Normann-Copenhagen

Norman-Copenhagen is a housewares company with a solid design heart. That focus on design is reflected in their elegant new website. The website features beautiful high res images of their products with detail shots, colour options and information about the product's designer. A lot of care and attention to detail went into this website, which reflects well on the products and designers themselves. (Found through The FWA).

No One Belongs Here More Than You

What better way to see a book than with some great storytelling? And Miranda July's website for her book 'No One Belongs Here More Than You' is definitely an example of great story telling (maybe not fabulous photography but good storytelling). I plan on buying the book based solely on the joy I got from the ridiculously entertaining approach to the website.

FontStruct

And speaking of fonts... I just came across this great font building software called FontStruct. It allows you to build, share and download fonts for free. The gallery of designed fonts is very inspiring. (Discovered through Springwise).

Daylesford Organic

I've newly discovered Great Britain's Daylesford Organic. It's an organic store that specializes in food and home products. Their website is drool-worthy gorgeous. It's branding at its best. Plus, they have some refreshing approaches to products, like this fresh organic milk packaged in environmentally friendly, biodegradable, fold-flat milk jugs (slash bags).

Pixlporn

Pixlporn is a risque, or rather not so risque, website that features celebrity's private bits in super pixelated form. You can look at it as art, as an interesting color study, or an exercise for the imagination. However you look at it, it's hard to stop looking. Each pixel image is tagged with the celebrity featured and the source of the image. The above pixels belong to Madonna (in case you were squinting, I mean, wondering).

10mg Interactive Bunny Surgery

The 10mg Interactive site is such a great little advertisement for a web design company. It requires you to preform emergency surgery on a teddy rabbit against the clock. You can't help but keep playing!

Nokia Nseries Urbanista Diaries

The Nokia Nseries has created an interesting website where they tell a tale of 4 bloggers traveling around the globe and taking pictures, to help sell the Nokia 5 megapixel, GPS enabled phones. The advertising story goes like this... "Once upon a time, 4 travelers began a global quest. They beat a path through our urban jungles to seek out untold stories - to capture time, only to release it back into the world. And they laid out a trail so we cannot lose them". You can track the bloggers' travels and view their geo-tagged photos as the post them. It's a cool, overly dramatized take on selling a phone - I like it. (Found through Comuptuerlove).

Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far

I'm kind of intrigued by the site Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far. It invites users to contribute maxims that they have learned about life. The site asks "What have you learned in your life so far? What is it that you are fairly sure about? What is it that you believe in by now?". What I like about this site is that they have put an artistic spin on things. Contributions are made in the form of digital artwork. They are sketches, or photos, or movies created to illustrate or include the advice. This one hit home for me... Take a moment, locate yourself. (Found through Josh Spear).

Free Rice

I love the thinking behind Free Rice. The idea is very simple, they use advertising profits generated by visitors to donate money to the UN World Food Program in an effort to help end hunger. People are invited to come to the site and play a multiple choice word game. For each correct answer, 20 grains of rice are donated. The game strengthens your vocabulary and keeps your attention long enough to make the advertising money needed to pay for the rice donations. It's super simple, super smart, and by the look of the stats, super effective. (Found through notcot.org).

Walk Score

If you are moving and looking for a place to buy or rent, you should check out the website Walk Score. It scores neighbourhoods based on how walker friendly they are. Walkable neighbourhoods are determined based on proximity of restaurants, shops, schools, parks, etc. The site admits some shortcomings in their calculations, but overall it's an excellent approximation of walkability. The Walk Score website has a great list of reasons why it's important to live somewhere walkable. The reasons range from the predictable eco-friendly sort to some you many not have though of, such as increased social capital. Very cool site. I'm going to be looking up the walk score of every neighbourhood I consider living in from now on. (Thanks Karon and fam).

Overheard in New York

I'm moving away from New York this week :( I'm really going to miss the character of the city and all its inhabitants. This reminded me of the site Overheard in New York. It's part of a series of websites where people submit pieces of overheard conversations. Too funny! Overheard in New York is my favorite of the Overheard websites. You just have to read a few posts to appreciate the awesomeness of New Yorkers.

