History Repeating
This week’s Doctor’s Note is all about value versus values. That extra ’s’ makes all the difference. Here’s the first part of it. …
This week’s Doctor’s Note is all about value versus values. That extra ’s’ makes all the difference. Here’s the first part of it. …
I have been enjoying the Brain Culture: Neuroscience & Society series via BBC Radio 4’s podcasts recently. In the series Matthew Taylor looks at how …
I would have loved to have gone to the Serious Play conference, but seem to remember it cost serious money too. This talk from Tim Brown of IDEO sums up a great …
Photo: barackobamadotcom on Flickr It is hard to overstate just how different these US elections were and what a shift in thinking Obama and his campaign …
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of interviewing Sebastien and Eva from Troika, the studio behind the Cloud and All The Time In The World installations at new …
I like these e-mail-yourself-from-the-future things, and Photojojo’s Time Capsule is a brilliant one that takes a selection of your Flickr photos from the …
I quite often teach COFA Online’s course, Graphics and Contemporary Society, which I find more interesting now that I’m here in Germany. A lot of …
The Omnium Project will be running another global online creative collaboration project under the Creative Waves banner from 28th April - 20 June, this time …
Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar, who created one of my all time favourite interactive pieces, We Feel Fine, have a new piece called I Want You To Want Me …
My latest Core77 Broadcast interview with Jason Bruges from Jason Bruges Studio is now online. In a slightly echoing room in Jason’s studio, accompanied …
From the old, beloved Atari 2600 joystick to the Wiimote, how did we get from there to here? The “Sock Master’s” family tree of controllers …
There’s a well-balanced piece from Patrick Wintourin the Guardian today about parents being shown how to protect their children online. It reports of a …
I’ve long been uncomfortable and unclear about the law when it comes to taking photos in public places and have read of several situations when …
There’s an interesting piece about Creative Play on NPR at the moment that looks at a school running the Tools of the Mind programme. One of the findings …
I walked past this ‘iSmoke’ ad for Lucky Strike cigarettes the other day. How wrong? Let me count the ways… It’s lazy creative. This is …
I don’t normally do straight plugs for things that aren’t interactive and that I’ve never heard of, but this screening at Film Friends Forever …
Disraeli’s quip, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” could do with “and Facebook” tagged onto it, …
Those crazy Danes. (Image stolen from djaphrael) Amusing project over at Halfmachine which involved making toilet door signs from LEDs in a club. Of course, …
My interview with Hector Serrano is now available on the Core77 Broadcasts page. My thanks to Hector for an entertaining chat about his playful and insightful …
Photo: eek the cat The other day I was trying to explain the emotional relationships people have social utilities and other read/write web applications …
I liked this and the sentiment. It’s a poster for the Biennial in Greece from Manetas. (Via Thomas).
There are plenty of big announcements and coverage of Steve Jobs’s Macworld keynote. I’m happy to see the new AppleTV, movie downloads and rentals, …
Alexander Stojanovic makes an interesting comparison between the Nintendo DS and the OLPC. Having bought both for his five year-old daughter at Christmas he has …
For several years I’ve been trying to express how design thinking can be used across a whole range of disciplines from sustainability to education to, …
Following on from my last post about Hereafter, my podcast interview with Matt Clark from United Visual Artists is now online at Core77. We chat about a range …
In France at least (which is good, because we usually only get a very Anglo-Saxon view of these things). Experientia have translated the summary of a report by …
I’ve just been chatting with my online students in Australia about emerging media and it led me to do some quick sums on the merits of Titanic, the …
Interesting piece in the Guardian about a new (but already out of date) British Council report (PDF link) on what education is worth to the UK. I’ve …
If you don’t know who Andrew Keen is, Google him, I’m not linking because I find him and his views on the internet and the changing face of the …
This technology developed by Ariel Shamir from the Efi Arazi School of Computer Science resizes the content of images in the same way that web pages are …
