Cravendale: Milk matters

I love this one:


Especially since it's already happening:

Procrastination

Procrastination from ism studios on Vimeo.

Driving is fun again

Crazy Honda ad created by Dare advertising agency (Vancouver, Canada) on June 2011. The 2012 Honda Civic was designed to make "driving fun again".

This is not porn

I have just stumbled upon this wonderful website called "This is not porn - this is pure beauty" , which gathers "rare and beautiful" pictures from celebrities. Sometimes very natural, simple, surprising, funny, or completely random, these vintage pictures give us the opportunity to discover these celebrities from an unusual point of view.

Lego minifigure USB flashdrive

How cool!

Contained within the character is a fully functional 2GB USB flash memory drive. You can store and share your photos, MP3s, games, documents and personal files! Attach it to your keychain and carry with you wherever you go!

* Store and share your MP3s, photos, games, documents and personal files
* Save up to 2 GB of information
* Hi-speed
* Compatible with Mac and PC

Available here.

Youtube: 1911

Did you notice the "1911" button on Youtube videos yesterday? A certain Friday song seemed a lot more bearable...
Check out this youTube vid :"One hundred years ago on April 1, these moving pictures were the finest in the land. Hooray!".

Spiderman

Spiderman by Oak Oak:

The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun

Google Art Project

Have you tried Google Art Project? If the answer is no, then you really should!

"Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces."

This Art Project will not only give you the opportunity to view thousand  high resolution artworks online in extraordinary detail (thanks to Picasa and App Engine), but you will also be able to "visit" the museums in 360° view (thanks to Google Street View technology).

Using a a specially designed Street View trolley, 360 degree images were taken of selected galleries, and in each museum, some artworks have been photographed at high resolution (7-14 billion pixels in depth) thus enabling viewers to zoom on small details. 

This "behind the scenes" video shows how the "Street View" shots were taken:

It is also possible to bookmark and comment on teach painting, and “create your own art collection by saving your favorite images into a personal gallery. Of course, your "collection"can then be shared with friends.

Moroever, museums are providing many other images to complete the gallery, and offering links to information and video on the subjects. For now the following museums are included in the project:

- Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin - Germany
- The Frick Collection, NYC - USA
- Gemäldegalerie, Berlin - Germany
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC - USA
- MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC - USA
- Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid - Spain
- Museo Thyssen - Bornemisza, Madrid - Spain
- Museum Kampa, Prague - Czech Republic
- National Gallery, London - UK
- Palace of Versailles - France
- Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands
- The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
- Russia - State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow - Russia
- Tate Britain, London - UK
- Uffizi Gallery, Florence - Italy
- Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands

Push Pop Press

Lots of buzz today on the Web about "Push Pop Press". What? Who?

Not much on the official website for the moment, except for this short introduction: " Our team is bringing together great content and beautiful software to create a new breed of digital books. Books that let you explore photos, videos, music, maps, and interactive graphics, all through a new physics-based multi-touch user interface. Our first title will be available for iPad and iPhone later this year. We can't wait to share it with you."

Ok, just another digital book maker on the way I thought. 

So why all the fuss surrounding Push Pop Press? It turns out the start-up was founded in February 2010 by a team that includes Mike Matas, who joined Apple as a designer at 19 (!); Kimon Tsinteris, formerly a senior engineer on the iPhone team, and Austin Sarner, an applications developer (AppZapper, Disco,...). 

Apple blogger John Gruber of Daring Fireball had the oppportunity to try Push Pop Press, you can read his full feedback here:

"What I saw (and used) was a multimedia-rich book running on an iPhone 4. There is no UI chrome. No status bar at the top or tab bar at the bottom. It’s just like you see in the still image on their teaser site. The entire screen is filled by content, not user interface elements. The screen is the book, the book is the screen.

You use it almost entirely by swiping and pinching. [...] In Push Pop’s books, [...] to play a video, you just tap play and it plays in place. If you want to play it full-screen, you pinch it out. Pinch back in to go back to the book layout. [...]

And, as they say, there’s a physics engine in place, which gives all the elements on screen a certain heft as you swipe and pinch them. It doesn’t just feel like a game — it feels like an exquisitely crafted game.

