so pass it on and starbucks will donate 5usd(1cup of coffee at Starbucks) for each forward!

good to know my selfish indulgence in rhumba frapuccinos goes back into a worthy cause.

what’s left now only is a Banksy cover on Time Magazine

Splat (Cornwall)
Pity Me (Co. Durham)
Pennycomequick (Devon)
Nob End (South Lancashire)
Great Snoring (Norfolk)
Thong (Kent)
Piddle River (Dorset)
Sandy Balls (New Forest)

REAL town names in England, from the guardian.

Wideopen (Newcastle)
Great Cockup (Lake District)
Twatt (Orkney)
Crapstone (Devon)
Slack Bottom (West Yorkshire)
No Place (Co. Durham)
Lickey End (West Midlands)
Hackballscross (Co. Louth)
Horneyman (Kent)
Fryup (North Yorkshire)

Car brochures are no longer limited to print and paper. The level of interaction with the MINI ad campaign through Augmented Reality could possibly change the advertising world. It gained so much buzz, which immediately sparked offso many other versions(IQ Toyota, Nissan cube…) all over video-sharing sites. Augmented Reality is basically a combination of real-world elements(user generated movement, film, sound) and computer-generated data.

a couple of years back in the land of the kiwi, on Mobile Ads:

and remember Holograms? the word you learnt from Star Trek or any sci-fi teleseries in the early 90s? There was a whole buzz a while back on iHologram on the iPhone, which i still cannot verify the authencity of. But i doubt its impossible nowadays.

Wikitude, the new must-have travel application (currently available on Android), just angle your phone’s cam against a location and travel trivia pops up on your phone:

What i like most is that the music industry is catching on to it. Julian Perretta’s interactive music video should be put in a contemporary art gallery. Most of the current versions work like this: The idea is that you print out a special “tracker” image which you then hold up for your computer’s webcam to pick up. The tracker looks like this,

Then the 3d, pop-up-book style content of the video appears in spatial 3d as if you’re holding it. Here’s a demo

cool huh?

Designers against Human Rights Abuse(Dahra) founded by Risha Sodha, exists to promote and raise awareness amongst those involved in the creative industry of their social, political and ethical responsibilities (yes, this struck a thick, strong chord in my heart).

Through various mediums our members are encouraged to express their opinions in order to raise awareness, not only about these various causes, but also amongst other creatives and the responsibilities they have. [Dahra]

One of their projects(which i feel strongly for), Designers Against Tibetan Abuse[DATA] is Dahra’s first project wrapped up in a pleasantly edgy book of visual designs focusing on Tibetan Rights. 52 creatives from every part of the world worked together to produce this compilation of inspirations, and all funds raised go to the Tibet Relief fund. Buy now! 

More on ZeroDB…

[from Reprieve] On the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights musicians are uniting against the use of music to torture by joiningwww.ZerodB.org The Zero dB project (zero decibels = silence) was launched by legal charity Reprieve which represents over 30 prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Many of Reprieve’s clients – and hundreds more held in US secret prisons across the world – have been subjected to deafening music played for hours, days and often months on end in order to ‘break’ them. Zero dB aims to stop torture music by encouraging widespread condemnation of the practice and by calling on governments and the UN to uphold and enforce the Convention Against Torture and other relevant treaties. Zero dB is backed by the Musicians Union which is calling on British musicians to voice their outrage against the use of music to torture. The UN and the European Court of Human Rights have banned the use of loud music in interrogations, but it is still being widely used. Prisoners describe the experience as harder to bear even than physical torture. Reprieve’s client Binyam Mohamed from North London – still held in Guantanamo Bay – suffered 18 months of torture in a Moroccan secret prison. During this time his penis was routinely slashed with razor blades, yet he describes the sensation of feeling his sanity slip during psychological torture as even more horrific. He spoke to Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith, his lawyer, in Guantánamo Bay: “They hung me up. I was allowed a few hours of sleep on the second day, then hung up again, this time for two days. My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb…. There was loud music, [Eminem’s] ‘Slim Shady’ and Dr. Dre for 20 days…. The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night…. Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off.” There is a long and growing list of supporters who are outraged by the use of music to torture: James Lavelle of UNKLE, Matthew Herbert, Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine, Massive Attack, The Magic Numbers, Elbow and Bill Bailey have so far pledged their support of the initiative and made statements against the use of music to torture. Musicians and the wider public are making their own silent protests against music torture which are being shown on zerodb.org. A series of silent protests and actions are planned through 2009. Visit www.zerodb.org to record your silent protest now. Music that has been used to torture includes:

• AC/DC – Hell’s Bells
• AC/DC – Shoot to Thrill
• Aerosmith
• Barney the Purple Dinosaur – theme tune
• Bee Gees – Stayin’ Alive
• Britney Spears
• Bruce Springsteen – Born in the USA
• Christina Aguilera – Dirrty
• David Gray – Babylon
• Deicide – Fuck Your God
• Don McLean – American Pie
• Dope – Die MF Die
• Dope – Take Your Best Shot
• Dr. Dre
• Drowning Pools – Bodies
• Eminem – Kim
• Eminem – Slim Shady
• Eminem – White America
• Li’l Kim
• Limp Bizkit
• Matchbox Twenty – Gold
• Meat Loaf
• Metallica – Enter Sandman
• Neil Diamond – America
• Nine Inch Nails – March of the Pigs
• Nine Inch Nails – Mr. Self-Destruct
• Prince – Raspberry Beret
• Queen – We are The Champions
• Rage Against the Machine – Killing in the Name Of
• Red Hot Chilli Peppers
• Saliva – Click Click Boom
• Sesame Street – theme tune
• Tupac – All Eyes on Me

first it was blogs that described in full(sometimes mundane) detail of what you did today in one long entry.

Then came facebook update and twitter that described details of what you did today in multiple short entries throughout the day.

and then now, theres 12seconds.tv that lets you show details of what you did today , with short quick video updates- its Twitter on video

Why its hot? – quite the natural evolution in consumer generated online content – no surprise there. It’s not like youtube, where its more like a ‘showcase’ and it makes you feel silly if you wanted to post updates about yourself throughout the day. 12seconds.tv takes the embarassment away. Now instead of twitting ‘ i broke my toenail this morning’ you can now provide your followers with a richer video experience so they wont have to imagine anymore

Whilst most brands/companies are still struggling to figure out how to get on the twitting bandwagon, twitter brand gurus may find it easier to get ahead of the pack if they do decide to use 12seconds. If they do, i hope they don’t repeat corporate twitter boo boos and instead, look at it as a great chance to change how consumers look at your brand. Would be cool to have a sneak peek in Cadbury’s chocolate factory , google’s legendary staff lounge or even Jonathan Ive’s secret room of creative genius for example. Yes, we wish.

Microsoft will release a new version of their search engine on June 3rd

“Lots of links aren’t always the most helpful way to answer your question,” said Stefan Weitz, Microsoft’s director, search group, in a promotional Bing video. “What if we could cut through those endless lists of links and give you great results quickly?”

am very curious to find out what it would be like. however it still bugs me. I can’t think of any reason why they would name it Bing, other than its Chandler’s last name.

There’s a  new visual search engine in town: Spezify collects search results in different media formats (e.g. definitions, images, Twitter messages, Flickr photos, quotes, wikipedia articles, …), arranges them on a desktop and allows one to drag it around as an (almost) infinite collage. Interactive, fresh, and somewhat inspiring. Works as a pretty good substitute for a thesaurus. 

The search results are interesting, and may not always be 100% relevant. But its a great tool for creative marketers out there looking for fresh, new associations for a certain product/brand/word.