I’ve mentioned Barry Schwartz many times throughout designverb, but why not mention his talk again at TED. Watch it, wonder, question, and talk about this paradox! (Buy the book “Paradox of Choice“!)
experience
I’m off to SF later this week again. Hopefully the weathers less foggy. I checked out the Seward street slides, Twin Peaks, and 826 Valencia last time. Any other places to scoop out or must try food spots??
– NY Times Interactive Evolution of the Olympic Torch
– Telephone Piano Music video
– Total Solar Eclipse from an airplane video
– What happens when you tease a baby with food!
– Nissan Cube (spring 2009) giving away free shirts!
– Mini Coop to go Electric!?!
– Women rocks it out in a library! (hilarious!)
– Person documents 7 hours on tarmac delay!!!. Delta Bad Experience!
Dells launched Community Pulse which organizers their customers “Compliments” and “Complaints” along with a cloud of tags on subjects and a graph on subjects to see how they are doing overtime with individual categories.
Instead of hiding away all their complaints, show it off and improve. The more transparent a company can be about their issues, the sooner they can fix them. Fail faster, improve sooner.
Hmmm, first comes Googles hidden SearchMash.com, then comes a surge of visual search engines (searchme, viewzi, redzee, pogo, etc) then comes a spinoff right out of Google called Cuil (pronounced Cool!). Give it a spin, it’s a nice refreshing take at what we have all come to know. I’m not sure if I’ll use it, but only time will tell.
If your a fan of NewsMap, then you’ll also enjoy the dynamic set of “Digg Labs” visualizations. Personally, I like Bigspy, but all the other options are pretty nifty though more eye candy than functional. Turn on Bigspy, set it up on your 2nd monitor, and treat Digg feeds like a live streaming TV set!
Whoohooo! Google has finally added “walking” to Google Maps! I gave it a quick try and it didn’t jump across any parks or small alleys yet, but the routes are still draggable which rocks! Hopefully they can mix it up one day with train and bus routes since I do that!
Google Maps!
Hmmm, good visual food for thought.
I’ve had several managers with great visions assigning tasks based on their vision… then I’ve had great managers with great visions that believe in others visions as well… Guess which vision was more successful.
I’ve been playing around with Viewzi.com for a few days and must admit, it’s a visual pleasure to tinker with. There’s zoomii, Searchme, redzee, oskope, and a handful of other sites that intensify the visual sensors, but Viewzi definitely takes the cake in delivering high quality design within their interface and brand.
I could talk about them for some time, so I’ll just point my finger to their site, tell you to type in something like “food” then press enter and move your mouse around everywhere. Also check out their story through Viewzi.tv and their corporate site which isn’t at all corporate.
Speaking of pictures, here are two other interesting sites rethinking full screen picture viewing. Blowup and PictoBrowser.
A few screen shots of their site after the jump
oooo sooo very true! Brands that create amazzzing products still survive even when their broken. I love twitter, hate it when it’s down, but still use them!
“Possibly the most wonderful thing in the world that a brand can achieve is love so strong that users worship your failures.
Twitter has been a victim of its own success. So many new users, so much volume that the application crashes regularly. Sometimes hourly. From the getgo, they’ve managed to brand their “failure screens” in true twitteresque flavor. When Twitter is down beyond repair, users get the screen that is now lovingly referred to as the “fail whale.”
Here’s the thing. Despite the failures, Twitter fans remain users. And they joke about the down time, the failed tweets and the fail whale. Someone’s even produced a line of Fail Whale merchandise.
Can your brand generate that kind of love? Can you fail consistently, over and over and STILL keep your customers fans? Not many brands can. And that’s a wonderful testament to the power of Twitter. Tweet. Tweet.”
You can follow me(sidebar) or my blog postings on Twitter.
Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.
There once was a guy named Matt who quit his job to travel the world. In each location, he recorded himself dancing like a goofball and made a Youtube Videos that spread like crazzzy. The web world sees it, everyone smiles, and he gets sponsored to do a few more world trips dancing! Apparently he’s made the journey again this year, to dance across the world one adventure at a time, but this time, everyone knows him, hence he not only dances by himself, but with people around the world! Watch this amazing video and smile!!!
Damn! I love this, I’m jealous, I want to travel… keep up the rocking work Matt! I’ll keep watching as I always have cause goofy dances around the world make me smile. Reminds me a bit of the “Global Laugh Session” we had at Pangea Day!
WhereTheHellIsMatt.com
Watch all the videos here.
You want passion, Benjamin Zander defines passion that’s viral, awesome, and addictive! Reminds me how I love classical music sooooo much! Watch it here then buy his inspirational book “The Art of Possibility” here.
Hey all! I’ve got a little secret to spill that I’ve been keeping hush for almost a year! I’m in a TV show and it premieres on PBS today!!!!
The shows called “Everyday Edisons“:
“Everybody has a great idea that could change the way we work, the way we live or the way we play. Everyday Edisons documents the development process of 14 inventions and the parallel stories of the people who invented them. Selected from thousands, the 14 Everyday Edisons learn how their extraordinary ideas are taken from a sketch on a napkin to a store shelf.”
Check out the EverydayEdisons.com page or the PBS page. Find out your local PBS air dates and times here. (I’m in the 2nd half of the season but will appear at the beginning I think)
It’s a thrill to be one of the dozen inventors hand picked from thousands to be on the show. This adventure continues a project I invented while at RISD back in 1999 which made the blogsphere rounds in 2004-5.
I’m not sure what to expect nor how the show ends (good or bad) but that’s all part of the fun. It might not be as entertaining as reality TV, but you’ll get to see my goofy serious self!! And no, it’s not like the “other” reality show I’ve been on… this one is much more professional. There is no competition, the US patent office sponsors the show, and they actually spend over a year developing each inventors idea!
I’ll post a few articles that have been published about the show and myself after the jump (fun pictures)! Please watch and let me know how it goes, cause I don’t receive the channels it’s being broadcast on (booo).
update: episodes posted after jump
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