The lads at tokyoplastic have recently given The Little Fella a new lick of paint. I was lucky enough to brief in the original project to the boys which led to the creation of the loveable animated puppy and I am digging what they've done to him now. Grotesquely real, as they say themselves, and full of new tricks. Check him out.
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On March 23, "Night Tennis" came to the Sony Ericsson Open (21st March – 1st April), a Masters Series event in Miami. It's the second time it's been done with the first in Madrid at the end of the last year.
Night Tennis is played on a pitch black court between eight ATP and WTA professional players. The only illumination comes from the UV on the players' clothing and rackets, the net and the lines, and from the naturally fluorescent balls. Each match is punctuated by explosive beats and an incredible light show on a 25-metre projection screen. In Miami, dance music was provided by Paul Oakenfold, Masters at Work and Murk. In between matches, the crowd was treated to a UV fashion show by Gen Art.
Check out the Night Tennis trailer. Click on "action" after the site loads. Rumour has it they are considering a Night Tennis event for Wimbledon.
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Just got hold of Neil Young's latest live archival offering, Live At Massey Hall. It's probably my favourite live Neil album to date, which is really saying something. The sound quality is incredible, and those old songs that have been with me so long sound fresh and great. Back when this was recorded in 1971, many of the songs were still works in progress, as evidenced by Neil singing "a man feels afraid" in the first verse of "A Man Needs A Maid." All in all, this a fabulous piece of work and the accompanying DVD is worth a look as well. Aside from the gig itself, there lots of old footage from Neil's ranch, interviews with the man from 1997 discussing the Massey Hall performance, and plenty else besides. Check out the trailer below.
There's also more to come from the Neil Young archives, which, if it's as good as this, will be well worth waiting for.
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I've been meaning to post something on this since it happened last week. Here's a good trick: take a stylish photo of yourself scantily clad, add a product and a company logo, book a nice big colour spread in a magazine, and have them bill said company directly. A Swiss guy did just this and Gucci copped the $50,000 bill. This same bloke has also attempted to book concert venues by passing himself off as Puerto Rican singer Chayanne. Here's more and check out his fake Gucci ad as it appeared below.
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ABC's Four Corners had a fantastic in-depth report on Second Life last night. Reporter Ticky Fullerton took on the guise of a very pretty avater (I might add!) and explored the virtual world from all its angles including interviews with a bunch of key players both offline and also in world. You can see the program online, plus check out extended interviews, transcripts, articles and interactive features. Interviews included Second Life’s creator Philip Rosedale, virtual worlds economic guru Ted Castranova, critic Clay Shirky, virtual fashionista Veronica Brown, porn king Stroker Serpentine, "Play Money" author, Julian Dibbell, and virtual stock exchange pioneer, Australia’s own Luke Connell.
The report was also simulcast on the new ABC Island within Second Life, and afterwards, Ticky Fullerton answered questions from an audience in world.
While I'm on a Second Life rant, I stumbled across something cool at Mefeedia. An interview with brilliant novelist Kurt Vonnegut by host John Hockenberry, live from Second Life. The interview was for the "Through the Looking Glass" series, from the US national public radio program, The Infinite Mind.
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There's so much talk about Twitter these days, especially since SXSW where it really exploded, in large part due to an SWF display at the conference of all the messages texted into the service. You can check out the display here --extremely cool. Twittervision have created an even better version here.
In terms of reaching a tipping point, it's fascinating to track Twitter's message growth since the service began. This has been done right here by following the message log of Twitter's founder, Evan Williams (he has a very cool site by the way), whose message log went from #28 in March, 2006, to about #8.3M last Friday. Check out the overall usage increase on Twitter since SXSW as well, it is unbelievable.
In essence, Twitter brings together instant messaging, social networking and wireless communication allowing people to use their computers or mobile phones to send short messages (up to 140 characters) by text message or instant message to friends who have linked to them. There are other such services, such as the Google-owned Dodgeball, who dub the whole thing mobile social software, but Twitter seems to be the one garnering all the attention.
Like most social-networking sites, once a person opens a Twitter account they can invite their friends to join or connect with existing members. Each member gets a personal web page that logs all their posts. Some members limit their networks to a handful of friends while others sign up to receive instant updates from dozens of members.
Twitter elicits mixed feelings among early adopters. Proponents say it's a good way to keep in touch, but some feel "over-connected", as they deal with random "tweets" from friends 24/7. Check out this for a really negative view.
Fad or the next big thing in mobile communication? Steve Rubel looks at both sides here, suggesting some influentials are unsubscribing from hundreds of blogs in favour of following Twitter streams. Steve talks about Twitter really getting him to rethink when and how he publishes, especially as he, like most of us, is very mobile. He feels shorter micro blogs throughout the day/night lend themselves to Twitter.
However it pans out, Twitter has certainly captured the imagination. I will be very interested to follow the discussion and see what happens next.
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Last night saw Carlton take out it's second AFL pre-season premiership in three years, beating the Brisbane Lions by 25 points in perfect conditions at The Telstra Dome in Melbourne. Here's a match report at Real Footy. Well done to the Mighty Blues and especially the young brigade. I thought Murphy and Russell were fantastic through the midfield as was Irishman Setanta O'hAilpin in defence on Brisbane's game-breaker, Jonathan Brown. Hats off to Brendan Fevola for his four goal haul and to Nick Stevens for winning the Michael Tuck Medal after his 26 touch, best-on-ground performance.
After a dismal time on and off the field last year, let's hope the success now continues for The Blues in 2007.
As the official Player Partner of Jason Saddington, I am also hoping he can take a step forward this year and break into the team. When he's playing well, he is deserving of an opportunity, but with the team on a high, spots are at a premium and he is going to have to work hard all season to break in and maintain a position.
My grandfather, Harcourt Dowlsey, also played for Carlton. Wearing #20 and playing Centre Half Forward, he booted seven goals in three games in the 1941 season against St Kilda, Collingwood, and Melbourne.
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On the topic of crowd wisdom, you must have a look at PicksPal, a fantasy sports betting site. It’s all for fun, not money, but interestingly, PicksPal has an overall 63% win rate, which is pretty incredible. Some of the recent results can be viewed here. PicksPal really shows the predictive power of large groups (it has more than 100,000 members) (especially when the group has nothing to lose and chooses freely) and if the win rate remains over 50% against the spread, they will begin to disrupt real betting markets. Pickspal also expanded into pop culture “betting” earlier this year, with PicksPop. Shame they don't yet follow Tennis and Aussie Rules Football, or I would be on the site way too often!
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This month's trendwatching.com briefing covers a topic I enjoy, the power of groups or collective thinking and how the online medium is massively increasing the ability of people to easily connect, communicate and form groups to exert influence on a glbal scale together as a single force.They are calling this phenomenon "Crowd Clout."
It's not a new concept, as they agree, but the guys at trendwatching.com have taken a fresh look with some interesting examples. Take a look at the April Trend Briefing for more.
If that interests you, I think you should also read The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, who discusses with startling insight why the many are smarter than the few and how this shapes business, economy and every aspect of our lives.
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The Hummer-haters gang together at FUH2
