Crowdsourced Music

Bicycle Built for Two Thousand from Aaron on Vimeo.

Aaron Kolbin and Daniel Massey created this piece by letting participants on Mechanical Turk listen to a small sound clip and asking them to imitate it. The result is a symphony of voices recreating the song "Daisy Bell."

One Badass Rickroll

Yet another musical mashup, but this one, I don't mind. Makes Rick Astley kind of badass.

Toothpaste Art

Toothpaste Art on Passed Out People - Watch more Funny Videos

This might be the most tasteful prank I've seen.

3D Drawing Program

Check out this demo of a 3D drawing program called Rhonda. I can't draw worth beans so I can't comment on if this changes anything, but it looks amazing.

via @jackcheng

A Moodier Lily Allen

Doctor Rosen Rosen remixed Lily Allen's "It's Not Me, It's You." Allen's lyrics usually don't match the pop sound that it's packaged in. Doctor Rosen Rosen stripped the instrumentals and replaced it with a moodier background musics to match the lyrics. The end result it really good. Download or stream the songs here.

via clevahgrrl

Youtube in 3D

Youtubers are also privy to the 20% rule where they get to spend 20% of their work time on a personal project. One guy is working on making Youtube videos 3D. Check out the demo above. It's still in the early stages, but looks promising. More info here.

via Techcrunch

Time Released Ink Calendar

Designers Oscar Diaz created a calendar where each date slowly absorbs ink to print itself. The idea is that it not only shows the date, but also shows time passing and adds another dimension to the calendar. More here.

via @hashembajwa

Sneaker Bombing

It's kind of like sticker bombing, but with shoes. This video is from Brandan Chang of Greedy Genius throwing his shoes all over NYC.

Readability Means Access

Growing up, I’ve always thought it was strange that I was enrolled in AP English literature classes and was reading the classics with relative ease while I couldn’t read a mortgage contract to save my life. Initially, my reaction was to blame the education system for teaching me a skill – deciphering the metaphors and symbolisms of dead white men – that had no application to the modern world. But even after grad school, I still can’t figure out the differences between three health insurance plans.

Allison Arieff, a NY Times columnist, wrote an interesting piece calling for support of a national design policy. Part of her argument is that official documents like contracts, mortgages, credit card information are inherently hard to read for the average American – never mind a high school kid. The consequence of having a national design policy would be the liberation of information to the masses.

Whether it’s intentional or not, poor design has kept crucial information hidden from the people who need it the most. People who are buying their first home, getting their first credit card, or frantically filling out a form at the emergency room are all vulnerable to making mistakes while making these very important decisions.

Clear and understandable documents will allow us to better use the counsel of experts. I remember my parents spent hours with the realtor understanding the terms of the contract. What they should’ve been doing is strategizing the best way to tackle that huge mortgage. Good design has the ability to make the grunt work easier so you can spend more time on bigger things.

And lastly, good design is good customer service. Nothing is a bigger “fuck you” than 42 pages of legalese in 10-point font. When we think about how everything is a touch point for a brand experience, something that looks like a page from the dictionary is starting the relationship off on the wrong foot. It sets up a relationship that is not about the brand in service to the customer. It’s a relationship about the brand doing what it wants and the customer working around that to align with the brand.

That may be nuanced. But I think it adds to why we think governments, HMOs and mortgage companies are inaccessible bureaucratic monsters that we have to do battle with to get the things that they are supposed to be offering us. Readability means access. And these are the organizations that shouldn't be holding things from us.

The Fray - Heartless

The Fray covers Kanye West's Heartless. This is an interesting take on the song. Even though it doesn't have auto tune and features a distraught rock singer vocals, it doesn't seem as honest as the original.

There's something about the context surrounding Kanye West's personality, the overly emotional lyrics and the feeling that he's hiding behind the auto tune to distance himself from the lyrics that make it a much more honest song to me.

via @mikedamico

Very Big Fish in a Very Big Tank

Kuroshio Sea - 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.

