Category: 5things

Five things on Friday #41

Things of note for the week ending October 12th, 2012

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1. Awesome birdhouses
From the stylish to the down right scary, these incredible birdhouses have been made specifically to raise money for charity (which is doubly awesome). The whole set is quite fantastic and the one I’ve used above does nothing to illustrate how artistic the creators get…  it just really makes me laugh.

via

2. Blogger Engagement
A good piece of blogger engagement goes a long way. This is not news admittedly and there’s probably enough in this to warrant another blog post for another day (note to self: start this draft). But for now, let’s talk about some great pieces that have happened lately.

First, from the lovely chaps looking after social media for Tsingtao Beer. I’m not a huge Tsingtao drinker but, after some great banter with the aforementioned digital team – I know I’m going to order it next time I’m out for Chinese, certainly. I’m also going to vote* in the Tsingtao Beer ‘Legacy of Taste‘ competition, which is the search to find Britain’s favourite Chinese restaurant. You should vote too.

Second, Motorola announced their brand new Motorola RAZR i the other week and, in all fairness, I rarely take notice of anything Motorola do as I’ve never used any of their devices and it’s not a brand that’s ever interested me. However, after a delightful email from their representatives here in Europe, not only have I LIKED THEIR FACEBOOK PAGE but I’ve also mentioned the phone a couple of times on the podcast AND I’m also looking forward to actually getting my hands on one and having a play.

That’s all down to decent blogger engagement.

Look, I know this all sounds incredibly pompous but I collect blogger engagement. When I was engagement director at the ‘heads I made it my job to constantly review with the way we engaged with different communities; I have given entire presentations (internally, of course) based around bad engagement copy. It’s a habit I’ve kept since leaving and well, blogger engagement done well should be applauded more often.

So, Christine at Edelman and Tom/Robbie at McCann, if you’re reading this – good work.

3. BMX Boy
This is four year old Malcolm, out BMX-ing/Mountain-biking with his dad. It’s nine minutes of smiling from ear to ear.

My dad and I used to go scrambling around tracks like that. I miss it.

4. The Mayor of Mars
The Mars Curiosity Rover is using Foursquare to track its progress across that reddest of planets and, just last week, it became the Mayor of the Gale Crater.

I love love love the way that the team at NASA are using social media tor drive interest around this most awesome of human exploratory missions. And big up to the Foursquare team who are helping them do just that. Well done.

5. Stupid stuff
My girlfriend sent me this during the week and for some reason it makes me crack up just looking at it/him –

I’m laughing right now. Hahahaha… the artist behind this masterpiece is one Natalie Dee.

Go seek her out.

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Bonuses this week: a 15min speech from the Australian Prime Minister labelling the leader of the opposition a hyprocritcal misogynist is absolutely fantastic (seriously, watch it); a blog post entitled ‘the most interesting underpants in London‘ really does live up to its name; and finally, this is probably the best volcano video you’ve ever seen – hit HD, make it full screen and ENJOY.

 

*If you’re interested, Royal China got my vote. 

Five things on Friday #40

Things of note for the week ending October 5th, 2012

1. The Penis Blouse

That’s a penis, on a blouse. Brought to you by those lovely people at ASOS. Spotted it a couple of days ago and within 24 hours it was all over the place. ASOS are clearly onto a winner; everyone loves a penis blouse.

2. Statigram
Statigram is a web interface for Instagram. Given that Instagram is mobile-only, this is actually quite a useful tool. What’s really useful however is the super-cool stats (see what they did there) it pulls out of your Instagram activity.

eg: my most popular pics

Lovely stuff. On Instagram? Go have a play.

3. Dog shirts
Exactly what is says on the tin.

I bought one of these for Robbie last week (it was his birthday, we don’t just buy each other gifts for no reason – well, we do but that’s not for now), AND THEY ARE AMAZING.

4. 4G Networks
At long last, 4G is scheduled to launch here in the UK on October 30th. Well I say networks I mean network (singular, not plural) this is because of a whole bunch of reasons most of which are covered off in this rather informative article on The Register as well as this week’s episode of The Voicemail (I may have had a rant).

In summary: 4G is coming from network this year, but from everyone else in 2013. Rubbish.

5. Choons
This is the best thing I’ve listened to all week.

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Bonuses this week: FIFA have somewhat incredibly re-badged and relaunched FIFA 12 as FIFA 13; this article about how Nokia keeps its maps up to date by using UPS and Fedex van delivery data is quite the eye-opener; and finally, Snoop Dogg is voting for Obama. Wanna know why?

– Whatley out.

