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Oh…the extent to which some people go for an original Halloween costume!
And I thought my husband went a tad overboard with building a Buzz Lightyear costume complete with blow-molded parts, for our then 5 year old son!
This is incredible!
” I really wanted to get the faceted geosphere look with wireframe.”
Says Eric Testroete of his ‘papercraft self portrait’.
I think he got the look he was going for…!
Check out the whole complicated process here.
I am a HUGE fan of the iPhone and what it has done for technology. One clever device with so many uses…how did we ever live without it?
And it just seems to get better. A product developed by ‘Square‘, allows payments to be immediately made through any device with an audio jack input. A fast, simple way to accept and make payments. Especially good for small businesses, fundraisers and vendors. Below is a screen shot of a receipt that is sent to your phone or email, no paper receipts!
From the Square website…
“In February 2009, Jim McKelvey wasn’t able to sell a piece of his glass art because he couldn’t accept a credit card as payment. Even though a majority of payments has moved to plastic cards, accepting payments from cards is still difficult, requiring long applications, expensive hardware, and an overly complex experience. Square was born a few days later right next to the old San Francisco US Mint.
Today the Square team is focused on bringing immediacy, transparency, and approachability to the world of payments: an inherently social interaction each of us participates in daily. We’re starting with a limited beta and rolling out to everyone in early 2010.”
This video takes you through the process step by step. Have a look….
via: twitter
I graduated from Design school way back in 1990. That’s a long time ago…fast forward 20 years, and I am back. This time studying for my Masters of Design, in an attempt to one day be in a career in a field that didn’t really exist when I was in University and College those many years ago. And wow, have things changed….students have changed, technology has changed [we now have technology!], and courses have changed.
This video demonstrates the way in which most Universities have not progressed with these changes…I like to think that OCAD is not one of those schools. Design and Art school needs to progress with the times. Our classes are small, our teachers know our names…and we don’t sit in theatres with 100’s of nameless faces. A really interesting look at what education often looks like outside of our school.
thanks Hugo!
Is your New Year’s Resolution to reduce the amount of time you spend on Social Media sites? Or maybe it’s to completely stop the time-sucking that is Facebook and Twitter.
Here’s a site you should know about…Web 2.0 Suicide Machine . It allows you to sign out of all your Social Networking sites forever.
“Liberate your newbie friends with a Web2.0 suicide! This machine lets you delete all your energy sucking social-networking profiles, kill your fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web2.0 alterego. The machine is just a metaphor for the website which moddr_ is hosting; the belly of the beast where the web2.0 suicide scripts are maintained. Our service currently runs with Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and LinkedIn! Commit NOW!”
This is for serious quitters only. Once you commit Social Networking suicide – there is no going back. It takes less than an hour to delete all traces by the suicide machine. Manual suicide? 9 hours 35 minutes.
Watch videos of those who were brave even to commit, read their last words…and do it if you dare!
Wow. It has been a while. I have been really busy lately. Beyond busy actually. Teaching, studying, working as a Community Manager….which brings me to the topic of this post. Brand reputation being built by the consumers. Advertisers are facilitating these conversations in many cases, but really, it is the consumer who is telling fellow consumers whether or not a product or service is worthy. The on-line community that I have been ‘managing’ is Glade, [the fragrance people], and through a bit of Grassroots facilitating [Facebook, Twitter, Review Blogs etc.], the community is growing, people are talking and word is getting out.
But there is a surprising entry into the world of word of mouth. A bank. The UK Bank – First Direct – has created a new website that aggregates live comments about the brand from eight million social media sites.
“Our customers are writing about us all over the web and we want to embrace this, so we’re showing customer comments, good and bad, from websites, blogs and forums for everyone to see,” says Lisa Wood, head of marketing at First Direct.
A brave effort. Not all of the comments are positive. It is still a bank after all. This is the first bit of innovation seen in the banking industry in a very long time. By letting consumers know that they are willing to be transparent, to show the good, the bad and the ugly as told by the consumers, they are building trust in an industry that has lost all trust.
Research conducted by First Direct, indicated that we now trust online strangers to help us make many of our everyday decisions. Consumers are turning to online review websites and comparison sites rather than listening to sales people.
Graham Jones, an internet psychologist who specialises in the way people use the internet, explains: “As we become more open, so our expectations change towards the way we communicate with businesses. This new age of openness demands an honest and transparent approach and the rules of engagement are changing. The research clearly showed that one of the major drivers for people sharing their opinions online was a feeling of power, of having a voice both to promote good and lambast bad customer experiences. Businesses need to understand this and adapt accordingly.”
And more and more businesses are. They have to if they want to compete in the ‘Age of Openness.’
Working in an Architectural firm for 10 years, I have seen a lot of renderings, many of them quite good. In fact, many of the CG renderings were at first glance difficult to tell if they were actual spaces/buildings or an designer’s/architect’s vision.
Tonight I came across a film by Alex Roman. This is ‘digital architecture’ like no other. I couldn’t quite believe this wasn’t an actual video tour through Louis Khan’s Phillips Exeter Academy Library. “The Third & The Seventh” project, for the Mundos Digitales 2009 [digital architecture] conference, is a stunning example of how real CG can be, with the right tools…and of course the right digital artist. Not just beautiful to look at, the soundtrack is perfect, The Divine Comedy’s “Laika’s Theme” from “Absent Friends” album.
via: fubiz
Neurosonics Audiomenical is a new film created by Partizan Lab’s Chris Cairns.
“The film was made in collaboration with The Scratch Perverts, Foreign Beggars, Shlomo and Will Clarke with sound design by Will Cohen. Post production by The Mill London.” View all the credits on the site.
Love it! Here’s what Chris Cairns says about it….
“This one’s for my Dad…Kingdom of the unreal but also a higher state of being, ultimately free of the limitations of the material world through the agency of science, technology, and imagination.”
via: motionographer
This is kinds crazy. Create a pattern via Twitter, it gets encoded somehow, and then gets turned into a graphic on a T-Shirt.
The concept, created by Daito Manabe and Motoi Ishibashi, is based on the idea of using something ‘the wrong way’. Creating a new use for an old technology but combining it with a new one. 
This video gives a look into how it works.
via: today and tomorrow
Gotta love it when advertisers use technology to get a point across. To draw attention to domestic abuse, a campaign for Amnesty International, uses a built-in camera with eye-tracking technology to determine when someone is looking at it, and when they are not. The content actually changes depending on the viewers eye movement.
The ad in a Hamburg, Germany bus stop shows a husband beating his wife when no one is looking, as soon as they turn to look at it, the ad transforms into a portrayal of a loving couple. Ads imitating life. Using a built-in camera with eye-tracking technology, it can actually tell exactly when someone is looks at it.
I wonder what advertiser will take advantage of this technology next…
via: dvice
The Economist magazine has a web presence unlike most traditional print media. They have developed a site called “Thinking Space”. If anyone has the idea that The Economist is a boring news magazine, a visit to The Thinking Space may change your mind. They have developed an interactive site that asks the question…”Where do you get your ideas?”
The screen grabs shown, are from the founder and CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek’s Thinking Space. He gives a virtual tour of everything from staff photos to his passport to his favourite Economist articles, [there had to be a tie in somewhere!] They also want to see the Thinking Spaces of ‘regular’ Economist readers too, and are looking for submissions.
It’s great to see traditional media embracing technology, rather than fighting it. Using non-traditional methods to attract new readership while maintaining existing Economist readers.
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