Check out this video from Japan's Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. It's supposed to be the world's 2nd largest aquarium. The largest aquarium is in Atlanta, GA (USA! USA!).

via @mikearauz

Infographic Version of Little Red Riding Hood

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

North Korean Beer

Looks so darn tasty. You may have heard that North Korea started producing a beer that isn't half bad. According to the article, we may never get a chance to try it out because of their poor infrastructure and lack of trade partners. I guess we still have Hamm's if we want to savor the bitter, gross taste of delicious irony at whatever hipster dive we find ourselves in.

Do Gooder Designers

There's a group of people who take down ugly flyers that are posted around the city and redesign them to be more aesthetically pleasing. It's a fun exercise in showing the general public the power of great design. Check out their website here.

via caitlinthinks

Gruesome Chocolates

NYC based artist, Stephen K Shanabrook, created chocolates inspired by fatal wounds. Would you eat it? More chocolates and an interview here.

via @caitlinthinks

Greatest Website in the World

Interaction designers take note - this is how you get it done. Get the whole experience here.

Publicly Shaming Companies into Better Customer Service

There have been quite a few stories about how companies are using Twitter as a customer service channel to improve how they connect with consumers. For the most part, I think the consensus is that it’s a good thing that companies are more responsive. But I wouldn’t consider that a win for the company. I think all it has done is teach consumers to threaten companies into giving them better customer service and it has turned customer service into PR function.

If the companies truly cared about customer service, they would invest in other touchpoints – hotline, website, better instruction manuals, in person etc. – because that’s where you can nip the problem in the bud.

Customer service over Twitter is a reaction to all the complaints people are logging on the network and an attempt at damage control. And in a sense, it’s a little self-serving as well. Now a company is resolving customer service problems in front 100 people instead of waiting for that person to tell 5 people about it.

By the numbers, it works. But it misses the whole idea of good customer service which is to preempt complaints by being attentive. These stories about how some company heroically sent a repairman to a complaining customer are indeed very sexy stories of triumph. But is it a triumph if you have thousands of those complaints a day with your handle on it?

Multiple Screens Music Video

This is just a cool little music video from Japan. Purely executional, but the way they use all those little screens and the interaction between the people inside them is done quite well.

via @clevahgrrl

Augmented Reality Gaming

This is a game trailer for "Ghostwire" which will be available for the DSi. Pretty much anything that is exciting these days comes in some form of alternate reality. The DSi has a camera and the microphone which is used to scan for the ghosts you have to deal with inside the game. This is really pushing gaming into that experiential and more emotive space that some developers have been talking about.

The company blog for "Ghostwire" is here.

Last Words

I stumbled upon this website that documents some of the last words of death row inmates from some random clicking. It's surprisingly profound. We could assume that these men had a lot of time to think about their last words. But it doesn't come off as the product of years of fancy wordsmithing, rather the product of years of regret, guilt and remorse expressed in a millions of iterations over and over as they wait for their time to come.

Micro-Volunteerism

Volunteering for a few minutes at a time when ever you can is apparently a new trend. The Extraordinaries is a company that created an iPhone app that allows people to do a quick task - translating something, giving advice, identifying something - on the behalf a non profit. This idea is a mix between crowdsourcing and micro-transactions which theoretically allows more people to participate in causes because it's a fairly minimal commitment, yet they still get the sense of satisfaction doing good.

Read more about it here.

Lost Tribes of NYC

This is a nice, unassuming video from a pair of ethnographers who were interviewing residents in NYC.. They've found a creative way to use soundbites to tell a pretty personal and location based story.

via This Branded Youth

Baseball Infographics

There seems to be a data visualization craze lately here at GSP. For those who can't seem to get enough of it, check out Flip Flop Fly Ball - you guessed it - baseball infographics.

Sarcasm aside, data visualization could be powerful tool and a great add on for fantasy sports that are heavy on stats - baseball and basketball in particular. It could help players see mismatches and patterns much better than line after line of numbers. And at this point, most fantasy sports sites are fairly similar with the exception of where they get their insider news for the players.