A report just unveiled by think-tank the New Economics Foundation (nef) has found a robust way to calculate how much someone should be paid in relation to the value they create to society. It uses a series of measures including economic return, environmental impact, and knock-on effects for societal wellbeing. The report questions whether pay reflects the true value of different jobs and shatters some of the myths used to justify high pay. Tax accountants are said to be the most destructive, destroying £47 of social value for every £1 they create. Waste-recycling workers on the other hand, generate £12 for every £1 spent on their wages. In the case of advertising executives, the report calculates the cost to society of over-consumption. The authors quote the economist JK Galbraith who argued that advertising created socially and environmentally wasteful “wants” where needs have already been met.

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If I Can Dream is the new talent show from Simon Fuller, the pop culture goliath who brought us Spice Girls, Pop Idol and So You Think You Can Dance. If I Can Dream will follow 5 Hollywood hopefuls as they try to break into the movie industry. Described as “post-reality entertainment”, the show will allow viewers to interact with the hopefuls and narrative on-demand. Shock, horror, it will be interactive and online before it hits TV. No surprise there, what is interesting is the shift of focus from pre-talent content to post-talent content. Susan Boyle was notable for the plethora of post-talent exposure she received. Susan does America, Susan the Aftermath, Susan Sings to Cakes, One Night with Susan (18+)…If I Can Dream is one of the signs of our post-reality culture. The novelty of the stupid and talentless is finally starting to wane and people want to see genuine talent rewarded and nurtured. One of the reasons why this year’s X-Factor winner was never going to be Jedward but Joe McElderry, the show’s undisputed best singer. The day of the delusional X-Factor jester may well have passed.

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Cute culture is taking over the world and making our brains soft while we’re watching YouTube clips of laughing babies and sleepy puppies, according to an article in Vanity Fair. Our growing fascination with overly cute things is said to be part of a broader cultural movement which has arisen in a context of war, economic collapse and Wi Fi excess. One of the most viewed clips on YouTube is a video titled “Hahaha” showing a baby laughing in a high chair. The rise of cute has gone hand in hand with viral culture. Meanwhile, pictures of celebrity kids is said to be what keeps the tabloid industry afloat. And by 2010, pastel coloured cupcakes will be more popular than the way too mature wedding cake. Cuteness has become officially trendy and is permeating mainstream culture and marketing. Rock band Weezer is one of the unlikely new faces of cute; the group is endorsing cute product Snuggie, a wearable blanket for warmth and comfort. The unloved car industry is also tapping into the cute trend. When the Smart car was introduced into the U.S. last year spokesman Ken Kettenbeil said, “If you look at it from the front, with the position of the grill and the headlights, it looks like it’s smiling.” The word cutegasm has entered the lexicon, which an Urban Dictionary user has defined as “The reaction one feels when being exposed to something overly cute. This may be an emotional, physical or even sexual response.” Here’s the example: “When Holly saw the baby trying to dance, she had a cutegasm.”

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Professor Joel Waldfogel, author of Scroogenomics: Why you Shouldn’t Buy Presents for the Holidays, visited the RSA last week to talk about why we shouldn’t get caught up in expensive Christmas shopping or “an orgy of value destruction”, as he chose to describe it. His theory illustrates how our festive spending generates £50bn worth of economic waste each winter due to difficulties of actually satisfying gift recipients. Professor Waldfogel, who is also author of The Deadweight Loss of Christmas, argues that when we buy for ourselves, every dollar we spend produces at least a dollar in satisfaction, because we shop carefully and purchase items that are worth more than they cost. When it comes to giving, it’s often the opposite; choices are less informed, leaving recipients dissatisfied to varying degrees. His surveys have shown that we value gifts up to 20% less than items we buy for our selves.

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This is our favourite Christmas brand viral. It’s from a Dutch website who have written and produced a Christmas song for Apple called ‘Christmas in Cupertino’. The song pictures Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller “dancing round the Apple tree”. Weirder still, Steve Jobs’s liver transplant is also mentioned. And you can actually buy it on iTunes. All proceeds from the song go to de Dutch Liver Foundaction.

