Back in 1984, IBM was Big Brother—dominating one boring world of beige and mainframes—and Steve Jobs was the rebel. In 2009, Apple and Jobs are the Big Brother of media in a world of white earbuds.
At least, that's what DoubleTwist—a company that makes software to use iTunes with any media device—thinks. That's why they turned the famous "1984" SuperBowl commercial against Apple and Steve Jobs himself.
The original Apple "1984" ad was commissioned by Steve Jobs to agency Chiat/Day. The ad was written by Steve Hayden and art directed by Brent Thomas, with creative direction by Jobs' pal Lee Clow. The Apple board didn't want to air "1984", but at the end Jobs got it in the SuperBowl, becoming the most famous and cost-effective commercial in the history of TV advertising. It featured a nameless heroine sporting a t-shirt with the Macintosh Picasso icon, being chased by policemen who are unable to stop her as she throws a hammer against a screen that has a large number of people idiotized.
Of course, in the original ad, the man in the screen is a representation of IBM, and the Mac manages to break the Big Brother brain washing. In the DoubleTwist ad, however, the man in the screen is Steve Jobs. And, supposedly, this October 6 they will get all of the hypnotized fanboys out of the Kool-Aid loop. Good luck with that, people. [TechCrunch]
They came, they saw, they took pictures. And thanks to them -- about 150,000 Flickr users -- a team of computer scientists built Rome in a day.
Using nearly half a million Flickr photos of Rome, Venice, and the Croatian coastal city of Dubrovnik, a team of computer scientists at the University of Washington's Graphics and Imaging Laboratory assembled digital models of the three cities in 3-D.
Their work builds on the algorithms used in Microsoft's Photosynth, which were invented at the same lab, but it's like Photosynth on steroids.
A series of videos on the project Web site lets visitors fly through landmarks like St. Peter's Basilica, the Colosseum and Venice's San Marco Square. For much smaller Dubrovnik, you can see the whole city, including mountains in the distance.
Each video includes clusters of small diamond shapes, which represent each photographer and his or her vantage point.
The team built a new algorithm that proceeds in two steps -- first, by matching the photos by what they had in common, puzzle-style, and then by determining the scene and each photographer's pose. They also designed new software that can more quickly solve the type of large math problems that exist in 3-D reconstruction.
It took 500 computer processors 13 hours to match 150,000 photos for Rome's landmarks, and eight more hours to construct a 3-D image of them. Venice involved 250,000 images, which took 27 hours to match and 38 hours to reconstruct. By contrast, using the algorithms on which Photosynth is based, it would have taken 500 processors at least a year to match 250,000 photos.
Dubrovnik had fewer photos, so matching only took about five hours, but the reconstruction ate up almost 18 hours.
It stands to reason that more photos would take more time, but there were so many similarities among Rome's photos that it was simpler to put them all together into individual landmarks. The team found clumps of photos that went together, yielding fine detail of the front of the Trevi Fountain, for instance. The Colosseum had 2,000 images. For Dubrovnik, however, the team had just 4,600 photos corresponding to the entire "old city" portion, which comprises several narrow streets and tall buildings.
The recently released list of 2009's top websites from Time Magazine provides a peek into the diverse mix of educational, commerce, entertainment and practical tools that help web users stay organized, share information and quench their ever-increasing thirst for knowledge, information and immediacy, MarketingCharts reports.
While many of the top 20 sites on Time's "Top 50" list - chosen by Time editors - are useful tools that help web surfers stay ahead of clutter (popurls, Flickr, Metafilter, OpenTable, Kayak), many present formidable attempts to circumvent, supplant or complement traditional media.
Voice-over-IP provider Skype, for instance, helps users bypass traditional phone service, while Hulu enables its audience view favorite TV shows from days gone by.
A good number of sites on the list represent direct attempts to compete with category-leading websites. The Wolfram|Alpha search engine has its sights on Google, while ShopGoodwill.com and Craiglook - a Craigslist RSS feed aggregator - are aimed at those who seek no-frills alternatives to eBay.
