Ideas, Money & Art

Find Your Balance Point

There is something to be said for concentration and focus. With the amount of distractions in our work life (and life in general) I keep coming back to the idea that singular focus is the answer to productivity. And I don't mean productivity in an efficiency, Henry Ford way. I mean personal productivity. There are so many things I want to accomplish on a day to day basis and it seems I am always fighting through the white noise of my surroundings (for instance, I have 13 apps and 8 browser tabs open as I try to write this entry). What this gentleman is demonstrating is that with singular focus the obstacles fade away. The impossible becomes possible (no glue required).

These are trying times...

but sometimes a quote like this reminds you that life is to be lived, not feared. Thanks Andrea

“This is the true joy in life, to be used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, to be thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap. To be a force of nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am a member of a community and as a member it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can before I die. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch that I want to make burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” George Bernard Shaw

A Clever Way to Guilt People Into Voting

What if you or one of your friends cost Barack the election this year because you/they decided not to vote. This website let's you see how the world would react. Plug in your info and see what it is like to let the entire free world down!

This is a clever use of viral video. Beats dancing elves in my book.

Project Frog Shoot

Last week we IMA-ers had a shoot with an architectural firm named Project FROG. Project FROG is a pioneering firm that integrates sustainability and customization into quick-to-deploy, high performance building environments. Our mission is to provide a transformational landscape of sustainable, friendly, and affordable learning environments that inspire creativity, collaboration and productivity. (from their site).

They have created a new type of portable classroom. In this case, the classrooms were on the San Francisco City College campus. They were beautiful, functional and sustainable. We were impressed.

What happens when you fund Google-Maltese Falcon arrives in SF Bay

On Saturday Tom Perkins brought the Maltese Falcon into San Francisco Bay. It looked like a 21st century pirate ship emerging from the fog over the Pacific.

Man on Wire (What Is Your Dream?)

This film is an amazing story of a man with a dream. As with all dreams, his does not come easily. But he persists, leveling all obstructions, to arrive at his goal. When he arrives there is an extraordinary look that comes across his face. It looks like he has touched God.

Man on Wire website
HD Trailer @ Apple

IMA

Subaru Sexy Photo Shoot Website

And one more.

Nice use of interaction. So few of these are actually fun to use.

Sex Photo Shoot

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One of my all time favorite flash websites

This one has been around for years but never gets old.

Matthew Mahon

IMA

Interesting site concept

As IMA gets deeper and deeper into our interactive niche and looks to our future in content creation and distribution, I'm going to post websites that I come across that look interesting and take the web in a new direction (sorry for the rambling sentence, a little extra Blue Bottle this morning).

Brand Gaurdians does some interesting things with their layout and approach, which I like, but it isn't interactive enough. All of those words should link to something.

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Daemon: Bot-mediated Reality was good

I said I would follow up if Friday night's event was a good one. Well, it was, so here we go.

The seminar focused on bots, which are the programs that run our automated world. They are a type of artificial intelligence called narrow AI and they are everywhere around us. What is disconcerting is that there are a small group of people writing these bots and wreaking havoc on "the cloud" and private institutions alike. Mr. Suarez showed a graph ofBotnets (a Botnet being an army of zombie computers taken over by bots ((really, I'm not making this up)). These Botnets can then wreak havoc by denying internet service or sending out virtual mountains of spam. In one particularly frightening example, Suarez related the tale of an Israeli network security company who was trying to protect a large corporate client from a botnet. In retaliation, the programmer aimed the attack at the security firm which denied internet access to the entire company. The company went out of business. Then the bot army refocused on its primary target. Okay...

The overall theme of the talk was grim but Suarez, who owns his own IT consulting firm, ended with a ray of hope. He suggests we build another network beside the current internet we know and love and use complete, personal transparency to deny the power of masquerading bots. If this sounds interesting check out his book (if you don't like to read it will be coming to a theater near you). If this sounds REALLY interesting, join Long Now and you can watch the video of the presentation.

IMA