I actually came to the NYT story Broadway Is Busy, With Pedestrians, if Not Car Traffic from a post on Reuters by Felix Salmon How the NYT sees bikes on Broadway which offers a fascinating counterbalance to the original article. However that isn’t what I’m wanting to post about. What I did want to note is that the info graphic is an interesting study of simplification and visualization of a street that I’ve often walked down. If a person walks down any of those cross sections of bike lanes, car lanes and sitting areas, it changes constantly yet has a consistent flow. I’ve often wondered what the pattern looked from above—now I know.

Yesterday while working on a multi touch iPad UI issue with Chris Fahey, the phrase “gesture deficient” came up. We were looking at some of the iPhone swipe actions to multi delete and wondered how many people like or even know about some of the things a person can do to swipe. Essentially there’s features built around those that are “gesture deficient”, for those that didn’t know that they can swipe delete things on their iPhone. This also relates to the iPad as well. One interesting response that I was asked about on Twitter after mentioning the statement was “what is the “unsuck” definition of that?” To that I replied “possibly swipe happy or happy tapper”.

Continuing on the swipe theme on a touch screen, I came across the iPhone game We Sliders. At first there doesn’t seem much to it. It’s actually quite ambient. There’s no music (though that would be cool), just shifting colour as a person moves the bars. As far as I can tell the goal is to sync the bars together by moving them side to side. At first there’s just two bars, once that level is completed is becomes three and after that it increases incrementally. I managed to get to six bars last night. As far as experiences go I’d rate this pretty high just on the uniqueness of the game and the discipline to keep it very simple (yet difficult) in terms of game play.

This morning as I do every morning that I walk to work I try to capture a photo of something that caught my attention. Today I stopped to notice a poster that had QR code on the bottom of it. Up until now most of the QR code stuff that I’ve seen on ads has been pretty gimmicky—but something about the placement had me curious. Plus the poster was from nyc.gov so I figured it probably had more value than just a coupon.

The three images show the chronological order of events. First I saw the poster, hence photographed it. Once I uploaded the image to Flickr I pulled out iPhone and pointed it at the QR code. Once read a bit.ly url popped up so I opened the url on my MacBook Pro after I emailed myself the link. The link btw is http://nyc.gov/html/media/html/schedules/schedules.shtml#life_schedule Turns out that the link is for a schedule of events on a number of different NYC TV channels. Everything worked perfectly to get to the site however the schedule in terms of getting me interested was pretty low. For all the effort to get me to the site I would hope that they would take some time to make the schedule readable outside of an excel form. At the minimum, include an image with each of the headings, at the max give me some filtering options with descriptions.

While I’m scratching my head wondering why they didn’t make the entire experience great, I do have to mention that it is pretty rare that I take the effort to actually check the url on any poster.

Last weekend Madison and I met up with Sarah Cox of Core77 and Raleigh Pop fame in Washington Square park to discuss dogs and design. It was fun to hang out on an early Saturday morning talking about two of my favourite topics. If you’re curious to read some of the conversation, please visit Dogs on Design- Surtees’ Oversized Lap Dog.

Just received a really nice zine from Auckland, New Zealand from Amanda Wood. It’s 22 pages plus cover and is balanced between black & white images of cityscapes and text. While I do push the speed of technology on this blog, I have to admit that I really appreciate when someone takes the effort and time to create something like Sketches. When someone creates a pdf the thing can be as many pages as possible, infinitely colourful and any dimension. Looking at this zine it felt considered with the pace of the images, page count and of course the writing.

If you’re curious to see more for your self, visit http://www.vortex.net.nz/sfsl.

This post is half recap, half collection of a couple mobile apps that found out about last night and how I saw things take off. I came across a post from Bob Lefsetz who typically writes about the music industry though occasionally brings something else into the mix. He was talking about a ski resort that was thinking more into the mobile future than anyone in the music industry. There was a lot of good points plus the attached video of the ski resort implementing check in’s was pretty smart. This was the quote I tweeted to link to his post:

What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where a resort company utilizes this concept before a music company?

A couple minutes later I looked at my stats from bit.ly to see how many people had clicked on it. At first I thought the number was an error but it turns out that Scobleizer rt’d it. It was fascinating to watch how the rt’s flew after that. Just like the post Visualizing How a Link Spreads Through the Twitterverse I was watching this happen in real time. Usually if someone passes along something I’ve mentioned things pop a tiny bit, this was a different magnitude.

