With NASA facing massive budget cuts, the scientific powerhouse must now consider ferrying cargo and astronautics into space through private companies, a first for the agency.  Proponents of the outsourcing idea argue that non-governmental organizations would foot the bill for research and hope to make profit from providing services or creating products with the resulting developments.  As seen at the 50th anniversary of NASA, the research provided by the governmental agency has brought many modern products to fruition.
Private companies must often react faster to developments to stay viable, while NASA relies on huge government expenditure.  While a presidentially appointed commission [...]

You’d be forgiven if the first response to the above image was that either some photoshop work or guerrilla street art. But the truth is that the Obama Deli and Grocery will open for business shortly in Brooklyn, NY. From a branding perspective this is getting a lot of pedestrian attention. But maybe not the best. While shooting this photo, a gentleman passing by on the sidewalk said some in the neighborhood are already talking about a protest. The Obama brand was extended in a lot of clever ways (Shepard Fairey’s poster for instance) but there may actually be a [...]

The Obama-YouTube love affair is at its end…at least in its official role on whitehouse.gov.  The Obama administration recently bailed on its embeddable YouTube videos and chose clips powered by Akamai, a web service hosted on local servers rather than those of Google.  The administration cited concerns over privacy voiced by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Digital Democracy.
Google tracks visitors with long term cookies through YouTube and because Obama’s Weekly Address is an official government function, the underlying technology should be hosted and controlled by government servers.  After running a campaign driven by internet media and cutting [...]

Thursday night, we were treated to an insightful and inspiring production at the New York Public Library as part of their Live from the NYPL series and sponsored by Wired. Titled “Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy”, the event featured Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons among other things, and Shepard Fairey, whom you may have heard of recently. Moderated by cultural historian Steven Johnson, it intended to focus on the future of art and ideas in an age when practically anything can be copied, pasted, downloaded, sampled, and re-imagined. Less about commerce and more about [...]

In the run up to the new US president’s inauguration, there’s been a lot of attention given to the artist Shepard Fairey and the iconic image he created to support Obama’s campaign. At the PSFK Conference Los Angeles we were proud to have the artist speak about the history of his work, his process and his commercial work. Watching the video is a great way to understand how Fairey has come to such prominence.

Some of the points he made:

For most Americans, the question yesterday wasn’t whether you should watch the inauguration, it was where.
Aside from every TV channel, you could watch live streams online from CBS (on Joost), ABC, CNN, Fox News (on Hulu). Katie Couric covered the post-inaugural events in a web-only cast (sponsored by Audi). There was an official feed from the Presidential Inauguration Committee, an amateur one from Obama Girl on Stickam.com, and everything in between. You could even join a virtual celebration as an avatar of WeeWorld.
One of the most popular places to watch was CNN.com, who did a virtual viewing party [...]