September 30, 2008
NO TEXTING ON THE DANCEFLOOR!
DJ C’Mish over at the Turntable Lab blog has posted a funny but legitimate observation about behavior he’s witnessed on today’s dancefloors. He cites party goers current propensity for being overly engrossed in texting and staring at their phones rather than enjoying the music.
C’mish vents:
Somebody’s gotta re-make Midnight Star’s “No Parking On The Dancefloor” with a modern version - “NO TEXTING ON THE DANCEFLOOR!” Seriously, how many times have you gone a party and seen all these wallflowers chillin’ and texting. You can be spinning the most bad-a** jam and the biggest response you can get is people looking up from their phones and going, “That’s my jam!” before going quickly back to perfecting their wpm with their thumbs. Talk about lame. When most of our parents were young and going out to clubs, they were drinking, doing stimulants, screaming their heads off, sporting fashion that we can only try to “bring back,” and most of all…they were dancing. I know if my old skool NY neighbors who partied at the house clubs in the 80’s saw this generation’s parties, they would think we’re pathetic. Going home before 4, talking to only people that you know, and texting in the club can all be filed under BORING. If you can’t out-party your parents, what does that say about us? Just food for thought the next time you see that certain guy or girl busting out her phone in the middle of the jam. Real sexy right?
PSFK Conference Asia: Tickets Still Available
Join us Friday, October 10th 2008 in Singapore for our upcoming PSFK Conference Asia. With the brief to inspire an audience of likeminded peers to make things better, some of PSFK’s favorite thinkers will present their ideas, projects and opinions.
The event will include local topics, such as China’s growing middle class, ways in which Chinese youth are creativity re-working their identity, and inspiring aspects of Singapore culture told by passionate local creative minds. International topics will include collaborative co-working, the secret to selling normal stuff to ordinary people, how creativity is liberating business, and the dynamic relationship between creators, the community and new-era companies as observed by PSFK’s own Piers Fawkes.
Tickets for PSFK Conference Asia are still available and can be purchased here.
Confirmed speakers include:
Daryl Arnold, Profero
Nick Barham, Wieden + Kennedy
Rob Campbell Sunshine/M&C Saatchi
Jerry Clode, Flamingo International
Sonal Dabral, Bates 141
Mark Dytham, Klein-Dytham
Piers Fawkes, PSFK
Andrew Hoppin, NASA
Chris Lee, Asylum
Michael Keferl, CScout
Achara Masoodi, Mindshare
Colin Nagy, Attention!
Charles Ogilvie, Panasonic
Graham Perkins, Elasticity
Jeff Staple, Staple Design
Jackson Tan, Phunk Studio
Brian Tiong, b-side
Ian Stewart, MTV
Floydd Wood, Flamingo International
Daylighting: Working More Than One Job at a Time
CNN reports on a growing trend: daylighting. Kind of like moonlighting during the day, it’s the practice of working jobs on the side while you are at another. They give examples of a cocktail waitress who works on her graphic design business when sales are slow, and a salesman who’s brokering mortgage deals in his office bathroom.
People’s reasons for daylighting vary, from trying to live a lavish lifestyle to just trying to get by. As you could imagine, the HR department is not too happy about all this bonus work going on.
CNN: “Sneaky ‘daylighters’ risk firing by working extra jobs”
Power Plant Turns Waste Into Fuel
Portland General Electric and Columbia Energy Partners have started a pilot project to turn waste from the Boardman, Oregon power plant into valuable fuel products. The plant is the state’s only coal burning facility and also the largest emitter of carbon dioxide. A plan has been devised to use algae to convert the carbon dioxide emissions into biodiesel and ethanol.
Algae breathe in carbon dioxide to make energy and grow. The idea is to feed the tiny organisms a steady diet of rich CO2 and then harvest the oily byproduct of their growth to make biodiesel. The algae carcasses can be also be used to make ethanol and a type of livestock feed.
Right now, this waste-to-fuel program is tiny. But when it goes full-scale in two and a half years it’s expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 60% and produce 20 million gallons of biodiesel per year.
