In an excellent example of brand narrative, the release of the M6 line from Nike/Jordan is accompanied by the launch of an interactive site full of behind-the-scenes storytelling content as told by the shoe’s designers.

The Scott Chair utilizes an interesting method of self-upholstery to decorate itself over time.

A Box Life encourages re-use by tracking the life and use of cardboard boxes.

In an effort to build on the micro-finance model of giving popularized by Kiva, new non-profit organization Jolkona – a Bengali word meaning “drop of water” – has incorporated elements of social media – community, connectivity and sharing – into their design, a move it hopes will appeal to a younger generation of philanthropists. On the surface, the system is far from new – pick a project and give money (as little as $5) – but where most donations end, with you feeling a temporary wave of good will, Jolkona wants to continue the story and make the process more [...]

In light of yesterday’s stunning announcement that Amazon had acquired Zappos for the sum of $807 million (plus), Seth Godin wonders what that deal actually means for Amazon, particularly when it’s clear that they already has plenty of shoes.
And while it’s hard to argue that eliminating the competition in one bold move is reason enough for the deal, Godin views things a bit differently, pointing to a number of valuable assets, many of which you can rarely buy for any price:
What you buy when you spend that kind of money is what matters now. And what matters is:

A corporate culture [...]

If the stories behind our physical things help to add value at the point of purchase (provenance) and throughout the lifetime of a product (object narrative), why can’t that value extend beyond our ownership and follow these items to their final resting places? With the launch of their newest project, Trash Track, MIT researchers  from the SENSEable City Laboratory endeavor to do just that, using electronic tags to trace the things we throw away as they move through the entire disposal system.

By monitoring the time and costs associated with transporting our garbage to dumps and landfills, the MIT team hopes to [...]

We may have survived the MTV Generation with our attention spans mostly intact, but it appears the same can’t be said for the age of the Internet, where competing streams of information, multi-tasking and multiple screens are dissecting our withering focus into easily digestible bits. Add in our increased need for immediacy, and an old-fashioned idea like the narrative starts to seem a bit obsolete.
Nowhere is this more evident perhaps, than in the way we consume video online, where the average attention span is three to five minutes, hardly enough time for a classic tale filled with fleshed out characters, [...]

Fetch and the OS 9 Graphing Calculator have interesting, inspiring and genuinely odd stories behind their creation. From being funded by game show winnings to literally breaking into multinational computer manufactures offices and finishing a scrapped project, the stories will entertain your imagination.