A Night On The Beach, Pink Floyd-Style
Something pretty cool took place in Oostende, Belgium, last Wednesday. Under the slogan 'Sleep under the stars', Eastpak invited a very limited number of people to spend one night on the beach in a unique setting.
Australia Gets Thrifty On The Garage Sale Trail
One man’s trash is another treasure, except in Australia, where scavenging for secondhand goods is set to be a new national holiday. Now in its third year with nearly over 8200 sales registered, the Garage Sale Trail encourages Australians to host and attend garage sales held simultaneously one day a year and they’ve made an interactive 'hyper local' map to go with it.
#IABR — ZIP Code Honey: The Taste Of Local Flowers
We came across a nice project called 'Postcode Honing' ('ZIP Code Honey) at the Smart Cities exhibition at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi). The idea combines the renewed interest for beekeeping (2012 is the International Year of the Bee) with a local touch. According to the makers, the taste of honey depends on the flowers that are growing in the landscape nearby the beehives, and could therefore be considered place-specific. ZIP Code Honey is an idea for local honey. The ZIP code on the label tells you where the honey comes from and what taste to expect. Mapping meets beekeeping.
Playhouse Nightclub Gives VIP Treatments Based On Klout Score
The trendy and famous Playhouse Nightclub in Los Angeles gives influencers on the Web a VIP treatment. Besides the Hollywood stars that frequent the club, visitors with a Klout score above 50 are the real VIPs in this Hollywood nightclub. The idea to introduce Klout to nightlife is part of a grassroots marketing campaign by the start-up from San Francisco.
Recreating Space: Vancouver And The Viaducts
Many cities, especially those in North America, continue to struggle with the legacy of massive freeway systems. While Vancouver was largely able to resist major freeway development during the 1960s and 1970s, a couple of intermittent elements of the freeway vision remain in the city, including the Granville Street Bridge (which Bjarke Ingels’s new tower proposal hopes to re-envision) and the Georgia + Dunsmuir Viaducts in False Creek. The viaducts have been a major topic of debate in the city for years considering the controversy surrounding their construction, but only now are serious proposals coming close to reality.
App Turns Gothenburg Tram Ride Into A Sightseeing Tour
Guided tours are expensive and do not let you discover places at your own pace. Design agency Forsman & Bodenfors created the app Tram Sightseeing for Västtrafik, the public transportation company in Gothenburg, Sweden. The app directs you to the nearest tram stop with GPS navigation and lets you begin a 45-minute city tour. Users are notified by audio (headphones please!) during the tour when they are near to a geotagged landmark. In addition, the app shows where and where to transfer trams, thanks to its real-time tram traffic indications.
Motion Sensing Ticker Tape Making Virtual Waves
Ticker tape has been around forever. The simple strip of scrolling information is usually found in transit hubs and financial centres, providing a constant stream of updates. This old-fashioned utilitarian display has been infused with a serious dose of play by the digital innovators at Breakfast, the company that came up with Instaprint. Instead of a boring standard data feed, your motions dictate the ticker tape display. The screen shows a series of random words, which you can smash or send flying with your movements to reveal a secret message. The ticker tape board has been equipped with motion sensors and the little electromagnetic display dots have been rewired to spin 15 times faster, creating a 'Reactive Super-Speed Electromagnetic Dot Display'.
Be Your Own Cartographer With Field Papers
Maps are just facinating. Some time ago we tweeted about all the lousy tourist maps we have, which just show all the tourist hotspots in a city. But how about creating your own map which presents what you think is important? At Fieldpapers.org this is actually possible. The service allows you to make your own atlases without any use of GPS or other complicated GIS software.
Puma Invites ‘Friends’ To A Social Club
The Czech architects of Edit! have recently designed a social club for Puma in Prague. The social club is located inside a shoe store and is intended to function as a hang-out and meeting point for young fans of the brand. The multi-functional space works as a combination between a concept store and a bar (that serves direct-trade coffee and cupcakes) and is an attempt of Puma to bring together young Puma fans. Besides all the digital options that youngsters already have to show their close connection to a brand, Puma now creates an urban meeting spot for them — an offline Facebook page.
Love Letters To Toronto
For topophiliacs in Toronto, the Love Lettering Project allows people to write love notes to their beloved city. At events around the city, the group sets up a table with fancy paper, glue sticks, scissors and pens and lets people pour their hearts out. Once they penned their odes, they are given an envelope and told to go hide their letters somewhere in the city for a stranger to find.
Pop-Up Foodism In San Francisco
Oh, glorious street food! Probably, the thing I most look forward to when going to markets, festivals, and even concerts. And I have just been giddy to see the recent rebirth of the food truck culture, along with myriad new cuisines and creative offerings. If only there were a regular event that brought all these delicious victuals together so that street food fans, like myself, could sample to their tummies' content. Off the Grid in San Francisco came up with exactly that idea in 2010. They now have 12 weekly street food markets running throughout the Bay area. The markets are setup in fairly central areas on plots of undeveloped land to keep costs low and local vendors are invited to peddle their fares. Offerings range from fusion tacos to delectable cupcakes. Hungry visitors can expect to see many well-known food trucks, as well as lesser-known start-ups, and even chefs of famous local pop-up dinners.
New Psychogeographic App Helps You To Get Lost
There is no excuse for being bored in the 21st century. With the increasing sedentary and plugged in lifestyle, people are always in need of new ways to get out and explore. Drift is a psychogegraphic phone app that does encourages people to do exactly that — its motto is “get lost in familiar spaces.”
Meet Stanley, The World’s First Twitter Piano
Stanley is the name given to a player piano that takes requests via Twitter. And what is a player piano? Traditionally, it's a self-playing piano that 'reads' music imprinted on a paper or metal roll. Common about a century ago during the vaudeville era, they were found in almost every smoky saloon. Stanley, created for the Seattle Capitol Hill Block Party music festival, is a new breed of player piano.
Temporary Dorms For Burmese Refugees
Continuous refugee flows from Burma have resulted in massive demographic changes in Southeast Asia. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that around 140,000 Burmese refugees are currently living in neighbouring Thailand. As such, small Thai villages continue to swell in size as human rights continue to be ignored on the other side of the border.
Makkie: A Currency For The Community
'Makkie' is a new peer-to-peer economy in the Indische Buurt (Indian Quarter) in East Amsterdam that was introduced a few months ago. Neighborhood residents can earn 'Makkies' by doing a chore for their neighbors or local organizations. This can be anything, varying from fixing someone's computer to volunteering at a film festival or painting a hallway. Every hour of work will earn you one Makkie. Makkies, which look like real money, can be redeemed for discounts on products at local shops, free movie tickets, fitness courses, you name it.
