the fruits of imagination

Zeitgeist

Google's year-end roundup of the searches that defined 2006 came out last week as part of Google Zeitgeist.  Anything that combines Borat, Banksy, and Hezbollah always makes for compelling reading.
 

How Google can make me sad, and how Google can make me happy

Every now and then blogging gives you an interesting window onto the world. 

1.  A few weeks ago, Mike wrote a post on how a recent study showed that people are better at buying presents for strangers than for people they know well (because we're misled by lots of extraneous information about our loved ones), and that this is one explanations for receiving disappointing presents.  I just noticed in our traffic stats that on Christmas day, and for a few days after, a wave of people, maybe 50 in total, started arriving here from very similar Google searches.   It turns out that on Google we're the top result for "disappointing Christmas presents", the second result for "disappointing presents", and the fourth result for "disappointing Christmas." 

And it made me a bit sad that there were dozens of people who had not only had a disappointing Christmas, but who felt their only recourse to that was to go home and ask Google what they should do about it.

2.  About 6 months ago, I wrote a silly piece about David Hasselhoff.   It included a picture of him.  To this day, at least 2 people a day, every day, from all over the world, arrive here because they've done a Google image search for pictures of Hoff.  It's usually around 65 people a month.  It's our 7th most-read post of all-time.

3.  And, whoever you are, wherever you are, I must salute the person who arrived here thusly:

The 2000s

To end of our impromptu triptych review of both the last 3 decades and ways to avoid getting work done, here's a list of the 10 most viral videos of all time, as compiled by The Viral Factory and widely covered in the press over the last week.  No idea how they determined these viewer numbers, and they say they're just "guesstimates." 

But it's interesting that there are 2 ads on there.  3 if you count the Kylie video.  And 4 if you count the Shining re-edit, which was really an ad for the editor.

10 - The Shining Redux (estimated 50 million views)
9 - AfroNinja (80 million)
8 - Kollaboration 2001 (200 million)
7 - Trojan Games (300 million)
6 - John West Salmon - Bear Fight (300 million)
5 - Exploding Whale (350 million)
4 - Kylie Minogue - Agent Provocateur (360 million)
3 - Paris Hilton sex tape - "One night in Paris" (400 million)
2 - Numa Numa (700 million)
1 - Star Wars Kid (900 million)

The 1990s

I've been wanting to get this up on the blog all day, but I couldn't think of what to write about it.  Thanks, Jason, for making today Awkward Video From the Past Day. 

I couldn't agree more with Torontoist.com's assessment that we all owe a huge thanks to the person who added "the" to the word "Internet".

via Torontoist

Meta-apps

Gareth points out this really cool app for easily finding pictures from flickr.  Using the tags on people's photos, it lets you quickly search for pictures, and guides you to other subjects that are related to your search.  Best of all, it's highly intuitive and looks great.  It's perfect for searching for images for presentations, mood boards, and photo sorts.

Some of the most interesting web stuff recently seems to be this wave of API meta-applications - apps that don't have content of their own, but that repurpose mountains of data, tags, and information from other sources, and present it all in a totally new way.  Like all the Google maps mash-ups.  Or another lovely site, We Feel Fine.

Technology + design

This is an interesting mix of technology and design. 

This guy laid out his favourite design books on a huge table and photographed them at high res, then used Google's mapping API to lay them out as a draggable, scrollable surface.  It's quite interesting to play with and often beautiful.

It also makes me think about other uses for the technology.  I'd love to do a non-linear presentation like this - lay out all of the slides next to each other, and just move the screen around as needed.

Update 11/12:  It doesn't seem to be working anymore.

Via Digital Agency and Random Culture

 

On missing the point

Maclean's is a national news magazine in Canada.  They're not the most cutting edge or insightful publication, but they have a fairly broad mainstream readership.  And this week, they've become the latest instance of old media hugely, colossally, missing the point.  Here's their cover article:

Now I realize they're probably trying to be contrarian and raise some hackles to sell some magazines, but come on.  The internet sucks?  Really?

You know, I was originally just going to post the shot of the cover and let it speak for itself, but now I think it deserves a response.  Yes, the internet is filled with porn, and spam, and scammers, and misinformation, and bad people doing bad things, and mean people, and selfish people, and boring people, and crazy people, and the whole enterprise is messy and convoluted and confusing.  But you know what?  That's also what LIFE is like.  And that's why Maclean's is missing the point.

The internet is one of the most powerful forces ever created not because it elevates dialogue to a better place or represents us at our best, but because it allows us to see each other exactly as we are.  It reflects humanity in all its forms, from every corner of the world.  By connecting everyone to everything it allows us to see unfiltered windows onto other people's lives in ways we never have been able to before. And that teaches us important things about the human condition.

