Wearable technology at ITP

Rocketboom Tech correspondent Ellie Rountree talks to Adam Harvey and Anaid Gomez of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University about Wearable Technology.

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Hot In The Hive: Jawbone EARCANDY Headsets

imageEven the least tech-savvy of people (my mother, for example) have heard of the state-of-the-art Jawbone Headset by now, and probably even have one of their own, even if they didn’t have the gadget-sense to pick it out for themselves. What even you might not have heard about yet, however, is that the brand’s latest model, Jawbone Prime, now comes in a series of fun bright colors for Spring and Summer to counter the device’s usual hue, appropriately-named “Blah Blah Black.” The EARCANDY Edition combines the same desirable high-tech specs of the more inconspicuous Prime, such as its updated NoiseAssassin technology and wind-detection voice clarity, with the fashionably sleek aesthetics that such an important ear-accompanying accessory should have! With clever shade names like “Lilac You Mean It” and “Drop Me A Lime,” this limited edition rainbow of quirky colors is sure to reel in more style-inclined gadget-loving gals who haven’t hopped on the Jawbone bandwagon yet for one reason or another!

Price: $129.99
Who Found It: xgalexy was the first to add the Jawbone EARCANDY Headsets to the Hive.

D&AD Awards 2009: Viral Judging

In our final interview with this year’s D&AD awards judges, Eliza Williams talks to Big Spaceship’s Michael Lebowitz, the foreman of the Viral jury. Lebowitz discusses the semantics of the term “viral”, the evolution of the digital industry and the fact that, while still in its infancy, there’s already a sense of maturity emerging within the field…

CR Annual Best In Book: Find It and Balloonacy

The current issue of CR features The Annual, showcasing the best work of the past year. Nine projects have been chosen for our Best in Book section, the ultimate accolade. We are featuring each of them in a series of posts with additional content to further explain each project. In this post, see how Dare’s Find It app will help you locate your tent at Glastonbury and the stats behind Poke’s Balloonacy project

Dare was lucky enough to be given an open brief from Sony Ericsson to come up with a variety of ways to show off the full GPS capabilities of the brand’s mobile phones. The strategy aimed to provide users with a range of free, useful applications. Dare Labs, the agency’s bespoke new product development department, came up with Find It. The application allows users to tag any object and then navigate to the pre-tagged destination via the HE-100 GPS enabler in the phone. The tagged object could be a parked car, a hotel or, perhaps most useful of all, that particularly hard-to-find tent at Glastonbury. All is explained hereVery useful in the dark, we imagine.

Poke’s Balloonacy project, meanwhile, looks like it will be a fixture at awards shows this year. This film demonstrates how the online balloon race worked:

While this fly through of the race shows the balloon characters and the sites they appeared on -very fast.

Balloonacy 40,000 balloons in 22 seconds from Mattias Gunneras on Vimeo.

And this timelapse film shows how the race panned out on Mattias Gunneras’s blog

Balloonacy time laps from Mattias Gunneras on Vimeo.

Credits

Find It
Entrant: Dare. Client: Mattias Järlevi, Digital Campaign Manager, Sony Ericsson. Innovation Director: Perry Price. Associate Creative Director: Matt Firth. Art Director: Matt Firth. Designer: Ian Fooks. Developers: Ryan McGrath, Sonia Rakotomanantso. Producer: Peter Williams

Balloonacy
Entrant: Poke: Client: Orange. Creative Director: Iain Tait. Art Direction and Design: Nicky Gibson and Marc Davies. Designers: Andrew Zolty and Dickon Langdon. Programmers: Caroline Butterworth, Nilesh Ashra, Mattias Gunneras and Greg Reed. Technical Developers: Derek McKenna and Gabriel Bucknall. Technical Director: Igor Clark. Producer: Mike Pearson. Copy: David Cadji-Newby. Planner: Lise Lauritzen. 3D Animation: JS3D

Machine with Scraps of Paper

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Sculptor and engineer Arthur Ganson designs kinetic art that explores deep philosophical ideas. See a video of this piece here.

