Tag: 5things

Five things on Friday #86

Things of note for the week ending August 22nd, 2014.

Things of note for the week ending August 22nd, 2014.

THE THINGS. THERE ARE FIVE OF THEM.

1. Annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year Finalists
There isn’t much I can add to this. The photos are, of course, amazing. These are just a couple of my favourites but the whole set really is worth ten minutes of your time.

 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 1

STRETCH.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2

TWEETING.

via Distractify.

2. Cap and Hulk = SCIENCE
Here is a three minute video explaining how the science behind Captain America and the HULK [if they actually existed in the real world].

Super interesting. Super fun. Super SCIENCE.

Speaking of superheroes…

3. The Phantom of Papua New Guinea
Have you ever heard of The Phantom? No, not that scary fella from the Opera. The purple one, from the jungle. The ghost who walks. The man who cannot die. Him. Once played by Billy Zane in a [terrible] film of the same name.

This guy:

Phantom

Yeah, you remember him.

He was in [the frankly awesome] Defenders of the Earth Saturday morning cartoon show, remember?

Right.

Anyway.

Apparently – and this is so random – back in the 1960s and 1980s, Mr Purple Pants started appearing on the war shields of the people of New Guinea.

The Wahgi people of Papua New Guinea have long made enormous shields from tree trunks, and have continued to make these shields as a form of ritual artwork. In the late 20th century, many of these Papua New Guinea highlanders began incorporating “new ideas” into their traditional works, so that shields bore emblems of football teams, beer brands, and, yes, the Phantom. Western comic books became widely available in the region after World War II, and the Phantom became a particularly popular character.

I picked this story up from iO9 and they’ve got a huge bank of various images of The Phantom depicted in multiple ways on said shields.

THE PHANTOM

It’s really awesome; I just love the idea that there were these badass warriors walking around with THE PHANTOM on their shields. ‘COME ON THEN! WE’VE GOT THE GHOST THAT WALKS!’ – or something like that.

4. Cyborgs

I know a cyborg. His name is Dan Lane (and it’s his birthday today – happy birthday Dan). His level of human/robot integration is probably higher than others but then again, if you know someone who wears contact lenses; they’re a cyborg too.

Do you know who else is a cyborg? Neil Harbisson. He has an antenna that comes out of his head specifically for turning colours into sounds.

Not kidding.

Go read.

5. Batman photo album
A bit of a superhero-fest this week (sorry not sorry) but I couldn’t not share this.

EItHIlD

Last week, someone posted this rather fantastic, 32-image photo set from The Dark Knight.

Specifically focusing on the interrogation scene between The Joker and Batman, the set is interspersed with quotes from an interview with Christopher Nolan discussing the work and effort that went into the scene, both from the actors therein and also the director of photography, Wally Pfister.

Great reading.

Great photos.

Great link.

_________________

Bonuses this week:

See you next week.

 

 

Five things on Friday #85

Things of note for the week ending August 15th, 2014.

Things of note for the week ending August 15th, 2014.

Whirlwinds of light

— Whirlwinds of Light, via This is Colossal.

1. Smartphones leak, dumb phones don’t
International master of misadventure,  John McAfee, spoke at Def Con recently and one of the things that picked up as a headline over at the Wall Street Journal was the following:

‘On the subjects of privacy and security, McAfee said smartphones are spying on American consumers, who don’t bother to read user agreements. “The most promising privacy thing is stupid phones,” he said. “I’m dumping all my smart phones.”

He said he had started brownlist.com, to collect complaints against large corporations. He also said he has an app for Android phones that tracks privacy permissions for various apps.’

A few things:

  • This is not news.
  • This could be the start of a new trend against all things privacy-related.
  • I get the impression that this is especially not news to the people it matters most to.

Something to think on maybe?

If you want to stay clean, and prevent THE MAN from getting his dirty hands on your lovely, lovely data. Go get a dumbphone. Like a Nokia 106 for example.

2. There’s a hexagonal hurricane on Saturn

Hexagonal Hurricanes

The above was first sighted back in the 1980s, when the NASA Voyager probes flew past Saturn for the first time. In the 30+ years it takes Saturn to pass around the Sun, we can finally get to see it again.

And the New York Times has made a gorgeous, sub-three-minute video to help tell the story –

This is my favourite item this week. By a long shot.

