If I was a Robot

AhHaha... it's funny because it's geeky and it's true. If I Was A Robot, I would totally break dance all the time. Thoughts care of Alex Noriega's entertaining sketch blog. Also see Stupid Things I've Done for Love. (Found through Swissmiss).

Color of the Internet

Antrepo4.com tried to answer the (hardly age old) question of what is the color of the internet? Although this problem could be approached in many ways, they chose to look at it from the scaled perspective of the top ranked sites. They created 4 posters showing the colors for the top sites in the categories of Global, Design, Games and Blogs. Then surfacing the most dominant color in any category. No surprise that the Global website color was blue (safe, predictable and unoffensive - yawn). Visit their website to see the full range of colors and order one of the beautiful color posters. I'd love to see this done over time.

Graze

Graze is a healthy alternative to your work place vending machine. It is a natural food company that delivers healthy snacks to your desk via the mail. They have a delicious looking selection of fresh fruits, dried fruits, nuts, seeds and olives. My mouth is watering.

The service is subscription based. They send you boxes once or twice a week until you tell them not to. You can customize how often you receive the boxes and what types of food you prefer. The type of mix can even be centered around your personal goals or activities, such as loosing weight, maintaining blood sugar, or boosting your immunity. Graze has also taken measures to stay green by using biodegradable packaging and standard mail service instead of custom deliveries. Each Graze box cost just £2.99 (including delivery). Unfortunately the service is currently only available in the UK.

Sentenc.es

I am one of those people that doesn't read emails that are longer than 2 paragraphs. I'm sorry, but I don't. I just don't have the time or the patience to read 5 page emails. I'm sure that sounds immature, conceited and worthy of a good eye roll, head shake combination. But I would be way more productive if everyone stuck to a two paragraph email rule.

That is why I like the thought behind three.sentenc.es, which applies a disciplined approach writing short emails. Comes in two, four and five sentence variations as well.

Slagsmalsklubben

Back to the topic of digital storytelling (a growing obsession of mine). Swedish design student, Tomas Nilssons has created this smile worthy digital interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood, as part of a school project. The animation was inspired by the Royksopp Remind Me video, and borrows heavily on the style and format. Despite the me-too aspect, I greatly enjoyed the twist on the Little Red Riding Hood story. Another great example of a classic story reinterpreted to a digital story.

Neon Sign Boneyard

In a recent trip through Flickr-land, I came across this photo set from Flickr user arZan. The photos are of a Neon Sign Boneyard in Las Vegas, where old signs go to retire. The signs are piled on the ground in colorful and playful combination. Creating a kind of niche Vegas history museum.

This looks like such an inspiring little adventure, and a fun place to take photos.

We Tell Stories

We Tell Stories is a website created by Six to Start for Penguin books. It features 6 writers, telling 6 stories, in 6 weeks. The project takes classic Penguin titles and retells the stories in a digital format - but not your typical, eBook style digital format. Six to Start consider themselves modern storytellers who tell stories using high tech interactive methods and media. Of the 6 stories, one is told using areal view map fly overs, one is told using twitter, two are web based choose your own adventure stories, another was written in real time with real time readers, and yet another was interpreted by Nicholas Felton's data driven infographic style.

Whew. And I'm sure there is much more to come. The world of digital and location based storytelling is just beginning. (Found through Half Deserted Streets).

New Math

New Math features equations about life, by Craig Damrauer. The math is very enjoyable to read though. Mainly because most of the equations are oh so true. I like the modern art one shown above. Another one of my favorites is a Good Meeting = (Time Saved/Time Wasted) + Snacks. Ha. He publishes a new one every Monday.

Reminds me of another one of my favorites: Indexed.

Donate A Meal

Donate A Meal is a German charity website for donating money to feed the children of Dusseldorf. It combines beautiful web design with a good old fashion guilt trip. To donate money you simply drag and drop food onto a child's plate. You can't help but fill the plate, and then you can't help but follow through with the donation. Very effective.

Thank You (So Much) Card

I think a "thank you" is much more valuable if you truly mean it. That is what appeals to me about these Thank You (So Much) Cards from The Design Office. You can choose just how much you appreciate someone or something.

iSketches

Jorge Colombo creates paintings... on his iPhone. He uses a application called Brushes, which allows him to paint with his finger. He captures scenes of New York City on his little 3.5 inch digital canvas. The backlit screen allows for easy nighttime painting sessions.

If you want to see how it's done, Jorge's website features movies of the paintings in progress (a feature of Brushes). I'm amazed and inspired.

Neave Vote

I can't get enough of Neave Vote. It is a tongue in cheek voting website intended to make you question the legitimacy of voting. The questions themselves are pretty humorous, but it is the answers that are the true entertainment. There is often just no good answer. You are forced to choose an answer that you probably wouldn't have said, had the question been open ended.

Paracord Survival Bracelet

When does 18 feet of military grade paracord not come in handy? I mean, come on. If you agree, maybe you should invest in one of these Survival Bracelets. The bracelet is made of knotted cord that can be unwound in the case of emergency. If you purchase the bracelet Survival Straps they are willing to retie the bracelet after use, as long as you send it back with a (true) story about how you used it.

If you are not interested in the story factor (which I think is the main selling point) you can always make your own Paracord Bracelet with these how-to instructions from Instructables.com.