I presented my seminar on Creative Collaboration and The Future of Education at Urban Learning Space yesterday and very much enjoyed the Glaswegian hospitality …
[UPDATE: There are several updates to this post, which has made it a bit confusing to read. I don’t like deleting posts, so it’s mostly persevered …
I promised I would stop ranting about Second Life and I will. Putting People First (the experientia blog) have a balanced post called Second Thoughts on Second …
Okay, so the whole Second Life theme is getting rather a good going over on Playpen at the moment. I think I’m probably going to have to stop writing …
There’s a great post on Data Visualization: Modern Approaches over at Smashing Magazine. Some of them are pretty well-known, like Newsmap and (one of my …
There’s been quite a bit of debate (and strikes) surrounding the privatisation of postal services. Whilst strikes has been going on, private postal …
I’m going to be giving a seminar called Creative Collaboration and the Future of Education at Urban Learning Space in Glasgow who have a number of really …
I wrote a post a while back about how dull I thought it was that Adaptive Path were researching Second Life (along with many, far too many, media academics). I …
In almost all of the course on interactivity that I have taught, someone comes up with the idea of making a screen-based Etch-A-Sketch toy. They’re almost …
I’ve just been introduced to a wonderful book. It’s called Timeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them , by Tim Walsh and …
There has been quite a lot in the news about privacy concerns with Facebook as well as it being used for investigations. Living in a country that was home to …
My first Core77 Broadcast with Nik Roope about Hulger has just gone online. It should become one of a series of podcasts for Core77 and I’m really pleased …
Or - In Praise of Randomness Whilst thinking about writing a post in praise of randomness in interaction design, I realised that StumbleUpon is, in many ways, …
I’m very chuffed to see that ChangeThis selected my thoughts on education to be part of their manifesto the Dramtic Impact of The Silent Revolution. …
I’ve been doing a bit of catching up with my blog reading recently and noticed Chris’s post on Pixelsumo about the HP giant Multi-Touch screen with …
This story on the protesters at the G8 summit has a set of related links at the bottom of it. I noticed today that the one saying G8, which is meant to link to …
So I’ve been a bit slow at blogging about Google’s Streetview as well as Microsoft’s Surface. I nearly didn’t write about either of them …
Teaching is an interesting process of projection. Much like any other relationship you project your own fears, bad habits and insecurities onto your students …
Nice post from Dan Hill over at City of Sound about finding a whole host of avant-garde films on YouTube, particularly Len Lye’s film, Free Radicals (see …
Flickrvision, just so much more interesting than Twittervision. Via the Nic.
I found Richard Sarson’s piece, The Kids Are Alright Online, over at the Guardian interesting today. He interviews children about their internet usage and …
So, I’ve been playing with Joost a bit and it looks like it’s going to become something pretty near to an alternative to television. At the moment …
John Gruber is one of the few Apple advocates that writes with intelligent consideration rather than just being an over-enthused fanboy. He has just written a …
Nice to see the article in the Guardian about Paul Pod’s Tape It Off The Internet being almost ready to roll. I worked with Paul at Razorfish and …
I added the link to Michael Schmitz’s Human Computer interaction in Science Fiction Movies to my del.icio.us account a while ago when one of my students …
I wrote some thoughts about the life of a creative person for my students a while ago, and recently commented on Rick Poynor’s article about the Soul of …
The latest issue of Desktop is out with an article by me called A New Set of Design Principles. It’s based on interviews with Stefan Sagmeister and Milton …
There’s a great piece by Rick Poynor in Icon called The Soul of Design in which he de-bunks many of the management consultant myths and misunderstanding …
As you know I think and write about play quite a bit and am a big advocate of most of what Pat Kane writes about in The Play Ethic. My interests are a …
Following up on my recent post about Jonathan Harris’s new work, Universe, Mike alerted me to this video interview with Jon on Coolhunting. It’s …
We all have inner thoughts, secrets and dreams that we fail to manifest and carry around with us like shiny gems hidden in our pockets. After a while they weigh …
I’ve written a few times about the work of Jonathan Harris and We Feel Fine remains one of my favourite combinations of data visualisation combined with a …
