internet cool?!

Hats off to the smartest nerd writer creative director dude I know: Peter Knierim.

Peter recently got shafted by “the man”. In a classic reversal (and armed with a sharpie) he equally flipped “the man” the bird AND made an awesome self promotion in the process.  Go Pete!

Enjoi.

Heyho.  As promised, here are my slides from yesterday’s ClickNY 2009 presentation.  It was a great day choc-full-o so many humbling visionary people and ideas, my head is still spinning.

Onward and upward.

/ t 

The latest Did You Know video will blow your mind with interesting facts and figures about the social web and how it’s changed your world.  Here’s a uber-post of all of them, starting with the latest (version 4). (Also, see below for some screen grabs if you don’t have the time to watch).

Version 3:

According to Digital Inspiration, This video is part of the popular “Did You Know” series that originally started out as a PowerPoint presentation [Shift Happens} and, once people caught on, the presentation was converted into a video by xplane. You can watch all the previous versions of the “Did You Know” series here or download source presentations and high-res videos from the Shift Happens wiki.

Version 2:

And finally, Version 1:

Screen grabs:

The hands on the screen belong to James Paterson. He is using “Rhonda”, a 3D drawing tool developed by Amit Pitaru circa 2003.

The first half of the video shows James doing a drawing start to finish. In the second part James is cycling through various previous drawings, created between 2004 and 2005. For the last several years Rhonda has been shown in galleries, museums, festivals and conferences. We are excited to finally release this video online (about time!).

Freakin’ awesome.  Sign up for the beta here.

Great post from mr micropersuasion on how to stay on top of all new thats fit to geek. Of course, you’ll have to be a slave to your RSS feed like we are - so why not just follow me on Twitter and get the daily digest? (Ahem).  Either way, this list should get you started.  Rock on…

from the site
Want to know what’s cool and emerging? Me too. That’s why I subscribe to dozens of blog feeds from cool companies large and small. They include all the Google blogs, the Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebbook blog and many more.

I have decided to share these with you by rolling them up into single feed, which you can browse or subscribe or even download here… 

• 37signals Product Blog
• Aardvark Blog
• AdaptiveBlue Blog
• Alltop News and Updates
• Amazon Kindle’s Blog
• BackType
• bit.ly blog
• blog.reddit — what’s new on reddit
• blog.scoopler.com
• Bloglines | News
• Clearspring Community Blog
• CoTweet
• Daylife Blog
• delicious blog
• Demand Satisfaction!
• Digg the Blog
• Evernote Blog
• Everything TypePad
• Facebook Blog
• First Look
• Flickr Blog
• FM Blog
• foursquare
• FriendFeed Blog
• Google Labs
• Hulu Blog - Home
• Instapaper Blog
• Mahalo Blog
• MindMeister Blog
• My Yahoo! Blog
• Netvibes.com Blog
• OpenID
• Pandora
• Pipes Blog
• ProgrammableWeb
• Remember The Milk - Blog
• Ron’s Evernote Tips
• Six Apart News & Events
• The Acrobat.com Blog
• The Ask.com Blog
• The LinkedIn Blog
• The Mozilla Blog
• The Official Posterous Posterous
• the popurls blog
• The Scribd Blog
• The Technorati Weblog
• The Windows Blog
• The Yammer Blog
• TweetDeck’s posterous
• Twitpic Blog
• Twitter Blog
• Windows 7 Team Blog
• Yahoo! Answers Blog
• Yahoo! Answers Team Blog (answers.yahoo.com)
• Yahoo! Mail Blog
• Yahoo! Search blog
• Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog
• Yodel Anecdotal
• YouTube Blog

The Art Of Creating Simple, Smaller And Smarter.
Or… Mommy, how I learned to stop making advertisements and start making things that advertise.

This is a little session description I wrote recently for POKE’s 2009 Cannes Workshop. I thought I’d share - mainly because I’m particularly angry today.

This session was designed to explore the value of execution over “big” ideas in a hands-on session. People broke into groups where, under a series of realistic constraints, they were forced to focus on being nimble, among other things…

U like? U hate?

The Art Of Creating Simple, Smaller And Smarter.
Or… Mommy, how I learned to stop making advertisements and start making things that advertise.

Blech! Recession. Advertising agencies and brands are running scared. “Digital” agencies are renouncing sight, sound and motion. They’re being forced to seek out alternative means of engaging consumers because their excessive marketing habits of the past have been rendered obsolete, both by technology and by lack of consumer interest. Face it, no one wants to be advertised to, online or otherwise.

Do you?

But for many, this movement isn’t just some new fad to control costs during troubled times. Hasn’t the best marketing has always come from creating something entertaining, valuable and useful? I believe people gravitate towards, and like talking about, simple and valuable interactions, and are willing to forgive (and even embrace) branded messages that come with them.

