Hasta La Ideas

This writer is slowly returning to normal after an epic battle with the flu and you, dear readers, were sorely missed. His head is still swimming a bit with all the NyQuil consumed over the past couple of days, so how’s about starting with some short entries for this morning, until he can work his way back up to his regular, irritating verbosity? First up comes an e-mail we received from our good pal and former UnBeige co-editor, Alissa Walker, who alerted us to the most recent episode of KCRW‘s design-focused show, DnA on which Ms. Walker regularly lends a hand. And all biases aside, we must say it’s a doozie, with a big celebrity slant to the whole program. We’re assuming Alissa won’t mind if we quote from her e-mails directly (because she sells things with far more excitement and enthusiasm than anyone we know), so here are some quick details:

We have a grrrrreat DnA lined up for today: David Rockwell on the Oscars, George Lucas on his new USC building (which I was waaaaay excited about) and an all-star tribute to Frank Gehry on occasion of his 80th (February 28 should you be planning your own party).

Go! Now!

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media

Speaking of England, as we were earlier this morning, and changing things over there, Her Majesty the Queen just rolled out a newly redesigned website. Constructed by the firm Bang Communications who have said they wanted to clean up the site, now in its third update since its launch in 1997, and make it more informative, accessible, and interesting. And in the premiere of the new site, the Queen was on hand to play around with it on a gigantic screen (alongside World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee who was also at the event). But not everyone is pleased with the update, like the Times‘ Technology Editor Nigel Kendall, who says that there is still quite a bit left to be done with it before it’s finished and that its navigation is currently somewhat clumsy. Yet, to present both sides, Kendall also decides that it would be a good idea to get a quote about it from a competitor of the company that got the job, which doesn’t seem entirely fair to either Bang nor the winning competition:

Mark Wilson, a director of Wilson Fletcher, a rival web design specialist whose clients include The Science Museum and Discovery Channel, was less than complimentary about the new site.

“It’s very disappointing,” he told The Times. “I don’t think this expresses how we feel about our monarchy at all. It feels more like a library to me. I really thought that they would do something more progressive this time, try to get under the skin of what the monarchy means. This looks more like a set of Google search results and involves wading through huge amounts of text.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media

Sure, the world may be slowly crumbling around us, but Google has its priorities straight, as usual. Today’s Google homepage features this special holiday logo to commemorate the birth of Jackson Pollock. The artist would have turned 97 today. The specialty logo (or “Google Doodle,” as they’re known in-house) is likely the work of Googler and graphic artist Dennis Hwang, but the company’s crackerjack legal team has hastened to alert those who position their cursors over the ode to Pollock that it is there “Courtesy of the Pollock/Krasner Foundation / ARS, NY.” The ARS stands for Artists Rights Society.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media

Stuck at home cleaning up after your wicked stepsisters and no fairy godmother in sight? We can’t help you get to an inaugural ball, but would you settle for a do-it-yourself version of Shepard Fairey‘s iconic Obama poster? Music magazine Paste brings you “a bit of inaugural fun” in the form of Obamicon.Me, a website that allows users to create their own “Obamaicons,” a la Fairey. After the site was bombarded with traffic that Paste describes as “on an exponential growth curve,” the magazine deployed new servers to improve the site’s performance. More than 150,000 Obamaicons have been created in less than two weeks. Among them are those that feature a can of soup (“Progresso”), Groucho Marx (who was a lot funnier than Karl), Brangelina (“Yes We Cannes”), and the Hope diamond. Unable to resist the obvious papal pun, we uploaded a shot of Pope Benedict XVI and went to town.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media

Architonic è forse il più completo database disponibile online per architetti e designer in cerca di complementi di arredo, materiali e tecnologie da utilizzare nei propri progetti.
Il portale possiede anche una pagina dedicata al news ed approfondimenti, purtroppo penalizzata da una struttura generale che inevitabilmente favorisce la gestione dell’archivio. Quello che invece ho scoperto da poco, è la sezione che da spazio a prototipi ed concept in cerca di aziende interessate a metterle in produzione. Ho l’impressione che gli aggiornamenti non siano molto frequenti, ma Architonic è un sito ultra visitato dagli addetti ai lavori, ed avere una piccola vetrina disponibile potrebbe essere una buona opportunità.