Other sites, such as Academic Earth, provide a glimpse into the world of academia at a level previously off-limits to all but the elite, while CaliforniaCoastline gives geography buffs a no-frills look at a meticulously mapped section of the US.
Maharaja: The Splendour of the India's Royal Courts'opens this autumn at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The exhibition features a life-size model of an elephant in procession.
To find out how to dress an elephant for a royal procession, V&A staff observed Ramu, a freelance elephant, being adorned with textiles, howdah and elephant jewelery belonging to the Maharana of Mewar.
With kind permission of the Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation.
Leo Burnett Inc. is one of the most renowned agencies in the world. They earned their reputation serving one key philosophy: that nothing could replace the marketing firm’s charge of “being the spirit of the client’s brand.” Coupled with a firm understanding of what it took for each client to get and keep their customers, Leo Burnett was also known for the quality of their creative work and eventually earned the responsibility of brands like Kellogg’s and McDonalds.
Founder Leo Burnett recognized that the industry was in danger of selling its soul out long ago. One of his famous speeches, “When to Take My Name Off the Door”, delivered on December 1, 1967, was based on that very fear:
He knew where the industry was going. And sure enough, it’s there—probably worse than he thought it could be.
Transcript: Leo Burnett: When to take my name off the door
"Somewhere along the line, after I’m finally off the premises, you – or your successors – may want to take my name off the premises, too.
You may want to call yourselves " Twain, Rogers, Sawyer and Finn, Inc."….. or "Ajax Advertising" or something.
That will certainly be OK with me – if it’s good for you.
But let me tell you when I might demandthat you take my name off the door.
That will be the day when you spend more time trying to make money and less time making advertising – our kind of advertising.
When you forget that the sheer fun of ad making and the lift you get out of it – the creative climate of the place – should be as important as money to the very special breed of writers and artists and business professionals who compose this company of ours – and make it tick.
When you lose that restless feeling that nothing you do is ever quite good enough.
When you lose your itch to the job well for it’s sake – regardless of the client, or money, or the effort it takes.
When you lose your passion for thoroughness…you hatred of loose ends.
When you stop reaching the manner, the overtones, the marriage of words and pictures that produce the fresh, the memorable and the believable effect.
When you stop rededicating yourselves every day to the idea that better advertising is what the Leo Burnett Company is about.
When you are no longer what Thoreau called "a corporation with a conscience" – which means to me, a corporation of conscientious men and women.
When you begin to compromise your integrity – which has always been the heart’s blood – the very guts of this agency.
When you stoop to convenient expediency and rationalize yourselves into acts of opportunism – for the sake of a fast buck.
When you show the slightest sign of crudeness, inappropriateness or smart –aleckness – and you lose that subtle sense of the fitness of things.
When your main interest becomes a matter of size just to be big - rather that good, hard, wonderful work.
When your outlook narrows down to the number of windows – from zero to five – in the walls of your office.
When you lose your humility and become big-short wisenheimers…. a little bit too big for your boots.
When the apples come down to being just apples for eating (or for polishing) – no longer part of our tone or personality.
When you disprove of something, and start tearing the hell out of the man who did it rather than the work itself.
When you stop building on strong and vital ideas, and start a routine production line.
When you start believing that, in the interest of efficiency, a creative spirit and the urge to create can be delegated and administrated, and forget that they can only be nurtured, stimulated, and inspired.
When you start giving lip service to this being a "creative agency" and stop really being one.
Finally, when you lose your respect for the lonely man – the man at his typewriter or his drawing board or behind his camera or just scribbling notes with one of our big pencils – or working all night on a media plan. When you forget that the lonely man – and thank God for him – has made the agency we now have – possible. When you forget he’s the man who, because he is reaching harder, sometimes actually gets hold of for a moment - one of those hot, unreachable stars.