[via Gas 2.0]
Microsoft Launches Panoramic Image Stitcher
The innovative folks at Microsoft Research launched a new piece of freeware called Microsoft Image Composite Editor. It automatically creates a panoramic image out of a collection of photos you select. For those who don’t regularly use this feature in Photoshop’s photomerge, it’s a nice free alternative in a neat package.
Photographers will appreciate the inclusion of exposure blending and the ability to output the resulting file in TIFF, PNG or the standard JPEG. Microsoft showcases some of the largest images in their ultra high definition gigapixel image gallery. Personally, the established and multiplatform panoramic creator AutoPano takes the cake in this field, but hopefully further competition will benefit the consumer.
“But the GPS Told Me To…”
Here’s a very interesting story about becoming too reliant on technology. A man in Westchester County, New York was following his car’s global positioning system’s directions. With complete faith, he took every turn and instruction he was given. Then to his surprise, he found himself stuck on trains tracks. He had taken the directions too literally (without thinking), and was on the rails, facing the direction of oncoming trains.
the Journal News reports:
He said he got off the Saw Mill River Parkway on the right when his Magellan GPS unit told him to take another right - directions that landed him on top of the rails.
“My son was at my side and told me we’re on the railroad,” he said.
The three got out to try to move the Saturn. Another man also stopped to help, Silva said. They called police to report the incident and were told that railroad officials would notify any incoming trains to stop - but five to seven minutes later, the train struck the car.
The vehicle’s bumper became lodged underneath the front of the train - the 6:52 p.m. express from Grand Central Terminal to Southeast. The train had to be backed up to allow workers to remove the car, and inspect the train and the tracks for damage.
The Journal News:”Driver blames GPS for crash with Metro-North train in Bedford Hills”
[via Trainjotting}
Droog Design’s 100 Meter Bench
The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs has tapped Claudia Linders of Droog Design to create an epic, 100 meter long bench that will wrap around the waterfront of IJburg, Amsterdam. The area is the youngest part of the city, made up of six artificial islands. The bench celebrates the area’s innovative character, representation of outstanding Dutch architecture and successful struggle against the water. the Dutch government will be also using the public space as a ‘gift’ — sections of the bench will be dedicated to their friends and associates worldwide.
Radiohead Launches Even Easier Remix Contest
Radiohead is at it again with more bleeding edge promotion tactics. The band has started a second remix contest, this time for their song “Reckoner”. It costs only 99 cents to buy all 6 of the remix stems (the individual pieces of the track), and you’re in business. Critics had complained that the previous contest was too expensive - participants had to shell out 99 cents for each stem.
Radiohead’s last remix contest was a brilliant success. Sales of the stem components and the ensuing remixes helped push their single “Nude” into the billboard hot 100. The website for last contest received 6 million unique visitors who listened to the tracks 1.7 million times.
[via rb trends]
Transforming Buildings: Amazing Augmented Reality Video
Augmented reality is a much hyped future technology. The basic idea is that the computer world and the real world will start to blend seamlessly, creating new layers of information over and about things in the real world.
Artist Pablo Valbuena’s work deals with the idea of augmented reality, and plays with viewers perceptions of what is real. He recently performed a video piece called ‘Augmented Space’ on the surface of the Hauge’s city hall. The projection, part of the TodaysArt Festival makes the building seem like it’s constantly transforming into new shapes. It’s really quite amazing.
[via Today and Tomorrow]
More Stories
45M Year-Old Yeast = New Beer And BioFuel Funds
The microbiologist best known for the successful extraction of living bacterium from a 25-45 million year old amber-covered honey bee (remenicient of the film, Jurrasic Park), has successfully brewed a beer from yeast discovered within an ancient Lebanese weevil encased in amber. Raul Cano, the director of Cal Poly’s Environmental Biotechnology Institute, is planning on [...]
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Most Popular Articles on PSFK From the Last 7 Days
Here are PSFK’s top five articles from Sep. 22 to Sep. 28, 2008. Results are based on Google Analytics and in order of overall page views.
Solar-Powered Plane Flies For 3 Days Straight - Dan Gould
“Glamping”: Glamorous Camping - Sean Leow
The Mysterious “Banksy of Bottles” - Dan Gould
Walkstation: Exercise While You Work - Dan Gould
Charge Your [...]
