products and services to those too young.

Link: gizmodo.com

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color

According to Fast Company, 90% of an assessment for trying out a product is made by color alone. The Logo Company has come up with a very pretty breakdown showing which colors are best for which companies and why, something for brands to think about when choosing colors that fit with their brand values.

Link: www.fastcompany.com

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