280daily – What happened to those hand-written diaries we used to keep as kids growing up? I had three of those during my teenage years, but once I became an independent, grown woman, those diaries went straight to the attic. 280daily invites us to revisit the personal diary tradition by offering a free and private documenting service where each day you can use up to 280 characters to describe your day.
As a default, you will receive email reminders of your daily 280 character summary at 4 pm, but you can change this of course in your settings. Since 280daily is optimized to mobile device using this digital documenting service will be a breeze on the go as well. There’s also an import to PDF option if you wish to immortalize your entries… Here’s a video explaining the full features of 280daily.
Noisey – Making the good kind of noise, Noisey is here to expose promising new music artists from all over the world to the global community. As the site claims, “Noisey is a video-driven music discovery platform, documenting the most talented emerging musicians from around the world. Curated by VICE, the site showcases bands and music scenes from over 10 countries.”
As you will see, Noisey uses Intel and Dell technology to make this digital platform a state of the art stage for new and upcoming artists to show off their talent.
Nowness – This is a Weekly Blog winner for a good reason: it’s a sophisticated Web storyteller, meaning it offers a regularly updated dose of the coolest and most chic stories currently circulating the Web. Claiming to be “the digital leader in luxury storytelling,” Nowness is the creation of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, which explains its posh appearance while its content is editorially independent.
Each story or post concerns the creative world (fashion, design, film, gastronomy), and is accompanied by large high-quality photos and videos. As the reader you are encouraged to vote for each post, by clicking ‘Love’ or ‘Don’t Love.’ I just adored Il Pellicano: Tuscan Paradise (see screenshot below), and I feel this is but one example of the semi-infinite wonder you will find here on Nowness.
What I Made – When Scott Bedford’s eldest son started to draw, Scott realized he should revisit his childhood’s favorite past time and started creating and drawing again, too. As a creative industry professional, Scott decided to merge his two passions -creating and illustrating- and What I Made is where he shares his artistic projects.
Each project is something anyone could do, and the cool part about Scott’s endeavors is he always includes a step by step how-to illustration. One great example is the Coca-cola Light (see below).
What I Made is the proud winner of the prestigious 2011 Webby Award and
Webby People’s Voice Award for Best Personal Blog/Site. Aside from the unique concept of this blog, its overall design is simply stunning, and a quick visit to this blog will show you just why Scott’s spot won these awards.
SHFT – “Curating the Culture of Today’s Environment” is what SHFT creators, activist/actor Adrian Grenier and film producer Peter Glatzer strive to deliver. Explore SHFT’s huge video archive where each video tells a different unique story about the environment and the good souls trying to make it better. In addition to video, SHFT offers top-notch content on a variety of topics including art, design, energy, fashion, sports, travel and more.
SHFT not only looks great, it also delivers engaging content on important matters, whether cultural or environmental, or both. Another cool feature on SHFT is the shop section, although some products featured there can get quite pricey. Either way, SHFT is a shining eco star! Here’s a cool video I found here, Backyard Sun Boxes by musician Craig Colorusso, showing music created by the sun and the solar panels Craig put in his backyard. Each solar panel was set to play one guitar note on loop, with the all the notes collectively making a B-flat chord. Amazing, isn’t it?
Draw and Fold Over – When the Campaign for Drawing wanted to let people know of the Big Draw project celebrating the role of drawings in our life, they went for a special and innovative approach. The Draw and Fold Over page invites you to draw whatever you wish, and then share it with the community and receive feedback for it. So come in and draw for fun, for helping this organization, or for sharing the love.
BBC Earth: Life Is – The British Broadcast Company is famous for its nature documentary series and films, and we have all come to know Sir David Attenborough, the avid naturalist, acting as the engaging narrator of many of BBC’s nature productions. Now BBC Earth, with a huge repertoire of footage and content related to the natural environment and planet Earth, invites us all to explore our world like never before.
Explore nature in a totally new mesmerizing way, through images and videos of nature, filmed human stories, and see it all from the filmmakers’ point of view. To browse the vast world of content available on Life Is, click ‘search for more stuff’ which will bring you to this page (see below), where you can search by climate conditions, color, media type and more. Come and meet your planet right here on BBC Earth. You will be amazed!
Pica Pic – This digitalized collection of the old favorite handheld electronic games is a sweet piece of geek heaven on Earth. The execution of this project is phenomenal, and as you can tell from the screenshots below, the interface is amazing and conveys the “real” look and feel you never dreamed was possible. All that is left is to visit Pica Pic, select a game (there are numerous old favorites to choose from), and go back in time. Pica Pic is the creation of Hipopotam Studio.
Donkey Kong Jr. (Nintendo Game&Watch)
Clowning Around – A strategy game that will keep you on your toes, Clowning Around is more serious than you think. Your goal is to drop the hanging balls into the color-matching barrels. What starts off easy soon becomes a challenging skills game. For more addicting games visit our I ♥ GAMES page.
Genius Scan – This cool iPhone app offers quick and easy creation and sharing of scanned documents using only your iPhone. Simply take a picture with your iPhone or pick one from your library (pics can be of a board, a note on the table and many other forms), crop it and straighten it, and you’re good to go. Using Wi-Fi internet connection allows you to copy scanned documents to your computer. Genius Scan offers a most productive tool you will appreciate having on your iPhone. Available on the App Store.
