Posts filed under 'Web'
Offf first day was so amazingly intense the the second day gone thru lightning fast and as I start writing this notes I’m already about half of the third day, so I just decided to sum all my notes from this two last days in one post.
KarlssonWilker - this guys made me have one of the best laughable moments of OFFF, their trip to Serbia and the whole plot around them was and is movie material! Jesus, how wrong can you be when you first overlook a project. One of the things I liked about them, was the way they started and addressed the ‘bumps’ on the road, the shortness of ‘resources’ and how they creatively resolved each of them. You can see their work here, and one of you’ll probably recognize immediately is the MTV orbs:
Andy Cameron (interviewed by Régine Debatty) - Andy’s work precedes him, but his mostly known this days by being the creative director of Fabrica (the Benetton research center in Treviso, Italy). One of the things that got my attention was his idea about collaborative art works and getting people to participate in their works, his idea of augmented spaces and the overall idea of how playfulness is THE primary form of interaction really make a lot of sense and I confess he just made it to may Playful Interactions presentation that I’ve been working on. Régine blogged about her interview here, so if you’d like to know a bit more I strongly recommend it’s reading.
Although I actually enjoyed the Interaction Design Panel I honestly think they got the name of panel wrong, should have been Interactive Design Panel and not Interaction Design, since there’s a great gap between Interaction and Interactive 
Some of the works presented were really interesting, Andreas Muller (Nanika) presentation, he talked and show several amazing ideas for dynamic and interactive visualizations where people can take part of the images and have some control over what they’re watching. I found particularly interesting his work’s for Nokia with the moving (ephemera) messages. One other project I liked in his presentation was his idea of teaching a computer how to draw, Andreas coded a program - Hana that allows the computer to draw flowers without any bitmap whatsoever, and the final result is something of amazing!
Rob Chiu, Chris Hewitt and Ben Boysen - WOW!!!! ok… and then again WOW.. this guys rock! They work separately from each-other and they still manage to have some amazing work, It’s hard to actually write about any of their projects I think I really enjoyed them all, but there’s one that really got me, Rob’s work about the refugees - ‘Black Day to Freedom‘:
and the ‘all things fall part‘ movie is pure talent (click to see it!)
One interesting thing I found out later going thru their blogs was they were the ones who did the amazing video for the SF FOWA that everyone was amazed by. 
Fallon, responsible for the amazing Sony Bravia’s color campaign videos had a very interesting presentation (pity they didn’t cite the sources of some of their slides - Steven Johnson and his TV shows networks theory for example), nevertheless I really liked their presentation and in particular their 4 rules to get GOOD ideas:
- Find the right problems to solve
- Make Space
- Find the skills you might not have
- Keep the Faith
The all presentation seem to evolve around ideas which makes sense since their business is all about getting good ideas or they wouldn’t be a creative agency right? Some interesting aspects of this presentation was how some of the best ad campaigns they had reallllly relied on the web as a distribution channel achieving strength as never before.
MiniVegas was one of the most amazing projects I’ve seen in all OFFF, they’ve managed to create a system that allows for real time video interaction. They showcased several examples of it’s use, namely the S4C interlude messages, where the pitch of the speaker voice actually changed the video you’d see, so each message actually randomize a video scene making it different every-time! Nothing like having a look at it (click to see some demos):
Offf is off by the time I’m finishing up this post, but I’m really looking forward for next year edition, it certainly wasn’t low on expectations and it it managed to surprised me with all the amazing ideas and works that I got from it, to all the organizers a bit THANK YOU!
May 11th, 2008
Hoje é um dia importante aqui pelo SAPO!
É que o SAPO ficou um bocadinho mais global! Que neste caso é mais ou menos o mesmo que dizer que o SAPO já não é só .PT mas também .CV:
O SAPO.cv é um projecto marcante aqui pelo SAPO não por ser o primeiro SAPO fora de Portugal mas por todo o impacto que teve na forma como se desenvolvem os serviços SAPO. Foi necessário pensar em tanta coisa! Desde de as limitações técnicas próprias de uma sociedade insular ao simples facto de que diferentes culturas correspondem diferentes necessidades e formas de ver o mundo, pelo que uma simples cópia do SAPO não iria provavelmente ser suficiente
Custou mas está aí! E até vem bem preparado, ora confirmem só:
os (…) foram mesmo só preguiça é que há mesmo muitos, muitos serviços localizados para .CV pelo que se querem um conselho vale mesmo a pena dar uma vista de olhos!