Five things on Friday #39

Things of note for the week ending September 28th

1. Tree Music
This is quite beautiful, and just in time for autumn too. Just below a giant chestnut tree in Berlin’s Montbijoupark, these green polymer membranes have been set out to create music whenever a chestnut falls on them.

Stunning.

The meaning behind this work is worth looking into… so’s the video (at the same link).

2. You’re Doing it Wrong
I lost about half an hour reading this page on metafilter last weekend. It’s amazing – and you’ll lose time too.

Trust me, you’ve been doing it wrong.

3. Ella Henderson
This, from last weekend’s X-Factor, is breathtaking.

It’s my blog, I’ll do what I want –
I mean, it could’ve been worse, I could’ve blogged about this.

4. New MySpace
It’s coming and it looks a bit gorge –

5. Resident Evil 6 Review of win
This is quite possibly one of the best video game reviews I’ve ever seen.

A fairly video heavy episode this week, but hey – who cares?

I’m out…

 

 

Five things on Friday #38

Things of note for the week ending September 21st

1. Genetic Portraits
Photographer Ulric Collette has been shooting a range of ‘genetic portraits’ taking two members of the same family and splicing them back together for some quite staggering results. This one above is one of my favourites, but the full set is worth a look too. It’s weird as hell, but awesome at the same time. YES!

2. Assassin’s Creed
I’m still hooked (about two hours into Brotherhood now, FYI) and now the girl is going away for a week (boo!) and I’m going to dive into AC like there’s no tomorrow (yay!) and mission it until there is literally nothing left in my sights but Revelations. Oh, and then AC:III obviously.

Why is this important? Well, it’s a nice pre-amble to this wicked little Assassin’s Creed Parkour video that was kickin’ around a while back.

Any excuse.

On that note…

3. Death by Gaming
There’s a great article over on Eurogamer about there being something in the air at game/internet cafés in Taiwan –

At 10pm the previous day Chen had taken a seat in the farthest corner of an internet café in New Taipei City, Taiwan. He lit a cigarette and began to play League of Legends. Chen played the online game for close to 23 hours, occasionally sleeping for a short while at his monitor before picking up where he’d left off.
–
While the popular café was half-full that night, the moment of the 23 year-old’s death passed unobserved. No one noticed the melted ice-cubes in his overflowing cup, the ghostly pallor of his cheeks, the idling of his on-screen avatar. It was only when the girl on the front desk went to inform Chen his time was up that, with a gentle nudge of the shoulder, he toppled stiffly.

And –

But I’m not really worried that something like that might ever happen here. We have a system to prevent customers from sitting in front of the computer for too long… We don’t allow any customers to play for more than three days at a time.

More.

Perhaps I’ll just play for a couple of hours after all…

4. Imagine
I’m getting back into books again (having spent most mornings these past few months reading my GReader) and my current book of choice is ‘Imagine: How Creativity Works’ by Jonah Lehrer.

The chapter I’ve just finished deals with the much-documented link between depression and creativity. A few choice quotes for you –

‘If you’re at the cutting edge, then you’re going to bleed’, – Nancy Andreasen

‘The bad post is usually unconscious where he ought be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious’, – T. S. Eliot.

And this, from the author –

‘There is nothing romantic about this kind of creativity, which consists mostly of sweat, sadness, and failure. It’s the red pen on the page and the discarded sketch, the trashed prototype and the failed first draft. It’s ruminating in the backs of taxis and popping pills until the poem is finished.’

The next chapter is about losing yourself in the moment, using Yo Yo Ma as a case study.
Love.

Get this book.

5. Kids are mental – aka the best Star Wars story you’ve never heard
I spotted this on Super Punch the other morning and then not soon after, it appeared on Kotaku – so I’m fairly sure this has been ’round the world twice already but still – it’s totally worth (re)sharing.

One guy, talking about the The Empire Strikes Back reenactments he was involved with back when he was at summer camp –

The second year I was there, we planned the best (and arguably the most dangerous) game that camp has ever seen. We wanted to do our best to re-create the Battle of Hoth, in The Empire Strikes Back. We built plywood AT-AT shells with handles on the inside and a slot cut in the front, that two guys could get in. We tied ropes to bicycles and milk crates to the ropes to make snowspeeders with the tether cannons, just like in the movie. We even got stilts to re-create the AT-STs…

Read it all.

It’s amazing.

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Bonuses this week; Fast Company says that ‘Experimentation is the new Planning‘, iO9 has found a quite frankly awesome set of Heath Ledger / Joker promo photos that were never used; and on this week’s episode of The Voicemail Stefan and I have a proper good moan about exactly how bad the maps are on iOS6.

