Serendipity Book

Create your own tag cloud with Wordle

Wordle creates beautiful tag clouds from any text. This is what it did with my delicious tags. If only it was hyperlinked too.

Via: Thomas Hawk who points to a hack for creating a Flickr tag cloud in the same way.

"Let's make a sawng" with Weezer

Geek band Weezer have really been putting the internet to good use lately to generate interest in their upcoming album.

First they gave us a video recreating the greatest hits of the net.

Then, while everyone else is asking why they didn't think of doing that, Weezer's lead singer Rivers Cuomo has been off harnessing the power of mass creativity to write a song with his fans on YouTube.

Rivers' version of the resulting song, '80s Radio', can be found here. Alternatively, you can hear the versions done by some of his collaborators.

Aside: I wonder who owns the copyright to this?

Offside: Can the moustache REALLY be making a come back? I thought the rule was that moustaches can only be worn ironically and even then they must only be grown to raise money for charity and must be cut off immediately after the fundraiser?

Grab and play interactive video

A new way to manipulate video as you watch: you can "grab" on-screen objects and move them backwards and forwards, though actually you are only moving the video backwards and forwards. A "hint path" shows how the object can be moved.

The DimP direct manipulation player has been developed by the University of Toronto's Dynamic Graphics Project. There's an explanation in the video below.

Interesting to perhaps think of ways of matching this engine to a touch screen to give rise to some interactive outdoor / in-store activation ideas.

BBC Sound Index - buzz-based music chart

The BBC have created an innovative music chart called the Sound Index based on aggregating usage and purchasing data from popular internet music sites:

"The BBC Sound Index analyses what people are writing about, listening to, watching, downloading and logging on to. It then counts and analyses this data to make an instant list of the most popular 1000 artists and tracks on the web.iTunes, MySpace, Bebo, Google Groups, Last.FM and YouTube

The more blog mentions, comments, plays, downloads and profile views an artist or track has, the higher up the Sound Index they are. So, the Sound Index is a music buzz index controlled entirely by the public."

The chart is updated every six hours and broadcast on the BBC every Sunday. Yet more good stuff from Ashley Highfield and team:

"Under Ashley's leadership, the number of UK adults visiting bbc.co.uk has more than trebled from 4.6 million to 14 million every month and page impressions have increased tenfold to just over 3 billion a month."

Predicting the future of the internet

Edelman's Steve Rubel shares his predictions for the future of the internet in a presentation he gave last week to Next 08 in Hamburg:

| View | Upload your own

Thanks to Osgur Alaz

The end of futurists (and ugliness)

I love this (only partially) tongue in cheek visualisation of the extinction timeline of a number of things we take for granted.

Whether it is innocence (2001), retirement (2017) or ugliness (c.2060) Richard Watson can see it coming to an end some day. In fact he even predicts the end of futurists in c.2050 (at about the same time he thinks that we might finally wave good bye to Cher).

Full size version here

Found on Furl.com

Samsung's Illusion of a Soul

In this wacky little 2 minute film, Samsung attempt to show off the pseudo-holographic properties of their new 'Soul' mobile 'phone.

In simple terms it appears that the phone has an OLED display which changes to show different symbols for each mode (camera, phone, music player etc.).

The film consists of a zany (yes, sadly that is the best word for it) demo of 8 (count them) optical illusions.

This is perhaps the right time to mention that I've always been amazed that one part of Samsung can embrace these so-called 'viral' films (e.g. this and this and this and this and this and this) whilst simultaneously strangling the life out of all of their TV ads with endless approval processes and LINK tests. Do I sound bitter? I think I might be. The Viral Factory looked like they were having a lot more fun than we were.

Lower budgets for production and media = lower risks = fewer people to get between the idea and the consumer.

Interactive Architecture - some experiential inspiration

Stuck for experiential brand activation ideas? You could do worse than browse Interactive Architecture for stimulation.

This fantastic site is run by Ruairi Glynn of UCL's Bartlett School of Architecture and Central Saint Martins and it does a great job of bridging the specialisms of digital media, architecture, textile design and industrial design.

The Funky Forest installation pictured above makes for a nice starting point. But be careful you could lose a whole day to this site.

Video on Flickr - too little, too late?

So, I see from Popurls that Flickr have made a foray into the crowded online video hosting market. 

They are now offering their 'Pro' members (US$25 a year) like me the facility to upload 90 second video clips ("long photos") to their Flickr profiles.

Here are some of the videos that have already been uploaded and as you can see from this embedded film it is a nice implementation:

I think this is too little, too late but TechCrunch seem to be sold on it as do Boing Boing and I'd certainly rather have the facility than not.

Flickr have been keen to distance themselves from YouTube by emphasising their focus on archiving and sharing within private networks. Direct competitors are therefore the likes of Vimeo and Motionbox who, like Flickr, allow you to restrict who gets to see your videos.

YouTube analytics arrives at last

YouTube: "Today [March 26th] we're releasing YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks."

If only you could do the same (or get limited access) for videos that others upload too.