Skype Silence

Skype usage and Facebook traffic down by 5% in one week. People have had enough of constantly being poked and IMd to death.

Having to talk to lots of people in the US, Europe and Oz I couldn't live without skype.

Eliot Noyes

Noyes Telephone Stand
Room for a telephone and a directory underneath. This is almost the first prototype of the mobile phone.

Eliot Noyes book by Phaidon here

paper plane flight

bearth & deplazes

A cool reduction of architecture from swiss company Bearth & Deplazes.

Detroit Electronic Music Festival

Movement 2008 is due to be held on May 24 in Detroit. A truely amazing line up of techno legends including
Moodymann Last FM page on Saturday night.

Detroit is home to the most influential people of minimal house and techno, often not getting the spot light they deserve. A list in no particular order of some of the greats.

Mad Mike
Juan Atkins
Moodymann
Theo Parrish
Jeff Mills
Carl Craig
Kenny Larkin
Alton Miller
Blake Baxter
Derrick May
Kevin Saunderson

Social Network Analysis

A really old post from 2002 but very intriguing to see how all this became web 2.0
Peter Morville

joost live and mac OSX in beta

At long last Joost is out of beta and live. A lot of content is still not great but that's the web for you.
Pier 2 Pier is a really smart move by Joost (The team that bought us Skype)

The more people that watch it the faster the 6 sec clips get passed on. This does mean that I will be addicted to TV again but just while working on photoplop documents.

I have to admire the smooth slick menu design it really is there when you want it and disappears when you start watching. Great that they have released beta for Mac now.

mvrdv to start building for MIR in New Orleans

Make It Right project has commissioned MVRDV to build affordable housing in New Orleans.

Most of the designs on MIR site are raised up but a lot of the houses flooded were completely submerged so I cant see that just raising the houses is enough. A movable stilts idea would be much better.

glass the movie

After watching Looking Glass again
I found this new film due to release in Summer.



My selection of my favourite
composers in Alphabetical order

--------------------------------------


Johann Sebastian Bach
Béla Bartók
Glenn Branca
Benjamin Britten
Gavin Bryars | Portsmouth Sinfonia
John Cage
Philip Glass
Henryk Górecki
Gustav Mahler
Michael Nyman
Arvo Pärt
Steve Reich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Karlheinz Stockhausen
John Tavener

KidYourSelf

I have to laugh to myself when reading the diatribe of sore losers in media planning bleeting on about how 'elfyourself' didn't work. 120 million visitors over a 6 week period and 75 million elves sent on, yeah right.

Advertising is a numbers game no one asks for the 30' spot to interrupt their TV program. Digital has the added advantage of people that engaged with the campaign will mostly on send on to someone that will engage with it to.

I'm sure Office Max are laughing all the way to the bank. In a sector that is low interest and driven by cost per unit having a campaign that warms consumers to their brand is a good thing. Sure some people forget the brand name, but so do most people when asked to recall any advertising campaign.

Elfyourself worked because it's a great concept, easy to engage with and you can share it. The 3 rules of user generated content on rails. I see so many online campaigns that are over complicated, digital creative's porn. Good for awards but they can only dream of being as effective as EYS.

ToyNY who have worked with OfficeMax have pushed up sales no end. Not surprising when they are all ex Fallon and Crispin Porter + Bogusky. The one other stroke of clever planning is only having these seasonal sites up for the Christmas period, that way each year it's special. The US agencies seem to get viral, they know viral is a result not a media buy. 

fairtrade bananas

watch

Alex Rutterford PSP ad

Director / Alex Rutterford
Over a year old but is a great ad.
Better sound track and quality here

Paul Belford lecture at TypoCircle

21st feb Thurs at JWT.
Paul Belford's This is real Art site

xo laptop operating system

One XO laptop website.
Pentagram designed the website for this.
Operating system designs here

The laptop was designed
by Yves Behar

Digital books

Harper Collins start selling digital versions of their books. You can preview most of the book in rough jpg format first.

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Interesting comment on this, HC were pushed into doing digital books by the author who argued his case to do so. Shame on HC for not giving the credit where it is deserved. Coelho isa true pirate, arrrrrrrrr.

System call comparison

This is an old post on visual complexity. It's well known that windows is the most un secure system to operate but these two images show why.

Kolumba Museum Cologne

Peter Zumthor's new addition to the ruins at Cologne.

modular living

mocoloco good design blog for 

architecture and design.

Australian tips for green house builds here.

4khz inky video

irregular flow from 4khz on Vimeo.

german djs living rooms

Have we all become Victorians again. Our empirical quest for the new sound, fashion, living room, storage has left lhouses and bedrooms littered with records, computers and dusty turn tables. This article just sums in all up.