Whatley out.

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Five things on Friday #37

Things of note for the week ending September 14th, 2012

1. Removie Posters

Removie Posters are basically movie posters re-imagined with one letter from the original title removed. The above is a quite striking Jurassic Ark (see what they did there), but I think The Men That Stare at Oats is my favourite…

2. How To See The Future
The first of two keynote transcripts this week. This one – ‘How To See The Future‘ is from Warren Ellis and is probably one of the best things I’ve read this year, if not – ever.

3. Fight, Fight, Fight
Amando Ianucci is next with this, quite frankly, excellent speech from the annual BAFTA television lecture. Entitled ‘Fight, Fight, Fight‘, it is a wonderful celebration of that is great about UK TV creativity; littered with history and filled with inspiration. Read it.

4. Transformers On Your Street
This kind of activity has been done before*, but I really like the execution: to celebrate the launch of the new Transformers video game ‘Fall of Cybertron’ you can actually have Transformers on your street. Great use of the Google Maps / Streetview API.

Go and give it a go –

*See Arcade Fire and British Airways

5. Solitary Peace

This gorgeous set of photos remind me of my travels with Lucozade several years ago. The multitude of locations, the sparse surroundings – Gustav Willeit has struck a deep nerve in me: I miss the air up high.

‘Til next time…

 

Five things on Friday #36

Things of note for the week ending September 7th, 2012

1. Naked Beer
The above packaging design is a response to a stunningly simple question: why hide what good beer looks like? Well, Timur Salikhov decided that ‘Naked Beer’ should be the answer. I love this.

2. What’s up with The Avengers Boxset?

I had a proper moan about this last week —

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsHowever, all is not what it seems. While the UK does quite often get short shrift when it comes to the repackaging of DVD/Blu-Ray releases, this time around it seems that Marvel/Disney have come a cropper by not actually getting the case’s reproduction rights.

Turns out while Disney had permission to use the case in The Avengers, they do not have permission to create replicas. Damn. If you’ve pre-ordered this particular boxset, you may be waiting some time…

Update: Screenrant is reporting that this set is is going to be released next year but with a slightly different (and lawyer friendly) design.

3. Les Twins

4. Hansel & Gretel
It looks like B-Movie popcorn fodder of the highest caliber, but I don’t care. The pitch is quite cool and, as a result, I’m surprisingly up for this. Bring it on.

5. Skateboarding in the 60s
This set of photographs, capturing the pick up of the skateboard in the 60s, had me beaming from ear to ear.
Go check ’em out.

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Bonuses this week: Iain has a great idea on how to launch the new Nokia Lumia 920 PureView (inspired by yours truly); Jonathan MacDonald’s ‘Notes from the left field‘ really is quite the remarkable read; and The Next Web’s insight on how Samsung treats the bloggers on its blogger program is one hell of an eye-opener.

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Five things on Friday #35

Things of note for the week ending August 31st, 2012

1. Dub the Dew
This isn’t that new but I just found another write up on it and well, I realised I just had to share. Mountain Dew decided that they’d ask the internet to help them name their latest apple-flavoured beverage.

The internet, responded.

This was – I KID YOU NOT – the Top 10 right before, some 48hrs after launch, PepsiCo [unsurprisingly] took it down –

  1. Hitler Did Nothing Wrong
  2. Gushing Granny
  3. Fapple
  4. Gushin’ Granny
  5. Diabeetus
  6. Grannies Squirt
  7. Gushing Grannies
  8. Gooshing Granny
  9. Fapulous Apple
  10. Gushing Green Granny

Brilliant.

You could blame the internet. Or you could blame 4Chan. Really, you should blame a naively conceived competition by a brand that should’ve known better.

2. Verified Twitter Accounts
Ever wondered how they work? Lance Ulanoff just had his Twitter account verified and was kind enough to blog the entire process. I thought it was interesting.

3. THIS. IS. EPIC.

4. Las Vegas Lulz
So that thing happened with Price Harry the other week? Yeeaaah, aside from a few red faces inside the palace, it turns out the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority were none too pleased either.

A fairly decent tongue-in-cheek full page ad in USA Today appeared earlier this week –

Love it.

5. The Darkness, covering Radiohead

There are no words.
via

Bonuses this week: this Designing BBC iPlayer for Xbox 360 article from the Beeb is a damn good read; Episode 013 of The Voicemail Podcast is out now and is full of the usual mobile-related banter (but with IFA/Samsung/Sony extras); and this Leo Burnett vs Asylum Films debate is worth ten minutes of your brain [UPDATE: now with illustrative background from LB’s CEO]. 