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Sleep Easy Subway Rides
For all those casual sleepers riding the subways, a new iPhone application will stop you from missing your stop. iNap relies on the iPhone’s GPS abilities to alert users of their approaching stop. A travel alarm with a difference, the application is available online from Apple’s AppStore. How effective the GPS is within the subway [...]
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New Milestone For Jet Wing Human Flight
Yves Rossy made his way into the record books on Friday when he flew his Jet Wing across the English Channel. The French daredevil jumped from 8,200 feet over the French town of Calais, to make the 13 minute flight across the Channel.
Weighing around 121 pounds, Rossy’s Jet Wing is controlled by his movements, rather [...]
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Re-Wilding Photography Project
Photographer Lucas Foglia recently created a project focused on the “Re-wilding” phenomenon in the Southeastern United States. Foglia describes Re-wilding as “the process of creating a lifestyle that is independent of the domestication of civilization.” In his series of photographs he captures portraits of the people who follow this simplistic lifestyle and their unique relationship [...]
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OBAG: Luggage Outside the Box
The OBAG concept bag from Samsonite uses a different way of thinking about luggage. The suitcase design throws out the traditional box shape and instead takes the functionality of the rolling bag wheel and enlarges it into the shape of the entire piece. Two large exterior wheels help propel the circular bag through any type [...]
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LED Piano Player
Check out this very impressive stop-motion LED animation below. It’s visually striking, and the amount of time and patience that must have gone into its creation is mind-boggling.
[via Zoomdoggle]
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Muxtape Forced To Realign
During the end of this Summer Muxtape, one of the nicest music applications on the internet, had to shut down its service. Muxtape allowed anyone to create a virtual mixtape along with its own unique URL (with the limit of 12 tracks per tape). One of the neatest things about it was the the care [...]
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Of Montreal on the Propagating of Exceptional Objects
Kevin Barnes, from the indie band Of Montreal, believes the future of music lies in its packaging. With the advent of downloadable music, most consumers never have the experience of happily unwrapping a CD and poring through its liner notes. Barnes believes that musicians must create objects that extend their “brand” and that reflect the [...]
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MetropoliPhone: Location Made Simple
Location-based services are on the tip of everyone’s tongue these days, and iPhone apps that leverage GPS are coming from left and right.
As promising as it is, though, location is still a bit complicated. Even if the technology is there, the culture still needs to catch up. iPhone owners are no longer the early adopters, [...]
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Recycled Household Goods Go Musical
Make Magazine points us to kids that are building their own guitars and amplifiers out of common household products. Guided by teacher and composer Paul Rubenstein, the NYC-based high-school students design and build musical instruments, then learn the basics of playing, recording, producing, and eventually performing original work for a live audience at the end [...]
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Technology Habits of the Class of 2012
Clive Thompson points us to some statistics about the tech habits of this year’s incoming class at Amherst College. Although the freshman class only has 438 students, the numbers do show some interesting (though not especially surprising) patterns.
Peter Schilling, the director of IT at Amherst, breaks down the data:
Percentage of first-year applicants who applied online [...]
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The Bubblegum Sequencer
The Bubblegum Sequencer looks like some sort of simple child’s toy, but it’s actually a novel way to control drum machines –a surprisingly simple interface hides the technology within. Users place colored balls within a 16 by 4 grid of circular holes corresponding to the 16th notes in a measure. A camera below the grid [...]
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Reclaimer: Reharvesting Urban Timber
Los Angeles based “The Reclaimer” salvages usable wood from old buildings and re-sells it to builders. It’s a good thing too, LA landfills are approximately 5 years away from being completely filled up.In fact, Half a billion board feet of lumber are thrown away in Los Angeles every year.
The company focuses on pre WWII buildings [...]
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What You’ll Be Eating for the Remainder of the 21st Century
Momofuku chef David Chang shares his thoughts on the future of food, and basically says: prepare yourself for a vegetarian world. He explains that the infrastructure which has supported the world’s meat-heavy diet for so long, is now breaking down due to epic gas and feed price increases. This situation, Chang believes, will lead us [...]