It’s been interesting (in that way that your mum says your clothes are ‘interesting’) to see all the hype excitement about Second Life build …
Kathy Sierra over at Creating Passionate Users just made a brilliant comparison of customer relationships to personal relationships. She points out that many …
Following on from those thoughts about the Nintendo Wii, I noticed an Engadget re-blog of a Chicago Tribune story about folks in a retirement home getting into …
I’ve been struggling with separate iTunes libraries on different machines for a while now and I also made a stupid command line error a few weeks back …
Live|Work have just put together a new collective action website called 70max aimed at encouraging people to slow down and reduce accidents and carbon …
One of my more brilliant ex-students, Gabi, just sent me this link to the very disturbing Têtes à Claques. It’s all in French and my schoolboy French …
What with all the cool things people are doing with Wiimotes I nearly bought a Wii yesterday, but wasn’t terribly convinced by the games. This post from …
There’s been a whole lot going on about the Wiimote as an interface to pretty much everything. It’s very flexible, relatively cheap and easy to use …
So the folks behind the popular BitTorrent client, Azureus have launched a service which Wired has described as a YouTube for HD video. It’s called Zudeo …
In general the main exhibition of Transmediale 07 left me pretty unimpressed. But that may be due to my general cynicism (or arrogance - I prefer cynicism) - …
](/images/2007/01/normal_dbsigns.jpg) [ Click to enlarge the images For a while I’ve been meaning to photograph this - unfortunately I only got them with …
Okay, it’s not really the server behind Playpen, but it is the machine on which I write most of it. Iain had the nice (and as it turned out simultaneous …
Not really the usual fare of Playpen, but through a strange Google Ad placement that I clicked on I ended up at the U.S. Airforce’s propaganda recruitment …
I’ve already posted some thoughts about this project by Yuichiro Katsumoto on the Bauhaus blog so I won’t repeat here save to say that I like this …
This skit from on a pretentious Big Brother-style ‘art haus’ full of pretentious artists (with German accents) had me chuckling. I have seen a …
I’ve seen the Five Things meme floating around and now Nik tagged me. If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, like Nik I’m going to …
I’m delighted that the very brilliant and extremely well-connected Regine Debatty from we-make-money-not-art.com is giving a talk at the Bauhaus on …
Just a quickie to thank Regine for the name-check on we-make-money-not-art.com. WMMNA is the source for all things interactive/new media art/design, or as she …
Having just mistyped a domain name and been sent to one of those really irritating ‘parked domain’ search pages, I saw this pop-up. Normally, I …
I just read Brendan Dawes’s new book, Analogue In, Digital Out, in one day. A day when I was teaching all day too. I even stayed up late to finish it. …
Now that large corporations like Dell have started to ‘get’ blogs since the various Dell Hell blog posts started panning their stock price it …
I just stumbled upon Matt Locke’s post about play and technology, which is very much worth a read if you are interested in the intersection of play, …
My colleagues and I from The Omnium Project will be conducting a workshop at the Online Educa 2006 Conference in Berlin on the 29th November and it will be …
As most regular readers (yes, you there) will know, I have a fascination with Google’s mapping activities. So it’s such a pleasure to see Google …
I’m not sure how old this interview with Joshua Schachter, inventor of del.icio.us, is but it’s a fascinating insight into the Wisdom of Crowds. It …
Google and the United Nations Environmental Programme last week launched an addition to Google Earth called the Atlas of Our Changing Environment, which allows …
What a joy to discover Steven Blyth’s My Social Fabric project (thanks to Mike Coulter at Digital Agency). Essentially the My Social Fabric project gives …
I’ve been catching up with my blog reading and thought Todd Dominey’s point about MTV trailing YouTube was worth a re-blog as it hooks into what I …
I finally got around to discovering, downloading and watching the documentary, Steal This Film about the MPAA’s attempts to shut down the Swedish …
Having spent a long time thinking about and writing the Re-imagining Higher Education essay I am trying to get it published as a Change This manifesto. So, if …
You don’t have to be stupid to be a Don here, but it helps. I really enjoyed Francis Beckett’s article in the Education Guardian regarding Cambridge …
