Save the sounds
June 3, 2012 § 1 Comment
Sounds in danger of extinction? Well, it seems that there are sounds that are about to extinct, to be forgotten and lost forever, like the sound of a tape in a tape recorder, the loadind of VCRs, the symphonic startup of a Windows 95 computer, the ringing of an old Nokia mobile phone. But Brendan Chilcutt aim’s is to preserve these sounds: the sounds of old technologies and electronics equipment. In his site, the Museum of Endangered Sounds, you can hear all these sounds and remember an era before it is totally forgotten.
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A film and its multiple interpretations
December 9, 2011 § Leave a comment
A film is a different experience for each of us. A different interpretation based on our interests, experiences, life. The Silver Screen Society created by Trevor Basset, Brandon Schaefer and Adam Hanson is a website which invite artists each month to create art based on a chosen film and present their own ‘visual’ interpretations of their favourite film.
See more after the jump
You’re a comic sans criminal
April 28, 2011 § 2 Comments
This is an intervention for comics sans addicts. We’ve had enough.
link: comic sans criminal
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Read it elsewhere
April 20, 2011 § Leave a comment
Check them out:
- A dramatic reading of Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook, complete with a beret and (e)spanish accent (video) – kottke
- Is the cupcake dead? – Johnson Banks
- John Lennon’s bitter letter to Linda McCartney – flavorwire]
- Do you know how much power your appliances use? (interactive infograph) – GE visualization
- The evolution of web design – mashable
- He’s an actor, he’s a writer, he’s a musician: download Hugh Laurie’s new blues track for free – pop culture brain
- What if Barbie was real-size – msnbc
- The latest tumblr to take the world by storm – hipster animals
- If logos were honest – buzzfeed
Do you know about A Google A Day?
April 18, 2011 § 1 Comment
Well, if you love puzzles, riddles and trivia (or plain Google procrastination) this is your game. And if Google searching is your specialty, then you will like its challenge: A Google A Day asks a question, gives you some hints and allows you to use Google Search to find the answer. The catch? The search is protected by Deja Google, a search engine that only returns results from before A Google A Day was created. This way, you can’t get walkthroughs or answers from social media.
Are you up to the challenge?
P.S. I dedicate this post to F. who’s 10 years my junior and recently asked me, when I was complaining about not finding something on Google, “but did you search cleverly enough?”. Duh!
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You type, they design
April 12, 2011 § 3 Comments
Everybody is obsessed with typography, lately. And it’s OK, the only problem being that not everyone has a design degree or money to spend on a designer. Now, there are designers who will turn your phrase into a typographical masterpiece for free.
Just head to the phraseology project, submit a word or phrase (less than 20 characters) and check back in a few days to find it fully designed in a typographical form.
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The world is not a peaceful place
April 7, 2011 § 2 Comments
As if you didn’t already know that.
Still, if you get caught up in Conflict History, a very interesting, google-maps-based website that puts all the wars known to mankind (from 4000 BC to now, sourced from Wikipedia) on the map, you can’t help but be amazed by the amount of conflict that went on at any point in time. You might know about the big ones, you know about the current ones, but, believe me, there has never been a peaceful moment on this planet.
This, for example, was the situation when I was born:
And it is not getting any better (2007-2010):
via forbes
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Distorted cities
April 7, 2011 § 4 Comments
Imagine a map that instead of representing the physical and geographical boundaries of a country or a location, displays human communication and interaction. SubMap:Visualizing locative data on distorted maps, a project created by Dániel Feles, Krisztián Gergely, Attila Bujdosó and Gáspár Hajdu at Kitchen Budapest, is a subjective map of the personal experiences and preferences of a city’s residents. Their first attempt was to present maps that show the city from ‘their point of view’ by choosing their homes as epicenters of unique, spherical, perspectival distortions. Locations that were closer to them look larger, whereas locations further away become smaller.
The project’s latest version, SubCity 2.0: Ebullition, visualises and sonificates data pulled from one of the biggest news sites of Hungary, origo.hu. Whenever a Hungarian city or village is mentioned in any domestic news on origo.hu website, it is translated into a force that dynamically distorts the map of Hungary. In the following video, each frame represents a single day, each second covers a month, starting from December 1998 until October 2010.
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Create stunning word cloud infographs
April 2, 2011 § 4 Comments
Sometimes everybody is in on the secret, and somehow you are left out. That’s the case with me and wordle. So, if there’s anyone else in this world who hasn’t heard about wordle yet (which I doubt), this is what it does: it is a web app that creates beautiful word clouds from any text or URL you submit. It allows you to change fonts, colors and layout. It basically allows you to create stunning infographs based on word occurance to use in an essay, presentation or website and blog post. Try wordle-ing articles, novels, song lyrics, letters, ads or whatever else comes to mind.
