henry chilcott

Data, beautiful data (iv)

Amsterdam SMS messages on New Years Eve from Aaron on Vimeo.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Albert Einstein

Hironao Tsuboi’s LED watch.

Data, beautiful data (ii)

Back in August I wrote about how computers, as they get more and more sophisticated, are capable of making seemingly dull data more and more beautiful. Here's another nice example: 24 hours worth of geotagged photos (64,410 photos to be exact) from last Monday - March 23rd. 

In this case the data was brought to life by the talented Rev Dan Catt.

Best watched full screen in HD - click on bottom right of video.

 

Brand owners hold reams and reams of dull consumer data. By re-purposing this data with a bit of imagination, they can create interesting and engaging stuff - even helpful stuff. I'm certain we're going to see more of this in future.

I'm also sure the idea above will appear on our TV screens as an ad for someone like Nokia in a few months time...

Wish you'd thought of it #2

Charge up your Apple device with the iYo 

Cool design: check

Super cool partner: check

Fun: check

Useful: check

Good for environment: check

Go see Peter Thuvander or the Swedish design collective Muungano

Wordle

Wordle creates word clouds but lets you play with how they're presented. Just stick your chunk of text, your site (or someone else's) into their little machine and out pops something like this - usual rules - the more you've / they've rambled on about something the more it'll stand out:

Data, beautiful data

There are people who argue data is interesting. But probably more who consider it dull. But this is changing. As computers get more sophisticated and powerful, data is getting cooler. I wrote about wattson months back - I'll concede that watching your real-time electricity consumption doesn't sound particularly cool, but with wattson it certainly looks that way.

There are more and more examples of this - and I'm not talking about the world of computer game programming but real world dull-as-dishwater-data carved up and presented in such a way that it catches the eye and captures the imagination. 

It's all about simplicity and beauty of presentation. Here's something I stumbled upon the other day - a depiction of the UK's national telephone network coming to life on an average working day:

It's one of many chunks of data Britain from above (tonight on BBC1) will be bringing to life - another being our national electricity consumption; wattson on a grand scale. 

Now clearly brands are getting in on the action, Nike+ being the classic example; but one thing is certain - in a digital world where brands' hard drives of consumer data are growing ever wider and deeper - the opportunities to manipulate, chop and reform this data into beautiful, interesting and engaging stuff are huge.

twitter, twistori, twennis, tweetscan

Another build on twitter I've stumbled across - tweetscan - a real-time search engine for Twitter.

It allows you to find the conversations, people, and tweets you want. You can search by keyword, author, and date.

I thought I'd see what 'noticing' was doing. Weird but kinda cool. 

Your scan: noticing

	kellymc : Noticing the placebo effects of straight tonic. <<
	mmmeghan : Noticing that once you give up/give in to anything, you begin to see it in a totally different way. Mets lose; so do I. <<
	kash007 : @ketta its true you dont see these things I only start noticing children when my lil sis arrived but they so cute when you see them play ^_^ <<
	perryevans : is relaxing (using the term loosely) in chicago o'hare, half way to the homeland. Noticing that travelers resemble the economy. <<
	thefitnessnerd : @skwigg Amazing how shaky you get in a plank -- was noticing that the other day. Planks are HARD ... <<
	SerialNumber : Just noticing that an apartment, where I've had dinner almost every Monday for four years, is accross from DC Comics. <<
	carney : Noticing that I always need to be overcomitted. If I have one thing to do it goes undone. Three things and I do them all. <<
	cameyg : noticing others. <<
	MissRFTC : It's a cloudy day. A robot loses one of its paws. A bird stops to look at the severed appendage. The robot thanks the bird for noticing. <<

User generated contentment

The internet is whirring away with blogs and websites that fan the flames of people's love affair with creation and fame. Little entities are constantly springing up that - if magnetic enough - draw audiences of hundreds, thousands, millions. And after their audiences reach critical mass, most of them are monetized through advertising. 

But sometimes, simply harnessing the creativity and desire for fame is enough to make the dollars roll in.

I've been a long-time admirer of threadless.com Since 2000 they've built a thriving online community of 700,000 and growing. This community creates and - through voting - rates threadless' product: t-shirts. If they are rated highly the designs move up the charts. If they get high enough they are printed and sold netting the designer a $2500 prize and, more importantly, the warm glow of fame. Now Imagine that model in the offline world - a fashion label of 700,000 designers with qualitative research groups 700,000 strong that operate around the clock 24/7 3-6-5 giving you real time consumer feedback on your inventory. Ridiculous in the offline world but online - it's as close to perfect a model as you can imagine. The line between producer and consumer is completely blurred: it's all about participation; getting stuck in, sharing your creativity, and holding onto the thought that your creation could end up being worn around the world by thousands of wonderfully diverse creative people - with your name on the label.

The great news is - everyone wins - threadless are at the forefront of a new breed of online business spreading and monetizing user generated contentment. And these little businesses know everyone's happy - because if they weren't, there shelves would be empty.

The Whuffie Factor: Threadless Interview

twitter, twistori, twennis

 

A few posts back I mentioned how twistori beautifully built on the twitter idea. Its happened again with twennis but this time it's been created by a commercial entity - thetennischannel.com - to build excitement for the French open by streaming tweets that mention tennis.

Undeniably a great idea - leveraging the immense twitter community's chatter across calendar periods when certain topics will spike. Twitter's success is its scale and simplicity - and such topical filters further hone and harness to create enticing bite sized tweets for their targeted community.

Sticky to Slippy

I just heard this new concept - slippy - on a talk from Aki Spicer on this (Fallon Brainfood post)
The shift from sticky to slippy content sums up nicely the shift from the old web to the new. A world where we must give up trying to control, knock down the last of the remaining crumbling walls and encourage visitors to journey ever onwards.