Chris Unitt

Links for 1 August 2012

Chris Unitt -

A couple of starting points this month. Firstly, ‘Assembly’ is an installation by Kimchi and Chips. There’s a fuller description of it on the Creative Applications Network but, for the purposes of this blog, here’s a video:

Meanwhile, Leila Johnston’s post about Making Things Fast was quite rightly tweeted like billy-o. It’s worth reading in full and even though I shouldn’t really pull an excerpt from it, I will:

dreams are just a mind-altering drug to divert us from grim body-shovelling reality. However you look at it, making things come true involves making. So are you making, today? Or are you dreaming about next year?

From a Nina Simon post called Ancient Greece 2.0: Arts Participation before the Industrial Age:

If arts managers fear bloggers today, imagine how they would have felt back in the good old days when the audience was yelling and throwing things at the stage

A couple of posts that go well together:

If those two posts are about digital media making us more aware of how we’re perceived by others encountering us virtually, When Art, Apple and the Secret Service Collide: ‘People Staring at Computers’ is (amongst many other things) about how we present ourselves in physical space while we’re doing that:

There was no expression on my face. Even though I spend most of my day talking to and collaborating with other people online, from my face you can see no trace of this. I thought about Paul Ekman developing his Facial Action Coding System in the 60s, and discovering that “expression alone is sufficient to create marked changes in the autonomic nervous system“

Assorted bits and pieces:

I loved this post about simulating outcomes for interactive stories using Logic.ly – a tool for teaching logic gates and circuits. Clever. I like it when people find unexpected uses for things. On a similar theme, see Experimental Turk and, slightly different again, an utterly wonderful post from Robin Sloan titled Summer Reading… and Programming. I really don’t know where to start with that last one.

I’ve been thinking about online fundraising recently. It’s worth mentioning this list list of top fundraising websites (top content marketing there by the guys and gals at Pancreatic Cancer UK) and also Mobilise, which is a mobile regular donation and communication system and well worth checking out.

I mentioned a load of online learning sites in an earlier post but it’d be remiss of me to not also point out this post that speculates that In the Future Everything Will Be A Coffee Shop. It starts with universities and goes on to cover coffee shops, retail and offfices.

The Wallaby Card looks like a great idea if you use credit cards (which I don’t). The idea is you consolidate all your various credit card details on one card and you use that to maximise cash back rebates, merchant discounts and frequent traveller rewards. Only available in the USA at the moment, as are Mint and Manilla, dammit.

Yet more Kickstarter stuff (with a UK launch coming soon):

I’ve been looking at approaches to digital analytics frameworks this month (invite me to your next dinner party, I double dare you) and have been finding all sorts, most if it utter dross. I won’t dump all of those links here but the GDS design principles are, typically from that lot, very good and clear in relation to transactional public services. I also came across #SMMStandards, a “cross-industry effort to simplify and unify the measurement of social media”.

John Waters has a point:

When I was young there were beatniks. Hippies. Punks. Gangsters. Now you’re a hacktivist. Which I would probably be if I was 20. Shuttin’ down MasterCard. But there’s no look to that lifestyle! Besides just wearing a bad outfit with bad posture. Has WikiLeaks caused a look? No! I’m mad about that. If your kid comes out of the bedroom and says he just shut down the government, it seems to me he should at least have an outfit for that.

Although he should probably be careful what he wishes for – for a short while there almost was a look.

Apps, services, etc

Finally…

It’s only right to finish with this all-conquering short film from Dice Productions. It was written by Ian, who I work with, and I’ve followed with interest as it’s toured the world picking up awards at festivals all over the place. The film’s now available to watch online so please, enjoy All Consuming Love (Man In A Cat):