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What if when we bought products, the choice was taken away from us and we were given the product the expert thought best? That’s the theme of Hipstery a new T-shirt store online. Their manifesto reads, ‘Life is increasingly loosing mystery to the encompassing world of technology and an endless desire for knowing’. Rather than choosing your T-shirt design, they choose one for you, basing their decision on a survey of seven questions. The faces behind Hipstery, who prefer to be known as ‘scientists’, say they are experts in picking the right T-Shirt for you, ‘With over 10 years experience in the t-shirt industry we combine our knowledge, contacts and superior style to create the Hipstery’. A thought provoking retail model, it would be interesting to see all kinds of retailers take this approach to selling us products, experts in their field prescribing what is best for us based on what we told them. It would certainly put surprise and mystery back into our lives. Whether it would work out or not, Hipstery T-Shirts will definately be on our Xmas list.

The Twoddler is a new award-winning prototype that allows toddlers to communicate with their family and friends using Twitter. The team behind it, designers and academics based at the Expertise Centre for Digital Media in Germany, have simply created the application from an old Fisher Price Toy. The plastic toy has been enhanced with pictures of family members and a special Arduino circuit board, which connects to sensors on the parts of the toy. When a toddler interacts with the toy the sensors process activity in two ways. Firstly, if the toddler plays with the picture of ‘mommy’ for 3 minutes, an @mommy tweet is sent saying ‘(toddler’s name) misses mommy and looks forward to playing with her’; whilst if the toddler hits the bell four times in a row a twitter message will be posted saying ‘(toddler’s name) is showing off his music skills with a new tune’. Other interactions with the toy can link to other Twoddlers, where toddlers can communicate with their friends through the toy’s flashing lights. The basic premise is that the Twoddler works well with busy families where parents can’t always be around their children. A mother can know that her toddler is thinking about her when she’s at work. Beyond that, the Twoddler demonstrates another innovative approach to linking physical world interactions with digital activity.

The residents of Westbury-sub-Medip in Somerset have set up what is Britain’s smallest library. After loosing their much needed mobile-library service, the village of 800 people clubbed together to transform the iconic red telephone box that lay dormant in their village into a book exchange. The idea of village resident Janet Fisher, the local parish bought the telephone box from BT for £1, whilst villagers then contributed wooden shelves and their own books and local businesses supplied signage. “It has really taken off,” Parish councilor Bob Dolby told The Guardian. “Turnover is rapid and there’s a good range of books, everything from reference books to biographies and blockbusters.” From thrillers to classics and cooking books, it even houses a small children’s section, Westbury’s proud residents are never short of something to read. The mini library is of course finished off with the obligatory ‘silence please’ sign.

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Award winning multi-disciplinarian designer Tokujin Yohioka has created an installation for the window display of Maison Hermes’ Tokyo store. Following on from last week’s branding theme of simplicity, Yohioka’s hangs two of Hermes silk scarves, whilst the video projections of two models seemingly blow the scarves. The result is aesthetically pleasing and adds a sense of theatre to the window-display. We admire how Yohioka has successfully combined an innovative use of video media with his client’s product. Yokioka also works with Muji, Issey Miyake & BMW mainly focusing on work and shop design, whilst he also has a product design series called ‘Tokyo-Pop’.

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Durrell Bishop, owner of Luckybite, a London based design & innovation-company is, according to Wired UK, ’on a mission to “physicalise” software’. His latest product the Birdbox, a physical application for the iPhone and iPod touch, does just that. You download the application to your device; then before going to bed you set the alarm and you sit the device in the birdbox he and his design partner have created. Through the circular door you see the face of the clock ticking away, when the alarm goes off you see the birds nesting as they sing to alert you to wake. “The computer screen is a window on a new world, but the services it provides don’t need to hide there”, Bishop told Wired. “Products get sucked in to computers and become wonderful lights on screens. It’s always fun to drag their potential back to physical products”. You can set the birds to tweet every hour or just to wake you in the morning – to snooze for 10 minutes you simply tip the box. The box of course also hides the charging station. More physical Apps are our top trends tip for 2010. The Bird Box App is free to download from the App store, whilst you can buy the box for £8 from Luckybits.