– via Mental Floss

3. Planes IRL vs Planes Hollywood-style

0aircraftcutaways-002

0aircraftcutaways-007

I really, really liked this photo-essay. Interesting for not only seeing how crazy big planes can be (in contrast of your average human being) but also gaining an insight into how plane scenes are shot on film.

Check it out.

4. Samsung + New Ad Space
I’ve never owned a Samsung phone (something about the version of Android that it runs combined with the achingly boring product design really puts me off) however every now and then you have to applaud the epic trolling enjoyed by its marketing team over Apple (‘Screen Envy‘ definitely made me chuckle).

One of Samsung’s latest was this little video poking fun at ‘wall huggers’ – aka – iPhone users who have to sit next to plug sockets all the time while their [poorly-powered] iPhones charge. It seems, not happy with its near-15m views, Samsung has taken this down another level. Literally.

Samsung wall huggers

‘Samsung Galaxy S5 with Ultra Power Saving Mode. So you have the power to be anywhere but here’

A super smart use of ambient media in conjunction with an already well-established viral video. Contextually relevant and guaranteed to hit your target market. I think this is great.

Well done, Samsung.

Sidenote: I guess this makes me a Samsung blogger now, right? Christ.

5. Behind the Scenes of Guardians of the Galaxy’s aliens
Seen Guardians of the Galaxy yet? If not, why not? It’s not ‘just another superhero movie’, nor is it ‘one of those Marvel films that I know nothing about’ neither is it ‘a film for geeks’. GotG is probably the summer blockbuster of 2014 (with Dawn of the Planet of the Apes running a close second).

So yeah, see it.

Now that’s out of the way, Fast Co.Create has published a [completely spoiler free] behind the scenes look at some of the make up and special effects that went into creating the aliens that appear in said film.

GOTG Aliens

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Bonuses this week:

  • This Louis CK interview is a long read, but both excellent and worth your time.
  • Anagramatron hunts for tweets that are anagrams of each other. It’s so brilliantly bizarre that it’s my recommended Tumblr of the week!
  • If you’re a male social media expert who happens to be vegan, single, and an active Tinder user, I’d recommend not reading this AMAZING comic strip.

 

Did you like this stuff? Did you find any of its interesting? If you did, do me a favour and tell your friends. I’d really appreciate it, cheers.

Have a great weekend.

 

 

 

 

Five things on Friday #84

Things of note for the week ending August 8th, 2014.

Things of note for the week ending August 8th, 2014.

Five Things Dah-ling

– thanks for the amazing photo, Lauren

1. Xiaomi* is coming.
I think it’s fairly reasonable to say that, globally, Samsung are the biggest seller of mobile devices. However, a relative minnow of a hardware manufacturer (but growing incredibly fast), Xiaomi*, actually beat Samsung last quarter to become China’s number one smartphone vendor in Q2 2014.

This is no insignificant feat.

Who are Xiaomi and why is this interesting? This Bloomberg Businessweek article is a pretty good read but, in short: not only does Xiamoi make gorgeous hardware but it also has a rather different way of doing business. From the Bloomberg piece –

Xiaomi’s real invention is its business model. It sells online, never in stores, and avoids conventional advertising, devoting only about 1 percent of its revenue to marketing. (By comparison, Samsung earmarks 5.4 percent.) Instead, the company relies on China’s social networks, Weibo and WeChat, and the free press Lei gets as a national tech hero. The money Xiaomi saves on marketing lets it buy top-notch components while keeping retail prices down. The Mi 3 costs 1,699 yuan, or $270; the iPhone in China starts at more than twice that. A Mi 3, or any Xiaomi phone, is a great deal if you’re lucky enough to snag one—the latest models routinely sell out. Xiaomi sells handsets in batches, usually of around 100,000. The first Mi 3 release, the company trumpeted, was bought up in only 86 seconds. It’s the technology equivalent of Air Jordans.

A few months back, I remarked to a friend that should Xiaomi want to widen its footprint outside of Asia, then it might need to consider a new name; perhaps one that is less worrisome to western tongues. Shortly thereafter, Xiaomi announced it had bought ‘Mi.com’ (two letter URLs, not easy/cheap to come by).

Xiaomi is coming.

Just watch.

