An awesome post by blog Creative Closeup, a place I love to visit when I feel like getting schooled in innovation and creativity. Your reactions will be (in sequence):

1) Man, that's just awesome! I want this!
2) How come this has never been made? How can a manufacturer not see the genius behind this?
3) Makeitmakeitmakeitmakeitmakeit. Now.

You can't say I haven't warned you. Now go check it out.

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You need something to make account people unwind when they get into your most reverred creative office, because your numerous awards and hulk figurines just won't do it anymore? Try Cube World. Looks like fun? It suuuure is, dear customer. The Cube World Cubes (sold separately, batteries probably not included) feature little stick men that work, walk and do crazy little things aaaall by themselves. But that's not all! Link them together and they INTERACT! IT'S TEH FUTURE, FOLKS! You can even SHAKE them, and the integrated motion sensor makes them wap themselves around their invisible walls! This is crazy. I like crazy.

Available at ThinkGeek for US $30. Watch the telly ad, it's OUTTA THIS WORLD! The acting is also OUTTA THIS WORLD! WOW!

Watching this I suddenly get the urge to wrap myself in my NY yankees blanket and eat Honey Combs in front of the TV and...and pretend it's saturday, and also, I'm 8 years old.

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Spreaking of old boyfriends, check out this great knife holder called "The Ex". Now available at ThinkGeek.

(Thanks, Japanese Gadgets!)

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Of course we've all tried it once, after hearing this legend of wonder in our school days - hardboiling an egg in the microwave produces cheap yet fun entertainment. But now that we're all grown up, what if we're in a rush, and truly want something delicously atomized to fill in the early morning void of our hungry stomachs?

Well folks, someone thought about you. Here's the world's first microwave hard egg cooker.
Says TokyoMango: "The device actually fits 3 mid-sized eggs, which are placed on an aluminum tray. Put 130cc of water in the yellow part, insert the tray, place the eggs on it, close the lid (the white part), and pop it in the microwave. 8 minutes in a 500W microwave gets you soft-boiled, 10 minutes gets you hard-boiled."

If you have good japanese skills, go and get it from Rakuten Japan.







































I can't even remember what's the exact wattage of my microwave , yet in any case, 10 minutes of egg cooking sounds like, whichever kind and nourishing soul our egg had initially, will be gone forever. Atomic eating! Yay. (Thanks Boing Boing!)

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I had never seen nor heard about the Sony Mylo (Mylo stands for My life Online) digital companion until I saw a recent Rush Mylo ad, downloaded from an RSS feed on my PSP.

Just a bit about the product itself: The Sony Mylo is a digital tool that's basically a portable broadband communicator. You can use it to surf the internet, check your emails, IM/chat, make voice calls over the internet, listen to music, check out videos and more. No wires needed - you just get connected through a WiFi spot, and get going. I thought there was an integrated camera in there, but apparently, none yet. Pfff. I don't know why people would get this instead of a Sony PSP, which has tons more features, and is about the same price.

Nevertheless, they have this cool new campaign called "Rush Mylo", obviously targeting the golden demographic, youth 18-25. The campaigns mostly feature viral movies about "thumb students" living crazy episodes depiciting college life. You'll find most of these on YouTube, but here are a few anyway.





Among campaign elements, the RUSH MYLO WEBSITE featuring an interactive campus on which you can go about, and discover the life of a Thumb Student, and of course many of the Mylo features.

















A MOST TRIPPY CAMPAIGN! I love it. Original and complete, noteworthy, talkworthy, with actual movies you can download and view on your Mylo or PSP. Great work from McKinney + Silver, in North Carolina.

Another great example of... TEH FUTURE.

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It's already 10:30am and you're bored at the office? Have you ever played NGame? No? go there now. It's super addictive, super clean office-ninja fun. (Thanks to adjunkie of Ihaveanidea.org for pointing me to this!)

