What happens when a few hundred willing volunteers gather to play a big urban prank, such as walking into a Home Depot store to walk in slow motion for 5 minutes, freeze, and then walk like normal again without breaking a smile? Besides absoute confusion and a landscape like mania, I think of one person; Charlie Todd, the prankster and founder of “Improv Everywhere“.
Charlie made a brief appearence during this past years GEL Conference and showed us his hysterical HomeDepot Prank. Check out the video above, then hit up his HomeDept Mission page with several more detailed videos, pictures, and comments.
“Giving customers the opportunity to learn a few words of Korean or Portuguese while en route to Seoul or São Paulo, Air France introduced in-flight language instruction on selected flights this month. An interactive audiovisual language program developed by Berlitz, the service works on regular in-flight entertainment screens. Passengers can learn and practice the basics of 23 different languages, in four main lesson categories: numbers, dates, words and dialogue.
JAL and Singapore Airlines also offer Berlitz Word Traveller as part of their in-flight entertainment package, and Virgin Atlantic has experimented with Japanese and Spanish lessons. It’s a great example of trendwatching.com’s status skills trend. As many consumers are demonstrating a value shift in status from passive consumption to mastering skills, smart companies are offering their customers the opportunity to add to their skill set. Similar initiatives include BMW’s Performance Driving Schools, the Sony Digital University or the Viking Cooking School. Watch and learn!”
I’m off to my 3rd GEL (Good Experience Live) Conference in NYC this week. This years speakers list is a bit more unknown which is great since they are usually the event highlights. I’ll come back with a small list of thoughts and anything worth sharing. Otherwise, check out the past GEL lectures here.
If your brain hasn’t overloaded in inspiration and knowledge from the TED TEDtalks or PopTech PopCasts video archives, check out the GEL conference Videos! I attend these 3 incredibly stimulating, overcharging, brain shaking events yearly and now their lectures are avaliable online for everyone to absorb! GEL’s coming up this week, so catch up while you can before the next batch of speakers goes online!
Googles 411 service has been out for a few days, but I finally gave it a go today. It rocks! Simple to remember, free, fast, and useful. The voice recognition software is really fast and quite accurate from the few calls I made so far.. The best part is that it’ll text message you the info if you want instead of connecting you right away….(no more scrambles for pens) Give it a call: 1-800-goog-411. It’s fun just to test the voice recognition software as well.
Update: Here’s another free sms 411 service, TellMe, which was acquired my Microsoft..you pick which big cookie monster to use!
FYI, the new interactive, community based, graphical TED site has launched! If your interested in sharing BIG ideas and inspiring millions…sign up, check out all the TEDtalks, and start commenting!!!
My journey over to Milan from Florence was delayed by 4-5 hours, hence my well planned shopping safari around Milan never took place, but my late night visit for dinner did included a quick journey which I’ll post about here. In comparison to Florence it’s much more diverse, more of a city, more lively at night, but with the same rustic streetscapes surrounding Florence with finely detailed buildings. It’s more modern while stylish with a larger urban crowd hovering abouts the area. Most of my spare hours in Milan were spent eating at Obika, but I took a few pics here and there….so enjoy them after the jump! (I’ll include a few interesting going away images as well)
The sensational PopTech Conference I attended last October just launched their new PopCasts website with several of their amazing lectures from the 2006 event.
The above MUST watch video is an astonishing and inspirational highlight from the 2005 conference of Jesse Sullivan & Todd Kuiken presenting the world’s first non-fictional bionic man maneuvers of his prosthetic arm using only his mind. (Don’t ignore me…watch it!)
Watch the rest of the captivating videos after the jump! Continue Reading
“Can one of the nation’s great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour?”
Here’s an astonishing experimental story that questions talent, location, knowledge, culture, perception, a bit of marketing, and displacement. What happens when you take a world famous musician, Joshua Bell, and put him in the morning DC metro posing as a street performer seeking extra change? Do people stop and listen, do strangers acknowledge his talent, does a crowd form in awe, does he cash in, does talent simply pass by ones ears because of his environment, or are people too busy to stop and listen?
Read this incredible experiment after the jump along with videos. (mirrored from WashingtonPost.com)
After arriving to Milan (or Milano as they say here) 4 hours later than expected, I trekked around quickly by foot then stumbled upon “Obika: the Mozzarella bar” which my friend Yasmina mentioned since I told her my love of mozzarella in Italy so far. We really had no idea where to eat since our meeting was so sporadic but it was pretty late on a monday night when everything seemed to be closed, and we were in the neighborhood craving to eat, so we went here…which turned out to be an amazing simple choice.
Manufactured Landscapes is a stunning must watch documentary film created by legendary photographer Edward Burtynsky and award winning director Jennifer Baichwal that has received several awards this past year. The film visually captures China’s massive industrial revolution through Edwards camera while questioning our own human endeavors in impacting the planets future global proliferation, destruction, and waste.
I was not aware of this film until recently while talking with Edward at TED about his amazing slide show he gave at Poptech which previewed images used in this film. I missed the film when it was in theaters, but the DVD’s are available which I’d highly encourage everyone to buy (or the book) and share. (it’s a bit odd thinking about the movies message on massive product waste while using the exact same substance to distribute this film)
As an industrial designer I’ve been greatly influenced by the huge message Al Gore gave in Inconvenient Truth (meeting him pushed me as well) while also advocating Alex Steffan of Worldchanging.com‘s message that “your either in, or your wrong”. I’m stuck in a field where products and massive sales are king, yet the sustainable need for global changes is so uneducated in a cost driven but not globally aware or active field if not society. I’m not saying change is not happening, but time is not something you can pause… this change must happen, not sooner, but now. Perhaps I feel more like architect and famous product designer Philippe Starck when he was onstage at TED and said “I believe in general that my job is absolutely useless; but now, after Carolyn(Porco) and these guys, I feel like shit”.
Anyhoots, before I get ya’ll stuck in my own dilemma, give the trailer to Manufactured Landscapes a view and perhaps question your own actions in your own field, home, and surroundings and get motivated for some simple changes like recycling, changing to longer lasting light bulbs, or even reusing your CD spindles.
“Multinational coffee companies now rule our shopping malls and supermarkets and dominate the industry worth over $80 billion, making coffee the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil.
But while we continue to pay for our lattes and cappuccinos, the price paid to coffee farmers remains so low that many have been forced to abandon their coffee fields.”
Watch the Youtube Trailer above or read more about this documentry on their website “BlackGoldMovie.com” or on PBS here where you can find the TV schedule (airing in the Boston in April).(Would be nice if it were on Joost which I just received my invite to today 😉 ) The PBS site also has a listing of troubling facts about certain companies to keep in mind the next time you buy yourself a cup of joe.