*shall, but with a z – me // ‘zshou mee’. According to Hugo Barra, the best way to pronounce Xiaomi is to “think of ‘show me’ and then pronounce the first word as if it [were] ‘shower.’

2. Facebook + Instagram = Smart[er] Advertising
It was April 2012 when Mark Zuckerberg slapped a billion dollars on the table and walked away with Instagram in his pocket and, since then, the two platforms have been very slowly integrating their services together. First came the inevitable sharing of user info then, later, Instagram dropped Foursquare’s location data in exchange for Facebook Places.

insta-ads

When Instagram finally announced its plans to launch advertising last year, there was one particular quote that caught my eye:

We want to show ads from businesses that are interesting to you, and to do that we will use information about what you do on Instagram and Facebook (our parent company). For instance, this might include the people you follow and the photos and videos you like on Instagram, and your interests and other basic info on Facebook.

Basically, if your Instagram and your Facebook accounts are linked, the two companies will use that data to better sell you MORE STUFF.

So far, so what. None of this is news.

What is news is that this is now happening. Mercedez-Benz is conducting an experiment whereby it can retarget Facebook users that have seen its ads on Instagram.

We’re only in the testing phase, apparently. But this is it, kids. THIS IS THE FUTURE.

Digiday has more.

3. A Modern Take on Japanese Kutani Tableware

Screen Shot 2014-08-09 at 10.10.38

Screen Shot 2014-08-09 at 10.12.40

These are quite wonderful.

– via Colossal

4. Lord of the Rings plot hole busting

Fly you fools

Ever wondered about this?

EAGLES

Some smart chap over on Reddit has come up with a fairly sound theory.

5. The Perfect Northen Lights

Krystall Hotel

This, believe it or not, is the design for the newly approved ‘Krystall Hotel’. Currently being developed by Dutch Docklands, this floating hotel will be based in the fjords near Tromso, Norway, and – given its locale (middle of nowhere, zero light pollution) – will be the perfect spot to take in the Aurora Borealis.

Incredible.

_______________

Bonuses this week are all video game related:

 

 

Five things on Friday #83

Things of note for the week ending August 1st, 2014.

Things of note for the week ending August 1st, 2014.

SHINY NEW THINGS

1. Anti Surveillance YOUR FACE
Robinson Meyer slathered his face in make up and, as a result, achieves the oxymoronic feat of hiding in plain sight by looking ridiculous.

Anti-CCTV makeup

When it works, CV dazzle keeps facial-recognition algorithms from seeing a face. The technique takes its name from the dazzle camouflage of the two World Wars: The Great Power navies sought to protect their ships not by hiding them among the waves but by obscuring their size and movement.

The Atlantic has more.

2. I wrote about Gaza.
There’s not much else I can say aside from: please read and, if you so wish, pass it forward.

Failing that, donate to one of these three charities –

3. The American Room
Bizarrely, I found this adventure into, and subsequent critique thereof, the American room ‘with YouTube’ hugely interesting. Fundamentally it is an article about decor and the blandness against which lives are depicted and played out but, for some reason, when I reached the end of the article, I burst into tears.

The American Room

4. Happy (Neus Remix)
I was at the London Street Feast last night and the DJ played this EPIC Justice/Pharrel mash up –

Put it in your ears AND DANCE LIKE THERE IS NO TOMORROW because one day, there won’t be.

5. The Monkey Men of India
Outside of the recent Russian / Gecko space mentalism, this is probably my favourite animal-based news of recent weeks. Are you ready for this?

OK.

FORTY INDIAN MEN HAVE BEEN HIRED TO IMPERSONATE MONKEYS TO SCARE AWAY THE REAL MONKEYS FROM DEHLI’S PARLIAMENT BUILDING AND OTHER GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS.

This is not a joke.

Amazing.

I KNOW, RIGHT?!

______________

One bonus item this week:

I’ve seen Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s hilarious. Marvel’s funniest film yet.

Go and see it.

___

 

Whatley out.

 

PS. Still off Twitter – it’s actually really quite refreshing. That said, my output has gone up on the other places where I dick about, e.g.: Facebook (public posts, often), Instagram (random photos), and Spotify (for ze choons).

Five things on Friday #82

Things of note for the week ending July 25th, 2014.

Things of note for the week ending July 25th, 2014.