Forget thinking big.

It’s time to think small. It’s time to embrace the art of simple, smart and social. It’s time to stop creating advertisements and start creating useful things that advertise. Your communications can be executed more efficiently and with greater impact than the clutter that’s prevalent today. Let’s explore how.

In other words:

@CannesLions: The “Big Idea” is dead. Learn to embrace small: Simple. Smart and Social. Otherwise, don’t bother. When? Tuesday 23 June • 17:00-19:00 • Where? Debussy Theater

♥,POKE

360° video isn’t new, necessarily (there are a lot of programmers who have done created similar executions). But this is the first time I’ve really seen making video like this get so accessible, so quickly.

Meet Yellowbird. BTW, their URL is “yellowbirdsdonthavewingsbuttheyflytomakeyouexperiencea3dreality.com” (which is awesome in it’s own right).

By using a Google Streetview-like camera, a system with six lenses, not as a photo but as a video camera, an all-encompassing picture is captured. From the point where the images were recorded, the viewer can look in any direction, let his eyes wander through the crowd, or stare at the ground or the air, which makes viewing a video an experience without boundaries.

Oh, and as soon you figure out how to strap your 6 iPhones together with Duct Tape, you’ll even be able to embed and share all your 360 videos with your nerdy, jealous friends.

You’re welcome. :)

This dude is making music with computers err trees errr both.  Whatever. It’s awesome. And nerdy. But not too nerdy. It’s kinda tree-huggy too. And that’s awesomer. Enjoi.

from the site

In the garden of my house there’s a tree with lots of randomly grown twigs. It looks odd and nice at the same time.One day I asked myself if I could create a piece of music with it.

To tune the tree I picked a fundamental note and tuned the twigs by trimming them with a pencil sharpener. I used two Røde NT6 and a NTG-2 as microphones, combined with a customized stethoscope.

I recorded the tracks live on a Pro Tools LE system. I didn’t use any synthesizer or sampler to create or modify the sounds. All the sounds come from playing the tree, by bowing the twigs, shaking the leaves, playing rhythms on the cortex and so on.

Below you can see the video and some pictures with more detailed descriptions from his posting on Behance.

Diego Stocco - Music From A Tree from Diego Stocco on Vimeo.

I modified a stethoscope by using some hose accessories.The connection between the plastic pipe and the microphone needed to be sealed in order to transmit the sound well.

Here I was recording the low frequencies coming from a big piece of cortex. I used this sound as a kick drum.

The two Røde NT6 attached to my fingers with rubber bands. I came up with this idea because mike stands are not very practical for certain locations and also because in this way I can move the microphones dynamically around the object I’m recording.

Tuning the twig by trimming it with a pencil sharpener.

This is the twig that I was using to play the bass note.

A little twig I used for high-pitched sounds.

The track is also available as an high-quality download on my Bandcamp page:
http://diegostocco.bandcamp.com/track/music-from-a-tree

My closest friends know how much of an evangelist I am interactivity in schools and the positive impact and potential it can have on our children and their education. I’ve had a number of children’s interactive projects over the years (the most recent being KideoPlayer, a family-friendly interactive YouTube filter) but nothing I’ve come across recently has the potential of this…  

Meet The Hidden Park, an iphone-guided scavenger hunt that uncovers trolls, fairies, tree genies, and other fantastic creatures skulking around actual landmarks at your local park. You read that right. It’s awesome. And my boys and I are doing it this weekend.  :) 

Convincing kids to spend an afternoon away from the PlayStation is a tough sell with the promise of xBox and Wii sitting in your living room. (Nature? Booooooringi!) Use your children’s video-game obsession to lure them outdoors where the best games always come to life. 

The ‘augmented reality game‘ can be played in a growing number of public spaces across the globe, including New York’s Central Park, Boston Common, London’s Kensington Park, and Ueno Park in Tokyo. Tapping into your iPhone’s GPS, the app leads families on a quest to help the Magical Wildlife Protection Association prove the existence of magical beings in the park, which is in danger of being bulldozed by money-grubbing developers. (But imagine the themes, and geographies we could bring to this idea? This is just the tip of the iceberg). Does anyone have an land they want to donate? :) I’ll make the app!

The map the game supplies is also enchanted; as you move past specific landmarks, it throws out riddles and puzzles to clue you in on where to go next. The cool factor comes into play when your kids use the iPhone’s built-in camera to document their discoveries. Just like magic, the park’s mystical denizens make their presence known.

Maybe fresh air isn’t overrated, after all.

Get it here:  The Hidden Park $6.99 at Apple iTunes Store

Learn more here :  The Hidden Park