That, boys and girls, is when I shall insist you take my name off the door. And by golly, it will be taken off the door. Even if have to materialize long enough some night to rub it out myself - on every one of our floors. And before I de-materialize again, I will paint out that star-reaching symbol too. And burn all the stationary. Perhaps tear up a few ads in passing.
And throw every god-damned apple down the elevator shafts.
You just won’t know the place, the next morning. You’ll have to find another name."
Twitter for Sh-tters works to raise money to build eco-san toilets (the aforementioned “shitters”) in communities throughout India. For every $400 we raise, Wherever The Needis able to build one shitter (the aforementioned “eco-san toilets”) that helps to stop the spread of disease, improves health and provides opportunity for as many as 30 years. The toilets below represent how many shitters your donations will help us build. (You know…so far. Keep donating – how about a dollar every time you hit the head?)
Why is sanitation such a dirty word? For whatever reason, it has become taboo to talk about it. We all poop, crap, dump, or whatever you call it! Well, we think it’s time to cut through the crap and start talking shit.
Why now? Because the world needs it. Lack of sanitation has become a life-or-death issue in the poorest parts of the world, and we can’t hold it in any longer.
The idea is simple: every day, Twitter users – whether they have 5 followers or 5,000 – will spend the day tweeting to try and get their followers to donate. Our “Daily Dumpers” can tweet about whatever crap they want from the best “potty humor” to simply just “talking shit.” The point is to take this long-avoided topic and, pardon the expression, step right in it.
Will you give a shit?
State of Maharashtra, India: Toilet Project
In India, according to conservative estimates, about 772 million people do not have a private place to answer the call of nature. Consequently, vacant lands, fields, bushes, roadside and railway tracks are being used for defecation with serious consequences for the environmental well being.
It has been computed that in China, India and Indonesia, twice as many people are dying from diarrhea than from HIV/AIDS.
In the State of Maharashtra, India, every year 3 million people are affected by diseases caused by defecation in the open. Of these 3,000 people die.
This video shows how this problem was solved using mass communication techniques.
Advertising agencies are turning to consumers for new ad ideas because they have run out of their own and believe that consumer-produced ads are more effective, according to members of the public interviewed in the latest Brand Republic video.
Longplayeris a one-thousand-year-long musical composition. It began playing at midnight on the 31st of December 1999, and will continue to play without repetition until the last moment of 2999, at which point it will complete its cycle and begin again. Conceived and composed by Jem Finer, it was originally produced as an Artangel commission, and is now in the care of the Longplayer Trust.
Longplayer was composed by musician and computer scientist Jem Finer to be played on singing bowls, a traditional standing bell from Tibet, and can be performed by humans or machines.
Jem Finer is best known as a founding member of The Pogues but has also won awards for his innovative cutting edge musical compositions.
Among his recent works are Score for Hole in the Ground, where hidden percussive instruments are played by an underground waterfall; Landscope, which detected storms on Jupiter, and The Centre of the Universe, a spiral tower that generated music from the cosmos.
Longplayer can be heard in the lighthouse at TrinityBuoyWharf, London, where it has been playing since it began. It can also be heard at several other listening posts around the world, and globally via a live stream on the Internet.
Longplayer is composed for singing bowls – an ancient type of standing bell – which can be played by both humans and machines, and whose resonances can be very accurately reproduced in recorded form. It is designed to be adaptable to unforeseeable changes in its technological and social environments, and to endure in the long-term as a self-sustaining institution.
Because the piece is ultimately intended to play across several centuries a special trust has been formed to ensure that it continue without interruption, and will appoint a never ending series of caretakers to preserve the music in whatever form the future makes necessary.
In this way, the composer hopes that Longplayer will evolve as a social organism and flow organically through various mediums during the next thousand years.
Puma AG, the German sports clothing company, is promoting Puma Bodywear with The Puma Index, an interactive application designed to lighten the impact of the current economic recession. Launched initially as an app for the iPhone and iTunes, the Puma Index has models taking off and putting on clothes in response to the DOW, DAX and S&P/ASX 200 indexes. When the market goes down the male and female models’ clothes come off to reveal their Puma Bodywear underwear. When the market recovers, back go the Puma clothes.