The bigger deal in all this to me is the different type of services that offer check in’s. Some are trying to be all things to all businesses, while other’s are just for one particular market—in my example a a ski resort. I’m not sure who was behind the design of Epic Mix though I have a couple guesses. The video is quite compelling and covers a lot of angles that haven’t been completely thought out until now. A small but important feature is that they’ve also tried to solve the feature of kids checking in. The tech behind the service is already getting a lot of attention.

One other mobile check in service to take a look at to compare is Festival Crowd. I haven’t played with the service at all, it looks like it does speak to some of the features that Lefsetz was wanting. All these check in’s plus push to a third party is going to be the minimum very soon in terms of how busiesses and events become a better experience. The days of just having a listing of events as the site are over.

Sunday morning I had the opportunity to hang out with Randy J. Hunt, a smart design guy that I respect a lot. He has a habit of mentioning great places to eat so when he emailed me on Saturday wanting to meet up on Sunday I wasn’t going to say no. I had never been to Pulinos before but have walked by it quite a bit with Madison checking out what was going on Bowery.

We ended up splitting a couple pizza’s. There was the Nutella (extra virgin olive oil, sea salt + nutella) and the Ottima (Ricotta, wild blueberry jam + bacon). Having never had those combinations before I wasn’t sure what to expect. The Nutella was a plain thin crust with a side dish of Nutella and sea salt. The Ottima was had a decent proportion of the description above. They were both amazing for different reasons. Nutella and sea salt are a great combo while the ottima was a solid combination of three elements.

While the food was really good what made me want to do this post was the bathroom. Strange as that sounds there was a perception shift that I had never really felt before. A lot of bathrooms in NYC are multifinctional—meaning they’re both for women and men, but the doors at Pulinos would suggest otherwise. Walking down the stairs there’s two doors—women’s and men’s. Kind of obvious until a person washes their hands. The bathroom was empty while I was there, though I suspect the experience would have been different if I had seen anyone inside. In any case as I turned my head to my right I noticed that both the women’s and men’s doors lead to the same spot that I was standing. It was a really interesting gut hit to see that. I could have photographed the whole experience after the fact but I think it is worth going through without the visual ahead of time.

I would love to know the process of how this bathroom came to be. I’m going to assume that this idea isn’t completly unique but it was the first time I’ve experienced it first hand. That situation was a great example of taking a set of parameters that most people would have complained about, and made it something memorable to the context of a shared bathroom which isn’t exactly uncommon in NYC.

Usually patent diagrams aren’t that exciting. The above images are—they’re illustrating an automatic lacing system. A couple years back I had a post about the actual shoe here, here, and here. Now come the laces.

More info about the laces at Street Giant and Nice Kicks.

Just as the title suggests I was curious to examen how these two on demand media types benefit and distract people that want to enjoy music. Pandora allows a person to search for an artist and stream music from their choice along with other that sound similar. In theory the stream will play as long as someone wants. If they want to advance to a mystery next track they can, but with the free version this can happen only for a limited period of times. Vevo on the other hand streams high quality music videos from a fairly small library of mainstream artists. Typically someone once again will search for an artist, play the video and be forced to find a new video after the song is over. There’s playlists and other ways to find videos but before someone can view a new video they must stop watching something.

The benefit of audio streaming from Pandora is that if they’re playing an artist they like, there’s a chance that they can let the service pick the rest of the music. They can do other things while the music is on. It’s not visual like Vevo but a time saver. The biggest drawback is that the songs can get predictable after a while. For Vevo the high quality video stream is impressive. While the sound doesn’t always match up exactly with the video, the pure quality of the video is clean. The biggest issue is that if a person get’s bored of what they’re watching there’s no easy way to change the channel. A person can’t pick a new track while the audio or visual is playing. What that means is that a person must really be willing to make a good selection, otherwise there’s a couple annoying clicks before they can find what they’re looking for. In theory a person can make a playlist which will stream all the videos consecutively, but again that’s an investment in time.

Essentially it comes down to random choices of audio being selected that can’t be rewinded but forwarded versus finding exactly what you want, but having to make that choice every time with a delay in the next video. The ideal solution would be the ability to watch something that I choose and have the ability to find something new without turning the video off. This could be achieved in the mode after tapping the screen. Allow someone to search for new artists or present related videos in a results screen while the audio plays.

With the humidity at levels that I can’t really tolerate I’ve been spending most of my Sunday afternoon reading. I’ve also been keeping an eye on the clouds roll in and out, sometimes turning my view completely white. But things move fast and a couple moments later I had a new pointillism inspired view. Tons of clear raindrops turned my view into something that if I didn’t capture that moment would likely not be seen again. Here’s a couple of those images.

