Lunch over IP

TED2008: More video interstitials

(Unedited running notes from the TED2008 conference in Monterey, California.)

Short videos of various nature -- be it art or ads -- but all interesting or original or fun or surprising -- or all of the above -- are used at TED as interstitials, between speeches or between sessions. I posted two the other day. Here a few more that were showed since:

Dove's "Onslaught" for their Campaign for Real Beauty:

Guinness' "Tipping Point Domino", by Rube Goldberg (like the Honda Accord ad of a few years ago, inspired by the great Fischli&Weiss "The Way Things Go" of twenty years ago)

Sony Bravia's "Rabbits" ad:

Sony's "Walkman" ad, by agency Fallon:

TED2008: Funny interstitials

(Running notes from the TED2008 conference in Monterey, California.)

Short videos -- funny, interesting, spectacular -- are used at TED as interstitial between speeches or between sessions. Here two that the TED audience got to see today.

"Frozen Grand Central", by ImprovEverywhere (listen carefully, towards the end, to what the guy in the cart has to say):

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Monster.com's advertising "There is a perfect job for everyone", by BBDO:

LIFT08: The fondue evening

(Running notes from the LIFT08 conference in Geneva - Conference blog - video.)

The LIFT fondue evening is becoming a legend in conference circles -- soon some other organizer will copy it, but it won't be the original. Yesterday night, 600 people shared a fondue, prepared by the LIFT team in cooperation with Le Gruyère, the organization of professional cheesemakers of the Gruyére region. The fondue was delicious, the service great, and the networking/fun quotient very high. Last year, LIFT and Walabab published a "Swiss cheese survival guide", a primer about fondue: it's still available here. Here a picture of yesterday night's preparation:

Rush hour at the airport

Best Photoshop job seen in a long time. (From EveryoneForever)

Don't miss Chappatte's books

Patrick Chappatte is a global soul. For his biography: born in Pakistan from a Lebanese mother and a Swiss father, raised in Singapore, has lived in New York, lives in Geneva. And for his way of looking at the world's events, applying the unfettered perspective of humor to both the tragic, the farcical and the absurd. This makes of Chappatte one of the world's best editorial cartoonist. He draws for the International Herald Tribune and for the Swiss dailies NZZ (in German) and Le Temps (in French) and the subtlety of his cartoons consistently robs you of a smile (let me add a transparency line: he's a friend - but judge by yourself if you think I'm biased).

Some of his best drawings are now out in book form: "Globalized", in English, which is available online from the New York Times' store (if you live in Switzerland, you can find it in the English section of most bookstores); and "La vie qu'on mène", published in French by Glénat and available from Amazon's French site. I've published several of Chappatte's cartoons in this previous post, and the image below is the one used for the cover of "Globalized", featuring a drawing from October 2005 related to the US restarting their Moon program.

TED2007: Conference interstitials

During the TED2007 conference (which took place last week in Monterey -- see all my posts on it) some of the best ads and commercials of the year are traditionally shown as "interstitials" between sessions. Here are two that have been shown this year. First, an Indian tale:

And here the colorful follow-up to one of last year's videos:

Artifact from the future: Gorebama clipping

This morning I was testing a time-travel device and could journey a few days into the future. As I always do when visiting a new place, I picked up the local newspaper:

 

(Newspaper clipping courtesy of the clipping generator. Cross-posted on the Huffington Post.)

Swiss timekeeping

The clock on the left was photographed a few days ago by Jürg Stuker at the St Gallen train station; the one on the right was spotted by Nicolas Nova somewhere in the Swiss countryside:

Swiss army knife: Where's the USB drive?

The first thing that came to mind after reading the list of the 85 tools included in the Giant Swiss Army Knife produced by Wenger (a subsidiary of Victorinox) is: where is item number 86, the USB flash drive?

The Giant Knife is not to be taken too seriously, of course: weighting almost 1 kg and measuring 22 cm, the instrument is basically unusable. It was intended for promotional purposes - until some collector asked to own one, and now Wenger is building them to order and selling them for sums close to CHF 1500/$1200 a piece. They're built in Delémont, where Wenger is headquartered, and produced by the company's craftsmen "assembling most of the tools that have been included in Wenger Swiss Army knives in the past", Claude Kottelat of Wenger told me on the phone. Some of those tools may be in shorter supply than others, and that's why Giant Knives aren't necessarily all alike. As for the USB drive, there is a reason to its absence: it has never been part of Wenger's catalog - "that's a Victorinox product", so Kottelat.

