internet cool?!

Last week the Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization announced the winners of the 51st annual Good Design Awards. This show is always discovering some really cool stuff, and the judging committee, is typically made up of a couple dozen designers, journalists, architects, and marketers. This year they even showed off their nerdy side by awarding Zarigani Works’ Korejanai Robo a prize.


Korejanai Robo translates literally to “not this robot” and is created as an ode to all those kids who once really wanted something, like say a toy robot, and got something way less techie, like a light-brite or a GI-Joe.

To add to the irony, Korejanai Robo is not really a robot, but rather a wooden doll that looks like a Robot (you getting all this?). Last year the doll became popular on the interwebs and was even made into a USB drives and keychains, securing it’s place in cult item history.

just remember:

This is not what I wanted!!

Kids they might say that word with ugly screaming! Xmas is always great moment, this item is transformed into a battlefield, Guaranteed! Have you ever done this any situations before? Maybe not, people are not willing to have unhappy situation,but life is so long. kids learn about something important things from that. Especially, it is not possible to have whatever you want without any kind of risk or achievement. Let’s try Korejanai-Robo for cultivation of aesthetic sentiments!

This was a labor of love. Daniel at 0c0m 0y0k made an entire Garamond typeface out of powerline parts. Shocking! Tee hee.

Click here for the full site letter forms.

Hey gang. Today marks they day I’m kicking off three new flavors of MWC. I’ve added to the archive Stuff that made me go hmm, suff that made me smile, and stuff that made me go ZOMFG! Enjoi. :)

Awesome interactive “installation” of an animation projection interacting with snow sculptures. It’s just awesome to see beautiful mergers of physical and digital stuff like this.

Related post: cheap hackery makes pretty

This post assumes you’ve either heard of or seen the presidential campaign phenomenon The McCain / Obama Dance Off”

Oh, you haven’t? Well take a moment now my freng:



I received this video from my pal Charles Gallant with the following note attached:

I’m sure you’ve seen this… but in case you haven’t…

*Link to above video omitted*

Imagine this technology 5-10 years down the road, where spoofing a person’s identity like this is as easy as making a blog. Imagine a much more subtle use of this, where one could simply make a video of someone saying something that they didn’t. In a few years, people won’t be able to tell the difference between raw footage and spoofs like this.

The content is changing, and the medium itself (video) is changing. At the end of the day, video is a really important truth for us. If something is captured on video tape (surveillance, news, etc.), it’s proof. It even holds up legally!

That truth is breaking down. How will information + credibility be evaluated in the future? The publishing site that hosts / displays the video?

Will people just stop believing the videos they see (like I do now with photos)?

Deep thoughts - and with good reason. Just where is technology and *everyone’s* ability to edit and manipulate video, images, etc. going to take us? Can you imagine a world where government legislation forces those who use content editing software such as After Effects or Photoshop to apply for a license? I can.

Here’s a list of World Economic Forum Blogger with similar concerns. What say you?

I’ve been speaking a lot recently about the evolution of Twitter and all the amazing ways it is getting used across media, advertising, politics and family life. I’m going to try to create on an ongoing list building on this previous post. If you know of any I’m missing, please add ‘em in!

1. election.twitter.com
We all know Twitter as the place millions of people from around the world talk about what they are doing. But when you have that many people using a freeform communications tool they are going to bend it to their own voice: like mouthing off about this fatiguing 2008 Presidential Election process we’re in. This election has driven unprecedented content since it began (but that’s another post) and all of that chatter makes a great spectacle if you can get it all in one place. Enter election.twitter.com

First, and most importantly, it is open. Meaning, you don’t have to be a twitter member or user to use election.twitter.com. For many people, it has become a way to check in on (and do their own “chatter” reasearch on who is favoring who (and why). If you are a twitter user, you can join the conversation by posting directly from election.twitter.com and your update will go to everyone who follows you and into the election timeline.

My wife and I love to use it while we’re watching the debates…it has become our own Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) where we get to heckle and watch people heckle from the front of the room. Awesome.

2.Rick Sanchez

The stunt-blundering CNN correspondent cum anchor who did things like get himself tased, stand out in hurricanes, and simulate how to escape from a car underwater. Love him or hate him, Rick is once again shaking things up by trying to lead “the man’s” ongoing effort to pioneer in social media, Rick (and CNN) might be on to something with this one.

Rick Sanchez has been using Twitter on-the-air during his Saturday and Sunday evening shows on CNN and according to the above tweet, might be branching the show out futher. Similar to the way I use the election.twitter.com example, Ricks hows the Twitter on the screen and talks back to and about the tweets as they pass his screen. Talk about interactive mash-ups. This model isn’t going away folks and more people will experiment with it. We know many anchors try to comb through emails while on air - this is an evolution of that concoept (and probably a more valuable one). Sanchez has accumulated quite a few followers already. You can follow him on Twitter here.

Is it working? It’s probably too early to tell, but check this out: Steve Garfield (One of the Internet’s first video bloggers) has a flickr account that is getting hammered because he posted a shot of Rick Sanchez pointing at his tweet on air.

See the photo below.

_{There is some controversy on this photo as Rick removed a URL from the tweet (cleansing) for his use.}

At the time I posted this 25,456 people are following Rick on just less than 700 updates. Follow this one closely, folks. More discussion of CNN’s use of Twitter can be found here and here.

This is fantastic. Just don’t do it. Oh, and Magic Hugs? Hahahahahahahahah.

Meet MyKey Ford’s new programmable key/dashboard that does three basic things: it allows parents to limit a vehicle’s top speed, it allows parents to limit the stereo’s volume up to 44% of its max, and it allows them to set a sustaining chime if the seatbelts aren’t being used.

I applaud Ford for their efforts trying to take a proactive stance at attempting to make driving a bit safer for teenagers. But the new Ford MyKey is taking the driving nanny thing too far. Ford, sometimes you can over-do it with technology and this new innovation takes the cake.

Parents: talk to your children. Teach them about their automobile. Healthy relationships have a foundation of trust. When parents respect and trust their children their relationship matures. When parents trust their children and their children make a mistake (like a speeding ticket or god forbid, an accident) - lessons are learned - valuable lessons.

I can admit to learning some big driving lessons when I was a teenager. I sometimes think back at how lucky I was being able to walk away from some of the predicaments my car and I found ourselves in. And today, I cringe in fear at the thought of my children driving someday and making their own choices behind their own wheels. But, as scary as it is - I’m OK with that the responsibility I have as a parent to let my children make their own decisions and help them learn from their mistakes. That’s what parenting is about. And if there is one thing I learned from being a teen with too much energy - any attempt at bridling my spirited nature - was met with much retaliation.

I for one don’t want Ford teaching my son about automobiles. I’ll happily take that task on myself.

Awesome. When I first saw this stationary on SwissMiss today, I thought, man that really speaks to me. I’m always starting up things (projects, postings, exercise routines…) that I never finish.

But today I’m inspired. Today I have this notepad to rid me of my non-starter multitasking hell. Today I’m going to tell you all about this notepad and why it speaks to me so. Yes sir, today is going to be dif

Check out this neat music video for The Breeders song “Walk it Off”. Click the numbers and you can change your POV of the action as the video is playing. Everything hits “in time” with your clicks. Super cool and some really rick thinking I might add. Just another notch for the music scene and the constant marketing innovation we’re seeing come out of it.

We all know online video won’t exist solely in the “flat” format we consume it in today and little advancements like this show the depth of the medium waiting to be unleashed.