WEEEEEEEEEEEE

— Above image via this AMAZING photo set 

1. Shatner on Facebook Mentions
If you’re a celebrity (hi!) then you’re probably interested in this new app from Facebook, ‘Facebook Mentions‘. If you’re not a celebrity, don’t worry because William Shatner (yes, that one) has written a handy guide.

Facebook Mentions - shatner

You can read said guide over on the former Captain Kirk’s super awesome Tumblr page.

2. Destiny
If you’ve been paying attention recently, you might’ve spotted that there’s a beta of a new game out at the moment and its name is Destiny.

DESTINY

Seriously, download it now.

To celebrate this game being amazing, here are some key facts about Destiny:

  • Activision, the game’s publisher, is apparently investing around $500 million on the development and marketing of this game (that’s an insane amount of money ).
  • Bungie, the game’s creator, is the team that developed the multi-award-winning Halo series for Microsoft’s Xbox.
  • The game itself doesn’t actually hit the shelves until September 9th. All of the press so far has been about the limited time Alpha (one weekend!) and the Beta (two weeks!). See the official timeline for details.
  • Oh, and it is awesome. SO AWESOME. Order it now.

3. A guy walks into a bar
This is wonderful.

4. Moto X Tattoos
This is now a joke: Motorola have launched a new range of temporary DIGITAL TATTOOS that you can stick to your skin and then use to UNLOCK YOUR PHONE.

Wooo fancy

There’s a fancy video too (it’s only 90 seconds long – give it a watch).

Personally, I think this is awesome. Like, really really awesome. Admittedly the ‘tattoos’ themselves only last for a week (and I think about ten dollars for a pack of ten) BUT it’s a yet another item to add into the wearable tech of the future category that hopefully we might see more of over the coming years.

Hurrah for innovative thinking.

5. The best Philippines fact you’ll read today

Vulcan Point

Did you know that Vulcan Point (the small island pictured above) is the world’s largest island within a lake on an island within a lake on an island? Well, you do now.

Nature is awesome.

— — —
I’m off Twitter for a little while (long story, check my feed for clues as to why) so if you’re reading this, please share it as far and wide as you can.

Cheers,

Whatley out.

rain

 

Five things on Friday #81

Things of note for the week ending July 18th, 2014

oakoak-urban-interventions-1

– OakOak street art, via Web Urbanist

1. Drone Photography
The results of the first annual Dronestagram Photo Competition came in this past week and, of course, they are all pretty stunning. The image below, by Dronestagram contributor, ‘Capungaero‘, took first prize but the others are well worth a look too.

Dronestagram1

2. ‘I don’t recognise the British Image of the EU’
My general guidelines for creating Five Things on Friday every week tend to fit around a couple of rules. One of those rules is ‘Never share anything you’ve seen posted 2-3 times elsewhere’.

I’m breaking that this week because I really think you should all watch this video of Finnish Prime Minister, Alex Stubb, talking to Channel 4 News about Britain and the way it approaches its own internal EU debate.

Alexander Stubb Channel 4

I may make no secret of my love of all things Finland (the people, the produce, the cities, the festivals) and it seems that love now extends to the Prime Minister too.

Engaging, charismatic, and articulate, Alexander Stubb is definitely worth six minutes of your time.

3. Sex Lives of the Humanitarians

When you introduce yourself at a party as a former humanitarian, people expect that your field experiences were shaped by witnessing suffering, violence and displacement. What they don’t expect to hear is that your day-to-day management challenges also included arguments over what time your colleagues could watch porn in the common room, and negotiating how staff could get to and from a brothel. Yet it is often a reality of the job and it is time we talked about it.

After that opening paragraph, I wanted to read more. You might too.

4. Snapchat in The FT
This past week, ephemeral media platform and darling of all brands who want to get at ‘the yoof’, Snapchat, starting experimenting with ‘geofilters’. That is, filters for its self-destructing images that only appear when the user is in a certain locale. Said place could be a city (eg: Malibu) or a big sprawling metropolis of a living, breathing brand (step up, Disneyland).

FT Snapchat

The Financial Times asked me what I thought of this development – so I told them. Basically, talking about what this means for brands and of course, does this mean that Snapchat might have a business model? Maybe.

You don’t need to pay to read it [but you do need an account] and it’s actually quite a good read. Worth your time if only for finally getting around to setting up that FT account you’ll know you’ll appreciate in future.