BBC's British History Timeline

The BBC's British History Timeline is a (insert best British accent here...) gorgeous (...end accent) way to brush up on your British history. It's a simple but sophisticated interactive timeline that lets you explore significant events in British history from 862BC to today.

Burst Labs

Burst Labs is the online production music library of The Burst Collective. The site takes a refreshing approach to organizing and searching through audio files. I particularly like the Discover feature that allows you to pick from suggested descriptive words to help define the type of music you are interested in. It gives you just the right amount of tools to 'discover' the music with, depending on your level of adventurism or need to define.

Floor Planner

If you are thinking about redecorating (or just rearranging) your house or apartment, you should definitely check out Floor Planner. It's very easy to use and has better graphics than most floor planning software I've seen. The interface is straight forward. You just drag and drop walls, windows and other architectural elements to represent your room and then add contents from the 300+ furniture elements menu. Double clicking on different aspects of the room allow you to enter or alter dimensions. Oh, and it's free for personal use. (Found through Apartment Therapy).

CDX Game

CDX is a interactive video adventure created by the BBC and the always inspiring Preloaded. The game was designed to accompany the BBC mini-series Ancient Rome but it's a fabulous stand alone piece. The game is educational in a very subtle way. It reminds me of a modern, adult version of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. Preloaded used a combination of Maya Renderings, video, and Flash to create this online adventure. CDX won this year's Flash Forward Game category.

Diesel Style Lounge

A new online Diesel store recently launched featuring this mesmerizing Liquid Space Style Lounge. It has the same dark underwater feel as their amazing holographic fashion show did. The clothes are shown on floating models. To add to the effect they have also changed the behavior of the users cursor in the lounge so it feels as though you are pulling it through the water. Great combination of effects. On a side note, this is supposed to be one of the most complete online Diesel stores ever, including items from the runway not available in most stores. (Found through The FWA).

Express Shirt and Tie Guide

Express seems to know their customers well. They have put together this handy little interactive guide for choosing shirts and ties. The guide explains all the important elements of shirts and ties. It also offers some suggested shirt and tie combinations and even shows animations on how to tie different styles of ties. What I really like about this guide is that it is shows a certain amount of respect to the reader by maintaining a level of sophistication, even for basic information. Its information is aimed at people who know nothing, without making them feel like they know nothing.

Gwen Stefani Content on HP Site

I heard a comic the other day doing a funny bit about how silly it is that gum companies have websites. The gist of the bit was, do you chew your gum and think 'Wow, this gum is really good. If only I had more information about it'. It made me laugh, but it also make me think. Which is more ridiculous, not having a website or having an essentially useless website?

Some companies have gone out of their way to make potentially uninteresting websites interesting. HP is an example that comes to mind. They have smartly added an Activity Center to their website. It features fun and easy projects that are designed to make you think about all the great things you can do with a printer. Recently they have been promoting the Activity Center though their collaborative projects with Gwen Stephani, featured on her HP commercial. This is a great way to draw people to their website, a good use of combining tv and web content, and an effective use of their creative celebrity endorsement deals.

Net Disaster

I don't know why this is so fun, but it is. Net Disaster is a website that allows you to inflict catastrophes on your favorite (or least favorite) websites. Just type in the target site's address and choose the type of damage you want to inflict. Disasters to choose from include; wasp stings, spilled coffee, throwing tomatoes, sending in protesters, spray paint graffiti and much more. A great stress reliever. (Found through the always fabulous Swissmiss).

Filippa Smedhagen Sund

I like the portfolio of Swedish Makeup Artist Filippa Smedhagen Sund. It contains some gorgeous photography of her work. What I like most about the site is the interface. Upon entering the site you get quick instructions on how to navigate, and then off you go. The interface is simple enough that you could probably figure it out yourself but I like the courteous idea of just showing people what to do up front. It makes users much more receptive to new interface styles. The site was designed by the Berlin based company, Mocoro.

