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made me smile
As you well know by now I way in to all kinds of innovation when it comes to kids education and entertainment. So I was pretty stoked to find KiwiCrate recently. For $19.95 a month (includes shipping), KiwiCrate will send you an age-appropriate craft project for your child complete with all the materials and detailed instructions. The crafts are developed by a panel of experts in child development, science, art, and education and tested by the ultimate experts: real kids.
Had some fun this morning with Instagram snapping the 20’ of snow that pounded us last night. Weeeee!
Hey! Thought I’d take a quick moment to introduce you to a pet project of mine.
Meet Tegu. A startup Toy Company that I have been involved with since 2010. Tegu “the blocks that click” are green, sustainable, beautifully design pieces of art - loaded up with magnets inside. They are unassumingly cool and once you pick them up you can’t put them down. Tegu LIVE is the first outcome of our journey together as business partners.
Think of it as an online playmate and owner’s manual. Full of ideas and instruction to inspire you to create with Tegu. Having given the block to my boys, I can attest to their quality and beauty. But I can also attest to how challenging they can be! Tegu LIVE aims at helping people through the learning and creation process by making the entire think interactive.
Would love your thoughts. There’s quite an operation behind the scenes at POKE making it all happen. Stop by sometime and we’ll show you!
- Tom
Parallel Parking from Yum Yum London on Vimeo.
APRICOT — A Short Film by Ben Briand from Moonwalk Films on Vimeo.
Holy smokes. This little indie short really delivers. Good acting, good script, good editing, good camera work (although at the end, the camera motion was bit too much, but still!) There are a lot of inspiring films on Vimeo, but few are this beautifully written, shot, and performed. Somehow it reminds me of Where the Wild Things are. Love it. Enjoi!
Remember what it was like to meet people before Facepants? You know, with coffee and high-fives and fist-bumps and shit?
Meet Meet Joe. A new, low-tech alternative to Facebook and its ilk that requires no online profile but relies on personal introductions instead.
Serving the Chicago area, Meet Joe focuses on introducing people to new friends based on their interests and the kinds of people they want to meet. Users begin by signing up with the service online—that may actually be the last time they use its website. From there, Joe Drake, the company’s founder, will contact them personally via email to set up a confidential meeting over coffee or a drink. Based on their description of who they’re hoping to find, Joe will then coordinate an opportunity for them to meet someone or a small group of people—he’ll even help coordinate schedules and recommend an activity based on everyone’s personalities, interests and preferences. Joe! That’s rad! Looking for someone to start a NY outpost? :)
“Joe is like a great tailor or a trusted real estate agent, but he doesn’t have an assistant and he never takes a day off. You’ll be able to reach him by email, phone, text, or instant message within 24 hours unless he is in jail, a coma, or the world is ending.”
The price of a personal consultation and one meeting with potential friends is USD 29.
Yay! The folks at Mashable covered If I Can Dream again today. Pretty sweet since we’re so close to launch. (It’s set to premiere on March 2 on Hulu and IfICanDream.com.) See the latest teaser video below.
For those that haven’t gotten the low-down yet, If I Can Dream is a live, made-for-web TV experiment — that will use Hulu as the “Television Network”, will be broadast live 24/7 at IfICanDream.com, and follow the lives of five young people – a musician, an actor, two actresses and a model – as they leave their hometowns and live together high up in Hollywood Hills – and go on their journey to stardom as their journey is documented across the Internet via Twitter, MySpace Hulu, etc.
Full disclosure this little labor of love is the baby of my little nerd tank POKE.
The show — with new episodes released every week — will take a reality-esque look at the lives of five aspiring artists who are trying to make it in Hollywood. A sneak peek of the episode can be seen below.
What’s especially interesting about If I Can Dream is not just the fact that it sprung from Hulu (a website) and Simon Fuller (of traditional TV fame), but that the content and format seem much more broadcast-like than typical web/TV shows.