5. The best comic redesign of the week
A bunch of stuff got announced in comic book land this week. Everyone is talking either about either Captain America now being black or how a woman is about to become THOR. Big whoop.

Screw those people, the coolest thing that happened in comic book land was the epic redesign of Batgirl.

Batgirl Stanley Lau

So. Good.

Details, and more, over at Comics Alliance.

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Bonuses (all podcast related):

Whenever I try to talk to people about podcasts I get one of two responses. The first one is ‘Yeah, what do you listen to? I’m really into [insert awesome podcast name]’, which is fine. The second response is this ‘Yeah, I’m not really a podcast person’, which, to be frank, is a pile of crap. You’re an idiot. Go and download a podcast app and just start listening to stuff. My friend Stefan has a pretty comprehensive list of good stuff that he listens to. That’s not a bad place to start.

Y’know where else is also not a bad place to start?

The following bonus items.

 

Five things on Friday #80

Things of note for the week ending July 11th, 2014.

I AIN'T PLAYIN' SON

1. Village Buildings as Art
In Burkina Faso, near the bottom of a hill over looking the sun-drenched West African savannah, there’s a village where every house is its own individual work of art.

Burkina Faso

Its residents, the nobility of the Kassena people, have lived in the region since the 15th century and are one of the oldest ethnic groups in the Burkina Faso. Keeping itself fairly isolated from the outside world (the photographer negotiated for a year before being allowed to enter) the village comes with strict rules, such as ‘only the most noble family is allowed to carry an umbrella’.

I doubt it rains much there but still.

Screen Shot 2014-07-06 at 12.39.37

Screen Shot 2014-07-06 at 12.39.47

More details, as well as more photos, over on Messy Nessy Chic.

2. My Life as a Tech Evangelist
I first met Myriam Joire – aka ‘Tnkgrl‘ – way back in September 2008, and since then she’s gone from a self-made mobile blogger, to technology news reporter at Engadget, to Tech Evangelist for the ‘original’ (and best) smartwatch, Pebble. This post, entitled ‘So what is it you do anyway?’ an,d published on Medium last Saturday, goes into the detail of what it means to be a Tech Evangelist at a start up in the one of the newest and most exciting product categories today.

Quote:

“How do you become a tech evangelist?” I get this question a lot. First, you need to be an extrovert who loves tech. You have to be comfortable talking with people — whether individually or up on stage, in front of thousands. It’s also important to have a solid understanding of the tech world and how it operates. You want be familiar with the products in your market and beyond, including the competition. Relationships are critical — start building connections with as many people in tech as possible, especially the media. Attend conferences and events, and have a strong presence online (social media, blog, etc…) Be yourself, be honest, be critical, be fair, and — most importantly — have fun!

Myriam is a great person, Pebble is a great product (trust me, I know), and this is a great post.

3. Toilet Tennis
Wimbledon came to an end last week and, as Djokovic enjoys his well-deserved championship, the New York Times has a great article about the uncertain protocol around Grand Slam toilet breaks.

Toilet break tennis

Not the most exciting of topics you might think, but brilliant reading (and trivia).

As Djokovic and the restless crowd waited, Murray stood alone in a tiny, one-toilet bathroom just off the court at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
.
“I stood in front of the mirror with sweat dripping down my face, and I knew I had to change what was going on inside,” he said the next spring. “So I started talking. Out loud. ‘You are not losing this match,’ I said to myself. ‘You are not losing this match.’ I started out a little tentative, but my voice got louder. ‘You are not going to let this one slip. This is your time.’
.
“At first, I felt a bit weird, but I felt something change inside me. I was surprised by my response. I knew I could win.”
.
He did not say whether he used the toilet.

Ha!

More.

4. 100 Social Media Content ‘Ideas’
This Forbes article lists off 100 different things you can do in social.

idea

Rather confidently named ‘100 Killer Ideas For Your Social Media Content‘ it is a little disingenuous in its pitch however, given that the article reels off a century of tactical things you can actually do with your social media pages, I’m willing to give it a pass.

Where it lacks in strategy (e.g.: ‘Share a Reddit topic!’), it makes up for in sheer volume.

Bookmark it for when you need to mainline some CONTENTIFICATION.