Who doesn’t like pretty things? Design is a very broad term used to describe numerous different industries (there’s graphic design, industrial design, packaging design and many others). For the purpose of the Thursday post, though, my Top 10 website list focuses mainly on interior design sources that offer brilliant, creative and yes, aesthetic ideas we can all appreciate and be inspired by, and even implement at home.
1. Apartment Therapy – When it comes to interior decor, Apartment Therapy is one of the biggest fish in the design pond. Since its launch, this cool site has expanded to additional lifestyle realms including technology, children, green and cooking, although the main Apartment Therapy page is by far the best of the bunch. Find amazing home design inspirations via AT’s beautiful home decor photos and posts showing how small renovations make a huge difference. Here’s a cool design idea I found on Apartment Therapy: Hanging Furniture.
Roundup: Hanging Rattan Chairs
2. Contemporist – With an extensive readership of over 40k subscribed users, Contemporist is all about beautiful design both inside and outside the house, architecture, furniture and lighting, and more. Although the architecture section of the site offers innovative and luxurious buildings I’d die to live in, the furniture category is where I found lots of interior design ideas. Contemporist is the designer at heart’s must stop.
3. IKEA Hackers – Interior design is full of innovation and creativity, but what good is it without sensible hands-on application? IKEA Hackers is the DIY design site that is both beautiful and practical, therefore a definite top design site to check out. Explore the numerous IKEA furniture upgrade projects this site has to offer, explaining in detail what Ikea products to buy and step-by-step explanations on how to turn them into a premium piece of furniture at home. You can also submit your own upgraded IKEA project and share it with others. Here’s a super cool example cat owners with small apartments will appreciate: Hol Cat Litter Box with Sliding Top. Click the images below to see the project from start to finish.
4. Swiss Miss – This design blog and studio by Tina Roth Eisenberg is a fabulous source of design inspiration to both industry professionals and esthetics-conscience individuals. Swiss Miss is full of design ideas (spanning across different fields) with a clean, white space theme -Tina’s Swiss homeland roots. She’s a renowned talent in the global design arena with famous clients such as NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Food Network, and she also teaches at the prestigious Parsons ,The New School of Design. With such credentials, I needn’t explain why visiting Swiss Miss is an absolute must.
5. HolyCool – Sometimes a well-designed home is the result of the little things in it. HolyCool is a design blog showcasing oh-so-cute, cool objects and home products with a twist you won’t find anywhere else, and these will add a chic tone to your home. Each post covers a certain product or set of products, and includes a brief description along with a link to the online store selling the item. Have you ever seen such a sweet egg cup before? Find this and hundreds of other cool products on HolyCool.
6. Design Mom – Gabrielle Blair, a talented designer and a mother of six has created this blog which presents the intersection points between design and motherhood. The result is nothing short of inspiring, well-written posts on the many facets of design (including fabulous cooking as well). As you will agree after visiting Design Mom, motherhood can be quite a colorful and creative adventure!
7. DECOmyplace – Check out real living places of people all over the world, submitted by users who decided to share their design whim with the online community. Browse styles, themes and living space categories for the site’s full nine yards wonder. DECOmyplace is a fun, gorgeous and inspiring source of home decor you should visit on a regular basis. In addition, you can submit your own pad’s design ideas. My personal favorite is the one below.
8. KNSTRCT – Simply entering this site will pull you right into the warm and fuzzy world of design. KNSTRCT explores the ingenuity of design in various fields including architecture, interior design, fashion, travel, transportation, art and product design. The entire site has a sophisticated, upscale look and feel, as do the individual posts KNSTRCT always garnishes with large high resolution photos. This one is certainly special and it is filled with brilliant design ideas.
9. Design*Sponge – This design site is one of my personal favorites. As you will discover, it combines all of the elements each of the above sites offers. Design*Sponge has a sophisticated taste of design and style, but without the posh attitude. It offers a large DIY section, offers great (and practical) interior design ideas and product reviews, among many other features. In short, it’s an A-list design site. Here’s a cool before-and-after example of Julie’s kitchen. Amazing, isn’t it? Total cost: $15,000 and this included all new appliances!
10. All My Faves’ Design MiniFaves – For all of the fabulous design sites listed above and many other top online design pics, visit our Design MiniFaves page dedicated to the pretty things in life. Aside from architecture and interior design you will find there grade A graphic and Web design sites as well as well-designed sites, such as Jim Carrey’s gorgeous official site.
Photosynth – This cool photography tool by Microsoft invites you to create amazing panoramic, 3D photos using the digital camera you’re already using to take pics (mobile phone cameras work just as well). Although a program download is required, as is creating a Photosynth account, this powerful set of tools is so rewarding you won’t believe it’s free. In addition, your created 3D pics can be added to Bing maps, shared on facebook and even added to your website or blog.
The idea of creating 3D pictures with your mobile phone is phenomenal, although one can’t avoid the evident similarity between Photosynth and Google’s street view technology. Either way, I’m curious to know what effect will this concept have on the way we all take pictures in the future. Either way, here’s the full explanation on how to create mobile panoramas.
Now that we’re done with all the (justified) geeky raves, here’s an actual example.