Nike ID

Nike ID is probably the best thing to happen to running shoes since Velcro. It is a website that allows you to create and order your own set of custom Nikes. You choose a shoe style and then you have creative control over all the colors (base, laces, swoosh, sole, etc), plus you can add your own graphic or text to the side, and if you have wonky feet you can even order the left and right shoe in different sizes. Love it! Ordering my first pair tonight.

Also check out the Puma equivalent - The Puma Mongolian Shoe BBQ

Earth as Art

I came across the site Earth as Art today. It's from a couple of years ago, but I found it really inspiring. It celebrates the beauty of the Earth by featuring a collection of stunning high res satellite images of our planet. Above is a photos of China's Himalayas.

The Opposite Side of the World

As little kids, my sister and I would often dig in the sandbox. Most of the time the imagined goal was the same - dig to China. I would have been greatly disappointed if I had done all that digging just to find out that the other side of the world was just the middle of the ocean. Luckily modern children don't need to waste their time digging... they just have to go to this website. It shows you what is on the exact opposite side of any point on earth. (Don't get your hopes up too high, odds are the other side is ocean).

100 Mondays

Plataforma Humana is trying to collect "100 days in 100 images of 100 people, or better yet of 100 people around the world taking 100 pictures of their Mondays". Basically on any old Monday you take 100 pictures (about one every ten minutes) of whatever you are doing (eating, staring at the computer, dancing). The idea is to take the photos from your own viewing perspective so that the final effect is to live 100 Mondays from different people's points of view. They are not publishing the results until they have received all 100 Monday's worth or photos (currently at 22). I'm adding this to my To Do list!

Worldmapper

Worldmapper is an interesting website that contains 366 maps that visualize different global stats. The maps use equal area cartograms that re-sizes each country according to a variable. For example, the above map shows Research and Development Expenditure. The country size is shown in proportion to the worldwide research and development spending. These types of maps are very good at quickly illustrating statistics and their popularity seems to be growing.

Red Interactive Agency

I get very excited when someone does something unique with a website. There are so many awesome websites out there that it is hard to pull off something new and interesting but I think Red Universe has done it. Each user to their site becomes a character in their universe. You get to run around exploring the site and chatting with other visitors. You even get to fly about in a little superman pose. It is simple but also fun, interesting, and most importantly engaging. The site recently won a well deserved FITC award in the Self Promotion category and ultimately won Best in Show. (Found through the FWA)

Mr Toledano Will See You Now

I really enjoyed the online portfolio of photographer Philip Toledano. His photography is very compelling. Each of his photographs is like a story in itself. I particularly liked his series called People, which he describes as wanting to be "as though you'd accidentally picked up the phone and caught the middle of a conversation". The site itself, designed by Megaphone, complements the photos by being very simple yet pretty.

A Moment on Earth

A Moment on Earth is a series of short films created to try and put some perspective on what any moment on Earth is like. On August 5, 2004 at 12:00pm GMT 60 filmmakers around the world recorded one minute of video showing what was happening where they were. The results give a small glimpse into how much is going on at any moment and emphasize the difference in people's situations around the globe. The website has an interesting Mosaic of stills from the different films that give a good summary of their subjects.

Mail Me Art

Mail Me Art is a collaborative art project created by Darren Di Lieto. The project invites wannabe artists to create a work of art on an envelope of parcel and mail it to the project's address in the UK. The end goal of the project is to show the submissions in London gallery where the pieces will be sold. Part of the money from the sale goes back the artist. The site also offers monthly prizes to keep the mailing momentum up. For more information on how to submit, visit www.mailmeart.com.

15x15

15x15 is a website that plays on Andy Warhol's theory that 'In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes'. The site constantly shows 15 boxes, each playing a 15 second video clip captured using mobile phones. The videos can be of any content, as long as it is not offensive. The variety of the clips is pretty entertaining. Clips can be submitted by anyone by uploading them from your computer or sending them directly from your phone using MMS.

