There was some recent buzz about a new tablet from a company called Eurostar. This tablet was being made and marketed specifically for women, and would come pre-loaded with apps that would appeal to them. Oh, you know, like grocery shopping, perfume, and recipe apps. It’s called…wait for it…the ‘ePad Femme’. Not surprisingly, the tablet has sparked controversy over its content and presentation, being perceived as if it is talking down to women. The apparent subtext is that trying to find and download relevant apps is a task too difficult for the fairer sex.

Ostensibly, this incident is a poorly-conceived attempt to create a gender-specific product. But are gender specific gadgets worth the time and dollars of the manufacturers or consumers? Is there even sufficient data and research to show that such a niche exists? By all accounts, any attempts to build statistics around gender tech differences have led to very even or vague numbers. If anything, women are edging out men in almost all categories of online ‘early adopter’ behavior.

Thus far in the digital age, we’ve seen dozens of devices move millions of units based on unisex advertising. Apple and Samsung have become dominant forces in the consumer technology industry without the need for any kind of gender-specific marketing. Now, of course, brands and toys targeted to men or women have made tech extensions of their products with great success, but those always start with a core idea that’s gender-targeted and then tech is added is simply a layer. Our own web property Spark City World is girl-centric, but right to its very bones - when we move to retail extensions of the brand, we’re already positioned within a relevant audience. Making a colorful toaster and then shouting “Hey, Laaadiess!”, not so much.

The thing is, marketing otherwise ‘normal’ products toward a specific gender comes with a lot of risk. Not going far enough and making it indistinguishable to similar, unisex devices could render the intentions of the product moot and result in an inferior product. Go too far, and you risk offending and alienating the target sex. And this doesn’t just apply to tech (remember ‘BIC for her?’).

Take-away of the day: Spend more energy making amazing products, and spend less energy making them pink.

Good afternoon, facial hair aficionados. As usual, here we are with another follicular profile for our rabid facefans. This time, it’s none other than bearded boy wonder, Derek Ledoux, freshly-returned from GDC, and called one of 2013’s ‘beards to watch.’ And, as usual, we’re ranking it based on the three pillars of facial: lustre, length, and liveliness.

Lustre: Look at that sheen. Is it iridescent, even? We can’t even be sure without more expensive equipment, but we’re willing to bet he’s using some product in there. Is it Hennigan’s Beard Paste? Perhaps. It could be Forrester’s Face Fudge, but Derek seems like he buys premium, so Hennigan’s it is. Either way, I hope you’re wearing your aviators, because we’re in lustretown. Score: 9.5

Length: Derek sat down with us and revealed his 3-step process: Step 1 - start growing your beard out. Step 2 - forget about it. Step 3 - win. An alternative process is: Step 1 - Every morning, ask yourself ‘can my facial hair smother a polecat?’ Step 2 - Grow your beard until the answer is anything other than ‘no.’ Score: 9

Liveliness: If you’ve never seen a man tossing his facial hair bouncily through the air at a conference, you haven’t really lived, have you? If you’ve never stood next to a man at the bus stop in admiration as his beard gently wafted in the breeze, then please leave, because we’re done here. Derek’s beard strikes a beautiful balance between playfulness and stoicism, like a toy wooden duck lost and gamboling on the ocean tides. Score: 9.8

Total Score: 9.4 - ‘Transcendent.’

Yes, Derek’s been accused of ‘peacocking’ before, grandstanding his follicular endowment with a bit too little humility, but we don’t want to live in a world where people like Derek are chastised for daring to cross the ether of mediocrity into the celestial soup of hirsuteness. Face on, Derek! Face on!

The End.

Derek is one of the founders of Ottawa’s independent games group Dirty Rectangles, and a Web Applications and Game Developer at Fuel. Photo courtesy of Unwinnable.com’s Daniel Imperiale.

Last week, Facebook Announced a new feature, Graph Search, that allows users to search through their connections in a way that, well, actually makes sense.  Type ‘coworkers who like sushi’, and you’ll know who to ask out for an after-work dragon roll. Type ‘photos before 1990′ and you’ll easily find that picture of you and your buds waiting in line for Whitesnake.

On one hand, it’s a way to keep people on Facebook for longer, and, just maybe, run a couple fewer searches on rival Google’s engine.  Hey, if I can find a decent Mexican restaurant recommended by my friends, without needing to leave my Facebook chat, then why wouldn’t I?

