With the recent recall of Mattel toys, I am sure every parent lives in fear of what next. While China is obviously trying to cope with the recent flak and corporations are stepping up their quality control, here is an innovative idea that helps parents take control of their children’s safety. Rick Klau launched Safertoys.org to help parents and people in general track and submit stories on unsafe toys – ala digg style.
Growing up, I sometimes would read Indian comic books that covered stories of epic heroes. The visual depiction was traditional and often lacked the sophistication in story-telling that you are accustomed to in the Western world. Story-telling and character development is in our history, as is evident in the numerous Hindu gods and goddesses that we worship. And comic books would have been the ideal medium to instill the sense of pride and awareness that as a child, I completely lacked. Sadly, epic stories were not as popular as Archie comics. I often knew more about Veronica than about Tansen.
So imagine my surprise when I found out about Virgin Comics and their efforts to revive Indian history through comic books. What was even more surprising was to know that filmmaker Shekhar Kapoor is behind this effort. I have friends in the animation world that have done mini-projects backed by his vision and I have understood that his passion to put Indian history on the world map has been relentless.
So to see what these comics were doing different, I played hookie from my weekend errands and spent a few hours checking out the illustrated Ramayana. I admire the work and the the artists behind the illustrations. While the visual design surpassed my expectations, I was disappointed in the character visualization and story-telling style. Rama looks like a cross between a western superhero and the Indian god Shiva while Ravan had the flavor of an evil Manga character. The language had a yuppie spunk to it that is not typical of Indian story-telling. Call me old skool but I am still not sure if I really like this compared to what I have been used to growing up. I realize that to cater to a western world the characters were modified. This is heartening and despite my initial impressions of the visual impact, Virgin comics will be on my “interesting things to track” list.
Ever thought about capturing the infinite universe of changing information in a computer program? See this unbelievable attempt to capture present day mythology.
Jonathan Harris is the mastermind behind this visualization. Part visual designer, part anthropologist, part artist, part storyteller, Jonathan has a body of work that is often my source of inspiration. As I watched this new applet transforming gobs of infinite data into finite visualizations, I was fascinated at how he uses technology to tell a story.
His philosophy of passive information gathering is an interesting concept, especially when I am building interaction models based on contrived forms of user feedback. Passive information gathering as Jonathan says is about living life, while what you say or do on the web is captured without your knowledge.
Data then is real and spontaneous helping create richer experiences within the web sphere. Universe is one example of that richer experience.
Last night I watched an ad for Spot Runner that talked about “affordable” television advertising. Having been privy to that world, I have known that television advertising has always been elitist, catering to the big fish of the consumer experience. So now that small businesses can advertise and more importantly compete with the big fish, it is going to be interesting to watch the new wave of Spot Runner ads.
While the concept is revolutionary, what piqued my interest is the approach. Read more ›
Clive Thompson talks about Twitter in this week’s issue calling it the “social sixth sense”. While some would think that this new app is just another dying fad I tend to agree with a lot of what Clive talks about. Having experienced it myself I now have a better understanding of some of my peers who have hooked this app to their chat client creating as Clive calls it “social proprioception”. Read more ›