Archive for August 2004

Television adverts. Love them or loath them? Well the British are about to see for themselves. A full launch set for September 6th this year will see The Advert Channel air current popular commercials of all kinds, with an emphasis on viewing adverts as a form of entertainment, culture and from an artistic and creative aspect.

Programme schedules are said to contain ‘Ad Chat’, ‘Ad focus’, ‘Adverts for You’ and ‘Adverts Today’.

The Channel is also said to incorporate a high level of interaction by use of Phone, SMS and the Web.

The Advert Channel is currently test broadcasting on the digital satellite platform Channel Number 694. If you don’t have digital, you can always read more online.

The Advert Channel

Apple has unveiled its next generation of desktop computers, the iMac G5, at the Apple Expo 2004 in Paris. The two-inch thick new member of the Apple family is small, white, and has both a 1.8GHz G5 chip and a 17-inch or 20-inch screen. It also has a wireless keyboard and mouse, and the whole computer, including the power supply and slot-load optical drive, is built right into the display which sits on an aluminium foot.

The iMac G5 is expected to be available worldwide from mid-September, with prices starting from $1,299/£919.

BBC Article

Is there a world beyond Arial? The New York Times reports on the trends in typefaces and selects some of the most popular fonts that have been issued by a new generation of typeface creators inspired and enabled by the digital age. The experimentation of the 90’s, they argue, has evolved font development into a serious applied art form and business.

Mrs Eaves

Cezanne

Requiem

Neutraface

Inky Black
Restrospecta

Powerhouse

New York Times Slideshow
New York Times Article

Domain extensions (such as .com and .org) have never been so important in playing a major marketing role as they soon could be with the awaited release of .mail and what it could mean to a business.

ICANN, the Internet’s governing body and Spamhaus, a British based anti-spam entity are currently placing the .mail domain under consideration to overcome the recent inbox harassment of Spam.

Spamhaus are careful to point out that .mail isn’t an anti-spam system, however it would become a device to verify emails sent from a business as legitimate. Emails from .mail would not be blacklisted through email filtering.

John Reid, a spokesperson for Spamhaus suggests:

“Some small businesses will certainly use it. The businesses who would are the ones who are having trouble getting e-mail delivered.”

But surely everyone could get their hands on a .mail domain? With a cost of $2000 it would certainly discourage most spammers. Approval of .mail is set for the end of 2004.

Entrepreneur.com article

ICANN : Spamhaus

These days our lives revolve around change. When something we’ve had for so long just isn’t right, what do we do with it? Improve it and change it. And now - it’s not just the immaterial things.

“Fashion is the recognition that nature has endowed us with one skin too few, that a fully sentient being should wear its nervous system externally“.
J.G Ballard

If you feel like you could do with transforming your negative mood states into good ’scentsations’, better sleep, a boost in confidence, more relaxation, an uptake in energy, increased self-esteem and ability to expand the imagination and open your sense of wonder, then maybe you should look towards a Smart Second Skin.

Smart Second Skin

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Thanks,

Piers & Simon

It hangs there for those rare occasions: job interviews, weddings and court appearances. Unloved and hardly wanted, the good old fashioned suit. Yeah, with all this forever-youthful lifestyle we try to lead these days there’s no denying us men all have a secret craving for donning the suit once in a while to look the grown up age we really are.

But wait! What’s this? A couple of pointers that the ‘whistle and flute’ may well be on the way back: back into the offices, back into our oh-so casual lives! Timesleader reports on a company that asks/tells its staff to buckle up Monday to Thursday. “It’s important to show that we take what we do very seriously,” says one boss. Cargo, the men’s shopping magazine, already offers a guide to finer apparel and Fairchild Publications have just announced the launch of upscale Vitals targeted towards “men ages 25-45 who have acquired some wealth.”

And its not only in the boardroom it’s also happening in the world of three quarter length Ts! Live reports on Farnsworth Bentley - a chap, they argue, is spivving up the Hip Hop world with his handmade suits, a silk bow ties and umbrella - bringing on the ‘Gentleman’s Movement’.

Let’s wait and see shall we? But with all these 80s revivals, before we know it we may be all yuppy again: supping champagne in our charcoals and red ties!

My favorite line used to be ‘What’s the junction called where one road goes into the side of another?’ It was simple but worked - mainly with new people in my poorly lit office in London’s West End. ‘I’d love one!’ I’d say when they gave me the answer.

Poke London has found a solution for all those poor suckers who I have left stewing over the years. Tea Buddy is designed to put an end to all those boiling tempers in the work place caused by people not getting their round of tea in. Poke’s Iain Tait described the system to PSFK as "a  turnkey b2b enterprise level web based tea-management solution infrastructure, if you like." Simply create a tea-round with the system with everyone’s preferences and the system monitors how many teas each person is making - it even lets you give somebody a prod.

Tea Buddy
Poke London

Just when we thought we’d have to skip proper work and write something about the trend of people making things themselves after spotting the eMachineshop site news we were happy to find that Slate had already reported on how industrial design has become a weekend hobby.

eMachineshop.com allows you to design a part in a CAD-like program and then send it over the internet to a real machine shop where, a team of 17 machinists will craft your part, bundle it up, and send it back to you via post. Slate says that “Nowadays, people want consumer goods to have serious aesthetic appeal. If they can’t find what they want in stores, they’ll build it themselves. You could call it ‘grass-roots industrial design’.“

Cheers, Slate. We’re glad you found the time to do the article and not us. With all the bits and bobs we found in Chelsea Flea Market we’ve decided to try to make a couple of robotic dancing dinosaurs - roar!!

Slate Article