At Involution, over the years, we've been lucky enough to count among our team a number of designers and strategists who are also industry thought leaders. In this new and regular blog feature, "From the Archives", we'll highlight articles from the past, written by our Invo colleagues that have stood the harsh test of Internet time and still have something to say to us today.

This week, our links round up on design and innovation in the digital life features a little something for everyone: from the future of gestural interactions to a ground breaking transparent concept plane to J.K. Rowling's latest online endeavors.

For the past 10 months, Involution Studios has been producing The Digital Life podcast on digital design and technology. We're proud to say today that we've achieved a significant milestone: Episode 30. The Digital Life has now reached adulthood and is stretching its legs.

At Involution, since we're fully immersed in the digital life, we're often deluged with articles via RSS and Twitter. In this, our first links round up, we thought we'd share some of what we've been reading online on the topics of innovation, social media, life, the universe and everything.

Jared Spool delights in being provocative. Listen: I like provocative. Much of the way people frame our professional world is outdated or out-of-touch. It takes provocateurs to get most of us to look in a different direction and consider new things. Unfortunately, many of those who make provocative statements as a matter of routine espouse half-baked and incorrect things alongside their other good ideas. Such is the case with Jared's latest attempt to stir up a shit storm, Agencies Don't Like Me Very Much.

For Immediate Release
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (U.S.) – May 26, 2011 – Raptr, the only online platform that allows gamers to share, interact, and discover personalized gaming content across all major gaming platforms and IM services, was featured on industry bellwether TechCrunch today.

"Raptr is the only service out there to aggregate essentially one's entire gaming life into a single communication and management platform," said Dirk Knemeyer, a founder of Involution Studios. "Dennis' (Fong, Raptr CEO) vision for Raptr preceded the social networking explosion and led to a service that was designed from the start to be ahead of the latest trends in cloud computing and cross-device communication. We're thrilled, but certainly not surprised, to see Dennis and the Raptr team enjoying such overwhelming success."

This weekend I attended the Humanity+ Conference at Parsons in New York City. Subtitled "Transhumanism Meets Design", the conference aspired to "explor(e) emerging technology, transdisciplinary design, culture and media theory, and biotech."

For Immediate Release
NEW YORK CITY (U.S.) – April 19, 2011 – Involution Studios Creative Director Juhan Sonin was announced today as one of just 11 Respect Advisors for the NextGen:Health Conference. Scheduled for February 2012, NextGen:Health aspires to bring together "the greatest minds in modern medicine and healthcare from around the world."

Always self-deprecating, Sonin commented: "The Respected Advisors is an all-start team. You know they are going to bring together an incredible collection of minds. I'm not really sure what they're doing putting me in that group but I'm going to really enjoy being part of it."

If you enjoyed our recent series on tech in Africa you might be interested in actually checking the situation out, on the ground, with the foremost tech experts on the continent.

This series on technology in Africa is written by Involution friends and emerging markets experts Niti Bhan and Muchiri Nyaggah.