Here the complete list of the 85 tools included in the Giant Knife, v1.0:

1. 2.5” 60% serrated locking blade
2. Nail file, nail cleaner
3. Corkscrew
4. Adjustable pliers with wire crimper and cutter
5. Removable screwdriver bit adapter
6. 2.5” Blade for Official World Scout Knife
7. Spring-loaded, locking needle-nose pliers with wire cutter
8. Removable screwdriver bit holder
9. Phillips head screwdriver bit 0
10. Phillips head screwdriver bit 1
11. Phillips head screwdriver bit 2
12. Flat head screwdriver bit 0.5 mm x 3.5 mm
13. Flat head screwdriver bit 0.6 mm x 4.0 mm
14. Flat head screwdriver bit 1.0 mm x 6.5 mm
15. Magnetized recessed bit holder
16. Double-cut wood saw with ruler (inch & cm)
17. Bike chain rivet setter, removable 5m allen wrench, screwdriver for slotted and Phillips head screws
18. Removable tool for adjusting bike spokes, 10m hexagonal key for nuts
19. Removable 4mm curved allen wrench with Phillips head screwdriver
20. Removable 10mm hexagonal key
21. Patented locking Phillips head screwdriver
22. Universal wrench
23. Laser pointer with 300 ft. range
24. 1.65” Clip point utility blade
25. Metal saw, metal file
26. 4 mm allen wrench
27. 2.5” blade
28. Fine metal file with precision screwdriver
29. Double-cut wood saw
30. Cupped cigar cutter with double-honed edges
31. 12/20-Gauge choke tube tool
32. Watch caseback opening tool
33. Snap shackle
34. Telescopic pointer
35. Compass, straight edge, ruler (in./cm)
36. Mineral crystal magnifier with precision screwdriver
37. 2.4” Springless scissors with serrated, self-sharpening design
38. Shortix key
39. Flashlight
40. Fish scaler, hook disgorger, line guide
41. Micro tool holder
42. Micro tool adapter
43. Micro scraper-straight
44. Reamer
45. Fine fork for watch spring bars
46. Pin punch 1.2 mm
47. Pin punch .8 mm
48. Round needle file
49. Removable tool holder with expandable receptacle
50. Removable tool holder
51. Multi-purpose screwdriver
52. Flat Phillips head screwdriver
53. Flat head screwdriver bit 0.5 mm x 3.5 mm
54. Spring loaded, locking flat nose nose-pliers with wire cutter
55. Phillips head screwdriver bit 0
56. Phillips head screwdriver bit 1
57. Phillips head screwdriver bit 2
58. Flat head screwdriver bit 0.5 mm x 3.5 mm
59. Flat head screwdriver bit 0.6 mm x 4.0 mm
60. Flat head screwdriver bit 1.0 mm x 6.5 mm
61. Can opener
62. Phillips head screwdriver
63. 2.5” Clip point blade
64. Golf club face cleaner
65. 2.4” Round tip blade
66. Patented locking screwdriver, cap lifter, can opener
67. Golf shoe spike wrench
68. Golf divot repair tool
69. Micro straight-curved
70. Special tool holder
71. Phillips head screwdriver 1.5mm
72. Screwdriver 1.2 mm
73. Screwdriver .8 mm
74. Mineral crystal magnifier, fork for watch spring bars, small ruler
75. Removable screwdriver bit holder
76. Magnetized recessed bit holder
77. Tire tread gauge
78. Reamer/awl
79. Patented locking screwdriver, cap lifter, wire stripper
80. Special Key
81. Toothpick
82. Tweezers
83. Adapter
84. Key ring
85. Second key ring

If you can't live without it, contact Wenger (Switzerland - USA) and they will assemble one and ship it to you in about a month.

A wikicomedy, but fun is missing

We've heard about the "wisdom of crowds" - the idea (postulated by author James Surowiecki) that a group is collectively smarter than the smartest person in that group. Now my friend Ze Frank, the Brooklyn comedian, is testing wheter there is a "wit of crowds" - whether a group of Internet-linked writers can be funnier than the funniest person among them (that would be Ze, of course).

I guess that, faced with criticism, every comedian (and pretty much every one among us) at some point has ruminated or said something like "If you're so smart [funny; fast; creative; cool; you pick], why don't you do it?"

That's what Ze did. For three months now he's produced a five-times-a-week video show for his website, parodying the news. He is generally funny, sometimes acutely so, and gets some 10'000 viewers a day, but the "comments" field has also seen people questioning his ablities as an entertainer. So, early June, he turned the tables, "why-don't-you-do-it"-style, setting up a comedy-writing wiki: a site where anyone can write a joke or a line and edit or correct or delete those written by others - and telling his public that if they collaborated in writing a script for his show, he would faithfully execute it, no matter how absurd - so long as it involved no nudity - and post the result on the site.

The result of this "comedy by consensus" exercice - four minutes and a half of talk about football, gay marriage, NASA, bathrooms and more - is now up for everyone to see. It's called "Fabuloso Friday". According to a story in the New York Times, some 220 people made more than 2000 revisions to the script. But as Clay Shirky (the researcher who coined the term "social software", and who took part in the exercice) says, the script reflects the two basic tenets of comedy writing: "Most people aren't funny, and most funny people are not funny most of the time".

A second wikiscript - although with altered rules - is underway.