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Came across some of the “iamamiwhoami” vids at the end of last year and meant to follow up but have been too busy. The names of the vids look like coordinates and sure enough the folks at unfiction are on the case.

The marriage of ARGs and music is such a natural fit. NiN did an effective take on it with Year Zero a few years back. In fact many have thought these viral vids are the work of NiN and earlier tonight Trent Reznor tweeted

I often post about data viz. Here’s a nice animated vid that compares internet data across services, outlets and country.

234 million websites

126 million blogs

12.2 billion videos viewed monthly on youTube (US)

1.4 billion email users

1.73 billion internet users

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

MIT’s Futures of Entertainment conference is held each fall. I had the privilege of speaking at the event in 2008. It’s an amazing mix of people from various sides of the industry. This past year the conference had a number of excellent transmedia focused panels. In the following panel the team behind Purefold give an inside look at the project.

I’ve been tracking thesixtyone for a bit. The first version of the site matched social gaming with music discovery. The newest incarnation has taken a slightly different approach one which is more discovery focused with a mix of simple challenges called quests that encourage you to listen to music and gain reputation points.

The part I love about the new design is the simplicity and richness of the interface.

Of course you could look at the picture on the box but this is a cool use of AR to demo the contents prior to purchase.

Meet “Yuki-taro, the friendly snowbot” – for a million yen you can have a Snow Removal Robot that clears snow while creating igloo bricks, is GPS enabled and uses twin cameras to see.

(hat tip inventorspot)

Very much looking forward to the release of Bioshock 2 which comes out this week. I’d love to get my hands on the game bible that I’ve heard rumors about – Bioshock is a rich game world while at the same time haunting, beautiful and bizzare.

The WorkBook Project joined forces with Filmmaker Magazine to produce a number of daily videos from Park City. SABI filmmakers Zak Forsman and Kevin K. Shah speak with Ted Hope, Jon Reiss, Mynette Louie (Children of Invention) and Linas Phillips (Bass Ackwards) to explore the solutions that are emerging for independent filmmakers – featuring some of the insights and actions that came from the 2010 Filmmaker Summit.

A visual snapshot of internet consumption – provides an interesting look at the state of the internet in 2009.

I received a mention in a New York Times article entitled Talking About a Revolution (for a Digital Age) The article also references William Castle and the experiences he created around his work. Castle was an inspiration for some of the Cinema ARG experiences I did around my last film Head Trauma. DIY and the concept of transmedia were popular topics at Sundance this year and both have been popping up more and more in the press. Here’s a trailer from 1955 where Castle – always the showman – is plugging the experience around his newest film The Tingler.

I spent the last few days at the Sundance Film Festival. When I’m at the fest I always make it a point to checkout the Frontier which is located in the basement of a mall. Its a sprawling space that brings together a nice mix of new media, tech and art. Here are a few pics.

More than a decade ago it was “search” that was driving innovation and large investments in both infrastructure and talent. When Google first started indexing unique URLs in 1998 there were already 26 million. Two years later the amount of indexed pages had crossed the billion mark. Flash forward to this winter and the amount of unique URLs exceeds 1 trillion.

We are swimming in a sea of data. On average Americans wade through 34 gigs of information a day according to a recent report by researchers at the University of California, San Diego. The ability to “filter” this information will drive future innovation. How people are posting, commenting and clicking will greatly impact the ways films are created, curated and shared over the next decade.

Enter The Magical Mystery Chambers – 27 track mashup – free stream and download

URDB is an awesome site that enables anyone to set world records. “The definitive site for human achievement.” We had the honor of working with Dan and Corey the co-founders of URDB for an episode of RADAR back during season One. If you have a world record in you itching to get out head over to URDB.org and join in the fun.

I’ve always wanted a remote controlled helicopter especially one with a camera! The Parrot AR.Drone turns your iPhone or iTouch into a helicopter remote control. And if that wasn’t cool enough the AR.Drone taps the AR capabilities of the iPhone or iTouch to provide a cool augmented gaming experience.

20×200 brings limited edition art to the masses. The site has a threadless type vibe minus the competition but I think sites like Etsy, threadless and now 20×200 are wonderful discovery platforms for collectible and cool items. Would love to see something like this pop up for experimental visual works.

Album 1 by Paul Madonna

More and more things are moving to the cloud. The hype around OnLive and their solution for “Cloud Gaming” reached a fever pitch in early 2009. By years end they had a beta running. The following is a demo by CEO Steve Perlman to students at Columbia. As more things move to the “cloud” it offers interesting opportunities for new forms of social interaction. The following vid is cued to the demo section. But there is interesting info throughout the vid and Perlman gives a nice overview of the platform and biz model.

This past week I came across two filtering / aggregation projects which were both developed within internal lab divisions – one from url shortening service Bit.ly and the other from Google.

With the excitement building around Apple’s announcement of a tablet device rumored to be called the iSlate – I hope in 2010 we’ll see digital magazines and books step into the transmedia fold. The integration between apps, APIs, and a strong movement towards standardizing “activity streams” across social services present fertile ground for transmedia storytelling. Character extensions, augmented reality, supporting materials, back stories, experience hyperlinking that ties into online / offline events not to mention real-time interactions between readers all are fuel for rich transmedia experiences.

Two icons from the DC scene sit down and talk punk rock and DIY.

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Deerhunter’s 2008 Kranky release Microcastle is a haunting and beautiful stream of consciousness. “Never Stops” definitely finds it’s way onto my playlist of favs of the past decade.

Deerhunter – Never Stops

Today my Loveland deed came in the mail. I’m the proud owner of 25 inches of Detroit. I’ve written about Loveland the social ownership meets collaborative art meets urban revitalization project a number of times.

Play of the day

Broken Bells is a collaboration between Danger Mouse and The Shins’ James Mercer

Broken Bells – The High Road

In the winter issue of Filmmaker Magazine, I talk about how data can be used to discover, curate and create stories.

Novuhiko Obayashi’s flick Hausu aka House is just bizarre. It’s all over the place and bound to leave a lasting impression. A mind trip of a ghost tale mixed with warped bedtime story. The best quote that I’ve seen “an episode of Scooby Doo as directed by Dario Argento.”

Just returned from a 24 hour trip to LA. Long commute for what turned out to be an amazing set of meetings – more on that another time. But upon returning tonight I was greeted by a package from Hong Kong. A few weeks back I ordered Evan Roth’s book “Available Online for Free – selected works by Evan Roth: 2003-2008.” I’ve been a fan of Evan’s stuff especially the Graffiti Research Lab. Love how his work embraces open source philosophies.

Customize and personalize a puzzle. National Geographic has a new service that will create a puzzle based on any map you wish. Just provide a starting point and they’ll create a 400 piece puzzle of a six-by-four mile area.

The following short directed by Matt Pyke and animated by Maxim Zhestkov was part of 42×42 a number of short works commissioned by 42 Below. The films needed to be 42 seconds long and surreal.