Bicycle Built for Two Thousand

Bicycle Built for 2000 is the latest project by Aaron Koblin and Daniel Massey. They took the song Daisy Bell (a.k.a. Bicycle Built for Two) and synthesized it, breaking the song down note by note. They then paid Amazon's Mechanical Turk workers to listen to a note of the song and reproduce it to the best of their abilities. None of the workers knew about the greater goal, they were only informed of their task. All the sampled notes were put back together into a complete song featuring over 2000 human voices. Amazing!

Braun Photostream

This Flickr photostream of Braun products brings me a sense of inner calm.

My Shelf

Dudes in Suits have an outstanding ask for pictures of things from your shelf. You know, that shelf where you keep your favorite display items; an unframed photo, a design book, StarWars lego men, binoculars... whatever. Here are some of the My Shelf photos they have received so far.

The Cult of Done Manifesto

Bre Pettis and Kio Stark have published a Cult of Done Manifesto to help creatives banish procrastination and just get on with making. It is a kick in the butt, get on with it, style of inspiration. And who doesn't need that?

The manifesto has 13 declarations. Here are some of my favorites:

Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.

The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.

Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.

Illustration by James Provost.

See Saw Series

Artist L Filipe dos Santos has a nice sketchbook series called See Saw. They start with colorful gouache blotches and are transformed into quirky, story filled drawings.

There is something really nice about allowing yourself to be inspired by color and shape. (Found through Sub-Studio).

The World of 100

Toby Ng set out to simplify his world view by imagining the global population was a village of just 100 people. From this minimalized perspective, he was able to create a set of beautiful and effective posters to visualize global statistics.

Passive Aggressive Anger Release Machine

The Passive Aggressive Anger Release Machine is a vending machine full of breakables. Insert money, smash something. Brilliant! Unfortunately this is just an interactive sculpture created by Yarisal and Kublitz. I say unfortunately because I would really get good use out of one of these. They could put one in my office next to the regular vending machine, and charge $50 per plate. I can't think of a more satisfying way to release some afternoon frustration. (Found through Thriving Too).

Reminds me of Smash Shack.

Where Does the Internet Come From?

Sometimes when I have nothing better to ponder, I think about how amazing it is that communication cable run under the ocean. I'm not kidding, I've spent hours thinking about this. How did they get them down there? How do they make repairs? What do the fish think? It keeps me occupied because it is so incomprehensible.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds this facinating. GOOD magazine has an article entitled Where Does the Internet Come From? which addresses how amazing our reliance on the semi-archaic submarine cable system is.

"And, while the internet might seem like the cutting edge of technology, it’s interesting to note that information has been traveling this way since the first telegraph cables were laid across the Atlantic ocean in the 19th century."

Follow Cost

Ha! I'm not sure if this website is made in jest or not, but it makes me giggle. Follow Cost calculates just how annoying it will be to follow a particular user on Twitter. Annoyance is measured in milliscobles, or 1/1000th of Robert Scoble's Twitter output (twitter.com/scobleizer). For example I (twitter.com/onefloorup) am only 40.82 milliscobles of added annoyance to your life, where as Guy Kowasaki (twitter.com/ guykawasaki) is 1661.68 milliscobles of annoyance (no offense Guy). In case you don't find a lot of tweets annoying, they also show the percent of recent tweets that mention politics and the percent of tweets that are @ replies. Ha! This would be much better if you could specify that things that found annoying and then rate each user based on your criteria.

Twistori

Twistori is an emotive collector (heavily) inspired by Jonathan Harris' fantastic project We Feel Fine. It pulls and displays Twitter content containing the words; I love, I hate, I think, I believe, I feel, or I wish. It is easy to get caught up reading the tweets around any one emotion.

My favorite is I Hate. I was expecting it to be super negative, but it is actually very amusing and uplifting in a round about way. (Thanks James!)

Decaying Paintings

Humans have a tendency to want to fight time and create things that last forever. But there is something very beautiful about how a fragile material ages, and changes over time.

Valerie Hegarty challenges the way we think about art by creating pieces that are already decaying and decrepit. Her art is battered, torn and damaged. It has already been burned, shot, drowned or eaten by bugs... so now you don't have to worry about it, just enjoy it. (Found through My Formative).

Everything I Have

Artist Simon Evans has taken inventory of all his worldly possessions in his piece, Everything I Have. The image was created out of pen, paper, scotch tape, and white out. I have so many questions...

This idea definitely makes you reflect on your own belongings and consumerism. I'm trying to imagine how big or small an inventory of everything I own would be, and just how long it would take to catalog. I'm sure at the end of the process I would want to give away everything and move to a hut on the beach. I'll add this to my To Do List, just in case.

You can see Simon's work in NYC at the James Cohan Gallery, now until April 4th. (Found through PSFK).

Augmented Twitter T-Shirt

The geeks (and I mean that in the nicest way) at Squidder have combine their favorite things; t-shirts, Papervision and Twitter, to create this live status t-shirts. The shirts have fiduciary markers, translatable by webcams or camera phones. The markers are encoded with your user name, to look up and display your latest Twitter post in a movable 3D format in front of your chest.

Ways to be Cool

I was considering working on a Manifesto, but I've decided to scrap that idea and just work on a list of ways to be cool. Inspired by this list. It is funny how some things are just eternally cool and others are very temporal. I wonder who Steve is... (Found through BB-Blog).