Film is rich with the kind of cross-pollination between science and art that inspires really great ideas. There is nothing more fascinating than digging up the grains of truth behind movie fantasies. I can’t say to what extent, if any these re-life projects have taken inspiration from the cinema, but one thing is for sure: They don’t lack in the coolness department.
Top Five Real-Life Ironman Projects
May 14, 2008 – 5:22 pm
Ping.fm Beta Invites and New Features
May 12, 2008 – 1:13 pm
The social network and microblog posting service Ping.fm has expanded it’s set of features with better posting control and improved support for posting to full-length blogs. Ping.fm offers unprecedented flexibility and is a huge time saver for people who maintain an online presence across multiple sites. We’ve updated our Ping.fm tutorial to reflect the new features so be sure to check it out here.
If you would like to sign up for the beta, we have some invites. Use the beta code “pingsauce” at the sign up page
Updated: Ping.FM Tutorial
May 12, 2008 – 1:19 am
For those that haven’t heard, Ping.fm is a great tool that allows you to post to multiple Social networks and Blog services at once. So instead of say, updating your Facebook status, then logging in to Twitter and updating there you can do it all at once. (and more, but we will get to that later) Check out the full tutorial after the jump. Note: Ping.fm has recently added some juicy new features so we’ve updated the fourth section of this tutorial so be sure to check it out.
FontStruct: Online Font Creation Tool
May 9, 2008 – 4:02 pm
Font Shop has quietly released a nifty new online font creation tool called FontStruct. FontStruct is an Ajax-y (really, is that actually a word?) web app that lets you go to town and try your hand at making your very own font which you can download in TrueType format. You can also make your font available for download by other users, as well as browse and download fonts created by other users.
Full review after the jump.
Obama: the New Chuck Norris?
May 9, 2008 – 12:48 pm
Apparently, the meme of the day over on Twitter involves declaring how the world will be better when Obama wins. Here are a few of the more amusing things that will apparently happen when Obama wins, according to the Twitterverse. Hyperbole included for free.
Brain Hacks: Six Ways to Come Up With New Visual Ideas
May 9, 2008 – 12:07 pm
Overcoming Mental Block
Looking at other work is a great way to get inspired, but what if you want to do something totally from within, relying on your own brain to come up with something without the benefit of external ideas? Here are a few tips that can provide that little bit of inspiration that can help you get the ball rolling if you are drawing a total blank:
1. Take a nap
Our brain has many different type of brainwaves and they ebb and flow depending on what we are doing. Each classification of wave is indicative of certain behaviors, for instance, when you are sleeping you will have high Theta activity, and when you are learning something new your high Beta waves will be more prevalent. Alpha waves are associated with creativity and lie in front of the Theta waves on the spectrum. As you relax and fall asleep your brain travels through the elevated Alpha wave state on it’s way to
it’s resting state.
Pay attention to what thoughts you have when waking up or falling asleep (A sketchpad next to the bed or napping spot is a great way to record things).
Social Portability and the Free Internet
May 6, 2008 – 4:13 pm
With the advent of the social network, web denizens have been enabled socially in ways that where never possible before. People who would never have been comfortable wining and dining at a real-life cocktail party (myself included) have been given the tools necessary to network, make and follow up with friends and colleagues online. This, of course is old news to anyone in the know at this point. The biggest story about social networks over the last few years has been the rampant proliferation of new websites and services which, when it comes to a social network can be a less-than positive thing. In a very real sense, the value of any given network is the people involved in it, so diluting the pool of contacts across multiple networks is problematic for those seeking any sort of total solution.
This of course, is where the social network aggregators have begun to find their foothold, but they still rely on the centralized structures of all the social networks they scrape data from. If, heaven forbid Facebook or Twitter or one of the other services people rely on to connect online folds, your carefully built network of contacts and the history of your communication with them evaporates into the ether.
Interesting Link of the day: Twistori
April 29, 2008 – 12:16 pm
Twitter can be notoriously overwhelming if you deign to to browse the public feed. Thousands of random thoughts and snippets of conversation de-contextualized and served up like so many TV channels flipping past at a huge rate. Twistori, however has created a truly interesting Twitter inexperience. Looking at Twitter not as a utility, but as an opportunity for social experimentation, Twistori feels more like collaborative art than useful social utility. It puts the poignancy back in the internet. In some ways Twistori feels like it the embodiment of what the web had promised to do for humanity at it’s inception: Bring us into closer community. Ultimately, no technology can deliver the intricacies of the human heart on demand, but seeing the Twistori text scroll up out of black with endless echoes of expressed emotion from nameless people reminds you of something: Someplace out there through the mess of wires, switches servers and fiber, you are connected with real people.
Commodore: Out of Extra Lives?
April 25, 2008 – 1:46 pm
The Channel Register is reporting this week that the Dutch firm that owns the Commodore brand has been declared bankrupt.
One has to wonder if the German and Dutch firms that traded Commodore around over the past few years failed to understand 
the value in leveraging the American nostalgia for the brand.
What is sad is that I truly think that Commodore could have come back had the brand been managed smartly. Unfortunately, in this day and age I’m not sure how many people have the intestinal fortitude to base an ad campaign on nostalgia, since it’s hard to demonstrate how that could be sustainable moving forward. You’d pretty much have to put all your eggs in that basket and hope that you could gain enough traction in the market to transition into a more forward-looking approach once you gained some new brand awareness. The problem is, without this approach the Commodore brand becomes a dead weight around their neck (seen as old and outdated) instead of an asset (good feelings about my very first computers, retro, hip).
It is kind of sad, but their most valuable asset now that they are near folding is probably their IP in terms of licensing t-shirts and other swag to companies that cater to nostalgic 80’s kids.
Twitter and Friend Sourcing: a Proposal
April 24, 2008 – 5:42 pm
Your TwitterBase
I recently read a post by Mark and Sean Evans over on their blog talking about Twitter. They touched on something that I’ve been hearing and thinking a bit about lately, but defined it in a particularly succinct manner:
“Twitter has accomplished want nobody, not even Google, has yet to figure out - crowdsourcing search. How often have you seen a request for advice, recommendations or suggestions come across your Twitter feed? “