It should be noted that these images are best viewed with the DJ Shadow’s Pandora channel playing in the background.

“Observe the world around you – everything you do, and especially everything you hate to do.
- Aaron Patzer”

Simple quote (likely less than 140 characters) in text.

DISPLAY

Visualize and personalize quote with the face of the person that wrote it, make type better to read

HOST

Show on website with single url that is part of a larger collection, give the capabilities to pass core unit via text (Twitter)

LOOP

Give away the text knowing that there’s a better experience within the display at their own site.

Last night I watched a live announcement from Facebook about what Foursquare had already done. Once the keynote presentation ended I watched Gowalla go up as the first partner and was sort of relieved. I had never used them because again I thought they were a blatent rip off of Foursquare. (For the record I think the design of Gowalla is gaudy and smudgy.) I felt Gowalla would sell me out data wise if the opportunity presented their company to advance up the social geo chain. But next up was Foursquare and while I didn’t feel the gut reaction, I realized that I would never use the service the same way again.

As a designer I feel that it is really important to understand how communication works these days. I think it would be irresponsible to give a client advice not knowing what is available and what advantages there are to using particular streams. So I try a lot of different services to figure out what advantages they hold. Last night watching the Facebook announcement on Ustream allowed me to consider a couple things. If I wasn’t going to check in the same way again, how could I learn from it? At first I thought why not just check in though what Foursquare considers as shouts. Instead of mentioning where I was I’d just type in the zip code of where I was. I could still use that info for my own reasons and Facebook would never be able to figure out my trending data. So I tried that this morning and realized that was a pretty dumb idea. It was pretty pointless and a waste of my energy. So I decided to just delete my account.

There were a couple other reasons, Facebook Places was the last 20%. 1. I don’t think Foursquare should have an open API. I’m pretty sure anyone that has checked in has not considered what http://www.assistedserendipity.com/ can do with that info. 2. I also think that there has been plenty of time to make Foursquare links valuable. There is zero value in clicking on a link of someone I know that has checked in to somewhere and has mentioned it on Twitter. 3. I felt creepy looking at people’s Twitter accounts from people that checked into places I was at. 4. For all the people I was connected to on Foursquare, I think I only asked a couple people to connect to me—everyone else asked me to join. I really didn’t like putting people in the position of saying yes or no to me. 5. I felt if there was a time to quit, this was it. I design products and I wanted to know what the experience would be to quit something. What would hold me back, if anything. I also realize that I could start up again tomorrow if I wanted. Most of the people outside of NYC that I know probably wouldn’t know to follow me again but if someone really wanted to know what I was up to, they would follow me again.

There’s a couple people at Foursquare that I really respect and think very highly of. But with that said my data is open to anyone that can play with the API. On top of that I suspect the closed API from Facebook is just to watch how people use the info before they revise their own service. Maybe I’ll sign up again, and if I don’t maybe I’ll rethink how the data I used to check in could be valuable to myself.

A couple more thoughts 08.20.2010

This tweet sort of sums things up for me “fortheartofit RT @damongarrett: Facebook assumes we want the same networks of people across each of the social media products we use. Um, not quite.”

I’m also thinking about how a signed up for one service and now potentially all that data could have been sucked into Facebook. Sure Foursquare already has an open API that anyone can do strange stuff to my data—but with Facebook it becomes sketchier. And like I said in my prior mentions, I might sign up again at some point. I just felt I had a right to do what I wanted with my data before Facebook got their hands on it.

I like this story for a couple reasons. I found it via Twitter from the person that actually designed it. The illustration is perfectly balanced between narrative and visuals. I can look at it more than once and it is going to have the same consistent impact. I also wanted to post about it so I can have the .png in my own database. Just press (or click if you’re not on an iPad) to view it at full size.

So here’s how I found it. Twitter from a friend so I rt’d it, to Jezebell: Can We Date? Find Out, With This Handy Flowchart who originally linked from The Morning News: Can We Date?.

I know it’s not Friday yet, but for this week #FF goes to http://twitter.com/jenniferdaniel.

I really enjoyed reading and looking through From Here to There: A Curious Collection from the Hand Drawn Map Association. The book is divided into six categories of maps: directional maps, found maps, fictional maps, artful maps, maps of unusual places and explanatory maps. Each map that is a category explains what is going on with the map, and typically a story. What I found enjoyable was reading the personal anecdotes of why a person needed a map or what they doing as a result.