CR Annual Best In Book: The Nine Inch Nails Interactive Stage

The current issue of CR features The Annual, showcasing the best work of the past year. Nine projects have been chosen for our Best in Book section, the ultimate accolade. We are featuring each of them in a series of posts with additional content to further explain each project. In this post, see how Moment Factory created an interactive extravaganza for Nine Inch Nails’ last tour

Montreal-based Moment Factory created this ‘interactive environ­ment’ for rock band Nine Inch Nails’ 2008 Lights in the Sky tour. The installation allowed the band to interact with the video and lights while performing, with the visuals reacting to their positions, movements and sound.

Moment Factory worked with the band to develop different interactive effects and styles for each song. This how it was done clip explains more:

And here’s some footage fo the show:

Credits
Created by Moment Factory Experience.
Client: NIN.
Art Direction: Rob Sheridan.
Show Designer: Roy Benett.
Video Supplier: Nocturne.
System Designer and Content: Moment Factory

Is information visualization the next frontier for design?

infovisualization.jpg

Fast Company published a (very) introductory article on the emerging field of “information visualization,” an offshoot of graphic design devoted to the clear display of complex information.

“If we’re going to live in a world driven by data, the thinking goes, we need a simple means of digesting it all. We are increasingly a visual society, and our understanding of the world is increasingly made possible by this new visual language.”

>> Read article

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Percussa AudioCubes for music creation

Percussa AudioCubes – An Introduction from percussa on Vimeo.

We’ve seen lots of “block” type tangible sound control systems in installations and experimental student projects, but the folks at Percussa, a small electronics company in Brussels, have made one that’s got the kinks worked out enough to go to market. Their “AudioCubes” are glowing, physical blocks that hook up to a computer and map to musical structures, allowing you to unleash your inner geek DJ and play with toys all at the same time. Electronics embedded within each cube allow the blocks to sense one another’s positions and orientations, as well as the blocks’ distance to other objects, such as a hand (think four-sided mini theramin). They are networked, and scalable, so you can use any number of pieces (up to 100) together, as long as your audio hardware budget can handle it: a single block costs almost 300 bucks, though sets of multiples bring the price per block down.

percussa.jpg

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Keep your Twitter account clean with the Nest Unclutterer

We love Twitter.

But we don’t like it when a tweetbot follows us just because we mentioned a particular word or brand name. We could protect our updates, but that would just make it more difficult for people we actually know to follow us.

We don’t like tweetspammers who follow so many people that they’re probably just trying to get people to follow them back. You can’t be really listening to what 2000 people have to say.

We don’t like having our friend list filled up with inactive users who never tweet anymore.

These are just a few of the reasons we have created the Nest Unclutterer. It uses Twitter’s excellent API to help you maintain a tidy Twitter account:

  • The Nest Unclutterer protects your privacy from marketers and businesses by blocking followers who are already following a user-specified number of people.
  • It removes followers who have been inactive for a user-specified period of time.
  • It helps create a whitelist of users exempt from any of these rule-based actions.

We hope you like it, and we would appreciate any suggestions for additional features.


Savvy Gifts For Savvy Moms!

imageI love my mother and I love her style, but she is surprisingly hard to shop for and with Mother’s Day fast approaching, I’m looking to send her something besides the same flowers as the previous year, or a last-minute card. I could always give her cash, which she loves, but of course I want something a little more personalized and memorable. The thing is, my mom is still a stylish and hip woman who, although loves anything I get her, will not really like wearing a “World’s #1 Mom” sweatshirt. I’m looking for something chic and fashionable and something that she’ll want to use and not just store away after May 10th. This Mother’s Day, check out these featured items and see her eyes light up with true surprise and let her be the envy of all the other mothers at brunch! Anything from Swarovski studded earphones for her gym time, crocodile leather checkbook cover to patent leather, stylish diaper bags for the new mom, you’re sure to find something different for your mother that she’ll be happy to use every day of the year!

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