Ship’s Biscuit — Flipping the digital landscape to portrait.

Not sure what this vid is for but it’s beautiful. It’s shot at a super high rate them slowed right down. Great technique. Shame they aren’t clowns or something.

Action Figure slow motion video from Stig Nordas on Vimeo.

Last night was the first ever live TV ad and it ran without a hitch. Take a look for yourself.

Honda are definitely living by their strapline ‘Impossible is nothing’ when they pulled this one out of the bag. It’s a wonderful ad, it’s got passion, determination and drama. It puts the recent trend in viral towards fakery a la Kobe Bryant to shame.

I can’t quite identify the brand on this one but it’s a wonderfully simple and racy little concept that I’m sure many can identify with. Not me of course.

I’ve noticed a trend towards very amusing blogs that point out failure and inadequacy in their subjects. Here’s a couple that have cropped up recently.

Really Good Images - All of the cheesiest stock photography you would never pay for. The kind of stuff they can’t give away.

The FAIL Blog - This has to be the funniest of them all. Simply put they are just photographs pointing out abject failures.

PhotoShop Disasters - Incredible feats of anatomical inaccuracy, it’s like a freak show

There’s a million more, I know there is. Add your cruel blogs to the comments.

Here’s something interesting if you’re of a planning persuasion. It’s called BrandTags and it take adjectives that relate to brands and displays them as a tag cloud. It’s a wonderful little idea based on the premise that brands are nothing but the words we use to describe them. It’s certainly the start of something every interesting. The way the chap has built it right now is just displaying them as tag clouds, which isn’t all that helpful given that you have to scroll for miles. I can very much see this being opened up with an API to allow people to build new and exciting interfaces for it such as bubble charts etc. I could also see him doing something like LoveMarks where it could become a kind of WikiPedia-for-brands-meets-Facebook. This information could even be connected to your Attention Profile in some manner.

They did that wicked video with Chachi from the Happy Days years ago. Well, they’ve pulled together all the greatest virals of the last few years and made a video. It’s on 4m views itself right now. Wonderful.

While on the subject of innovative videos, here’s one from Manchester band The Get Out Clause who performed their video in front of CCTV cameras around the city. They then wrote to the people responsible for the cameras for a copy under the Freedom of Information Act. Apparently they did it this way because they they couldn’t afford a camera. It’s amazing how creative you can become when you’re on the dole.

Ok, so if we’re going to talk about innovation, let’s talk about RATATAT. The tune is on repeat on my headphones and the video is an absolute delight.

Oh, what’s that? You say you want more innovation. Ok, this has nothing to do with bands and stuff but the execution on this one is ace plus the soundtrack is killer.

You want more? What!? Haven’t you got work to do? Ok, check this one out, it’s a demonstration at TED by Microsoft of their completely ridiculous technology that allows you to mash together thousands of photographs together into a 3d view while being completely lightweight. No doubt they wont ever release it because it is simply far too cool for normal people.

I’m not going to link to the video of Kobe Bryant jumping over a pool of snakes because it’s just plain stupid. Get back to work you.

I love this sketch. It’s by Dave Walker - I’ve tried a tonne of these methods that help you work more effectively, mostly along the lines of GTD. You give it a go and for a while you feel like you have more time and that you are in some way in control of your situation. Then the novelty wears off and you struggle to keep on top of all these things in your life that you are supposed to be doing. Then you get sloppy at it and you don’t bother with your system. When you need it most, it abandons you. But that’s just me I think.

The sketch above just makes me think about the way in which we feel we should organise our life. Since abandoning GTD I feel I have more time on my hands simply by only accepting as much work as I can feasibly handle. It’s been working for me for a while now.

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I haven’t had the opportunity to blog much recently. This is mostly down to attending the IA Summit in Miami last week, then the ensuing onslaught of catching up I had to do on on other work. Overall the summit was very good and I’ve returned to work inspired and motivated. The guys at ASIS&T have excelled themselves. I met a tonne of great people that I’m hoping to stay in touch with and will be pestering management to send myself and a couple of other people to the ‘09 summit in Memphis.

If you are in any way involved in the area of user experience I would very much recommend it.

Slideshare really came into its own with this summit and there is a wealth of information on the decks to be found at http://www.slideshare.net/event/ia-summit-08

My new buddy James Kelway at User Pathways has written up a very concise summary of the very entertaining keynote from Jared Spool.