As I went through all the maps it became clear that there was a couple recurring needs for the maps. People traveling to somewhere new, giving context to something that people needed reminding of, or some specific event that was going to happen once. Other details that people will find fascinating is how people choose to organize information, what details to keep, and how things were categorized. Taking all those details into account plus visualizing all that stuff makes things enjoyable to read.

I’m a huge fan of information design and by relation—maps. I’ve blogged in the past about some of the maps contained in the book, so when I opened the envelope for this book I was pretty happy. I didn’t even know that this book was going to happen—but I’m glad it got into my hands. I think this is one of those books that people will spend some quality time with, both reading from cover to cover and flipping it open from time to time for inspiration.

BOOK INFO
Title: From Here to There: A Curious Collection from the Hand Drawn Map Association
Author: Kris Harzinski
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Additional Link: http://www.handmaps.org/

Up until a couple months ago I’d collect a number of links over a week, look at what patterns tied them together and make a mind map of it. Things have been really busy and I haven’t had the time to focus on that type of post. I’m also looking at a huge magnitude shift in the number of things I can read during a week—it is really hard to take the time to stop reading and start posting. Today was strange in that I kept tweeting about three topics that most people came across today too. 800% Justin Bieber, Twifficiency and Web is Dead. What I’ve done is list the tweet, a screen shot of the link to the site and pulled a relevant quote. By doing this I was curious to see what things might have been a pattern.

There was an interesting similarity that each three took topics took. First it was a gut kind of wow to pass along the link, second, it was about demystifying the link—was it fake, which lead to talking about potential consequences which lead to interviews with people actually involved. Tomorrow I could pull three different things and come to similar conclusion. But as it was Tuesday and typically things that want to be released come out on a day like this, I thought it was worth taking note.

There was a lot of data issues, age issues, visualization issues, stuff that could be passed along easily issues, and the fact that Twitter was the glue to spread all those issues is valuable to know.

JUSTIN BIEBER

RT @Switched: how to make bieber sound incredible: slow him down 800 percent http://gawker.com/5614579/how-to-make-justin-bieber-sound-incredible-slow-him-down-800-percent morning zen

You totally hate Justin Bieber, right, because you’re a rebel, or whatever? That’s just because you haven’t listened to Bieber slowed down 800 percent. Now his new single “U Smile” is a 30-minute epic. And it sounds awesome. No, really.

RT @hamsandwich: We’ve been had! RT @zefrank: Bieber’s slw down is a fake sorry the original :: http://photonwaveorchestra.bandcamp.com/

We are aware…

RT @scandb: @MichaelSurtees @hamsandwich @zefrank It’s real! Observe: http://www.avclub.com/articles/great-job-internet-justin-bieber-sounds-amazing-wh,44254/ /cc @SuGeneris

UPDATE: As someone pointed out in the comments below, a group called “Photon Wave Orchestra” has claimed this song as its own original work. The poster of this MP3, known as Shamantis, has already addressed these claims, saying, “I DO NOT KNOW WHO THESE GUYS ARE: http://photonwaveorchestra.bandcamp.com/ but they are claiming to be the original makers of this song. THIS IS FALSE. take my song and speed it up 8x if you don’t believe me.” Many Soundcloud users say they have put the original Bieber song into software like Audacity and Paulstretch and gotten the exact same results heard here. So the question now seems to be who did it first—Shamantis or “Photon Wave Orchestra,” a supposed musical group whose sole output seems to be the above song, who claims to have posted the track on April 1 on its profile but whose RSS feed reveals that it really did so on August 16, and whose mysterious origins may be answered by some now-deleted 4chan posts—but there is apparently no question that this really is “U Smile” slowed down 800 percent. For once, something on the Internet appears to be genuine

“I guess the Internet really hates Bieber and to see him in a new light is quite a revelation of sorts” [INTERVIEW] http://mashable.com/2010/08/17/slowed-down-justin-bieber-song/

Who are you? You know, age, profession, where do you live, etc?
I’m Nick Pittsinger! I’m 20, I live in Tampa, Florida, and I produce music all day, everyday. I’ve recently been signed to Big Electric Management. I’m trying to score a job as a producer/songwriter for a record company at the moment!

TWIFFICIENCY

My Twifficiency score is 41%. Whats yours? http://twifficiency.com/

Twifficiency uses oAuth for Authentication. This is designed to protect your account. You will be redirected to Twitter and asked to allow the Twifficiency application. Simply click Allow to use Twifficiency. Twifficiency will tweet your score on your behalf. Do not use this app if you do not consent to this.