On the other hand, it brings to mind an interesting question in regards to the ‘non-quantifiable’ data in our lives: In, say, a decade, what will have more ‘truth’: the truth that is relevant to one’s social sphere, or the webpage with the highest ranking on Google?  This is the challenge of the semantic web, the idea that the internet can actually achieve an understanding of not simply which documents or pages we are searching for, but what we actually want.

Tools like Google Voice and Siri attempt to remove certain intermediate steps from a user’s query, trying their best to fill in the blanks and ‘decide’ how to best help, while sites like amazon or last.fm try to cater a user’s experience to their apparent tastes, but it’s still a shallow system. And while we’ve yet to see exactly how deep Social Graph’s capabilities will go, social networking is such a major slice of why people are online in the first place, that comprehending how humans interact with other humans is a key ingredient to computers being able to assess our true goals and eventually grow to serve us more often, more quickly, and more fluidly.  (If you’ve got 3 minutes to spare, this is a great little primer of the concept.)

So we go social - we hook the internet into our friend list, into our photo feed, into our likes and dislikes, and see what the computer spits out. For now, as the staff at Mashable shows us, the insights that Graph Search can provide aren’t exactly earth-shattering (did you know KFC is the most popular food for fans of Star Wars?). As soon as Facebook’s tool goes fully live, with the new ability to search through their profiles and past updates, many users will immediately be floored by what is representing them online.  But this will change. Both Facebook and others will continue to refine the tools, and as users begin to have more sophisticated interactions online, and the ‘internet of things‘ takes hold, the social space will be more reflective of real tastes and real insights into a user’s thought process.

An example: a 10-year-old female Taylor Swift fan and a 49-year-old male fan of Phil Collins both run a search for ‘best albums of 2012′.  Their world views and life experience are completely different, as is their understanding of what the ‘best’ music might be.  Should their search result be identical? On one hand, one might argue ‘yes, how else will people discover new things and broaden their horizons?’  One the other hand, is there really any value to telling the 49 year-old that Rihanna’s latest album made the top 50? And vice versa for the 10 year old and Rick Ross’s new EP? In reality, both of these people were actually trying to make a playlist for a roadtrip - but the search engine couldn’t know that because they didn’t choose to type it. But with access to what they’re saying to friends, imagine: instead of Google’s ‘did you mean’ function correcting spelling, it actually corrected meaning? ie. Did you mean you’re looking for great roadtrip music for your drive this weekend?

We’re pretty sure that tackling a question like ‘what is truth’ is a bit too ambitious for a blog post, but it’ll be interesting to see the internet put in an earnest effort in the years to come. Ethical and privacy questions are fodder for a whole other discussion, of course, but in the meantime, I won’t be surprised if, in a few years, we’ll be looking back and wondering how we ever managed having to click through search results to find the best taco in town.

This brand new video pretty much sums up how exited we are to do what we do every day, collaborating with our insanely creative team, working with terrific clients like McDonald’s Europe, Lucasfilm and Nokia. and having an amazing space that inspires us. So, what do you think?

It was an evening of comedy, creative, and celebration as Canada’s digital elite joined forces to recognize the most innovative and effective online content from studios and agencies across the country.  Hosted by Epic Meal Time’s Harley Morenstein and TV host and producer Anne Marie Withenshaw, the Digis took place at the historic Carlu in downtown Toronto, and saw nominees from over 20 categories vying for the top spots.

Fuel had the honour of being nominated in two categories, and the even greater honour of bringing home the award for Best in Branded Entertainment at the Tuesday-night event for its work with McDonald’s Europe and their Happy Studio virtual world initiative (the second nomination was for Best in Web Gaming, also for Happy Studio). Currently running across Europe and stretching into markets in the Middle-east and Africa, the campaign extends the Happy Meal experiences for kids into a safe, engaging online environment where they can interact with their favourite characters from a host of entertainment properties like Shrek, Tintin, and Megamind, create their own avatars, and play with other kids worldwide.

“Every creative agency aspires to do great work, but not every agency is fortunate enough to work with inspiring and forward-thinking clients like the team at McDonald’s Europe,” said Fuel founder and SVP of Business Development, Jeff Doiron. “To create such an ambitious entertainment experience for kids across an entire continent, and to have such an amazing strategic and creative collaborative relationship with our client is a real privilege.”

The award after-party took place on Toronto’s trendy Screens Lounge rooftop, where winners, nominees and guests took the opportunity to schmooze and celebrate over drinks. The Digi Awards are Canada’s premier annual showcase of the remarkable companies, products and people who are making waves in the digital media industry – for more coverage of the entire evening and all the categories’ winners, head to the official site.