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hi! i’m Tom, founder and creative director of POKE.  i live in CT, work in NYC, munch on tasty digital cookies, collect lunchboxes, take lots of photos and buy lots of t-shirts.  mmm…cookies. i’m passionate about creating a safe internet for kids, cookies, really great Italian cooking, all kinds of dogs, digital photography and the power of technology and how it affects our daily lives. i’d love to tell you i read a lot - but i just don’t. so there. Psychotic.

Entries in design (35)

Kiwi-Crate Rocks!

As you well know by now I way in to all kinds of innovation when it comes to kids education and entertainment. So I was pretty stoked to find KiwiCrate recently. For $19.95 a month (includes shipping), KiwiCrate will send you an age-appropriate craft project for your child complete with all the materials and detailed instructions. The crafts are developed by a panel of experts in child development, science, art, and education and tested by the ultimate experts: real kids.



I signed my boys up a few months back for this one and so far all three kits we’ve received have been a total hit.

So are the boxes that have arrived are themed (they may be centered around a season, holiday or subject; IE Space & Planets). There are plenty of materials provided, and it’s good quality stuff. I was happy to see two activities in most of our boxes as well as plenty of materials so both my boys can participate.

Really digging the creativity here. Can’t help but think the best is yet to come in the subscription service world. What do you think?

get back to work

Found in r27's Twitter feed. Enjoi!

apple #fail: one man's reaction.

enjoi!

via Centennial Society

yummy nerdy design (for a gloomy monday!)

Welp, these sweet (and very creative) toys brought a lil’ sunshine to a rainy Monday in CT. The video and the toys are the product of Beth Algieri and Jonny Plummer, two directors / designers with a common passion making awesome. Hope you enjoi!


Parallel Parking from Yum Yum London on Vimeo.

meet apricot. monday morning inspiration

APRICOT — A Short Film by Ben Briand from Moonwalk Films on Vimeo.

Holy smokes. This little indie short really delivers. Good acting, good script, good editing, good camera work (although at the end, the camera motion was bit too much, but still!) There are a lot of inspiring films on Vimeo, but few are this beautifully written, shot, and performed. Somehow it reminds me of Where the Wild Things are. Love it. Enjoi!

stretchable screens, transparent screens and e-ink displays Oh, MY!


This is the result of the Open Innovation experiment. It is an experience video showing the future of screen technology with stretchable screens, transparent screens and e-ink displays, to name a few.

Finger painting, music playing iPad awesomeness.  

infographic: explore the earth from the bottom to the top

Ideas are easy. Realizing one isn't.

Looks like someone shares our philosophy. Honored that its Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame.) :D

“You’d be hard pressed to come up with an idea so bad that it couldn’t succeed with the right execution. And it would be even harder to imagine a great idea that couldn’t fail if the execution were left to morons.


Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything.”

— Scott Adams

Amen Scott. Amen.

the stats behind the interweb's number 1 business

Hokay folks. This time we’re looking at the internet’s biggest business: Pornography. Special thanks to these guys for passing it along.


There’s an old anecdote about the most interesting technological advances and creative ideas happen in online pornography first. There’s a reason for that - the numbers are staggering! It has been traded online since the 1980’s, even in the form of ASCII art, and then, with the rise of the world wide web in the 1990’s, adult webistes began springing up everywhere.