Scott Ex Rodgers

Superb Typography - lots of it.

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Improv Everywhere people pulled their latest shenanigans at Grand Central Station this past weekend, freezing on cue, confusing and frustrating passersby by really getting in the way.

via gothamist

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New York Cabbie
http://www.flickr.com/photos/xrodgers/2225206504/
27th January, 2008

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Funny collection of Album covers here: www.sleeveface.com

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Brand Experience Lab shares some results from the in-theater games they did for MSNBC (The Newsbreaker) in the US and for Volvo in the UK (video below).

For the Newsbreaker:

78% played the game
93% want more games in cinemas
86% prefer a game to an ad
71% unaided MSNBC brand recall
75% more likely to use MSNBC

Definitely one of the coolest ad things from 2007.

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Human-computer interaction researcher Johnny Chung Lee at Carnegie Mellon demonstrates how with a Wii remote and a custom code you can turn your TV into a 3D display.

- Thank you, Erwin.

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A recent article in the New York Times predicted that the practice of geotagging photos is ready to hit the mainstream and that we should begin to see more camera manufactures including built-in GPS systems this year.
As it is now, geotagging typicall…

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The New York Times ran two stories today affirming the usefulness of citizen journalists and microjournalism tools to the reporting of major news stories. In October we reported that citizen journalism had gone undeniably mainstream after both Reuters and CNN embraced citizen journalism techniques and amateur reporting itself in the coverage of important news stories (perhaps most notably at the time, the California wildfires). Today the Times writes in two separate stories how techniques and technologies pioneered by citizen journalism are changing the way we get news.

Noam Cohen reports on the use of Twitter on the campaign trail in the ongoing US presidential elections. The article describes the use of Twitter by John Dickerson, chief political correspondent for the online magazine Slate. “Microjournalism is the latest step in the evolution of Mr. Dickerson, who worked for years at Time magazine, and has moved from print to online articles to blog entries to text messages no longer than 140 characters, or about two sentences,” writes Cohen.

According Dickerson, tools like Twitter provide a way for reporters to disseminate information quickly while a story may still be unfolding. “It is much more authentic, because it really is from inside the room,” he says, describing Twitter reporting the way someone might a live television newscast.

In another piece, the NYT writes about blogger Michael Yon, who uses his blog to cover the Iraq war from the front lines. “Michael Yon was not a journalist, and he wasn’t sure what a blogger was,” the piece begins. But after spending more time embedded with US soldiers in Iraq than any other journalist, and writing about his experience on his web site, Yon “has recently, grudgingly, accepted that he has become a journalist.”

The Times praises Yon’s reporting, who went to Iraq because he thought the mainstream media was “bungling the story.”

“Along the way, he created a niche outlet that is better reported than most blogs, and more opinionated than most news reporting, with enough first-hand observation, clarity and skepticism to put many professional journalists to shame,” writes Richard Perez-Pena. “The Internet has fostered such citizen journalism, shaking up ideas about where news comes from, but few have taken on the expense and danger of working in a war zone.”

The story notes that bloggers and citizen journalists have swelled in ranks in Iraq, while the number of mainstream journalists operating there has shrunk, putting added emphasis on the reporting that amateurs are doing.

The New York Times itself has experimented in recent months with running content from amateur journalists. We reported last month that the paper would begin running videos produced by an amateur production company about the US presidential race, and since October it has run a series of video debates from Bloggingheads.tv. They also recently sponsored the Polling Places project, which uses contributions from readers to document polling places on film during the 2008 US elections.

The rise of tools like Twitter and blogs to report on events as they happen is something we recently predicted will be a growing trend in the coming year. Stories like those in today’s New York Times help validate citizen journalists and the tools they use as legitimate methods of reporting breaking news.

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There are so many great sets of photos that people have collected on flickr. But no one I know has compiled them into one place. So here is my first contribution.

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Jennifer on her work:
My sculptures were originally inspired by the form and function of the sea urchin. The spines of the urchin, so dangerous yet beautiful, serve as an explicit warning against contact. The alluring texture of the spines…

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The Library of Congress and photosharing site Flickr today announced a partnership that will put photos from the LoC’s collection online in a social environment and users to interact with them. The Library is home to more than 14 million photographs and other visual materials, and to start they’ve selected about 1500 works each from two of their collections that are known to exist in the public domain. The images come from the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information and The George Grantham Bain Collection, for which no known copyright exists. The collections will be housed on the LoC’s Flickr page.

As part of the pilot program with the Library of Congress, Flickr has launched a new tagging initiative called The Commons. The Commons encourages people to help describe the historical photos being added to Flickr by institutions like the Library of Congress by tagging them or commenting on them.

“From the Library’s perspective, this pilot project is a statement about the power of the Web and user communities to help people better acquire information, knowledge and — most importantly — wisdom,” said Matt Raymond, the LoC’s blogger-in-chief. “One of our goals, frankly, is to learn as much as we can about that power simply through the process of making constructive use of it.”

The photos, which are already available on the Library’s photo and prints page (along with over 1 million others), may not be on Flickr permanently. The length of the pilot program will be determined by the amount of interest and activity shown by Flickr users, according to the LoC.

According to George Oates, at Flickr, the pilot program with the Library has two main goals, “firstly, to increase exposure to the amazing content currently held in the public collections of civic institutions around the world, and secondly, to facilitate the collection of general knowledge about these collections, with the hope that this information can feed back into the catalogues, making them richer and easier to search.”

Flickr also said today that the site now houses over 20 million tags which help to power the search function of the site.

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© Matt Stuart
Matt Stuart, who gave a perfect explanation for why the Leica M8 saves you money in the long run (yes, there were a few Belgian beers involved) talks about a few of his photos over on blakeandrews.blogspot. Matt founded in-public, whic…

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This is what I should have ordered for christmas. Brookstone has one with very good controls. $29 But the ‘Spinmaster Air Hogs Battling Havoc R/C Helicopters‘ are even cooler! Need to save up for those at $169.

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Michael Fakesch website

Electronic musician Michael Fakesch (part duo of ex Funkstorung) asked us to create a website for his solo project. The chosen design is simple, logical and it is easy to navigate. Flash programming made by Martynas, CMS made…

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From 1961 to 1969 the USSR and the United States were locked in a history-making race to land the first person on the moon. This detailed map explains the story of this titanic contest in a clear and informative manner. From afar, it is striking to l…

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via http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/11/21/style/1122-CURRENTS_index.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1196698565-laLd2kgP2sMTTyQuh2LgiQ

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For the past 365 days Sean Nicholas Ohlenkamp recorded his desktop at TBWA\Chiat\Day. Here are the results:
+ 365 Chiat Days

Via Graphito

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Just when I thought i had seen it all. Post Expression allows you to create and store multimedia messages that will be sent by e-mail to friends and family.

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Do you ever have the sneaking suspicion that you’re being watched? That some invisible voyeur is tracking your every move? Well, you’ll definitely be feeling the hairy eyeball from these spectacular by J. Richel. Pull the little lever and watch the painting watch you!

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