The annual social clean-up is in progress. I’ve already shut down my Posterous and Tumblr accounts to focus on my blog. Now it’s time to deal with Twitter.
I love Twitter. It covers such an incredible spectrum of information; but recently it’s begun to feel out of control. The signal-to-noise was wrong and stuff from people I cared about was being drowned out.
I started by unfollowing a few heavy/active users. But I enjoy a lot of the stuff they share so it didn’t feel massively practical. Then @sermad suggested I made more of lists. I created a few and moved a bunch of people over.
Great! But my timeline was still too noisy.
I tried unfollowing a few more people but couldn’t create a clear mental criteria in my head.
Take my friends and ex-colleagues at glue as an example. I don’t want 180+ people on my timeline, but once you start to add a few, you’re into a strange mental world of… If I add X, I should add Y, because we did X together. In the end I was trying to do something ridiculous like:
People I worked with for more than 4 years + that I regulary went out for beers with + that use Twitter regularly + but not so much that they drown everyone else out = Following.
It wasn’t working. I got frustrated.
So I went BIG and unfollowed everybody.
WOOHOO!!
It might’ve been a bit impulsive but it’s democratic and I can slowly add people back over time.
I have a nagging doubt though. It’s counter intuitive. Lists guarantee I see peoples stuff; but they think I’ve unfollowed them. Not great really. But I needed to wrestle control back of the timeline so I’ve taken the plunge.
WEBGL Twitter visualisation + real life holographic installation data eye candy goodness.
The goal of CNN’s Ecosphere [cnn-ecosphere.com] by Minivegas and Stinkdigital is a real-time Twitter visualization that aims to reveal how the online discussion is evolving around the topic of climate change. More specifically, the visualization aggregates all Twitter messages on the topic of #cop17 (in case you wonder, this is an abbreviation for “The 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)”.
The online visualization consists of an interactive 3D globe, described as a “lush digital ecosystem” that closely resembles the look and behavior of real plants and trees in nature. In practice, the virtual plants in the 3D Ecosphere grow from those tweets that are tagged with #COP17. Each tweet about climate change feeds into a plant representing that specific topic or discussion, causing it to grow a little more.
The result thus becomes an mesmerizing, real-time visual representation of how the world “sees” climate change (try clicking on one of the tweet messages), or… an interactive Tron-like Lindenmayer forest, whatever you fancy the most.
Vitro conceived this video wall as part of its campaign for the New York City Marathon.
It shows long distance runner Ryan Hall running at marathon speed across a tunnel in NYC’s Columbus Circle subway station – and challenges the public to keep up.
Sorry about the lack of updates. Work is taking up most of my time at the moment, but here’s some stuff I liked recently. Will try and share more of this kind of stuff in the future. Sound like a plan?
Chrome: SBTV
The first ad in the first break of the new series of X-Factor was this ad for Google Chrome, featuring youth site SBTV, and its founder Jamal Edwards. Inspiring da yoots. Excellent work.
DC Shoes: Ken Block’s Hollywood Megamercial
Gynkhama is back, this time he’s tearing around on the backlots of Universal Studios, California.
TableDrum
A virtual drumkit which syncs the sound of any object to high quality drum samples of your choice. /via Ad Bright
DragonTape HTML5 Mixmaker
Dragontape is an easy to use HTML5 video & sound editor that enables anyone to create mixtape playlists (up to 3 hours long) from YouTube and SoundCloud clips. /via Rubbishcorp http://www.dragontape.com/home
Nike+ City Runs
An installation for Nike retail stores which visualized a year’s worth of runs from the Nike+ website. Made with OpenFrameworks. http://yesyesno.com/nike-city-runs
Watch YouTube With Friends
Possibly the most interesting recent Google+ feature is a new button on YouTube that lets you start a hang out with friends around a video you’re watching. http://mashable.com/2011/08/18/watch-with-friends-youtube/
Wearable Electronic Sensors Stick Like Temporary Tattoos, Present Endless Possiblities
A team of researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign have developed small electronic devices that can be worn on the skin. http://www.geekosystem.com/sensor-temporary-tattoos/
IKEA Lullaby So many things I like I about this. Gorgeous HTML5 website, leading to branded content in Spotify and iTunes. http://demo.fb.se/pr/ikea/lullabies/
INNOVATION / TECHNIQUES
X-Men First Class – NFC Posterscope, Proxama, O2 and Nokia team up. The possibilities are HUGE!
Daft Punk – Anatomy of a Mashup The entire piece is composed from the latest HTML5 and CSS3 technology (canvas, audio, transforms & transitions). http://daftpunk.themaninblue.com/
MIT Mood Meter Isobar have already teamed up with MIT to look at applications for brands.
Androidify Dance Kinect + Android avatar. Love it.
Aurasma Object tracking non-QR AR for iPhone with multiple media (geo-located).
Paper Record Player A paper record player wedding invitation.
Kinect Live Music Performance Chris Vik uses Kinect with Ableton to control sound samples and produce an amazing live music performance.
YooToob Interactive Youtube Music Machine Just use your keyboard. It’s the Youtube interactive music machine.
The Wheels Of Steel Turntables in your browser with HTML5/CSS/JS and some Flash. Needs a kickass browser and machine. http://wheelsofsteel.net/
Human Jukebox This man is an owner of an electronics store in Stockholm. He swallowed a custom-made wireless soundsystem. People then request a song over the internet.
Borg & McEnroe Play Doubles on YouTube Separately, they are alright. But when played simultaneously, they interact perfectly.
The Verbalizer by Breakfast NY Enhancing Google Voice Search. Smart. Fast. Etc.
Face Projection Mapping Responsive projection mapping where everything is triggered by his face. Up close and personal.
Video Time Machine Handpicked popular culture from 1860 – 2011.
RobotFlaneur The idea is simple: pick a city, and every 30 seconds it will take you to a random place and show you the Google StreetView image. Each view is not important. What’s interesting is if you leave it running and occasionally glance at it. You might recognise some views in some cities, otherwise there’s a lot of mundanity: suburbs, motorways, traffic signs. These are the grain of the city and vary wildly. /via Dentsu Blog. http://robotflaneur.com/
Future Music Really smart use of the Storify platform to continue the conversation.
Phil Collins: Requirements The site geolocates you, and updates the album artwork depending on the weather. London. 18º. No Jacket required. http://www.philcollinsrequirements.com
CULTURE
Glasto 2011 Nice vid made from 1000s of photos.
Masterchef Synesthesia Swede Mason steps up culture smash.
Three-Toed Sloth Crossing The Road In Costa Rica (Sloth’s Perspective) What’s not to love?