It is very addictive; I’ve just spent the last half an hour wordle-ing the lyrics of some of my old favorites. Can you guess what they are? (Highlight the text to view the artists and songs)
Highlight: PJ Harvey “The Mess We’re In”
Highlight: Yeah Yeah Yeahs “Maps”, Red Hot Chilli Peppers “Under The Bridge”
See more word clouds after the jump « Read the rest of this entry »
Cool patterns
April 1, 2011 § Leave a comment
Our latest background for April (which some of you might have seen a bit earlier, oops) comes from Pattern Cooler. It is an amazing web service that allows you to edit online and download hundreds of seamless background patters for your desktop, twitter account, blog or mobile device. You can download the ready-made backgrounds as they are, or edit their colors and pattern size. It has a huge selection, but we particularly liked the minimal, japanese and geometrical series.
For April we decided to go retro. Find our background here.
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Make up your mind about your mind
March 31, 2011 § 3 Comments
Everybody has one. A conscious mind I mean. And with it comes the self-referential ability of theorizing about it. Philosophers of Mind, Cognitive Scientists, Neuroscientist and Religious Scholars have all put out theories on what consciousness is (especially in the last 20 years it has become a hot topic of study,and, believe it or not, zombies have central role).
So, where do I stand on the consciousness debate? That’s what Information is Beautiful told me:
What is Consciousness? Make up your mind is a short and sweet web app that gives you an overview of the main theories of Consciousness, lets you choose what you find more plausible and in the end hits you with an almost post-modern description of your theory.
P.S. I actually am not a Identity Theorizing Emergent Dualistic Higher Order Theorist.
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If you watch it backwards
March 28, 2011 § 1 Comment
Can you imagine how would things turn up if all the stories you know in life and fiction would start from the end and end up in their beginning? Ifyouwatchitbackwards is a tumblr site which points out the opposite path that life and fiction can take.
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What makes curly hair curly?
March 25, 2011 § 6 Comments
What makes curly hair curly? What makes glass transparent? Why can’t you say ‘Macbeth’ in a theater? Don’ t tell me that all these questions never crossed your mind, but you never quite managed to find the answer. Ialwayswondered is a cool website where Jarret Green tries to answer the questions that pop up in his curious mind.
via Swiss Miss
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Your life listed
March 24, 2011 § Leave a comment
It happens and I cannot deny it. I keep forgetting the book I have read two weeks ago or the gig I attended last summer. But I found a way to remember all these life experiences, well with a little help of the social web. MyLifeListed is a cool and fun website, where you can list, count and share your experiences, the ones you want to remember, of course!
You can create categories of the things you want to write down, such as the countries you have visited, the football matches you have attended, the restaurants you have eaten in, the hotels you have stayed at, even the parties you have thrown, in case you did not feel so embarrassed and want to forget them. And you can even share your experiences with your friends!
It appears a little frightening right now, as your memory fades away, but it would be nice when you will look back over time and remember what you’ve done, when you’ve done it, where you’ve been and what you’ve achieved.
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- “Dear boarding passes, thanks for making such fine book marks…
- What do you appreciate the most?
- Before I die, I want to go to the Galapagos Islands
- What should I read?
mylifelisted.com is a simple and fun way to list, count and share your life experiences.
By keeping on-going lists of your life experiences all in one place, look back over time and feel good about what you’ve done, when you’ve done it, where you’ve been and what you’ve achieved.
A Ming cupcake
March 21, 2011 § 1 Comment
I love contrasts. Of color, of texture, of style. And a contrast of style is what first caught my eye in Ming Makes Cupcakes. That and my weak spot for cupcakes, that is. But back to the point: I just love the contrast between the luscious maximalism of the cupcakes and the severe minimalism of the layout. Oh the conflict, the tension!
But I want to give (more) credit where credit is due. The recipes themselves are great, with some twists and surprises (flourless chocolate cupcakes anyone? Sour cream fig cupcakes? Port wine and cherry chocolate? Beet chocolate?). I plan to start trying them ASAP.
Oh, and a last note on usability: although every recipe (image & text) is an image, the blog has a text only version where you can read and copy/paste text from. Nothing to complain about.
Get inspired
March 18, 2011 § Leave a comment
Do you often feel you lack inspiration? Designinspiration is an online archive of user-submitted images, at your disposal as a means of inspiration. This collection of high quality images covers a wide range of themes, from art and books to film and fashion.
69 love illustrations…
March 18, 2011 § 3 Comments
…inspired by The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs. This is what you can find in How Fucking Romantic, a great little blog. It was launched by a bunch of London-based illustrators, comic-artists and writers who wanted, well to illustrate all of the 69 Love Songs. But the project is open and anyone can submit an illustration.
To paraphrase my favorite song by The Magnetic Fields (even if not from the 69 Love Songs): Please stop dancing in my heart / I can seem to make it art.
See more illustrations and listen to my favorite song after the jump.
Creative work in progress
March 15, 2011 § 1 Comment
Be careful: Tons of creativity!
Dribble is a website, where creatives from all around the web meet and share their work. Designers, developers and other creative minds share screenshots of the designs, logos and applications they are working on.
We sure are going to find some of the most interesting work in Dribble!
DJ for a day
March 12, 2011 § 1 Comment
Have you ever dreamed of becoming a dj for just one night? Now you can with a “virtual mixing console” that the Japanese breakbeat band, Hifana, has incorporated on their website. Fresh Push Play gives you the opportunity to play with different channels, use a turntable, and add effects to the band’s latest tracks.
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it's a small web 
