Global pulse

Twitter recently published two incredible data visualization videos showing the links between outgoing and incoming tweets from Japan following the March 11 earthquake. It’s a great example of how digital tools enable us all to communicate world wide.

From twitter’s blog:
“On Twitter, we saw a 500 percent increase in Tweets from Japan as people reached out to friends, family and loved ones in the moments after the earthquake. The video below shows the volume of @replies traveling into and out of Japan in a one-hour period just before and then after the earthquake. Replies directed to users in Japan are shown in pink; messages directed at others from Japan are shown in yellow.”

Check it out here

Refresh for Random Fashion Inspiration

TheSartorialTwist.com cleverly serves up a random outfit pieced together by strips of three different fashion street scenes.

While the utility factor might not be huge, the delight is definitely there in simply refreshing the page to see a new combination— sometimes scattered, sometimes synchronous, often funny — appear.

http://thesartorialtwist.com/

GE exercises their blogging voice

The choices brands make to cultivate their own unique voice and personality on the Internet are often interesting. Here, a well-established brand, General Electric, takes a trendy approach toward blogging.

By posting vintage shots — mostly using Instagram — of significant laboratory tests and research from the past 130 years, GE manages to create more of a niché web presence for their brand, thereby making it more intriguing, and perhaps more accessible, to a larger demographic.

http://generalelectric.tumblr.com/

Contributed by James Craig

Toronto Tourism Cheating Wall

Toronto Tourism has created a “cheating wall” where visitors can see via video screens into Montreal, and vice versa.

Equipped with video and audio, it’s a live portal enabling people to even chat with their counterparts in the other city.

http://www.marketingmag.ca/news/marketer-news/torontomontreal-go-to-the-wall-in-new-tourism-campaign-28905

Angry Birds LIVE

It may not be the most innovative idea ever, but this live version of Angry Birds was probably really fun to produce. Plus it’s always interesting to see the translation of an online experience into the physical world — it definitely started a party in Barcelona!

Contributed by Collin Whitehead

An elegant frame for digital art

FRAMED* is a simple, modern display that hints at the inevitable presence of these kinds of screens in all our surroundings. Home, work, wherever  — as the technology develops, so will the frame for showcasing it.

Facebook and Spotify Get Cozy

Facebook is partnering with Spotify to add music streaming to the site. While I’ve never actually missed the ability to play music within Facebook, I wonder if we’ll collectively have a “how have we lived without this” moment in a few weeks.

Listening to music with friends within Facebook already sounds like what turntable.fm offers but with a much larger audience. Depending on how many friends you have, that could be good or bad. It will be an interesting social experience nonetheless.

http://blogs.forbes.com/parmyolson/2011/05/25/facebook-to-launch-music-service-with-spotify/

Google Search By Image

Much like TinEye, Google has launched their version of search-by-image.

Contributed by Ricardo Hieber

(dot) whatever-if-you-can-afford-it

This is big news – ICANN just approved newly purchasable top-level domains.

If you can afford the $185,000 application fee, and the $25,000 annual fees, the options are pretty open, eg. .advertising. .milk, .this, or .that .

http://mashable.com/2011/06/20/icann-top-level-domains/

Contributed by James Craig

Jam3 – Bjork

Who doesn’t like Bjork?
Our friends at Jam3 http://www.jam3media.com/ who showed off their new site (coming soon) at FITC (its pretty insane) have been busy working with Bjork on her new site which just launched http://bjork.com/.
Its the first phase of her Biophilia project and it will continue growing over time.
HTML5 and they made their own 3D engine to parse the info coming out of Google Sketchup where it was designed by the Parisian artists M/M.

Editor’s Note: This is an excellent use and example of HTML5 + 3D being used in a site.  HTML5 works on mobile and iPad as opposed to Flash, which does not work on i-anything-mobile.

http://bjork.com/

Contributed by Jeremy Adirim J2theA