The Graffiti Research Lab (the folks behind the LED Throwies) have just launched another project called Interactive Architecture. Basically it involves leeching …
Recently I have been giving much thought to the structure and issues that most of us in Higher Education have been struggling with for several years. There are …
For a very long time now (since 2005 in fact), Pat Kane’s book, The Play Ethic has been on my Amazon Wishlist (hint, hint) along with several other books …
Interaction guru, John Maeda suggests that procrastination might be useful after all (hey, I bet that’s what you’re doing right now right? Reading …
Whilst writing that story about You Tube I spied BMW’s new “So No To Compromise” ad and website. It’s a US ad and is aimed at giving BMW …
Some enlightening “theoretical” figures being bounced around in Endgaget’s series about You Tube’s potential for generating revenue. …
Fake beer? In Germany? Sacrilege! Slightly off topic for this blog, I know (well, okay, it’s about design and I live in Germany), but Deutsche-Welle have …
Quick post about the BBC’s story on Smart Meters - the meters, designed by More Associates show you exactly where all your energy is going. The theory …
Once again I ‘accidentally’ ended up watching the Eurovision Song Contest. No really, I was reading and had the TV on in the background. Anyway, …
Ever noticed that the usual world map you see in atlases doesn’t really reflect the land-mass of the countries (the Northern Hemisphere countries are …
I am very pleased to announce the launch of the Omnium Creative Network (OCN), which is what I will be spending quite a bit of my time on from now on. The OCN …
It pays to be honest, even when it’s all going wrong. A while ago I bought the very useful application, Spamfire after I went on holiday and came back to …
I’m embroiled in an interesting debate about the perception of value of creativity versus (in this case) lawyers over at Greg’s Blog. I won’t …
I can’t believe I haven’t come across the Instructables website before - it’s a kind of collaborative How To for all sorts of things. These …
Run out of iPods at the last moment whilst you’re away on holiday? Enter the iPod vending machine. Like ForeverGeek I’m really not sure I would …
This is a piece I wrote and read out in a lecture a couple of years ago, just before I left my teaching job to move back to Germany. Lots of students have often …
Nice to see photographer par excellence, Ray Lewis, featured in New York magazine, Village Voice. The article examines the bike clubs of NYC. Ray and Rachel …
Anyone would think owning a TV station was a good idea. The Australian’s Mark Day wrote a couple of insightful articles today about Senator Helen …
Guardian Unlimited has just launched its new multi-writer blog and communtiy called Comment is Free. Not only are the writers of high calibre (which will make …
It had to happen: Flagr is a combination of Google Maps, Flickr and Delicious wrapped up in a nice AJAX interface. Basically it allows you to …
Not that the advertising world is totally lacking in originality or anything (ahem), but following on from the success of Carlton & United Breweries’ …
And whilst we’re at in on the audio front, check this out. Very smart. The BBC are doing some exciting stuff with all that licence money.
Paris-based collective, Pleix have just finished their new clip called Birds for Vitalic. The clip features extreme slow-motion footage of dogs jumping and …
My COFA colleague, Simon Hunt, mailed me this very amusing pic today. He writes: Taken with my phone the other day, just off Elizabeth St in Surry Hills… …
Okay, so I did blog on Christmas Day, but hey, it’s bit like reading the papers or watching James Bond movies isn’t it? As it’s Christmas I …
Gotta love Google. They’ve posted their 2005 Zeitgeist report noting our search trends around the world. The top Google News searches of 2005 are …
New from Jon Hicks :Riff.com
So, I’ve been ranting about the iTunes downloads killing off TV for a while. I’ve not been arguing that TV content will die out, but rather that the …
I’ve just been reading Hossein Derakhshan’s (aka Hoder) account of being stopped at the border in Toronto about to go back to New York. It’s …
An archive of the REFRESH! Conference at the Banff New Media Institute is now online. You can download my paper, Lowbrow, High Art: Why Big Fine Art …
A friend of mine, who works for one of the major Pay TV networks, mailed me a comment as I had inadvertently turned off comments when I moved to Wordpress. He …
Recently the Australian Council of University Art & Design Schools finally published the papers from the 2004 ACUADS conference in Canberra. My paper, …