The app, which will get you a 20 percent discount if you show it at a Puma store, is downloadable at iTunes or puma.com. A web application of the “Puma Index” will launch soon at www.theindex.puma.com.
Cadbury is celebrating the move to fair trade chocolate with the launch of Glass and A Half Records, an album inspired by the music of Africa. The first single, “Zingolo”, celebrates all things Ghana, its people, its rappers, its dancers, its cultural figures and, of course, its cocoa beans. The campaign follows on from the success of Gorilla, Hangar and Eyebrows at A Glass and Half Full Productions.
The initiative is aimed at emphasizing Cadbury’s 101 year-history of trading with Ghanaian cocoa farmers. Starring villagers of a Ghanian village, all proceeds from the Zingolo single at iTunes will go to charity Care, which works with the cocoa communities in Ghana.
Typology is short film that depicts human evolution using only typography. It’s entirely created using letters, numbers and signs. Produced by Olivier Beaudoin, this piece of art is one of the most brilliant short films I have ever seen.
This example for the launch of Wrigley's 5 chewing gum in France, allowed consumers to mix together their own music using a number of Augmented Reality symbols. Three symbols representing the different flavors linked to a certain track, with the distance from the main marker determining the volume and effects for each track. This was not only a very innovative use of AR, but communicates the core attributes of the Wrigley brand in a very entertaining manner.
The history of Buddhism is the story of one man's spiritual journey to Enlightenment, and of the teachings and ways of living that developed from it.
Siddhartha Gautama - The Buddha
By finding the path to Enlightenment, Siddhartha was led from the pain of suffering and rebirth towards the path of Enlightenment and became known as the Buddha or 'awakened one'.
A life of luxury
Siddhartha Gautama was born around the year 580 BCE in the village of Lumbini in present-day Nepal.
He was born into a royal family, and his privileged life insulated him from the sufferings of life; sufferings such as sickness, age and death.
Discovering cruel reality
One day, after growing up, marrying and having a child, Siddhartha went outside the royal enclosure where he lived. When he went outside he saw, each for the first time, an old man, a sick man, and a corpse.
This greatly disturbed him, and he learned that sickness, age, and death were the inevitable fate of human beings - a fate no-one could avoid.
Becoming a holy man
Siddhartha had also seen a monk, and he decided this was a sign that he should leave his protected royal life and live as a homeless holy man.
Siddhartha's travels showed him much more of the the suffering of the world. He searched for a way to escape the inevitability of death, old age and pain first by studying with religious men. This didn't provide him with an answer.
A life of self-denial
Siddhartha encountered an Indian ascetic who encouraged him to follow a life of extreme self-denial and discipline.
The Buddha also practised meditation but concluded that in themselves, the highest meditative states were not enough.
Siddhartha followed this life of extreme asceticism for six years, but this did not satisfy him either; he still had not escaped from the world of suffering.
The middle way
He abandoned the strict lifestyle of self-denial and ascetism, but did not return to the pampered luxury of his early life.
Instead, he pursued the Middle Way, which is just what it sounds like; neither luxury nor poverty.
Enlightenment
One day, seated beneath the Bodhi tree (the tree of awakening) Siddhartha became deeply absorbed in meditation, and reflected on his experience of life, determined to penetrate its truth.
He finally achieved Enlightenment and became the Buddha. The MahabodhiTemple at the site of Buddha's enlightenment, is now a pilgrimage site.
Buddhist legend tells that at first the Buddha was happy to dwell within this state, but Brahma, king of the gods, asked, on behalf of the whole world, that he should share his understanding with others.
The Teacher
Buddha set in motion the wheel of teaching: rather than worshipping one god or gods, Buddhism centres around the timeless importance of the teaching, or the dharma.
For the next 45 years of his life the Buddha taught many disciples, who became Arahants or 'noble ones', who had attained Enlightenment for themselves.