Essentially the series has all the ingredients of a network television show, but an entirely different and experimental distribution model. It appears as if the basic premise being tested is whether or not the web as a platform can syndicate and distribute highly produced content and churn out a hit show without broadcast as a medium. Although we’ve seen web TV shows make their marks in the entertainment industry — The Guild comes to mind — we’ve yet to see this exact formula tested online. So the real question is: Can this formula pump out a hit show on the same level as a hit TV show?
Good question Jennifer. I confidently say from everyone back at POKE, we sure hope so. In a world where Hulu and Boxee are about to explode…it seems like a great wager to make. Wouldn’t you say?
Readers, what say you?
This dude is making music with computers err trees errr both. Whatever. It’s awesome. And nerdy. But not too nerdy. It’s kinda tree-huggy too. And that’s awesomer. Enjoi.
In the garden of my house there’s a tree with lots of randomly grown twigs. It looks odd and nice at the same time.One day I asked myself if I could create a piece of music with it.
To tune the tree I picked a fundamental note and tuned the twigs by trimming them with a pencil sharpener. I used two Røde NT6 and a NTG-2 as microphones, combined with a customized stethoscope.
I recorded the tracks live on a Pro Tools LE system. I didn’t use any synthesizer or sampler to create or modify the sounds. All the sounds come from playing the tree, by bowing the twigs, shaking the leaves, playing rhythms on the cortex and so on.
Below you can see the video and some pictures with more detailed descriptions from his posting on Behance.
Diego Stocco - Music From A Tree from Diego Stocco on Vimeo.
I modified a stethoscope by using some hose accessories.The connection between the plastic pipe and the microphone needed to be sealed in order to transmit the sound well.
Here I was recording the low frequencies coming from a big piece of cortex. I used this sound as a kick drum.
The two Røde NT6 attached to my fingers with rubber bands. I came up with this idea because mike stands are not very practical for certain locations and also because in this way I can move the microphones dynamically around the object I’m recording.
Tuning the twig by trimming it with a pencil sharpener.
This is the twig that I was using to play the bass note.
A little twig I used for high-pitched sounds.
The track is also available as an high-quality download on my Bandcamp page:
http://diegostocco.bandcamp.com/track/music-from-a-tree
One of the most representative cases of succesful online brand building in Spain is Atrapalo.com, an online travel agency that also promotes leisure activities.
Their latest idea? Think simple, smart and social. These guys took a page out of the Radiohead Book and created a vacation model in which you pay for your trip when you get back based on how much you think it’s worth.
Nice.
Thanks to Rubbishcorp for the snag.
you’re welcome. :)
These necklaces, by Mike and Maaike, were created when the design team, who google searched for the most famous jewelry in the world, came up with a bunch of low-res images that caught their eye. They then stole, doctored, and transfered these images onto leather, creating their own “priceless” creations. The result is an intense visual experience, and while the intricacy of the jewels are gone, the effect is not lost.
The line can be found at velvetdavinci.com and mikeandmaaike.com
Nuff said. This made me laugh. A lot. Now you will too. You’re welcome.
Also, buy me one, k? Thx.
Click image for larger version.
Tape, tape, tape….. what to do with all those random roles of tape hiding round your office and in your home? Why not Tape 4 Fun and plaster it all over your (friend’s) wall?!
See more T4F goodness here.
Since graduating from London’s Central Saint Martins University of Art & Design with first class honors in graphic design and illustration in 2003, Shantell Martin has been expanding conventional definitions of drawing, using it as a base from which to storm and occupy the design, fashion and music scenes. Now based between Tokyo and New York, Martin has been a much sought-after resident and guest VJ at some of the city’s most experimental club nights and has collaborated with some of the best-known names in the fashion and music industry.
Like her drawings, Martin herself seems to be in an unstoppable state of constant and conscious movement: by turn illustrator, designer, VJ, artist, videographer and more, each persona is linked by the common thread of her trademark continuous-line style, each project a further entanglement of disciplines and an exploratory step into a new world the artist creates as she moves through it.
enjoi!
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