Being known for our non-traditional ideas, my agency’s annual holiday card is expected to be much more than a piece of paper and a photo. With “green thinking” being the latest craze, this year’s card is actually not a card at all— it’s a screensaver. The Renegade Greensaver, to be exact. The Greensaver serves up eco-friendly tips. It’s connected to the Internet and will display fresh user-generated tips to you on a regular basis.
With a “do as I say, not as I do” mentality, try to ignore the hypocrisy of getting conservation tips from an energy guzzling machine and download the Greensaver here. It’s available for both Mac and PC, so you have no excuse not to check it out.
If you live in New York City or are planning a visit, check out last year’s card— I Saw NY. The website uses Google Maps technology to plot user-submitted reviews and tips on New York’s best restaurants, bars, shopping and everything in between. Anyone can contribute, so share your favorite watering hole or sushi place with the world. Don’t have one or want to find a new one? You’re in luck, users have already submitted everything from where to see a guy play a saw as an instrument to a store that sells superhero equipment.
I was responsible for the front-end programming on both of these projects. As always, your questions and comments are encouraged.
I recently launched a site redesign for Kelly Architects, an interior architectural design studio based in Los Angeles. All of the design / development work was painstakingly done by yours truly and is solely responsible for the complete lack of recent posts.
I’d like to say I’ll have more time to write in the near future, but I am jumping directly into my next project — a Facebook application for my friends over at mental_floss called “Spot the Big Fat Lie”.
Flash guru Broman and I have once again defied the odds and met our seemingly impossible three week deadline. After countless sleepless nights and with the aid of a bottomless cup of coffee, Panasonic Share the Air 2007 is now live!
“Share the Air” is a viral extension of Panasonic’s Action Sports Tour, which tours five U.S. cities this summer. The website offers extreme sport enthusiasts the chance to submit pictures and videos of their own sessions to be judged by professional skaters and photographers. Winning submissions bank a hefty cash prize and some cool Panasonic gear— so get filming!
Stay up-to-date on the NHL’s latest fights
This site not only provides video and commentary on each fight, but it also allows users to vote on the winner. Even cheap shots from scumbags like Chris Simon are documented here. An excellent resource for any hockey fan.
Future Weapons on the Discovery Channel
The only thing I enjoy more than host Richard “Mack” Machowicz’s callus disposition towards combat casualty are his constant reminders to viewers that the weapons featured on the show are used to more effectively fight the evil terrorists. If I get to watch a double reinforced cement building get blown into a million pieces by an “anti-structure” missile, then I’ll deal with the shameless pro-war propaganda. Check this show out Monday’s at 9pm on the Discovery Channel.
My roommate works for a respected interactive agency here in NYC that is currently in the market for a Senior Interface Engineer. While looking through resumes of potential candidates, he came across this atrocity of a website (turn your sound up), accompanied by the following grammatically hilarious cover letter:
Your Senior Interface Designer position is of great interest to me and I’am a treasure chest full of knowledge, waiting to be opened! By blending my extensive knowledge of computer programming, and business marketing skills added onto your vision and goals, new horizons are easily obtainable. Whether you plan to utilize E-commerce or interactive videos, your company will be able to set new objectives, increase its internet exposure, advertising response, market share, and widen its global distribution avenues in the future with my services. I can creatively update any site by utilizing my custom FLASH 3D animations, voiceovers, sound effects, special effects and remixed-music, to establish an interactive video site that will capture your customer’s imagination.
By shooting videos and blending my HTML skills together I can create a futuristic designing theme that creates “Thunder Clapping” MOMA! {Word of Mouth Advertising} My innovative designs will add a sparkling touch of class to any site plus my skills run parallel to the present demands of your vacant position. My background also includes a wide variety of direct mail business marketing knowledge, creative media ads, and business proposal writing skills. I’am self motivated, own all of my own computer equipment, reliable, honorable, catch on quick, able to follow instructions, and possess the operating knowledge to over 52 different computer programs.
My animation skills are expert, and I’am learning advanced coding for FLASH action script games. If you are looking for a professional with insight, foresight, vision, mega experience and common sense! As we enter the outer limits of the new millennium with interactive animations and videos. Then your nationwide search for an innovative FLASH web designer has just ended.
If this guy’s resume came across my desk I would have to give him an interview just so I could laugh hysterically in his face for hours on end. You are a complete disgrace to every talented designer who takes pride in their work and their profession. Could you possibly be delusional enough to think you are qualified for any senior level position, let alone as an interface engineer? You can’t even write a coherent sentence!