5. WOLFCOP
I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about this already. I honestly thought I had but it must’ve been a dream. In short, WOLFCOP looks AMAZING. io9 is calling it ‘The best 80s film ever made in 2014‘ and, while I haven’t actually seen it yet, the trailer is a BLAST.

I’ll put it out there, I love love love werewolf flicks. I’ve seen ’em all. Twice.

Wolfcop is next on my list.

I reckon it should be on yours too.

WOLFCOP

RAAAAARGH!

—- Whatley out.

Bonuses this week:

Five things on Friday #79

Things of note for the weekend ending July 4th, 2014.

Lego Glasses innit

1. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Early reviews of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes are in and it’s beginning to read like one of the best sequels ever made.

Apes, man

You can read a bunch of SPOILER-FREE reactions over on Screenrant but here’s the quote that won me over –

Not quite the intimate parable of the first movie nor a balls-to-the-wall battlefield extravaganza, Dawn is pitched somewhere in the middle, with much of its two hour-plus running time powered by the simmering, expertly sustained tension both between and within the two species. The key to selling this knife-edge friction, of course, is the ability to buy into the apes as fully fleshed-out characters.

Yeah, I’m in.

2. Testing the ORION Space Launch System

KAPOOSH

KA-POOOOSH!

I picked this up from Tab Dump (a great news source) earlier this week. The Atlantic put together this amazing photo essay of NASA’s test of its new Space Launch system – and it is gorgeous.

3. The Slap
Another week, another Max Landis thing – The Slap – is a [somewhat late] response to the viral clothes marketing video from a few months ago, First Kiss. Both are worth watching.

4. Sink Hole Corvettes
I don’t know if you caught this at the time but back in February a 40-foot sinkhole opened up underneath the Corvette Museum in Kentucky and the poor guys lost a couple of beautiful cars to the Earth below.

sinkhole corvettes

Well, after dragging the smashed up beauties out of there, the museum’s board got together and tried to work out what to do with the gaping hole in the middle of their building.

The museum’s board felt that it had three options available: completely repair the sinkhole, leave it as-is or modify it slightly to be somewhat smaller. In a vote, the members decided on the third option, which would reduce the cavity’s size to 25-feet by 45-feet wide and 30-feet deep. That might be further modified after studies into how having an open hole in the Skydome will affect the humidity and heating costs. Regardless, the hope is to leave enough room to display two Corvette models down there, possibly the ones most badly damaged in the collapse.

Yup, that’s right, the AMAZING folks at the Corvette Museum decided to not only keep the sinkhole, but also display the damaged cars therein! Apparently, since the sinkhole occurred, attendance shot up by 59% so obviously it makes complete sense to keep it.

Brilliant.

5. Cutting costs? Nah, let’s make more money.
I read Scamp quite often and it’s pretty much nearly always a damn good read. This latest post, looking at why it’s not always the right idea to save money but instead just make more of it (it makes so much sense when you write it down like that) is a very good read and might make think everso slightly differently next time you’re going into the FD.

Scamp.

-Whatley out.

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Bonuses

One bonus this week – an awesome 8min long video on what the ‘one take’ in film really means and how the person you’d least expect is truly the one and only master.

 

 

Five things on Friday #78

Things of note for the week ending June 27th, 2014.
(sorry it’s late)

LOOK AT THE THINGS

1. Paper Later
Discovered via my friend Robbie last night (who had just taken delivery of his own copy). PaperLater is a super neat and super retro way of enjoying the articles that you save to your ‘read it later’ app of choice, e.g.: Pocket or Instapaper).

Paper Later

What it does is, for £4.99, pull all your saved-for-later articles, lays them out in a decent format, print them up on sustainable / recycled newspaper, and then delivers the whole thing to your door.

Lovely stuff.

The beta is UK only for now and you can sign up right here.

2. Petit Tube
Like Forgotify before it, Petit Tube is a website that celebrates the esoteric content of the internet. In this case, bringing out the very best (or worst) of YouTube by digging up those videos that have zero [or close to zero] views against them. This is deep exploration of the the long tail; here be dragons.

Seriously super random.

3. Phases in Mobile
A characteristically great post from Ben Evans. This week, using the TV ads of the past ten years to analyse how much the face of the mobile consumer space has changed since 1994.

Zero to 2bn customers in ten years. What will the next ten bring?

Read: Phases in Mobile.