Nice to see one of my students, Tim Rudder getting some interest on Tween for the music clip, Alicia, he’s just finished for his final year project with …
We were looking around at the popularity of names the other night and amusingly stumbled across this graph. What’s weird is the change of heart around …
Take a trip down Memorex Lane with Cassette Jam ‘05. I remember these Teac cassettes well. I thought they were the word in their day. Thanks to Toby for …
I just got mailed by Videobrasil to say they have put together a database of all of their festivals. It was a very pleasant trip down memory lane to see the …
Continuing a very amusing trend for sending up crap advertising, Carlton Beer just released this Big Ad campaign. Visual effects by my old-flame (geddit?) …
Phew. What a weird 48 hours that was. As far as I know everyone I know is okay, though I have many friends in London that I haven’t heard from, so I hope …
I work at a University as most of you will know and the issue of “Google culture” amongst students when researching comes up all the time. So …
At last a decent carpet in an airport. I’ve always wondered who chose the hideous designs for public spaces, but this one by Iranian artist Seyed Alavi …
Talking about advertising not selling but seducing, this Rexona ad is a brilliant example of a simple idea, well executed. It’s at the number 1 spot on …
An article over at Wired announces the development of a BitTorrent search engine developed by none other than BitTorrent’s inventor, Bram Cohen. The …
The second part to Mark Pesce’s Piracy is Good? is now up on Mindjack. Bianca wrote a comment to my previous post that I thought I would pull out here …
Just been reading Mark Pesce’s Piracy is Good? on Mindjack. They’re serialising parts of his forthcoming book, Hyperpeople. Those of you (all six of …
I so want someone to tell me for sure that “America We Stand As One” is not a spoof. If it is it’s brilliant in its double bluff, but I have a …
Just caught the last issue of The Economist with their feature and survey on “Consumer Power”. It makes pretty interesting reading for anyone …
Interesting post about music piracy realities from Richard over at the Gadget Lounge (and also cross-posted on the Gadget Show on the Podcast Network). It …
Great new project from Krister Olsson over at Tree-Axis called “The King Has…” We all carry secrets we cannot reveal. Taking its name from …
This drop-top car with a surfboard in the back passed me the other day in traffic. I couldn’t resist a quick snap, it seemed such a classic Aussie sight.
Howard Rheingold has just written an interesting summary of a paper by Keio University researcher Daisuke Okabe. Okabe has made an ethnographic study of …
Great short film called “Bike Kill” from my lovely and talented friend Rachel Meyrick. It’s the Black Label Bike Club, Brooklyn NY doing weird …
There’s a good story on BitTorrents over at Wired at the moment by from Clive Thomson based on an interview with Bram Cohen, BitTorrent’s creator. …
Now that BitTorrents account for around 35% of all net traffic (40%, shockingly, is spam) will Apple create iTorrent or implement it in iTunes eventually? It …
I’m a little late on this one but, hey, I’ve been offline in India. It’s always sad to see a big corporation like Sony completely …
Oh, the irony of it all. After my post about Hugh Macleod of Gaping Void not responding to my mails and posts, I got a comment from Hugh: “I suppose I …
I just saw a job ad today for “Vice President of General Duties”. Vice President? So what are these general duties then? They must be pretty …
I’ve been having an interesting conversation with Euph recently in the comments of my previous post about the SoundPryer and it’s led me to ruminate …
I have just written a new article for Desktop (Issue 200) about photographer, artist, compositor, Ray Lewis. The boyfriend of my lovely pal Rachel, he’s …
I thought I’d post a new entry in response to the comment by Euph about not having any personal space any more with regards to the Sound Pryer post. So, …
I just heard this story about a designer, Glen Hiller, from agency, Octavo Designs, being fired for heckling George W. Bush at a politcal rally. Apparently one …
I finally saw I, Robot the other night wondering what Alex Proyas might have made of the famous Asimov story. I had the interesting experience of working …
Just saw this thread titled How to be Creative doing the rounds. As someone who spends his time trying to teach others to be creative, and lamenting my own lack …
This is an article that I wrote a while back for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Australia. The original link and title is Protecting the extension of …