‘Til next time…

 

Five things on Friday #34

Things of note for the week ending August 24th, 2012

A bit later than usual (today is Aug 27th and I’m back-dating this post) as I HAVE BEEN ON HOLIDAY AND IT WAS AMAZING.

Ahem.

Shall we?

1. Evernote + Moleskine
My undying love for all things Moleskine-related is fairly well known around these parts so it was unsurprising to find tags, mentions and emails into their double figures when the Evernote + Moleskine partnership was announced. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Right, let’s make two things clear –

  1. Evernote is your virtual online notebook. You can upload all kinds of things to it, written notes, images, whiteboards, hell – even receipts. It’s basically there for you to store your whole written life and, what’s more, it’s 100% searchable and taggable. Kinda awesome, right?
  2. Moleskine is an actual notebook.

The two brands/products represent opposite sides of the same coin and as such, should be sworn enemies. In fact, they have been for some time. But no more! They are now in bed together and their first offspring is something called ‘The Evernote Smart Notebook’.

From TechCrunch:

The idea is to bridge the digital and analog worlds, allowing you to take notes physically, then import those notes into Evernote.

So the smart notebook uses specially formatted paper that allows it to work with Evernote. In the new version of the Evernote iPhone app, you can take photos of pages from the Moleskine notebook, and then they’re browsable and even searchable in the app. The notebook also comes with special stickers, which tell the app the notebook (the virtual kind) where each page should be saved.

I absolutely love this. Although I’m not an Evernote user (yet – I’m still trying to find my own use case), I can definitely see the benefits of being able to tag analogue pages for easy searchability online. I mean, that’s just ACE.

via RWW

Alas, it is iOS only at the moment meaning only iPhoners and iPadders get to play (for now). However, this is one really cool step in the direction of online and offline integration that I totally adore. More please.

Mark my words: it won’t be long until the Evernote sticker tags start appearing on a whole bunch of other things outside of the Moleskine…

2. Redesigning the America’s Cup

I don’t know if you know much about the America’s Cup, I certainly didn’t. What I mean is: up until about three years ago I didn’t.

Back in September 2009, as part of the final leg of the Lucozade Energy Challenge, we were flown out to the Caribbean for some yacht-on-yacht America’s Cup style racing… with actual America’s Cup winning yachts (see above and wikipedia).

Since then, the history of the game has fascinated me (seriously, it’s great – read up) and well, a recent turn of events are leading me to believe that we’re about to enter a whole new era of America’s Cup awesomeness —

When you win the America’s Cup, you get to decide pretty much all the details about how, where, and when you get to defend the trophy. It’s a little bit like H.O.R.S.E. crossed with Capture the Flag, a soapbox derby, being President in a game of Asshole, and lots of saltwater. After Ellison won the 2010 America’s Cup, hosted in Valencia, Spain, he wasn’t just interested in steering the ship, so to speak: Nope, he made like a nautical engineer and decided to redesign the whole thing.

There’s more over at Grantland, and keep an eye on this one – it’s going to be big.

3. POP
Need a universal charging station? Look no further. POP has been pulled together by an old sparring partner of mine and I actually really like the look of it (if my DT-600 ever fails, I’ll be first in line). There’s only a week left to buy one, so go get [kick-]started.

4. Facebook Mobile Gets Better
And Read Write Web have published a really well written article about how.

5. That Holiday (and CARNIVAL!)
Last Friday my girlfriend and I packed up our things and headed off to the island of Sal, for a week of sun, sea, sand and sangria. We spent seven days literally doing nothing, every day and it was amazing. Cape Verde is beautiful and this was pretty much what we woke up every day –

From a tech perspective, being able to use my Nokia 808 PureView underwater was pretty ace and I’ve got a ton of video to upload from that at some point (the images aren’t bad though).

Geekiness aside, it was exactly what we both needed and it was book ended perfectly too as – on the work front – a client win landed just as I was boarding for take off and then, when we got home, we were just in time for my first ever Notting Hill Carnival too – amazing!

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I’ve got a ton of blogging to catch up on and a helluva busy four day week ahead.

Hope y’all had an awesome week.

Whatley out.

 

 

Five things on Friday #33

Things of note for the week ending August 17th, 2012

1. Extraordinary Travel Destinations

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Stunning. Just, stunning. Bucket list worthy even. The full set really does need to be seen to be believed.

2. Bad Robocop
New Robocop script has leaked and it apparently it’s not looking good. Sad times.

3. Telegraph Olympics images
Now the Olympics are over (and the Paralympics just ’round the corner), it’s a great time to pause and reflect at the awesome achievements that have taken place over the past two weeks.