UPDATE: O Celso escreveu um post com (quase) todos os detalhes técnicos envolvidos neste projecto! Vale a pena ler…
April 15th, 2008
Yesterday I’ve assisted to the Conversas Unicer (an informal meeting organized and sponsored by Unicer a major beverage player in Portugal) where Bruno Giussani was the main speaker and some very well knowned portuguese bloggers (Maria João Nogueira, António Granado, Luís Paixão Martins, Eduardo Correia, Paulo Ferreira and Paulo Querido) joined in in yesterday’s conversation.
The starting point “We used to call them users” set the motto for a great presentation. The title was a clear reference to the ‘OLD’ web, where people’s role weren’t anything more than mere spectators of the whole business. The web we live in today if far different, since much of it is actually based in Action, web2.0 brought in personalization and customization, users stood up and embraced the role of actors! Which for companies actually meant more work or at least they couldn’t just count on users eating all the PR jargon they meant them to take. Users got a voice!
According to Bruno, users can be more or less involved along time with a company or product, but they tend to follow a specific path of engagement:
- witnessing
- sharing
- conversation
- collaboration
- action
At first, we’re all mere spectators, witnessing whatever happens around us. Nothing new here, or by that matters with the any of the following states. The only difference is that with the advent of web, the power and time by which this all process happens is amazingly fast, meaning I can progress from the point where I’ve witnessed something to the point where I decide to engage some action about it in a fraction of the time it used to happen.
For companies this brought in the need for them to engage users in all this different mind settings. And basically you have two options about it: retreat or engage the conversation. Bruno and the portuguese bloggers that joint the conversation seem to have an agreement that if you’re 100% into it, it’s probably better not to jump into blogging at all, since the side effects of poor communication (blogging in this case) can be as worst as traditional communication.
On the other side, for the companies that actually engage the blogging as a communication process, there are clear advantages. Users will always talk about a company products, so if a company does provide their customers with a place for open discussion about their products, they somehow control or at least have an active part in that discussion. Anyone barely involved in PR knows how much better that is
Plus, and this was something I haven’t heard during the general conversation, people bond with brands, it’s a natural happening, the difference this days to me is that people don’t expect to be mass-branded any more, so the closer they feel to a brand, the more personal the experience gets… and experience is everything in there days.
I personally thing that this theme is amazingly important in the Portuguese context, and I’m not complaining as usual to the fact that Portuguese companies tend to be 2/3 years far behind the rest of Europe/World! But by seeing so many companies PR’s in that room and see them taking part of the discussion and acknowledging the importance of the blogs in their communication as a way to increase their users satisfaction and have closer control how their brands are interpreted by their customers it’s already clear the importance blogs will have in the future or traditional public relations.
One last note, for the Unicer team who organized this all event, congratulations to them all, I’m truly inspired and admired with the concept.
UPDATE: the full video (PT) is now available:
April 11th, 2008
I’ve been working on a presentation about a special aspect of interface design: the need for PLAY! Boring interfaces don’t go far! And we as Humans have this inner desire for play so the more engaging a service/site is the better especially on the web where our attention span is so scarce!
Although the hard core of the presentation content is done (I’ve made a demo of it at Tecnonov last Saturday), and I’ll be posting it online in a couple of days, but the thing is that I would love to enrich it with a lot of good and bad examples of interface design! My Request for Help here is precisely for that, I would love to hear from your most loved or hated interface designs that you have to work everyday! Please drop me an email with a screenshot and why you actually that particular ’strong’ feeling about it! I promise to give full acknowledge of each submission if it actually makes it to final presentation!
Email: pedro (.) custodio (at) gmail (.) com
April 8th, 2008
Singularity 2008 will gather more than 100 of the world’s top web visionaries, developers, designers, thought leaders, and celebrities on what will be the very first large-scale online web conference in the world!
Singularity is an amazing idea by Aral Balkan, which many of us know from his open-source project SWX and other amazing works as Flash developer.
The idea is all about active networking and knowledge sharing, but one of Aral intentions will probably really make the difference! Aral wants to engage local groups to setup little singularities happening everywhere around the world at the same time and in parallel with the online event!
I’m so sold out to the idea that I’ve joined the speakers ranks and will be giving a presentation on my Community Design Patterns project:
You can keep an eye out for Singularity Blog or simply by joining the ranks at it’s Upcomming Group.
As a side note, just two very quick and interesting aspects of Singularity: 1) it will represent a screenshot of the Web in 2008 and 2) by saving so many flights it will be a very green conference right?
March 27th, 2008
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