Twifficiency might be a password stealer, so it’s better to revoke access http://twitter.com/settings/connections

How Twitter took a teenager from Zero to Villain to Hero in five hours http://thenextweb.com/uk/2010/08/17/how-twitter-took-a-teenager-from-zero-to-villain-to-hero-five-hours #Twifficiency

One young Scottish web developer wanting to learn about Twitter development ended up learning some harsh lessons about Twitter users today.

DEAD WEB

Is the web really dead? – Boing Boing http://www.boingboing.net/2010/08/17/is-the-web-really-de.html

Assuming that this crudely renormalized graph is at all accurate, it doesn’t even seem to be the case that the web’s ongoing growth has slowed. It’s rather been joined by even more explosive growth in file-sharing and video, which is often embedded in the web in any case.

Update: It’s also worth adding that bandwidth, though an interesting measure of the internet’s growth, isn’t so good for measuring consumption. It doesn’t map to time spent, work done, money invested, wealth yielded… Does 50MB of YouTube kitteh represent more meaningful growth than a 5MB Wired feature? And, as others point out in the comments, many of the new trends are still reliant on the web to work, especially social networking.

We’ve all read this, need to tweet it to prove a point for a post: The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet | Wired http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/all/1

Two decades after its birth, the World Wide Web is in decline, as simpler, sleeker services — think apps — are less about the searching and more about the getting. Chris Anderson explains how this new paradigm reflects the inevitable course of capitalism. And Michael Wolff explains why the new breed of media titan is forsaking the Web for more promising (and profitable) pastures.

Now that the iPad has been out for a couple months I’m starting to see different types of clusters of functions happening for publishing. There’s the standard web version through a browser, stand alone mags like Wired that have to be designed twice to fit portrait and landscape formats, pdfs, feeds like Flipboard and now a light weight flipbook like device that is essentially the print magazine in digital format. While the tech fan in myself would prefer a fully immersive and interactive experience, swiping through Dazed & Confused for the first time was pleasant enough.

Dazed & Confused used the publishing service Exact Editions to format their magazine so it could be viewed in an iPad. A viewer has the ability to see full spreads, individual pages and the ability to zoom in on an image which I feel is a really important feature that some photo heavy iPad apps are missing on. The trade off is that there is a slight load delay for each page to load—something I’m fine with because I can see a lot more detail with the images. I also noticed that the ads made a lot more sense in terms of visuals, really nice formatted images. The only glitch in the full spreads is that the images on don’t always line up if it is a full bleed through the center of the spread. The navigation also allows for a quick tap to thumb through all the pages.

How is it to read? I didn’t read from cover to cover but I didn’t have any issue reading the articles that I did. I’ve displayed a couple examples showing the full spread and the quality of the image when I zoomed in to read. Sure I couldn’t tweet about an article or share it, but I also don’t think that is the point. Again I usually would tend to feel everything should have a url attached to it, but for this I didn’t really care. Would I pay for this? Looking at Amazon, the print version is $75.00 a year ($6.25/issue). That’s a bit expensive for a really limited set of features. I could see myself paying somewhere between $35 to $40 but not much more. After all I still can get a ton of great content already designed specifically for an iPad that allows me to do much more. As a younger and more digital savvy type of publisher emerges there will be some pretty cool strides made in the upcoming year. For now it is interesting to watch how they figure out what that is.

This is one of those posts that came together after reading and viewing three different angles concerning education. It made sense to lump them together to show the spectrum of where education might be headed. I remember watching the video from Salman Khan first. My thoughts after that were if a person was really motivated they could really teach themselves more than a person that is unmotivated that is going to University. There’s a lot of other free online resources that can be found on YouTube and even iTunes. It is a matter of someone having the time and inclination. The second post came from TechCrunch that sort of backs up the assertion that online videos will give the opportunity and access that was not once available. Again I think it is up to an individual to take the initiative to discover this information. I don’t think it is five years away but in some case already here. The third post from Salon.com is depressing. I took a quote from the updated post that talks about how some schools are closing early and libraries are being shut down. Below I reversed the order showing the most negative post and built it up to what the potential might be for learning.

From Salon.com: What collapsing empire looks like. Utah is seriously considering eliminating the 12th grade, or making it optional.  And it was announced this week that “Camden [New Jersey] is preparing to permanently shut its library system by the end of the year, potentially leaving residents of the impoverished city among the few in the United States unable to borrow a library book free.”

From TechCrunch: Bill Gates: In Five Years The Best Education Will Come From The Web. “Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world,” Gates said at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA today. “It will be better than any single university.

