Beck Sound and Vision – 360 degree interactive concert

Beck has collaborated with Chris Milk to create an interactive video concert. There were 3 video cameras, capturing a 360 degree view of the concert. The beauty is that you can control the zoom and the pan of the cameras on demand. Don’t want to use your mouse to control the camera? No problem – use your head with the help of a face tracker (written in flash) to pan around.

Make sure that you go with the SD version as the HD can take several days to load.

Link to the site here.

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Coca Cola – the ice floes are melting

Ice floes, polar bears and Coca Cola? Sounds familiar right? I saw this campaign at the Toronto Eaton Centre today. The bear is standing on a sheet of ice that will melt unless you soash (short for all the social media bucket) a custom message, predefined message or a video. It brings urgency to environmental issues and has a well crafted digital extension. I like it!

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Submergence lights – motion sensing light installation

Massive light installations are nothing new but this one is somewhat unique. The user is being tracked through the installation, augmenting the pattern of the lights.

Check out the link: http://vimeo.com/57412634

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The Sensational Rise of Haptic Interfaces

Screen Shot 2013-02-13 at 3.15.00 PM

From wikipaedia

haptics – is a tactile feedback technology which takes advantage of the sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions to the user

 

Two very interesting articles online

1 Can You Feel Me Now? The Sensational Rise of Haptic Interfaces

http://www.wired.com/design/2013/02/haptics/?cid=co5813354

“Haptics is to touch the way optics is to sight. It’s a user interface that circumvents the cluttered inputs of sight and sound, and it’s appearing in an increasing number of objects we interact with daily. Vibration is just the beginning.”

2 iPad Touch? How Senseg’s haptic system gives touchscreens texture

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/07/ipad-3-touch-senseg-haptic

Author suggest strong likelihood that future iPads will include some sort of haptic technology.

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Tracey Emin in Time Square

Young British Artist + Time Square + Photosharing Art Campaign

Throughout the month of February, fifteen gargantuan billboards will be given over to the video art installation shortly before midnight. Digital art purveyor s[edition] has adapted six messages from one of Emin’s most well-known neon series into moving images, all based on the theme of love, echoing her notoriously tumultuous personal life.

The installation is the latest instalment of a public art initiative titled ‘Midnight Moment‘, organised and supported by the Times Square Advertising Coalition in partnership with Times Square Arts, for which the Square is transformed into a digital art gallery in the evening.

http://blog.seditionart.com/

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Form Follows Function

a collection of interactive experiences built in HTML5 and works beautifully whether you’re on a tablet or DT. a good inspiration for how design and technology work well to create a playful site.

http://fff.cmiscm.com/#!/main

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HTC X8 Windows phone – quick review

Picked up this phone yesterday and had a chance to use it exclusively for over 24 hours, while the iPhone 5 was quietly weeping in my back pocket.

The hardware is well designed and very fast. The camera takes great pictures and the video looked quite vivid as well. The battery life is better then the iPhone 5 (in my experience).

The operating system is slick and will be very easy to use for anyone used to Windows 8. If you are new to the device, the learning curve isn’t steep.

The Office suite works really well on the device. Viewing, styling and editing documents (word, excel) is a breeze. Setting up my 3 email accounts was dead easy (google, work google and outlook.com).

The biggest problem with the phone has nothing to do with the hardware or the operating system. It has to do with the lack of “common” applications for the Windows operating system. I was only able to find about 40% of the apps that I use on the iPhone in the Windows Marketplace. It could be only a matter of time before developers catch up, but for now, the situation is not best.

Pros:

– well designed, light, fast

– excellent screen

– decent battery life

– great camera

– good call quality

– highly compatible with MS Office apps

Cons:

– not able to dial out a number out of the web browser by simply pressing it

– the browser displayed several websites as blank white pages

– the search button is not placed well, so I kept pressing it by mistake

– lack of “common” applications in the marketplace

– very limited google application support (maps, drive etc…), what little exists is rumoured to go away

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