Archive | January, 2009

5 Things I Loved Last Week… Obama Inauguration Edition

21 Jan

Obama’s coronation er… inauguration had the entire world (and by extension the Interwebs) buzzing and some great links came out of it.

Clouds Comparing Bush’s Inaugural Speech Versus Obama’s

I thought David Wescott did a clever thing punching the two transcripts into Wordle. Have a look below and tell me which one is Obama’s and which one is Bush’s (I desaturated the images. The colours made it too obvious). There a few commonalities, but a couple of the prominent words are dead giveaways.

Collage of Newspaper Front Pages from the Next Day (via @jasonfried)

As Jason said, “Anyone know who this guy’s PR firm is?”
 

CNN’s Photosynth of the Inauguration (via @kevinrose)

Television really didn’t do it justice. They should have done some 360 degree pans. Interestingly enough, when you zoom in from some angles it captures moments when Obama isn’t on the podium. How is that even possible? I assume that 95% of the photos taken would have been while Obama was on stage.
 

Obama Skywalker

This is one incredibly detailed action figure with some awesome accesories (sold separately no doubt). Check out the link for the full photo shoot.

 

My President is Black – Jay-Z Remix (via @vasta)

I don’t care if the Young Jeezy/Nas version was first. Jay is the man.

5 Things I Loved Last Week… December 28 – January 3

3 Jan

 

1. Auditorium

This game is one of the most pleasurable experiences I have had online in a while. The interface is breathtakingly elegant and remarkably intuitive.

 

2. Wired Deconstructs a Girl Talk Track

Wired does some brilliant information design to show the 35 samples and their relationship to one another on one of the tracks from Girl Talk’s Feed the Animals.

 

3. The Independent Explores Torrent Legend aXXo (Thanks @hartleyglobe)

The Independent delves into a subculture that you surprisingly don’t hear much about given the abundance of articles written about piracy in general. This is a must read for torrent fiends.

4. Twit Apps’ Replies

I find I am either in Twitter mode or I am not, but I am always in email mode. Twit Apps‘ Replies forwards any Twitter replies to your email inbox and you don’t even have to give up your Twitter credentials (UX folks check out the registration flow, it is pretty clever, if not a little limited). 

5. The Best iPhone Apps of 2008

Bryan Barletta from AppVee has done a great rundown on some of the top iPhone applications for 2008 for TechCrunch. For anybody looking to pitch or build iPhone applications in 2009, you could do a lot worse than to start by looking at this list.