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For those of you less familiar with art creation software, Corel's Painter series are pieces of software whose purpose is to help you digitally create art that has the look and finish of real drawing and painting media, such as oil, conté crayons, watercolors, pastels or ink.
Of course, it won't create your art for you -- it sure is no replacement for raw talent. But nevertheless it's a great tool for professionals and amateurs alike, and you can spend hours fiddling with it.

The latest version in the Painter series is Painter IX.5. You can get a free 30-day trial on Corel's website.

I recently got it for myself, and I just started toying around with it yesterday evening. I created this little painting (gouache on canvas) in less than 2 hours.



















Better yet, if you have the chance to get yourself a Wacom Drawing Pad (I've been using one for over 10 years now - if you don't know what it is, check out http://www.wacom.com/), you get incredible stylus control and flexibility over the tools available in painter, for this natural look you want. Try it yourself !

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Admit it: you missed me posting these little video games. Try this wonderful Flash version of the original Super Mario Bros., complete with the little music that will probably play too loud on your speakers - instantly alerting any authority/cute girls at your office, which will probably come running and take down (or participate in) your procrastination/marketing research/creative inspiration.

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Daily Color Scheme proposes just what the title says: A Daily Color Scheme. You can bookmark the scheme, and also consult the past scheme archive. This might seem unoriginal to most, but to me, it's not. That's how I stay krispy.

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Most respectable commercial for Microsoft Zune, Bill Gates' answer to Apple's iPod series. The Zune series will be new "it" thing in terms of stealing what's left of your social life - becoming your new "digital lifestyle companion".

Besides the initial Zune mp3/video player, we might be plagued with a microsoft portable gaming console (kind of a portable Xbox), a cellphone, a system resembling Itunes that will actually ease your transition from iTunes to Zune, and proprietary software. The whole Zune system will be made to be a complete, vertically-integrated solution, and not a iPod, iPod Nano, iPod Mini, iPod This and that, iTunes, and iStore multiple combo scheme - which might actually make you feel like you have value for your dollar. Coming soon.



I hate Apple. I hate Windows. SONY, HELP ME!!! Just kidding.

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Here's a cool tool that brings something fresh to the world of viral video (for a good month or two, at least ;-) - Personiva. Personiva allows for the creation of branded content that can be personalized by the viewer, for the viewer. For example you might upload a photo of you, Personiva integrates it inside a specially-made commercial, and you get to watch a TV ad featuring you.

Check out HP's "Make computer personal again" and experience it yourself.












From the Personiva web site: "Personiva technology - recognizes faces, composites video, delivers dynamic imaging, creates interactive web interfaces, personalizes mobile messaging, drives e-commerce, measurable and ready-to-go."

While the experience is certainly new, its current application doesn't strike me as something that will last (the Levi's example on their site wasn't all that impressive), but I salute the idea. I do hope they find a way to push this a lot further.

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This is brilliant (no pun intended). Philips came up with textile-integrated led lights that can create animated light shows and display advertisements, or time - "without compromising the softness or flexibility of the cloth", as they report in this video. There are so many possibilities - altough I wonder if you could input a message in your shirt, yourself ? Now that would kick ass.
Once again, kids (and you know what I'm about to say) more PROOF that we are in... TEH FUTURE!

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Sony and Standford University have announced that the PS3 will be able to participate in a worldwide cancer grid research program titled Cure@PS3, due the the awesome computing power found inside the console's revolutionnary chip.

Distributed computing, or "Grid computing", "...breaks down complex computing problems into small steps that can be solved in parallel by thousands or even millions of machines at once. ", according to Wired.

This means that when you leave your PS3 on, it will crunch down formulas and numbers pertaining to cancer research, and send the info back to a master computer. Says electro^plankton: "...To put that into perspective, lets just say the PS3 sells as many units as the PS2's has sold to date. That's over 60 million PS3's number crunching away, far more powerful than any super computer at any facility."

I often dream of getting me one of these babies when they get out, but their reported december launch price of 600$ makes me reconsider. BUT NOW THAT I KNOW PS3s CAN HELP SOLVE CANCER, MAN! Maybe I can find a kind and generous spot in my heart.

(Thanks electro^plankton!)

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