They Rule(d)

They Rule was created by Josh On back in 2004. The information is a bit out of date but the idea behind it is still very relevant. The site is designed to provide a glimpse into the connections between the American ruling class. It allows you to create maps using the board members of the top 500 companies in the US. You can see who sits (sat) on what board and which other companies they are board members for. The more boards a person sits on the fatter their little icon is. You can create you own connection maps or view some of the saved maps (Apple vs Microsoft, Within 2 Phone Calls to Bush, If Women Ruled the World, and more).

GPS Drawing

Sure GPS units are great to help you get from point A to point B, but did you know that they can also be used to draw pictures? The GPS drawing site is an amazing collection of images that people have drawn on land, air, or water, using a GPS unit. The above image was drawn on a 67.7 km bike ride through Brighton by Jeremy Wood. The images are drawn in all sorts of ways including by dogs in a park, guys with lawn mowers, someone putting down the chalk markings on a football pitch, walking on the beach, and many more. My favorite part about this is imagining how awesome some of these people must look walking in circles with a GPS unit in their hand!

Get the Glass

Today's FWA Site of the Day is Get the Glass. It is a very bandwidth intensive Flash site but it is worth the downloading time. The site is part of a Got Milk campaign. The main section of the site is an amazing 3D board game. The object is to help the Adachi family rescue a glass of milk before they get caught by the police. The game graphics are incredible. I particularly like the effect of rolling the dice. I'm not sure exactly who this game is aimed at. The concept is very basic but a lot of the activities along the way are challenging. I hope there is a lot of money in milk these days because this site must have cost them a fortune.

Etsy

Etsy has been on my "to blog" list for quite some time. I love this site for two reasons; firstly, I have a huge amount of admiration for independent artists and designers who just do their own thing, and secondly, the site has some great interface and sorting features that make it really engaging to interact with.

The idea behind Etsy is that it is an online space for artists and designers to sell their own handmade goods. Each artist has their own "store" where you purchase from the artist directly but all the stores are searchable from the main site. There are tons of great handmade creations like jewelry, clothing, bags, artwork and furniture, most for surprisingly low prices.

The site itself is very intriguing. You can sort through the products in many different ways including by color, by geolocators (incase you want to support the locals), using time machines (to sort according to the date and time listed), or by recommendations (Showcase, Treasury or Connections).

Guests at the Toronto Zoo

I can't believe I'm saying this... Madagascar Cockroaches rock! Kudos to whichever advertising firm accepted the brief of making people want to come see cockroaches at the zoo. They did an amazing job. Check out this website to promote a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach exhibit at the Toronto Zoo March 9-18. It features a short movie of Jeb's trip to Canada (awesome), and this music video of 3 roaches singing "Hiss at you! Hiss at you! Hiss at you!" (love it).

Found Magazine

I've gotten a few comments this week on my post about the Post Secret website. This site is along the same lines. It is called Found Magazine. It is a website with daily postings of notes that people have found on the ground, on their windshields, on public transportation, and many other places. Each note is accompanied by an explanation of where and how it was found, which often adds to the amusement. This site offers a strange little glimpse into other people's lives. (Thanks Heckman)

Post Secret

Post Secret is a website that displays people's secrets on 4"x6" cards. Anyone can submit a secret as long as it is something that you have never told anyone and it fits on one side of a postcard (or at least mailable material). New secrets are posted to the site every Sunday and then replaced the following week.

There is something really fascinating about reading other people's secrets. They all seem so genuine. I really like the idea of telling a secret anonymously. It's like writing a message in a bottle and sending it out to sea... only we all get to read it. Previous secrets have been turned into books. Check them out on Amazon.

Don't Click

The Don't Click website is an experimental look into a world with no mouse clicking. It explores our clicking habit by creating an interface where no clicking in necessary. The site includes some games and activities to explain, explore and practice the different click-less selection techniques. They collect and display statistics on how many accidental clicks were made on the site and whether or not visitors miss the mouse click. (Found through Josh Spear)

Monoface

The creative folks at Mono branding and advertising agency have put an admirable new twist on team photos. They have created a section of their website called Monoface which combines features from different employee's faces together to produce some pretty entertaining portraits. You can can shuffle the images to see random face combinations or click specific features (eyes, nose, mouth, head) to make your own creatures, I mean faces. There are a total of 759 375 possible combinations and you can't help but make a few. These guys are clearly brilliant advertisers.