The above video of Salman Khan speaking at GEL (Good Experience Live) Conference. He talks about how he started creating different types of tutorials online and how it has grown. His YouTube channel can be found at http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy?feature=chclk

Over the past couple of months I’ve tried documenting how my consumption of information has evolved with my iPad. I’m using a couple different readers like Reeder and Pulse News. I’ve also noticed that there’s sites that are filtering Twitter like TwitterTimes and the new app Flipboard that is using tweets as the starting point to gather headlines. Pulling from Twitter is both helpful and a hinderance at the same time. Those sites are great to catch up on what people you know are following. The issue of course is that they found that info from someone before you. By the time that info makes it to an app using Twitter it becomes less valuable. There isn’t a huge strategic advantage of knowing that stuff. That information becomes a commodity like a popular business or marketing book. Everyone claims not to read them, though does yet it is only to keep up with everyone else. I sort of feel that way about a lot of links if you’re reading them from people you already know. Knowledge is one thing, being able to apply it to something new or better is a different issue altogether. So maybe it isn’t that bad to be reading and sharing info that everyone else can read. But my challenge to myself is to keep finding sources no one else has come across yet. While it is a never ending race I wonder if the path is a treadmill or actual track. With a treadmill the distance is virtual while outside there’s more to see.

This morning I found out from a tweet of MarcDSchiller that Os Gemeos and Futura2000 have a painting going up. After spending some quality time enjoying the great weather at Madison Square Park I decided to walk a couple blocks to check out the progress. The painting is going up on the side of a school at 320 West 21st street and looks to be titled the “giant project” according to a post from Os Gemeos website.

UPDATE: Below is the press release for the mural.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For More Information: relations@akanyc.com

Brazilian artists Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo also known as ‘Os Gemeos’ and pop culture legend ‘Futura’ have partnered with New York City-based creative studio AKANYC and street art website 12ozProphet to create an eightyfoot mural on the west-facing wall of P.S. 11, William T. Harris elementary school, in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City.

Allen Benedikt, founding Creative Director of AKANYC, has been coordinating the mural project with each of the three artists for close to a year now after the success of Os Gemeosʼ previous New York City mural on Bowery. Working directly with Robert Bender, the principal of P.S. 11 and and along with additional support from Nike and MTN Colors, the project finally began in the afternoon of Friday, August 6, 2010- dovetailing with Nikeʼs World Basketball Festival. The overall theme of the mural is a message of international unity. Os Gemeos’ iconic yellow character (sometimes referred to as as ‘the giant’ or ʻgiganteʼ) will be seen adorned with flags representing countries around the globe in varying color patterns. Of the design, Os Gemeos says, “We are using different flags painted with non-traditional colors. The idea is ‘one world one voice’, no borders, no separation, just everything and everyone working together for a single cause that is a better world.”

The hope from all parties involved is that the mural will serve as a gift for the neighboring community and the children of P.S. 11- which is why the public wall was chosen over a private or more commercial space- and to also help initiate a larger empowering art movement within New York. “We want to open a dialogue with the city of New York and work with local and international artists to create a regular mural series that we believe will inspire and enrich the creative communities throughout the city,” says Benedikt.

Futura’s art will be seen within parts of Os Gemeos’ overall design, where he will add his signature style to the piece. Benedikt notes that bringing Futura into the project was something really important to him. “He [Futura] is a hometown hero for New York and it was important for us to have someone from the city working on the mural,” says Benedikt. “There’s a great dynamic between Futura and Os Gemeos. They each have very distinct and respected styles. Coming together, they prove there is a symbiotic relationship between their aesthetics and that is the true essence of collaboration.”

The mural will be completed this Friday, August 13, 2010. AKANYC has a production team of photographers and videographers documenting the entire process. These assets will become available to media outlets by request from AKANYC after the project’s completion. Os Gemeos, Futura, and Allen Benedikt will be available for select press interviews on Friday afternoon. Please contact Brittnee at AKANYC via the details below for scheduling information.

###

contact information: relations@akanyc.com
press contact: Brittnee Cann
Media Relations Manager AKANYC
brittnee@akanyc.com
978.349.8677
www.akanyc.om | 51 MacDougal Street #235 | New York, NY 10012

AUGUST 2010
AKANYC x 12ozProphet x Os Gemeos Mural at P.S. 11 in NYC

About Os Gemeos
Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo aka Os Gemeos
Os Gemeos (pronounced “ose zhe’-mee-ose”) are two artists from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Born in 1974, they are Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo, identical twin brothers whose pseudonym, Os Gemeos, translates to “the twins” in Portuguese. In addition to painting, sculpture and installation work, in recent years Os Gemeos have gained international notoriety for their incredible works created on the streets of Sao Paulo.