Between the website and the cover letter, I have many questions and comments:
The first sentence of your cover letter incorrectly identifies the position for which you are applying. Great start.
Did you really just refer to yourself as a “treasure chest full of knowledge” and your experience level as “mega”? God I hate you so much.
I assumed even high school dropouts knew the contraction for “I am”. Guess not.
The animated GIF’s that litter your website make me want to throw up in disgust while having an epileptic seizure. Any “designer” that thinks these things “add a sparkling touch of class to any site” needs to be shot in the back of the head at very close range.
Is this or this or this or this what you consider to be “expert” animation skills? These are hilariously bad.
Your cover letter sounds like you bought a book of internet buzz words and randomly strung them together into sentence fragments.
Microsoft WordArt 3D graphics are quite possibly the tackiest things in the world. I’m surprised the entire website wasn’t written in Comic Sans.
You say your “futuristic designing theme” creates “Thunder Clapping MOMA! {Word of Mouth Advertising}”. First of all, what the fuck does that even mean? Second, how the hell did you manage to misspell your own acronym???
Your voiceover skills are nothing short of hilarious. The echo effect gets bonus points.
Hit ctrl+A on his homepage and scroll down. You may think you are outsmarting Google by doing this, but this ill-advised attempt at Search Engine Optimization (S.E.O.) is actually killing your Google Page Rank. You would know this if you were, in fact, the web designer you claim to be.
Listen very closely. Not everyone who can throw together a webpage with some annoying music is a web designer. You suck. Application denied.
I would like to start by thanking Charles for presenting this video at our companies weekly creative meeting. Not only is this an effective visualization of the transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, but one that offers a stunning insight into how Web 2.0 is affecting and changing our lives as we know them.
To many people, Web 2.0 is a term used to describe the fancy gradients and glassy buttons that have become so common in recent web design. Others will make reference to the emergence of user-generated content, blogs, wikis and social networking. Indeed, these are all byproducts of the Web 2.0 movement. However, the most profound affects have only begun to emerge. As the video describes, the most important distinction between these web “versions” is the separation of form from content. By separating the visual aesthetic from the content itself, we have hidden the complexity of the technology at the heart of the internet. This has opened the doors of online content creation to even the least tech savvy people, allowing virtual content to be the voice of the entire population rather than a select few. Web 2.0 is a movement that marks the beginning of an entirely new way of thinking and a new way of living. We are currently experiencing a technological and cultural shift that is unprecedented. Think about the world as you knew it a decade ago. It’s gone. Our lives have become automated, at times to a fault.
Google has emerged from the depths of Silicon Valley and streamlined all of our day-to-day activities, relieving us of any responsibility to search for answers or solutions unaided. MySpace has created virtual identities and communities for millions of people to use and abuse. Wikipedia has channeled the flow of information around scholars and first-hand sources and allowed it to intersect with the average person. YouTube has opened the door to 15 minutes of fame for aspiring directors, actors, musicians and absolute idiots. Everyone has now been given the means to be seen and be heard, but, more importantly, the means to be heard but not seen.
This is both fantastic and terrifying.
As we enter the virtual world we are shedding our real world identity in favor of utter ambiguity. We are now pure content, our true inner selves freed from the restraints imposed by our outer framework. With the ability to spread across a variety of forms with complete anonymity. As creators of virtual content we choose what and how much of ourselves is reveled to our virtual colleagues. We choose what we teach the machine and this lesson is by no means uncalculated. Anyone can visually observe the events of my life by perusing my Flickr account, but not even know my name. Conversely, somebody could read this blog and know many of my inner thoughts and opinions without having any context to base an assumption of my physical appearance. Obviously I have just made that connection for you, but that is a choice based on my comfort level with this medium. Some people openly embrace it while others shudder in fear of it. I would probably shake its hand.
At the beginning of the information revolution, back in Web 1.0, we were attempting to make a distinct separation of our real selves from our virtual ones. Now that we are beginning to grow tired of the ambiguity we once thrived on, we again crave the real-life interactions and connections we once had. Enter Web 2.0. For the most part, these virtual connections have not made the transition back to reality to complete the circle. As a result, we are beginning to see a change in the way that we handle our daily lives — opting for an automated solution in lieu of our traditional ones.
Why go to a bar to meet someone when you can go to Match.com?
When a society starts thinking like that, it becomes screamingly obvious that we are no longer looking for an enhancement to our daily lives, but a replacement. A step over the line dividing real life, tangible experiences from virtual ones is a step in the wrong direction. But what will happen if we cross that line, you ask? Web 3.0, I presume.