Photos of the Human Heart

National Geographic's cover story this month is Healing the Heart. It focuses on heart disease, which is still one of the number one killers of men and women worldwide. The National Geographic website has some nice multimedia takes on this story including images of the human heart taken by photographer Robert Clark.

Carla Collins Collections

Wow, I'm really impressed with this website. It takes a few been-done-before elements and turns them into something really unique and interesting. It is basically the Carla Collins Collections put into books that you can turn the pages of. The images are all variations of each other so that they effectively form a flip book. The real beauty of it is that you can play though the pages quickly to see the full flip book effect both forward and backwards and then you can rotate the whole book around and do the same thing upside down. This lets you see what was on the other side of the page in an entirely different way then you saw it the first time. Have I mentioned on this blog before about how much I like Flash websites (imagine my best innocent smile here).

TV Online

One of my favorite new internet trends is TV networks providing full episodes of their popular programs online for free. ABC and CBS have done a particularly good job of this. Yeah, it's not perfect. It stalls sometimes and the picture is relatively low res, but how can you complain when you have the ability to catch up on your favorite TV shows anywhere you have internet access. I wish they had had this when I lived in England so I wouldn't have had to wait the 6 month lag that it takes American shows to be broadcast there, that is, if they are shown there at all. I hope more networks jump on this bandwagon, especially international ones. It would be great to be able to watch some shows that we don't have access to here. I love the internet.

Digg Labs

If you are not familiar with Digg.com it is a website where users submit links to stories, videos or podcasts that they find interesting and then other users "digg" the submitted stories. The stories are ranked according to how many diggs they get. It's an interesting site, and if you haven't been there you really should check it out.

My favorite part of Digg is the Digg Labs where you can view the stories as Swarms or Stacks. They are both visual representations of stories being submitted and dugg in real time. In Swarm, stories are represented as circles. You can see Digg users swarming around the stories and watch them grow as their popularity increases. In the Stacks view stories are shown as columns and diggs fall from above. The columns change color to represent the number of diggs they have received.

The Darfur Wall

The Darfur Wall is a unique approach to raising money and awareness for a noteworthy cause. It is a virtual wall made up of the numbers 1 to 400 000, each number representing a person killed in Darfur. By donating one dollar you light up a number of your choice. As the numbers turn from gray to white, the panels of the wall start to glow. You can zoom out and animate the donations over time so watch the wall being built. Simple and very effective! Check it out at www.darfurwall.org

Ikea Dream Kitchens Site

The Ikea Dream Kitchens site is great example of why I love Flash sites. This sites features the kitchens in a freeze framed action shot that you can turn. One kitchen flows into the next. Very nicely done. Turn up the volume for full effect.

Denver Water Ad Campaign by Sukle Advertising

This advertising campaign for Denver Water is pretty effective. It grabs your attention and its simple message is reinforced by the visuals. The fact that is about water is a little lost in the print material, but I still like it. The water aspect comes across in the commercials.

On a side note, the Sukle site is awesome. Glad to see someone still has a sense of humor when it comes to websites.

Animated Flight Patterns

Check out Aaron Koblin's animations of flight pattern over the US. I like how you can tell the passing of time by the patterns.

Hope Garden

I realize that this site is kind of just a big advertisement for BSD Medical, but what brilliant advertising. This is such a lovely idea. Basically it is a big virtual garden where anyone can go and plant a flower for someone with a message attached. You can look through the garden at other people's messages and "add water too them" by choosing to add comments such as "You brightened my day" or "I with you the best". The original intention of the site was to positively influence people dealing with cancer but the garden has flowers that have been planted for many different reasons.

Visit the garden at www.flowersforhope.com

Whitney Music Box

Brett sent me this link to the memorizing Whitney Music Box. It is "a musical realization of the motion graphics of John Whitney as described in his book 'digital harmony' ". Warning: Do not watch if you are tired or otherwise impaired.