You could start With the ‘50 Best Images of London 2012‘, and then maybe move onto these awesome tilt-shifted photos too – that’s what I did anyway.

4. Useful Foursquare plug-in ahoy!
I’m a big film fan. I’m also a big Foursquare fan. Regular Foursquare users might know that as well being able to check in to cinemas these days, you can also check in to films at those cinemas.

Now imagine if you will, when you checked in to a film, somebody was kind enough to leave a comment on that check in telling you whether or not you should stick around after the credits.

Yeah, that would be awesome right?

Well, imagine no more.

5. AND I AM ON HOLIDAY. HERE.

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Back soon.

Bonuses:
– Satisfying read: OFFLINE
– Real time ads – from AT&T

Five things on Friday #32

Things of note for the week ending August 10th, 2012

1. Christchurch Dedication
The building above is what’s left of the Christchurch Normal School that was damaged during the earthquake in New Zealand earlier this year. The additional images, that have been placed in as a kind of optical illusion, are only temporary as the building itself is due for demolition any day now. However, the work itself has meaning.

Mike Hewson, the artist responsible, wanted to pay tribute to the talented people that once lived there and covered the building with these mixed-media installations that did just that.

Thanks to Marek for the source.

2. Olympic Heat
Now that the first part of the Olympics is coming to a close, once wonders how the athletes themselves might celebrate. Well, wonder no more, ESPN has the scoop and they lay it down perfectly –

Home to more than 10,000 athletes at the Summer Games and 2,700 at the Winter, the Olympic Village is one of the world’s most exclusive clubs. To join, prospective members need only have spectacular talent and — we long assumed — a chaste devotion to the most intense competition of their lives. But the image of a celibate Games began to flicker in ’92 when it was reported that the Games’ organizers had ordered in prophylactics like pizza. Then, at the 2000 Sydney Games, 70,000 condoms wasn’t enough, prompting a second order of 20,000 and a new standing order of 100,000 condoms per Olympics.

It’s quite a long article, but the whole thing is worth a look. It’s a great read.

3. This is Now

This is Now pulls together real-time Instagram feeds and organises them by city. The usual suspects are covered and from Tokyo through to Sao Paolo, you can see exactly what’s going on where, right now.

And yes, of course I chose London – LOOK AT ALL THE OLYMPIC GOODNESS!

4. A man walks into a bank
Patrick Combs deposited a junk-mail cheque for $95,000 for a joke. The bank cashed it.
Free account set up required to read this article [on the FT] – but it’s worth it.

5. Thiel vs Schmidt
This isn’t new, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past few weeks ever since it happened.

First, a re-cap:

Eric Schmidt is chairman at Google and Peter Thiel is ex-CEO and founder of Paypal. A couple of weeks ago they appeared alongside each other at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech in Aspen and their topic of debate was ‘The Future of Technology‘.

Apparently these events tend to be quite plain and a bit boring (I can’t remember where I read it) however, this time ’round, Thiel wasn’t pulling any punches. Choice quote:

“Google is a great company.  It has 30,000 people, or 20,000, whatever the number is.  They have pretty safe jobs.  On the other hand, Google also has 30, 40, 50 billion in cash.  It has no idea how to invest that money in technology effectively.”

Which basically translates as Thiel saying ‘Hey! Google! You suck! You’ve run out of ideas!’

Thing is, while Schmidt didn’t actually agree with him, the two of them did kind of agree when it came to barriers to innovation, namely: the US government.

ERIC SCHMIDT: What’s very odd about this conversation is you’re saying technology doesn’t matter, that it’s all politics.

PETER THIEL: I didn’t say that. I said, in fact, it’s the only innovation available, which is your point.

ERIC SCHMIDT: But, you’re saying we’ve been stagnant for 40 years because of bad government policy. If technology ‑‑

PETER THIEL: I didn’t say we’re stagnant. I said our policies could be improved.

And then… most tellingly, the moderator of the session asks Eric directly –

ADAM LASHINSKY:  You don’t want to address the cash horde that your company does not have the creativity to spend, to invest?

ERIC SCHMIDT:  What you discover in running these companies is that there are limits that are not cash.  There are limits of recruiting, limits of real estate, regulatory limits as Peter points out.  There are many, many such limits.  And anything that we can do to reduce those limits is a good idea.

— The whole transcript is available to read online and I implore you to grab a cup of coffee and sit down and read it all. It’s brilliant. There’s just so much that’s alluded to… and it makes great pub-chat fodder too.

__________

Whatley out.