New Year, New Ideas

• • 1 With Star Wars safely released and breaking records from here to everywhere, let’s look to what’s next on the silver screen with The Atlantic. From series instalments to independent gems, a handy commentary of ‘What It Is’  is followed by an extra ‘If You Need Convincing’ to reel you in.
  • 2 Wired aren’t counting their proverbial chickens, previewing the here and now of what’s new in tech from messaging to cracking natural language processing –sagely commenting on how far we’ve yet to go – for all the artificial intelligence in the world, all ‘innovative’ virtual personal assistant services in 2016 are named after women.
  • 3 A rich, multimedia travel feature in The New York Times sets the bar for wanderlust with its 52 places to visit this year, from ecotourism in Isla Holbox to the architectural wonders of Brno, discover why these are the spots to be heading to.
  • 4 Quartz bring a global line up of not-to-miss design events and conferences from Helsinki to Cape Town to our home town, Berlin – covering TED talks, typography, entrepreneurship, the world wide web and more. This isn’t all aspirational content though, with Quartz showing the way to the host of online streaming that will be available for all. 
  • 5 Regardless of the source, or the  screen you watch them on, we’re still going to call them TV series, and so will TIME, who have selected a mixed bag of TV shows to get excited about – from revivals to the anticipated debuts.
  • 6 It’s Nice That pack an inspiring start to the year, introducing us to 12 creatives to watch in 2016. Snappy interviews discover editors, photographers, illustrators and design studios in conversation – each with their own vibrantly illustrated portrait.
  • 7 If you would like to refresh, or rather, ruin your lexicon in the new year, take a look at MTV ’s picks of the slang the cool kids will be slinging in ’16. Call it your social research, or – take the laugh-out-loud antidote that is Billz Schultz’s vendetta ‘Words We Should Stop Using in 2016’ over at The Daily Beast.
  • 8 Consequence of Sound dish out the 50 most anticipated albums of the year. They admit they can’t promise you the release dates, but they can promise music to please all manner of listener’s ears with their comprehensive picks.
  • 9 If all the preoccupation with predictions is just too much to handle, get into the wacky with Kalman Meyerowitz’s cartooning forecast of the year ahead at The New York Times. The illustrations span the profoundly banal, “Noise gets NOISIER”, to the completely bizarre, and remind us not to take things so seriously.