Os Gemeosʼs particular process has led to a unique vernacular very specific to Sao Paulo. Most works are created using latex house paint, rollers and spray for the details. The artists championed this new style and mixed different influences from the street to create their own distinctly recognizable aesthetic. Improvisation plays a big role, as the work is shaped and formulated according to their surrounding environment.

Os Gemeos divide their painting mode in two, painting together, and starting and finishing each otherʼs works. The works convey their vision of day-to-day life, simple scenes that are sensually rich. The artists are interested in what lies inside of people, beneath the surface. Characters are often rendered smelling the insides of their clothing as if to say, “it is only here, behind the clothing that a personʼs true essence can be found.” They are influenced by the folklore and people of Brazil, creating characters that are reflections of both indigenous customs and the urban sprawl mimicking the contradictions of the world around them.

About Futura
Futura, born Leonard Hilton McGurr in 1955, is an internationally acclaimed artist who got his start in the 1970′s painting graffiti on New York City subway trains. His abstract approach to painting with aerosol gained him popularity amongst the art industry and in the early 80′s his work was featured in galleries alongside peers including Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Growing as a more serious artist, Futura began collaborating on music projects- first in 2000 with English rock band The Clash when he helped to produce the sleeve artwork for their 7″ single ‘Radio Clash’. From there Futura went on to do another collaboration with the band during their ‘Combat Rock’ tour by live-painting on stage during their musical performances. Years later in 2002, Futura appeared in DJ Mehdi’s music video for single ‘Breakaway’ where he covers a room with his signature tags using black marker and spray paint. Most recently, in 2006, he was featured in a John Mayer music video alongside other street artists like ‘DAZE’ and ‘Tats Cru’. All of these successes and more have earned Futura globally established credibility in art, music, and pop culture circles. Today, 54 years old, Futura is still a well-respeted artist, not only for his graffiti art but his illustration and graphic design as well. Under the label ‘Futura Laboratories’, he designs his own clothing line headed out of Fukuoka City, Japan.

About AKANYC
AKANYC is a boutique New York City-based creative agency that works with select clients to deliver online and offline media relevant for urban art and lifestyle culture. The companyʼs expertise includes graphic art, web design, studio photography, video production, and custom book publishing all. AKANYC’s client roster includes brands like Nike, Supreme, ALife, DQM, and Deitch Projects.

AKANYC was established in 2005 by Allen Benedikt and is also branded under the alias ALSO KNOWN AS.

About 12ozProphet
12ozProphet is one of the premier online communities for street art and popular culture enthusiasts. Founded in 1993, the website began as a fan zine featuring photographs of street art, articles about the underground movement, and selling art supplies like spray paint, caps, and other items including apparel and books. After reaching cult status in the late 90′s, 12oz moved business from it’s humble catalog to grow into a website that, still today, hosts forums where artists from all over the globe can congregate to discuss art and other musings. In the years since it’s move online, 12ozProphet has evolved to become a platform for many of the culture’s most authoritative voices by hosting blogs to a number of world-famous artists and photographers including Os Gemeos, Todd James aka Reas, Cody Hudson aka Struggle Inc, Martha Cooper, Haze, and Jamil GS.

www.akanyc.om | 51 MacDougal Street #235 | New York, NY 10012

Originally I wanted to do a post about the interview Charlie Rose did with Jeff Bezos. I had planned to embed the video of the talk and make a couple points about the things that stood out. But to my confusion I when I went to the share button on the page all I could do was email a link to someone. What surprises me is that I used to be able to embed the entire interview and now I can’t. I did notice that there is a six minute clip on YouTube. However what I did find interesting is that there is a tab that displays the entire conversation in text—in theory I could simply copy + paste the entire conversation yet not show the video. Seems a bit strange to me to allow low fi tech but not video. To prove a point I was going to in fact place the entire conversation below but decided in the end that it would be more effective if I just placed the highlighted conversation that made me pause.

These are the themes that that I found stood out
1. Buying something electronically and having the ability to use it on any device by any manufacturer
2. Carrying multiple devices that can do the same thing
3. Looking at the competition and using software, not hardware as a strategic advantage
4. Not having to worry about energy (battery life), explaining who should be creating the experience & having more than one device
5. Focus & compromises

1. Buying something electronically and having the ability to use it on any device

CHARLIE ROSE: But there is an application for a Kindle on an iPad.

JEFF BEZOS: Absolutely, and also on Android, also on the iPhone, also on the Mac, also on the PC, also on your blackberry. So our approach is when you buy a Kindle book, we want you — it’s buy once, read everywhere.

