Check out some of the highlights from the Wireless Japan 2005 show.
You can find it on Gerhard Fasol’s Eurotechnology Blog.
Archive for July, 2005
Wireless Japan 2005 Show
Jul 29
Borf Arrested in D.C.
Jul 29
The mysterious, ubiquitous and eminently destructive graffiti artist known as Borf was arrested yesterday after waging a months-long campaign that may have been intended to enlighten Washington, but mostly just confused us.
The man primarily responsible for Borf is, it turns out, an 18-year-old art student from Great Falls named John Tsombikos, according to D.C. police inspector Diane Groomes. He was arrested along with two other young men in the wee hours of yesterday morning after officers received a tip that graffiti artists were spray-painting at Seventh and V streets NW.
Google Maps Hack: Cell Phone Tower Search
FCC registration information on cell towers plus Google maps equals a searchable, interactive map of cell tower sites to answer the question, “Why can’t I get better reception at my house?”
Check it out.
[from Agenda Inc.]
Sexual double entendres were removed overnight from Burger King’s new website, CoqRoq.com, but the company claims it has received no complaints from consumers or other outside groups, AdAge reports. The deleted content included captions, under photos of young girls, that read: “Groupies love the Coq” and “groupies love Coq.”
The captions were there when the site went live yesterday, but according to Edna Johnson, SVP for global communications for Burger King, malfunctions in the Flash and XML programming were responsible for putting the captions up. A misspelling of “Burger King” had also been fixed, she said.
The site, created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky of Subservient Chicken fame, is designed to look like a rock band site. (The band is named CoqRoq, the lead singer Fowl Mouth.)
Here’s a GAP viral piece by Crispin & Porter. WatchMeChange is similar to what other clothing retailers are doing with their Virtual Mannequins. However, this one is more for fun than finding clothes. You get to customize a person to look like you, choose some clothes, and then watch it dance and strip. Stupid shit, but it’s from Crispin so it must be good.
Who’s Afraid of Niketown?
Jul 24
Who’s afraid of Niketown?
Nike-urbanism, branding and the city of tomorrow
by Friedrich Von Borries
[review by Riba Bookshops]
Who’s afraid of Niketown? illustrates the way Nike is transforming urban space into a new brand city. In his persuasive analyses, Friedrich von Borries is able to demonstrate this process with astonishing concreteness. He proceeds not just analytically, but also undertakes speculative excursions into the future. This approach endows his detailed investigations of contemporary marketing strategies with their forcefulness.
Nike has developed new marketing strategies during the last years which focus on the temporary transformation of urban space into brand-specific sites of experience. By looking at Nike’s strategies of urban interventions, this publication investigates the role that branding and marketing strategies will have on the city of the future as well as the responsibilities architects involved in the projects will have.
PSP Cutout Guitars
Jul 24
From today, if you happen to see a giant cardboard cut-out of a guitar, then you should know that it is your duty to interact with it.
In a bid to liven up the streets of London, PSP presents CutOut and will deposit 500 1.75m-tall electric guitar silhouettes around town, designed by Peter Saville and complete with frets and dials.
It is hoped that people will want to pick them up and play them, reinforcing PSP’s message of freedom and fun.
‘The guitar is the defining icon of electric pop culture,’ says Saville, who had an open brief as to what template he would design. ‘I wanted to design a super-sized cut-out for custom colouring and anarchic pantomime. I wanted to inspire people to feel like a child feeling grown-up.’
Fifty of the CutOuts will be signed by Peter Saville, but undoubtedly the real finds will be the 20 CutOuts that have been customised by 10 of the UK’s most hotly tipped newcomers from the fields of photography, art, graphic design, illustration, sculpture, textiles, product design, and silkscreen printing.
nikebasketball.com/nyc
Jul 22
This for all the NYC Basketball heads out there. nikebasketball.com just launched a NYC-based version of it’s site. It’s got some information around the hot NYC leagues such as Pro City, West 4th, and Dyckman. There are also player profiles around NYC playground legends like God Shammgod, Fly Williams, and Junie Sanders. The comprehensive league schedules are a nice feature given that during the past few summers it’s been almost impossible to get your hands on these schedules.
Nike Air Max Video
Jul 21
Here’s a NIKE AIR MAX instore video that my good friend, Joseph Cartman, found on onesize’s site. It’s a new piece to introduce the re-release of the Nike Air Max series, including the new “blackpack” edition.
Forests Forever
Jul 19
Here’s another great photography site that utilizes a world map. The photos are interesting, but I really appreciate the Flash design and animation which is so, so smooth.
Wonder Wall
Jul 18
If you love dope-ass retail spaces, then check out Masamichi Katayama’s Wonderwall. After completing his education and working for several years in design offices, Masamichi Katayama went independent as an interior designer in 1990. He formed H. Design Associates with Tsutomu Kurokawa in 1992, and launched his own office, Wonderwall, eight years later in 2000. His design projects have since spread beyond shop interiors to various other products, including furniture and lighting.