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Stanton’s DaScratch Helps Kill Vinyl
Vinyl is dead. Long live vinyl! Now, it pains me to report this, because records are great, but it seems like it may be the end of the road for the media format (at least as far as a DJ staple). Stanton has released the DaScratch media controller which is one of many new ways [...]
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“What’s Your Inspiration?” | PSFK Talks to Jane Mount, Bookshelf Art
Do people read books anymore in an age of Kindles and Twitlit?
Or are they turning into objects of art–an expression of personality to display?
Well, Jane Mount has turned books into art quite literally. When we saw her “Bookshelf” series on 20 x 200 the other day, we judged them by their covers: clever, subversive, beautiful. [...]
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Superheros on Bikes Lend a Helping Hand
A group of do-gooders based out of Missouri are on a mission to help people in need. They’re also superheros.
CompashMan, Believe-Oh, Love Ninja, Queen Bee, Atomic Calm, and Super OK With Himself Guy are all members of “The Haul of Justice”. Its an event where people dress up as superheroes and take off for a [...]
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Novelty Makes Brains Creative
Discoveries by neuroscientists studying the brain say that novel experiences are key in increasing brain power and creativity. When the brain experiences, or imagines a familiar situation, it already has a shortcut to understanding - it’s got that categorized in a neat little mental box. Novelty, new experiences and stretches of the imagination keep the [...]
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Video for Good: What Kind of World Do You Want?
What Kind Of World Do You Want is a video charity website that raises money for five different organizations: Augie’s Quest, Autism Speaks, Fisher House Foundation, Save the Children and Operation Homefront .
Organizations and viewers can upload their own videos (which are linked to the site’s charities) that explain what kind of change they want [...]
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Manga Sparks Wine Craze in Asia
The Japanese comic book “Kami no Shizuku” translates to “The Drops of God”. It’s the story of Shizuku Kanzaki, a wine enthusiast who is on a heroic quest to find the 12 best wines in the world. Described as “The Da Vinci Code” set in a Tokyo bar, the story is part mystery and part [...]
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It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure.
Clay Shirky gave a great speech at the recent Web 2.0 Expo which contains a wealth of insightful thoughts about our modern problems of managing information. He says that the issue is not information overload, it’s the failure of filtering systems. Shirky believes that information overload has been around since the invention of the printing [...]
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Poster Boy: Remixing Subway Ads
Poster Boy is a notorious street artist that remixes ads in New York City subway stations. Using simple tools - mainly just a razor blade, he cuts out images and text from advertisements, recontextualising them into a new hybrid artwork. The pieces generally have a critical edge to them, making comments on the state of [...]
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Retro Stereos in Shanghai
The appeal of nostalgia and retro among youth is a theme that most keen China trend watchers have been following recently. A handful of retro elements have shown up among indie designs, including in T-shirts, pins, books, and other small items affordable to students and young consumers.
On a recent trip to Shanghai’s trendy Tianzifang area, [...]
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Picnic 08 : Charles Leadbeater On Watching Scientists For The Future
The author of We-Think, Charles Leadbeater gave an impressive presentation at Picnic 08 this week. He looked at the new dynamics of creativity and innovation. He covered several subjects in his book including the prediction that many large media organizations (or ‘boulders’) are going to disappear in the next 10 years - covered by a [...]
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Cool Schools:Fall Semester Edition
The fall school semester has settled in and we’ve collected another batch of uniquely designed learning facilities. Each of these merge distinctive aesthetics with clever functional solutions to inspire learning, social interaction, and play.
The building for the University of Queensland’s School of Medicine, Rural Clinical Division in Australia needed make an inspiring statement. The Division [...]
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Picnic 08: Matt Jones of Dopplr: Friendship Should Be Considered Harmful
At Picnic 08, Matt Jones from Dopplr gave a short talk on his concerns around the focus on ‘friends’ in social networks. He said that he was worried that with the development of sites like Fake Friend Follower the social space seems ‘narrower’ than it was a couple of years ago. He highlighted this quote [...]
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