The folks at Microsoft Surface have begun to play further with their advanced multi-touch display. We are THIS CLOSE to getting one of these coolies to play with but now our desire has been captured by this new globe version. I think we were all amused by some of the “creative” demonstration apps they built for it, but the virtual tour demo left us wanting it purely because it looks like a crystal ball and who doesn’t want one of those???
Three months of still photographing dice resulted in this amazing video (thanks Rudy). It’s gorgeous. There is something to be said for the love of the craft and attention to detail.
In the virtual world everything must be intentional. This video makes an excellent example (thanks Travis) of this as the story and the conflict between cultures evolves. Watch the metaphors stack up on each side and then explode into reality as they drink their tasty beverages. A LOT of work went into this.
CHANGES from LORCANFINNEGAN on
We’re huge fans of the post-hyper-real (or whatever the historians will call it) abstract impressionistic CGI animation phenomenon. This video is a wonderful example of expression and playfulness. It illustrates the value of abstraction for creating mood, feeling, and aesthetic appeal. It would be cool to play in a virtual world that looks like this.
We are now stalking Robert Hodgin. This guy is our hero. This 163MB processing video features music by Tosca. The only thing that could possibly make it more beautiful is a stereoscopic display (ya 3D!) Rock on man…Rock on!
Take a look at these guys! First Avenue Machine (thanks Rudy) makes CGI video content that is so hyper-real it’s impossible to separate from the reality it’s superimposed onto. We can’t link to it (Bad flash developer! BAD!) but scroll down their projects window and take a look at “Sixes Last.” With Moore’s law still intact we are soon coming to the point where this type of rendering will be possible in real-time.
More fun:
This is a cool link of candy based drum machine.
Really really nice Hodgin work.
And a really cool blog about “advanced beauty”.
I’m not sure if it was the Zoomii Books (thank you Stephanie) hyper-real representation of a bookstore browsing experience mashup created by Chris Thiessen, or the stylish video explorations of Robert Hodgin, but digital is beginning to fuzz the edges of reality for me. We can now create “natural” (beyond multi-touch) interaction metaphors that leverage all of the history and nostalgia of an analog object and then extend the value of that object significantly with digital technology. We create objects that look like they exist but only exist as bits on the digital plane. As we explore this digital reality or rather as it augments ours what happens to traditional constraints. Time? Space?
I need to lay off the sugar cookies after 10.
Merlin Mann recently gave a talk to the folks at Google about his Inbox Zero process for managing high volume inboxes (www.inboxzero.com). While Merlin’s talk was entertaining and well done, I have to be honest, I was left feeling a little underwhelmed by his overall message. He says himself his method is simple common sense and that’s what it is. Luckily, I chose not to end my journey there. Desperate as I was for any help with the hundreds of emails I get a day (some at the talk claimed an unfathomable 600-a-day!) I decided to give Inbox Zero a try. I’m happy to say there’s no turning back now; I am officially a fan and I learned something about myself along the way.
The basic premise is the practice of scheduled email processing sprints (short 5-10min) with the goal of getting messages out of your inbox. There are five actions you can do to any message: delete, delegate, defer, respond (only if you can do it in a few lines), and archive. You may be wondering why it is so important to get email out of your inbox? It’s all about your state-of-mind and the impacts are huge. I had no idea the weight my inbox placed on my life as I spent the entire day using it as a to-do list and watching messages come in minute-by-minute to be responded to in near real-time. Managing my email took so much time I often found myself looking at the clock wondering where the day had gone. Some days I had no time to do my job (or at least the fun parts). The one thing I did get from my email-as-chat behavior was stress, giant fattening scoops of it. Stress has been a very big issue in my life as of late with a new baby, a growing business, a new house being manhandled by contractors, and Russian bomber flights resuming. To my surprise, my wife noticed a change the day I started practicing Inbox Zero. She keeps telling me how much calmer I am now.
The benefits of Inbox Zero don’t end there for me, I learned a little about myself along the way. As I started processing emails, I discovered some actions happened more frequently than others. To some extent this is supposed to be the case, but I don’t think my order is, well, optimal. Take a look for yourself. Here is my current processing ranking:
Here’s where the bump on my head starts pushing the anvil towards the sky. Delegate is last? This is not good. As a Director working with a whole bunch of extremely talented folks who can do most everything better than me, it’s a bad thing when the last thing I do is delegate. My job description starts with the word delegate. So what do I do now? Well the first thing I’m going to do is go through my Action folder and delegate as much of that work as I can. After that I’m working very hard to increase my delegation ranking. I’ve done some thinking about why this pattern formed and I’ve boiled it down to my control freakish nature. That means I will have to pay special attention that I don’t slip back into this pattern. CFS is a sneaky sneaky disease. Hopefully now that I’ve admitted there is a problem, I will find the road to recovery. Isn’t it strange where and how you learn about yourself? Maybe Inbox Zero won’t solve your woes, maybe it will. I can only recommend frequent questioning and exploration of your daily activities as a means of learning more about yourself. Thank you Merlin Mann!
Welcome to the spill. The overflow buffer for the passion we have for interaction.
Spill is the blog from Tanagram, Inc. a technology innovation and design company based in Chicago, Illinois.
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