Wonderwall Masamichi Katayama Projects, a compilation of Katayama’s works, was published collaboratively in 2003 by Frame Publishers of the Netherlands and Birkhauser of Switzerland. The compilation was the first volume in Frame’s internationally known MONOGRAPH series to feature the works of a Japanese creator.
Nestea Hopes Site Goes Viral
Jul 18
JUXT Interactive has created an absurdly interactive web environment for the new Nestea drink, Nestea Ice, geared to the 12- to 24-year-old male. The site incorporates original music videos, a design feature that allows visitors to create T-shirts, a short film, and other means of keeping visitors on the site as long as possible, writes MediaPost. Nestea is counting on the fact that the site will take advantage of the viral potential of the web. Since its launch in late June it has attracted about 2,200 unique visitors a day, but that is without the online ad campaign that will launch soon. The campaign will also include TV, point-of-purchase, radio, PR, and sampling.
eRuv is a digital graffiti project installed along the route of the former Third Avenue elevated train line in lower Manhattan. The train line, dismantled in 1955, was more than just a means of transport; it was part of an important religious boundary — an eruv — for a Hasidic community on the old Lower East Side. Using semacodes, the former boundary is reconstructed and mapped back onto the space of the city. Pedestrians with camera phones can then access location-specific historical content linked through the semacodes.
Urban Seeder
Jul 17
Urbanseeder is a flirting service that increases your chance of running again into people you find attractive. Using minimal digital technology, the game plays out unpredictably in real space and using physical tokens. It is an attempt to preserve the spirit of flirting and utilize technology in a way that complements our urban living.
Everyone Runs. Eventually
Jul 16
Here’s an addicting advergame from Saucony in support of it’s new Saucony Propel shoe.
My Social Fabric
Jul 15
Here’s a social networking project by Steven Blyth from the Interactive Institue in Ivrea. It’s called Social Fabric which is a representation of your social world, displayed as a single visual array on your mobile phone. It does not replace your address book or calendar but keeps you subtly informed about which relationships are prospering, which you have neglected, and the overall state of your social fabric. What a brilliant idea.
Peepshow Collective
Jul 14
Peepshow is a collective of Illustrators and Designers who promote their work through a group website, exhibitions, projects, presentations and printed material.
spring_alpha
Jul 13
spring_alpha is a networked game system based on Chad McCail’s drawing “Spring” and the series “Evolution is Not Over Yet”. This narrates the attempts of a small, urban community to create its own “utopian” society. The narrative is used as a metaphor for the real-world issues that the project explores and a focus around which speculative and critical ideas can develop. The software system serves as a “sketch pad” for testing out ideas for alternative forms of social practice at both the “narrative” level, in terms of the game story, and at a “code” level, in terms of working with the actual data and communication structures that support the game. It is an exploration of software and social governance in relation to Free Open Source Software practice. The project combines the development of an open software system along with workshop events that seek to broaden Free Open Source Software development principles into areas outside of programming.
Shin Tanaka
Jul 13
Shin Tanaka is exhibiting his paper AF1 collection at VACANT CHICAGO from JULY 8th to JULY 29th. You can download the PAPER AF1 template from his site and send your designed AF1 .pdf template file to info@govacant.com. The best entries will be on display at the Vacant Chicago exhibition.
Victoria’s Secret PINK brand is challenging young women to take up cards and take off their jeans with the launch of a strip poker Web experience created by agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky.
The site, at PinkPantyPoker.com, targets women aged 18 to 24 with a first person gaming experience akin to several others the agency has created for clients such as Method and Burger King.
Site visitors go up against a group of five other characters, attractive men and women, in a game of five-card draw. Each round has a loser, and that character must remove an article of clothing. If the user on the end loses, his or her arm extends into the screen and drops a shirt, skirt or pair of pants, as the case may be.
“We’re excited about this one because it brings together game-like qualities, but it’s all about the product. Your goal is to see the product,” said Jeff Benjamin, Crispin’s interactive executive creative director. “It’s a different way of showing a catalog.”
The strip poker experience is intended to spread virally, so PINK hasn’t deployed an ad buy to promote the site’s launch. Benjamin said some banner ads have been created and may be placed around the Web if the client decides it wants to boost traffic. He claims early traffic reports are good, and he expects the site to be a hit with men as well as women.
At the end of the game, an e-mail forward feature sends a message reading, “Supermodel Alessandra is throwing a Panty Poker Party with her friends Chris, Bobby, Theresa and Tatiane. Check it out at [URL]. Hope you’ve got your lucky bikinis on.”
PINK has been a CPB client since mid-2004. The agency has completed some banner advertising for it in the past, but this is the brand’s first “major” online initiative.
