It’s amazing how such a harsh and destructive thing can look so beautiful.
Monster truck tiltshift madness
December 1st, 2008New Pomegranate Phone, brews coffee
October 17th, 2008Folks up in Nova Scotia have designed the unthinkable. A mobile phone that takes the user experience to the next level. We’re talking built in web browser, hd video projector, coffee brewer and voice translation!
Look out iPhone, there’s a new player on the scene!
Viral marketing mashup
October 13th, 2008We’ve seen the browser shake and novel pop-up ads for a while now, but usually they have little to nothing to do with the content. The new Wario Land Shake It game for the Nintendo Wii looks to be a clever side scrolling platformer with some hip wii-mote gestures thrown into the mix, but what got me really into was the Youtube video disguised as an “awesome gameplay clip”.
I won’t link the video directly because the overall experience is not only fun, clever, but contextually relevant to the subject of the game. Make sure you play with the pieces at the end!
It’s interesting to think about mashups in the advertising space and the constant need to grab peoples’ attention in a world where we have less and less time for it. This was a great example of doing something simple to quietly distract you away from what you were already interested in, and in the end rounding out a key part of the message about why this product is unique. Good stuff.
Tilt-shift Video goodness
October 10th, 2008Keith Loutit has created a few beautiful video pieces using some combination of tilt-shift lensing and stop motion. The effect is very unique and cool, especially to see in video. Oh, and the editing is also top notch.
Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.
Bathtub II from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.
Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.
Adobe’s Experience Design team launches new blog
October 10th, 2008Just a bit of news to help circulate the word that we’ve launched a new public-facing blog for the XD group at Adobe. Now that’s not “xD” the ascii squinty smiley that I see daily in online gaming and message boards, but XD as in Experience Design.
xD Man
In my years at Macromedia and Adobe this isn’t the first time a blog has been attempted, and it wasn’t for lack of effort or desire, but I really have to say that I am very pleased to see it launch. The value of having a place to talk about the work we’re doing and having dialog with the design community at large are things I don’t think anyone has ever questioned. That said, until now we’ve never been able to balance easy content publishing and our day-to-day actual work to make a real blog actually happen.
Hats off to Chris Heimbuch, Ty Lettau, Mark Dennert and Andy Day for making this thing happen. I’d also like to point out that the site is one of the best FLEX/Flash/HTML/RIA hybrid sites I’ve ever seen, seamlessly weaving together the best of Adobe tech on the web today. I look forward to seeing what articles and videos we publish and the conversations [complaints, crying, threats, etc] with readers to be had ahead.
xD!
Hack the debate, Election 2008
October 8th, 2008While the debates (if you can really call them that) have been somewhat dull, Current.tv has been spicing up the broadcast with realtime overlay of Twitter feeds from the web. I found it particularly amazing to listen to the debate, and read the commentary at the same time; it’s pretty profound when you think about the density of thought and communication happening around a single topic at one time. I actually had the Twitter Election page open at the same time and was happy to see that the posts that were making it into the broadcast were fairly balanced, but I’m sure filtering out the spammers was the primary concern.
Bottom line is it’s cool to see mashed up video/commentary getting broadcasted back into the mainstream.
wow a digital SLR shot this? (EOS 5D Mark II)
September 30th, 2008I’m blown away right now. Vincent Laforet had the privilege of using the a prototype Canon EOS 5D to shoot a short video showing off the new gear. It’s a true testament of technology advancing that essentially a photo camera can shoot this quality of video. Apparently a killer sensor and a variety of sick lenses (oh and some amazing talent) is all you need for amazing HD video.
Widgets for TV
August 20th, 2008This just in, Intel and Yahoo announced plans for a new widget platform for consumer electronics most notably for TV. This is the first time I’m taking this stuff seriously, and it goes a long way to see that what they’re envisioning actually looks solid and useable; not just a load of pop up ads or hacked desktop widgets thrown over a broadcast image. I’m happy to see Flash in the list of supported technologies for the widgets; not just JS or just FLASH, but a wide array of options for developers to create with… something I think is critical for any emerging widget platform.
It’s also exciting since Intel is gearing up to release integrated tv sets with their architecture baked in. Tie that together with Yahoo’s data and you have the potential for some cool widgets that people would actually want on their TVs.
Mobile computing in India
August 8th, 2008China takes center stage
August 8th, 2008Today 08/08/08 the Olympic Games in Beijing have begun. Coming from an event production background, I am simply blown away at what China has created for the Opening Ceremony. There is a level of detail, both small and large, that can can be seen in the photos from today’s events that shows the work of very talented and dedicated individuals. The LED light suits looked particularly amazing.
I personally cannot wait to see what else the local Chinese media and production companies do next; from event branding to TV broadcast interstitials and bumpers to scoring and time tracking visualizations… all spanning different mediums, these are exciting times.
Edit: Another gallery over at Tianya.cn has other great shots.