Performance is achingly smooth. E.g., when you zoom out or in on a video, the zooming tracks the pinching of your fingers precisely and instantly. Do the pinch fast — more like a popping pinch-flick — and the zoom expansion will respond accordingly and pop the element into full-screen size. Think about how the standard iOS list controls have a momentum-based feel to them — like when you flick them to scroll quickly, or the bounce when you hit the top or bottom. That’s what Push Pop’s UI feels like, except it’s for everything — page-turning, image/video zooming, everything.

The format of their “books” is not HTML or anything like ePub (the format Apple uses for iBooks books). Push Pop’s books are native Cocoa Touch iOS apps. I’ve seen some cool stuff rendered through WebKit, but never anything like this in terms of smoothness, precision, and the lack of latency between touch gestures and on-screen responsiveness. “Pages” look more like they were laid-out by a designer than randomly rendered by a web browser."

If the name "Mike Matas" doesn't ring a bell, I strongly advise you to go check out Mike Matas website. 

He is best known for designing key parts of Mac OS X and iPhone. he joined Apple at age 19 (what were we doing at 19?), after creating the media management tool Delicious Library. He’s even been listed as co-inventor on patents Apple has filed.

By the way, it turns out the guy is only 24 and wikipedia points out that " he never attended college". 

"Formal schooling ended for me half way through my senior year of high school when I decided to drop out so I could focus on starting up Delicious Monster. Although that’s obviously not to say my education stopped there. I’m educated every day by the places and things I surround myself with, and the people I collaborated with. " Matas says. You can read the full (and very interesting) interview of Mike Matas on Cocoia Blog.

Did I mention the man also takes amazing pictures? Check this out:

I really can't wait to see how Push Pop Press turns out !

Ice Age 4

India #1

Here are a few pictures from my four-month trip in S.E.A., starting with portaits from India :

Cheyenne Ellis

Travel pictures by Cheyenne Ellis:

Her simple yet beautifully designed website also features some portaits, kids pictures.. nicely shot but a lot more staged. Anyway, here's a funny picture of babies which made me smile, and pictures of singer/actress Majandra Delfino, whom I haven't heard about in ages:

Splendor in the Grass

I haven't posted anything for quite a will now *understatement*. I hope all of you had some nice Christmas holidays, and it still is time to wish you a wonderful year :)

After my trip in Asia, I took some time to reflect on these amazing months in South East Asia, put my life back on tracks and connect with some friends. I also met new interesting people, started a new job and found a new flat. So, yeah, these last weeks have been quite busy!

It takes a lot of time to browse the internet, find something relevant, to talk about on the blog and look for more precise sources. In the next weeks, I'm gonna have to spend some time familiarizing myself with my new work environment (e-business, electronic publishing... Challenging and exciting new stuff ;) ). Consequently, I don't think I can promise you  regular posts...for now!

A few months ago, while looking for some info on "Splendor in the grass", a 1961 movie, I stumbled upon this William Wordsworth poem, which is a great way to end this post. Take care guys!

What though the radiance
 which was once so bright
 Be now for ever taken from my sight,
 Though nothing can bring back the hour
 Of splendour in the grass,
 of glory in the flower,
 We will grieve not, rather find
 Strength in what remains behind;
 In the primal sympathy
 Which having been must ever be;
 In the soothing thoughts that spring
 Out of human suffering;
 In the faith that looks through death,
 In years that bring the philosophic mind.

A darwinian theory of beauty

TED - which stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design - collaborated with animator Andrew Park to "illustrate Denis Dutton's provocative theory on beauty : that art, music and other beautiful things, far from being simply "in the eye of the beholder," are a core part of human nature with deep evolutionary origins".
TEDTalks cover various topics such as technology, entertainement, design, science, business, development and the arts.

May the Force of Typography Be With You

These ads inspired by Sta Wars was created by advertising agency H-57 Creative Station, and is in fact an agency self-promotion. H-57 Creative Station (Milan, Italy) is specialized in typography, graphic design and illustration. Well done!

I am a forest

Sweet stop-motion video, directed by Alex Schulz untitled " I am a forest " :

Above everything else

Here's Alex Roman latest commercial, for Grupo Cosentino’s Silestone brand countertops and untitles "Above everything else". Believe it or not, but this video is purely digital - yes : it's CG. Every single shot in this photo-realistic commercial  was made using 3ds Max, V-ray, After Effects and edited in Premiere.

Spoonachos

Spoonachos is a smart concept created by Denis Bostandzic, a professional designer from Belgrade, Serbia.Spoonachos combines the spoon and the nacho : very simple and brilliant :)