Posted: September 1, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Hands up, who is an Arcade Fire fan here? No, me neither.
However, I have played their new single several times now, because I have become ensnared in the online multimedia object that accompanies it. (I am not sure what the correct term is, but I am sure that “video” is the wrong term.) And, yes, I am starting to like the single that accompanies it. Perhaps I should check out the album…
The song is called We Used To Wait and the site is www.thewildernessdowntown.com. The title and the narrative make sense once you have heard the song.
When you arrive, you are instructed to enter the address where you grew up. If the address can be found in Google Maps and Google Streetview, then the presentation continues. Otherwise you are invited to enter another address.
The presentation only works in Google Chrome, because it is built entirely in HTML5, using help from the people at Google Labs. It is a stunning example of what can be achieved by mashing up different repositories, and by using the detail in the data.
It took me several viewings, with different addresses, to recognise how the visuals adapt to the different streets. The runner follows the path of the camera in Streetview, to navigate the roads where you lived. The point where the content in three different windows spins in time is impressive viscerally, and the end where the trees appear in the streetview, without ruining the 3D is impressive technically AND viscerally.
During the presentation you are invited to write a postcard to your younger self, and this can be uploaded to a database which will be used to generate the backdrop on Arcade Fire’s US tour. You can also share your personalised presentation by email, by Twitter or on Facebook.
Here is my personal more-interactive-than-a-video multimedia thingy, from the street where I grew up in Birkenhead.
One Week in London
Posted: June 18, 2010 at 4:53 pm | Full entry
I arrived in London last Monday for meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday. I realised that since I was getting a return ticket I could usefully spend the rest of the week here, and so I did. This morning, as I walked from the Lodge to Clapham South tube station (where I was to discover that all service had been suspended for the weekend for vital engineering works) an old Routemaster bus passed me by. It had been suitably refurbished and was waiting to be hired for some advertising event or the like.
Otto 2008 – 2010
Posted: June 11, 2010 at 9:30 pm | Full entry
At the start of the week our hamster Otto suddenly seemed to become old and slow. He stopped running around and stayed in his house almost all the time. Today Naa tried to pick him up and he jumped in the way that animals and people jump when they get a sudden pain. So, this evening we took him to the vet.
Old Spice advertisement
Posted: June 8, 2010 at 4:22 pm | Full entry
I have finally found an advertisement that is as good as the Tango advertisement that I have written about before.
Aviary is now free
Posted: March 2, 2010 at 11:25 am | Full entry
Aviary is a set of online editing tools that allow you to edit images, vector graphics, and sounds. The tools include a Firefox plugin that allows you to screen-grab directly into your Aviary library. And it is now all free.
Design Outside The Box
Posted: February 25, 2010 at 1:19 pm | Full entry
James sent me a Tweet the other day and I finally got round to checking out the link. It led to Fox @ Fury, an interesting blog (by the owner of fury.com) that I added to my Bloglines feeds. However James wasn’t just linking to the blog in general. He was linking to a post about Jesse Schell’s talk at DICE 2010 called Design Outside The Box.