4. Facebook’s ‘Experiment’
This story landed two days ago and it is spiralling like crazy. If you’ve not read about it yet, start with Marginal Revolution and click, click, click from there. This will not go away quickly.

5. Superman: DOOMED.
This isn’t an item about Superman. Well, it is. But that’s not what I mean. Guillem March is an artist working in comic books today. He uses his blog to demonstrate the process of creating, amongst other things, covers for different books.

This week he showed the process from this –

Screen Shot 2014-06-29 at 17.55.10

To this –

Superman Doomed cover color

I love this stuff.

That is all.

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Bonus items are all videos this week, enjoy –

 

Five things on Friday #77

Things of note for the week ending June 20th, 2014.

Bat bites. Like Whatley bits. But battier.

1. Burberry Twitter Cards
I’ve written about Twitter cards before and this year we’ll be seeing more and more of them appear in our collective streams. Further evidence of that is brought to us by a brand continually at the nexus of fashion and technology innovation, Burberry.

Imagine you’re Burberry and you want your oh-so-loyal and avid Twitter followers to absolutely tune into your next runway show. Got that far? OK. Now imagine you create a tweet with a calendar invite embedded in it.

Calendar Invite Card!

Ta da! Amazing.

Now, I want you to continue imagining you’re Burberry. But this time I want you to feel a pang of regret for the 98.98% of your followers that didn’t see your calendar event tweet (fact) and instead have to try and catch up somehow.

Well, that’s easy! You’re about to imagine a tweet with an embedded image gallery that your fans can easily browse, all without leaving Twitter.

Amazing Gallery Card!

Aren’t you fantastic, Burberry. Well done.

Via.

2. Good Music

MOOOOSIC

I’m a Spotify fiend. This Spotlight on new music playlist is the best new one I’ve listened to in a while. You should listen to it too.

Oh and for bonus sunshine action, subscribe to this beauty – Welcome to Summer folks x

If you don’t use Spotify well…

Sorry.

Maybe I’ll link you to something next week.

3. Hannibal
Last night, I finished season two of Hannibal.

Hannibal

Mads Mikkelson stars an the eponymous anit-hero/villain/cannibal and the show is loosely based on the events before and during those of Red Dragon. Telling the story of Will Graham and his first dealings with Hannibal Lector, Hannibal it is a stunning show.

Some of you may have heard of this show, some of you may have already finished it. But if you haven’t, or if you’re looking for something new in a post-Breaking-Bad, post-Game-of-Thrones-Season-4 world, Hannibal is it.

The season two finale is one of the best pieces of television I have ever seen.

I am still gushing about it.

Just watch it.

Now.

4. Ghostbusters 3

ghostbusters

It is happening. Bill Murry will return. It’s based on the video game. It’s based on Hell invading New York. Bill Murray won’t be back. It’ll feature new, younger ‘busters. It isn’t happening.

Much has been said about this long-gestating non-project but ever since Harold Ramis passed away, I’ve been firmly in the camp of IT ISN’T HAPPENING, but Max Landis (son of that awesome director guy I met once) has a hella wicked idea for the opening scene.

WHY NOT READ IT?

5. DERMAPHORIA
Last weekend I was extremely lucky to be invited along to the opening night of the East End Film Festival.

DERMAPHORIA

The opening film? DERMAPHORIA.

Described as ‘An inspired experimental chemist, wakes up in a New Orleans jail, accused of arson that’s linked to an illegal drug-manufacturing ring. Suffering from amnesia, he’s unexpectedly released on bail, determined to find his missing girlfriend.’ DERMAPHORIA is an unforgiving trip into the mind of a drug-addled way of life and is a non-stop back and forth between the worlds of the way up high and the deep come down.

It is JAGGED.
It is grimy.
It is a horror show of what it’s like to be under the illusion of being touched by God and it does not give its audience an easy ride at all. So go in ready. DERMAPHORIA requires concentration. You, like the film’s protagonist, will feel lost, frustrated, and at times utterly beaten.

I can’t recommend it enough and, without the East End Film Festival, I doubt I would’ve seen it at all. Good work, EEFF. Keep it up.

Find it and see it, as soon as you can.

Here’s the trailer.

Sidenote: Ron Perlman’s in it. I met him afterwards. That wasn’t as cool as I hoped it’d be. Ah well.

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Until next week,

Whatley out.

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Bonus items this week –