BBC R&D (Research and Development) in collaboration with creative media agency Mudlark demonstrated a new idea called Perceptive Radio this week: an old school-style radio that uses cutting edge networking technology to adapt its content to suit the unique location, environment, and actions of its listener.
I had a whole thing worked out for this first bit, featuring a really romantic story that cannot fail to warm your heart, a couple of gags about the new XBox, the best reaction to classrooom criticism you'll ever see, and the best wrong number text message conversation you will ever see.
And then Wednesday happened, and I sort of lost the appetite for it somewhat. It would be funny to see idiots all over the internet blaming otherwise-blameless fabrics 'muslins' for everything were it not so incredibly depressing.
Anyway, onwards with the stuff. Thank heavens for the bank holiday.
*looks outside*
Brighton's splendid Lighthouse recently played host to long, lovely talks from Mariele Neudecker and James Bridle.
Our new competition is to win a set of the wonderful Artefact Cards from Smithery. It's a great prize, and we're asking you to get your pens and pencils out for it.
The lovely Jon and Ali - better known as Thomson and Craighead - have a new show at the Carroll / Fletcher Gallery in London. As with many of their past works, this is a playful look at how technology and content is changing our view of our world and the world.
E-commerce behemoth Amazon is set to launch an online gallery this summer, with an official announcement being made today.
One thing I know is a new website and book from Creative England. The idea is that young, creative whippersnappers are given advice on running their business matters from wise, battle-hardened elders.
Patrick Laing is a creature of extreme diversity. Essentially a designer, but the titles artist, inventor and entrepreneur would fit just as appropriately. An interview to talk about one of his latest projects, the Flying Skirt light shade, turned up a whole host of other fascinating creations, including an astonishingly smart bicycle mudguard.
It was pointed out to me this week that, were you to click on every single link in this thing as well as reading my overblown prose, the whole thing would take you about 7 hours to get through. Look, what can I say? I'm SORRY. It's just that there's a lot of stuff out there and I WANT TO SHOW YOU ALL OF IT. Just bear in mind that no one reads everything (except me) - really, no one, not even my mum. You're under no obligation. Although obviously it's ALL GOLD.
Annual media arts festival Ars Electronica has announced its winners at the Prix Arts Electronica. 4000 submissions from 73 countries were whittled into seven competition categories, with the UK not getting much of a look in this time around.
Look at the picture above and you'll see the BERG Cloud logotype and "Made in Italy". That's a pretty good description of Sandbox, a new collaboration between the folks at BERG and Benetton's communications lab Fabrica.
The New Yorker magazine has launched Strongbox, an anonymised in-box for tip-offs, whispers and other documents where the sender may not wish to reveal their identity. Built by Aaron Swartz and Kevin Poulsen, the magazine launched the service this morning.