So you buy that Kindle book, and we have a technology called whisper sync, so we’ll synchronize your place and you can read on your blackberry, read a little bit on your iPad. If you’re going to have a two-hour reading session, get the Kindle and get a device that is really optimized for long-form reading.

2. Carrying multiple devices that can do the same thing

CHARLIE ROSE: So you are counting on the fact that people want to have an extra device for reading, and therefore you are opting to make it smaller, easier —

JEFF BEZOS: Exactly.

CHARLIE ROSE: — and thinner.

JEFF BEZOS: You got it. And at $139 — and cheaper. At $139, people are going to have — I think we live in a multi-device world. You’re going to have a tablet computer like an iPad or one of its competitors. You’re going to have a smart phone, you’re going to have a laptop. The tablet computer isn’t going to replace the laptop because there are times when you want to write a long memo or a long email message or an article —

3. Looking at the competition and using software, not hardware to a strategic advantage

CHARLIE ROSE: And are you here to also say that it is not all that certain that iPad will dominate that tablet market, that their competition will be good in the same way that the Droid-X is beginning to make progress because of the Android operating system?

JEFF BEZOS: Absolutely. Before the end of this year there will be many tablet computers. And the Apple with the iPad is going to continue to do extremely well. And I hope they do.

We don’t see the — from where I sit, all the data that I have, the evidence is very clear that Kindle is a companion to tablet computers, laptops. It’s not an either/or division.

CHARLIE ROSE: What is the evidence?

JEFF BEZOS: We have this feature called whisper sync where you can read on one device. And one of the strong usage pattern that is we see is people will read on their Kindles, and they read on their smart phones, tablet computers, and so on.

So we’re seeing that people are moving between these devices, and it’s one of the reasons that we’re so focused on buy once, read everywhere.

4. Not having to worry about energy, explaining who should be creating the experience & having more than one device

CHARLIE ROSE: How many devices do we want to carry with us?

JEFF BEZOS: I think you’re going to have a lot of devices.

CHARLIE ROSE: Do you really?

JEFF BEZOS: I do, at least four or five. Some have yet to be invented.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK, but you’re not –

JEFF BEZOS: We’re not trying to create an experience. We want the author to create the experience.

If you’re going to read Nabokov or Hemingway or — what do you want us creating the experience for? That’s not our job. Our job is to provide the convenience so that you can get books in 60 seconds, so that you can carry your whole library with you, so that you don’t get hand strain, so the device doesn’t get hot in your hand, so that it doesn’t cause eyestrain, so that the battery life lasts a month so that you never get
battery anxiety —

CHARLIE ROSE: Battery life of this is what?

JEFF BEZOS: One month.

CHARLIE ROSE: One month.

5. Focus & compromises

JEFF BEZOS: So all those things are — that’s our job. Our job is to design a perfect device for reading.

People say why don’t you add a touch screen? The reason we don’t have a touch screen is when we were going down that decision path, we say, “OK, a touch screen,” and the current technology for touch screens is called capacitive touch. It’s a layer that goes on top of that display. It adds glare.

The first thing that you do when you add a touch display is you adda little extra layer of glass or plastic and a little bit of glare. So it’s very easy from an engineering point of view to add a touch screen, but
it’s not the right thing when you’re making no compromises. And that’s our point of view on this. We want to build a device that’s uncompromised for reading. And guess what. Our approach is working.

My reading experience this year

At the beginning of the year I had set out the goal of reading one book a week for fifty two weeks. I’m pretty far behind so far so unless I gain a ton of time I don’t think I’m going to reach that goal. The reality is that my time is stretched to the max. With that said, early on in the year I was on a roll with reading paper books. I recall telling someone that I probably wouldn’t read any book digitally for a couple reasons. The first was that I wanted to be able to photograph all 52 books once I completed my goal. I couldn’t do that with a digital file. The second reason was that I had never read an ebook, so why would I bother? Fast forward to August. I have an iPad that has the Kindle app on it. It is so easy to buy books that it is really hard to go to a store that may or may not have what I want to buy. I also started reading on my iPhone which was another thing that I never thought I would do. I think it is amazing my book can sync together on all my devices without me having to do anything. The only thing that is poor is the actually reading experience. The type is set incredibly bad. There is no excuse for publishers to set digital books better.

If I look at the Kindle reading experience and relate it to other media types like sound or video, or even websites, you have to wonder why everything doesn’t work non device specific. Mobile browsers allow for a bit of seamless integration but still are pretty out of date. Typically sites just stripe out all the graphics—not such a great mobile experience.