Ever since the printing press, media has been centralized and controlled and edited, so the world you're seeing is someone's version of the world.  With the internet you really can get an unfiltered view of the world (of course, you can still choose to rely on others to control and edit for you), and have to navigate your way through it, find communities, share ideas, and build your own view of the world.  That ability changes the power structures.  It changes how information is disseminated.  It changes how we see things.  And yes, that's messy and nasty sometimes, but that is what life is.  Saying the internet sucks is saying life sucks.

Watch this 9-minute video of a random selection of YouTube postings edited together. 

Yes some of the people are boring, or silly, or use bad language.  But I find it really beautiful and inspiring.  And what gives you a better sense of humanity and what regular people are up to... this, or the op/ed page in a news magazine?

The internet sucks?  Please.

Standard wars

I was in a store recently and saw one of those digital photo kiosks, the ones where you can plug in memory stick and print out your pictures right there.  The front of it looked like this:

It's a bit ridiculous.  There are something like 12 different ways to transfer files onto these machines - USB, Bluetooth, Infrared, SD cards, Memory Stick, etc - because every camera manufacturer uses a different standard.  Of course I don't blame Kodak: it's great that they work hard to make sure every possible camera and memory device is compatible with these kiosks.  But surely it would be better, and less confusing, if there weren't so many competing formats and choices?  Especially for something as important these days as portable digital memory.

While I was thinking about this, I noticed a good bit in the New Yorker last week on the issue of competing standards - when different brands offer different, incompatible technologies, and each fights to become the widely accepted standard.  Like VHS vs Betamax in the early 80s.  Or Blue-ray vs HD DVD right now.  Or that ugly photo kiosk.

While every company has the right to develop a new technology and try to make it successful, getting into a protracted arms race over this kind of stuff means that their consumers, the people who buy the products, ultimately lose.  Some people lose because they picked the wrong horse (like the people who still gripe about Betamax), some lose because they can't decide what to purchase and put it off altogether, some lose because it makes it harder to share media with someone else who's using a different standard, and everyone loses because it makes the whole marketplace more confusing and harder for us all to use. 

If the history of marketing teaches us anything it's that when brands put their own needs/technologies/etc before their customers' needs, they're headed for disaster at some point.

On a related note, check out this wonderful site archiving all of the different memory formats that have been lost to history, from the punchcard to VecTrex to Photodisc, with lovely black & white graphics.  And with the great name "Lost Format Preservation Society."

Awesome.

Random inspiration (part 3)

I'm on a plane to the UK today for some meetings and the APG Battle of Big Thinking.

In the meantime, here's some random stuff that was interesting from the past few weeks.

1. Digital Agency has a good piece on the implications of trying on different identities and roles, as new web platforms and social media like Second Life allow us all to do.
2. Grant McCracken on Butler Shine Stern's awesome moving notice, and the power of little details.
3. W+K London won £10,000 cash prize for Honda's "Cog" as part of an awards show.  Instead of adding it to the corporate coffers, they have turned it into an experiment in designing, making, and selling a W+K product. Which is a fantastic idea - it could turn the £10k into a revenue stream, but at the very least it will teach them a bit about what clients have to go through building products.  They're currently trying to decide what the product will be, and are down to a short list - and the final decision is open to voting (personally, I love the pantone coffee/tea mug - genius).
4. The top 40 magazine covers of the 20th century, as judged by the American Society of Magazine Editors.  A fascinating look at how good photography, typography, and art direction make something visually interesting.  (via Digital Agency)
5. This lovely, crazy building - the recent addition to the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD), by Will Alsop.  It's a fabulously innovative use of architecture.  The 130-year old college desperately needed to expand, but had nowhere to go, nestled in between a park and a major art gallery.  Alsop propsed building above the existing structure - the new extension is balanced on stilts 100 ft in the air above the original building (my photo doesn't really do it justice - there's a whole flickr set that's much better). I live a few blocks away and love going to the park and looking at it. I find it good inspiration for thinking laterally.
   

This is engaging

While we're on the subject, check out the new M&M's Dark site (for the launch of M&Ms with dark chocolate).  It's a puzzle where you have to find and identify 50 references to various "dark" films (e.g. Silence of the Lambs) in a huge painting done in the creepy Renaissance style of Hieronymus Bosch.  It's very well executed, and highly engrossing.  It's also a smart way to up-age the M&Ms brand for a product (dark chocolate) that appeals to older people.

Leland wrote some insightful stuff on what makes it work.