Interesting 2008

Been meaning to write this earlier this week but its been mental!!!

I had the pleasure of attending my first Interesting last Saturday with some mates from work and it was, well, very interesting!
Im told by a mate that this year was even more focused on getting interesting people that we really would never have heard of, last year I think they had some more famous faces, especially from the bloggersphere; which made the whole event even more interesting and unexpected! no long talks on future of comms/marketing etc. all quick firing random, very interesting people talking about everything from coin design to handmade scotch eggs!

It was an early start for a Saturday morning but well worth it. Was nice to catch up with some people I hadn’t seen for a while and very odd kind of recognizing people from pictures on twitter etc.

I haven’t got time to go into the event in too much detail here but you can see all speakers and event details over here anyway. But if you haven’t been and missed last Saturday, definitely worth going next year!!

Thanks to all involved for making it an awesome day! – Conway Hall is a great venue too, felt like being back at school assembly.

Highlights for me;

“sign in” table
Radiohead Nude remix
Coin design
Geography
Informatics
Food Map
Graphic design and music
Funny words
Toilets around the world
Digestives shaped as “T”’s
The Final Countdown

Google continue the Net Neutrality fight

Google have further weighed into the whole net neutrality debate with the announcement that they are going to be providing web users the tools they need to detect for themselves if their connection is being messed with by their ISP’s.

I think this is a bold and positive move form Google in the fight for net neutrality, but I have a bad feeling this wont be a big enough move to make a real difference as I feel the vast majority of people wont have the inclination to fight a battle that has been seemingly low in profile outside of tech circles. However, I hope I’ll be proved wrong and this does indeed turn from a small groundswell movement to a full blown wave of protest!!

Guardian and VW - Film Map

The Guardian and VW have teamed up to create an interactive “Film Map”.
The Film Map allows you to search a database of films either via actors, directors, genre, country etc. and then visually maps out the links between films by either same actor, same director, same genre etc.

Its just a really simple and engaging way of visualizing a movie database and the links between films.

VW seem to be really hot at the moment on creating digital comms that easily visualize and sort data, check out their awesome site here, which is a perfect example of collating and distilling tons of info in an easy to use, simple and engaging way.

not magic enough...

Such a shame to read that the ‘magical’ FA Cup final clash between under-dogs Portsmouth and Cardiff attracted record low viewer numbers for an FA Cup Final (just 5 mil).

The finalists had battled away throughout the competition and surprisingly knocked out all the big clubs to reach the final at Wembley last Saturday.

The media had billed this game as proof that the famous ‘magic’ of the FA Cup was not dead; i.e. proving the under-dog can go on to win great things even in this modern age of corporate monster clubs that can afford to have the likes of Shevchenko sat on the bench etc.

However, such a shame to see that this kind of nostalgic ‘magic’ obviously doesn’t mean anything to enough people these days.

3D video out of a piece of paper....

So it looks like this cool new 3D ‘out of paper’ technology is being picked up and used now.
BBC have used the technology to encourage music fans who couldn’t make it to The Big Weekend this year to watch exclusive gigs/interviews with bands via a piece of paper with the printed out logo of BBC Radio 1. See above video of Scott Mills demonstrating it.

Nice.

Malkovich & Sony team up

Snow Angel
Uploaded by angels_in_the_snow


Sony Vaio have done an interesting piece of digital comms.
They’ve teamed up with John Malkovitch who wrote the first scene for a short movie then Sony invited people to write the remaining scenes of the film for Malkovitch to shoose the winning entries. The pieced together script has been turned into a nice little animated short film…well worth a watch, just for the amazing animation alone.

the Sony site is here

via: Yellow Tutu

As Seen On TV!!!!!

Ive been meaning to upload this photo for weeks but hadn’t got round to it.So glad Somerfield re-assure their shoppers before they choose to buy into the Coca-Cola brand.