12.07.2008 by Zoltan

The future of DJing?

Seeing this makes me think of how my mother used to think spinning vinyl was ‘just not how you make music’. Nostalgia for real wax aside, it seems to me that this is a bit too clinical and (potentially) takes a lot of the skill out of DJing. Almost like being able to see the waveform is cheating, as you no longer need to ‘feel’ the music.

But in time i’m sure kids will grow up knowing that they can touch any screen, and expect it to react. Then this will be OK, and we will most certainly be in the future. Or maybe that will be when someone ports this software to the iPhone and tells Andrew Andrew (of the legendary NYC iPod parties) about it?

12.07.2008 by Zoltan

Stop spam, read books

Everyone hates proving that they’re human. Captcha’s are those annoying sequences of letters, deformed beyond OCR, in every online form where you have to prove you’re smarter than the computer. But rather than use randomly generated sequences, some clever bod decided it could be put to better use by helping to digitise the world’s library, via a project called ReCAPTCHA

According to the site, “About 60 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent… more than 150,000 hours of work each day.” Put it all together and you get an endless distributed workflow, making good on their promise of “Digitizing Books One Word at a Time”.

A noble cause no doubt and a very simple and powerful idea. Honestly though, if these little puzzles are all that separate us from the machines, we’re fucked anyway, digitised world library or not.

10.07.2008 by Zoltan

What was I thinking?

I love the simplicity of this graphic, which neatly sums up my waning love for virtual friends. Although I still have my profile, I use Facebook now almost exclusively as an advertiser. And for this its absolutely awesome (though expensive at times). Anyway I just had to get it out there - I’m not in love with Facebook anymore. Phew. I feel better already…

17.06.2008 by Zoltan

Interactive YouTube

Something big is happening on YouTube. Something which is fundamentally going to change the way you and I use it. They may not look like much, but the newly added annotations allow you to embellish videos and even make them interactive.

Imagine the possibilities. Truly interactive narratives. User-defined endings. And even games (the example after the jump). Unfortunately the embed function doesn’t work, so you’ll have to jump over to check it out.

via Digital Examples

25.02.2008 by Zoltan

PicLens

PicLens is something very very special. Quite simply its a better way to search for images. A browser add-on, it uses the metaphor of a never-ending wall to display image results from google (or flickr) in a more natural way than simply by ‘page’. The infinite non-space of PicLens makes the act of searching for images a joy.

I think their brief must’ve been to re-create the experience of lightbox - where there is nothing apart from the image to distract your attention - and mash it up with everything that’s beautiful about digital.

And its surprisingly FAST! Actually its faster than normal because of the way it constantly grabs the forthcoming images. So by the time you want to see more, they’re already loaded. Brilliant! FYI its heaps better in Firefox.

31.01.2008 by Zoltan

Flash on the iPhone / iPod Touch

Apple fanboys pony up, cause my brand the-affair is officially the very first t-shirt brand with a mobile store, accessible through everyone’s favourite gadget. That’s right, our awesome Flash website is now available on the i’m-so-very-very-cool-but-still-can’t-play-Flash, iPhone. That’s right fanboys, you heard right - FLASH ON THE IPHONE!

So how did we achieve this little bit of tech-magic I hear you ask? Well, actually we did very little… All you’re going to need is the VNSea client released recently, and obviously a VNSea server running on some other broadband computer that you can then control. Its a tad on the slow side too, but hey, that’s the price for the bleeding edge.

Thanks to Kamil, our resident Flash guru :)

28.01.2008 by Zoltan

World Trends 2008

I never really understood the link between tube map and trends (apart from an easy way to lay out various loosely linked pieces of information), but anyway here is the 2008 version.

Nothing too-crazy / unexpected here. But it is interesting to note the rise of “Karma capitalism”, which only caught my eye because I received an xmas gift in the form of a KarmaCurrency voucher (which I am yet to spend). This in itself is not very interesting. The fact that I got it from my technologically illiterate mother certainly is…

via ad lab

22.01.2008 by Zoltan

PV3D 2.0 Alpha

You may not like magenta quite as much as Mr Doob (or even T-Mobile’s legal department for that matter), but you should definitely check out his experiments with the new-ish PV3D 2.0 alpha which supports run time lighting effects / shading.

Because if you remember anything about motion graphics circa 2001, your interweb is about to be infested. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Let’s just hope that the de rigeur feedback-infused soundtrack doesn’t come bundled with the effect this time around ;)

22.01.2008 by Zoltan

Russian Bytes

This is sooooo geeky yet somehow still very appealing. Maybe its the sheer simplicity of it? Or perhaps that elegant serif? Or the fact that Steve Jobs needs a lesson in what to preceed the word ‘byte’ with these days. Either way Art Lebedev (yes, they of the Optimus Maximus fame) have got it covered with these Russian dolls. Perfect gift for your mother I say…

via webponce

18.01.2008 by Zoltan

Finger fracture

Check out this new game by Vans, called “Finger Fracture” being developed specifically - SPECIFICALLY - for the iPhone. The screenshots look pretty cool, but its the fact that we used to make little skateboards out of wood/perspex back in high school and ‘ride’ them around the stair railings that makes this so appealing to the very people that are now owning iPhones.

It seems a pretty big gamble to put so much resource into such a tiny platform, but I’m certain its going to pay off ten times over in brand equity for Vans. We all need more clients like this - money where their mouth is - taking risks the size of their own (substantial) cojones!

via trend watch

11.01.2008 by Zoltan

Louis Vuitton stairs

What do you get when you mash-up a staircase with thousands of LED’s? None other than this staircase at Louis Vuitton on Via Condotti, Rome. Imagine the possibilites!?!?! All they need to do is integrate an SMS shortcode onto the window and they’ve got a super-sticky branded experience with massive PR appeal. C’mon, its not like LV is short of cash…

11.01.2008 by Zoltan

The Untold Story

I was (intentionally) silent when the iPhone launched as I saw no reason to add to the cacaphony. 6 months on and this article from Wired, The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry is definitely worth a read (fanboy or not) if you’ve got even the most cursory interest in the fact that nothing but nothing is stable in this digital world of ours.

via the mighty griffin

17.12.2007 by Zoltan

Spam can be beautiful

Who ever knew spam could look so good? I love Linzie Hunter’s typographic illustrations of spam message titles. Her style nods to Parra, but is softer and better suited to the more down-to-earth content that she so wonderfully brings to life.

17.12.2007 by Zoltan

S4/C’s idents are voice-reactive

I have no idea how this works but the concept is that good that I don’t care. The new SC/4 idents by Proud Creative are voice-reactive which means the edit changes each and every time a new voice-over is laid over it. Theoretically this means that no one will ever see the exact same ident twice, which is nothing particularly new online, but quite something in the world of broadcast.

via CR

06.12.2007 by Zoltan

Take out all the vowels and get down with the kids

RCRD.LBL might be a whack early noughties name that’s trying too hard to get down with the yoof, but the concept itself is interesting. Basically its the music industry slowly slowly starting to wake up (maybe, let’s not get too excited now) to the fact that if you pay for music produced by a big record label you’re a dinosaur. Everyone downloads music (for nix) so why not give it away and at least make some ad money along the way?

Definitely something to keep track of… If you ask me, donating direct to the artist the equivalent of their cut from a CD (what is it? like £1 or £2 only) is the model that i’d be following if i was in the music biz. But i’m not, so i’ll shut up now.