Entries published in June 2008:

More photos here and here

You're looking at a batch of Gregories, the froggiest iPhone Cozies around. As noted before, Gregory is a finalist in the Next Big Thing design competition at Fred Flare. There are 27 finalists in total, and they are being presented one a day at the Fred Flare Blog.

One of the designers will be awared a $1000 cash prize. As far as I know the voting will be on July 2 (I haven't seen the voting page yet), and the designer with the most votes will be crowned 2008’s “fred fan fave” and will receive the $1000.

Will you vote for Annamatic's Gregory? I will.

Link to Flickr for larger version

Click to enlarge

Compare my photo to that taken by Eleftheria, and you might bark at the difference. Why does HER MILK look rather smudgy in her photo, and smooth and glossy in my photo(s)? Which one is the real deal you might ask, and I'll take moment to answer that. This thing called skin is as good as you apply it:

Take your time
Transparent stickers are a bit tricky, because they're not air-permeable, like the vinyl material used for the other editions. Right after the sticker is put on, it can look tainted, because the enclosed air is reflecting light. What appears as dirty spots in Eleftheria's photo, are rather the textured spots, where the sticker is not fully attached on the surface. This effect will smooth out. After a few hours, you can see a difference, and again after a week or so. The sticker is a living thing: it expands and contracts in reponse to temperature variations and will attach more closely to the surface over time.

Avoid a bold stroke
Instead, rub the sticker on little by little, as this will avoid air bubbles.

Be strong
Use a cloth and some pressure. Pressure is good.

Leave your mark elsewhere
Touching the adhesive surface can leave your fingerprints visible. I write can, because the marks can fade out again over time. Hold the sticker on the edges with one hand and press it on with the other hand.

Aim low
In Eleftheria's photo, the angle at which the light is reflected gets right under the skin, exposing and exaggerating every mark there is. It couldn't have been much more unfortunate in terms of exposure. Believe me, it's not that bad.

Anyways, please keep the photos coming. I like to discover the user perspective of products as much as you do.

See /sticker_application for more advice on applying the decals.

Here is what Joffrey Lacour at geekandhype.com says about Shufflesome stickers: "...unique et original".

What are they not?

Personalized stickers available through Shufflesome.com, a website devoted to stickers designed specifically to personalize both your iPod Nano’s and iPod shuffles. The stickers are designed by artists from all over the globe and suit a range of tastes and styles. The stickers are edgy and offer style to your music lifestyle. They’re not only really cool but there also really easy to use and are quiet inexpensive.

Councillor Ben writes for Mactropolis, where you can read the full post.

Didn't I just play up Boris, the bunny guy made by Anna Lee? It turns out that Gregory jumps ahead of Boris. Gregory, the frog guy, is a finalist in the Next Big Thing design competition at Fred Flare.

As I learend at annamatic.com, his 3-eyed mutant friend, Goggles, makes regular appearances at Anna's Etsy shop.

Anna Lee has added new people to her Etsy shop, including Boris, a bunny guy, lined with plushy pink microfiber, to keep your iPhone or iPod.

She has also crafted the web design for Kidmondo, a new website launched about a month ago, and featured on 37signals Product Blog.

Calendar week 25, 2008

Keep the trend going. Remember that every day on which you beat the magic number of unique visitors, you contribute to keeping prices low.

Image based on Moody intro window.

That's my interpretation of the situation. Next to all the other metadata from which to create playlists, Moody's 4x4 grid offers an intuitive and fast shortcut to selecting songs.

I have written about Moody before. In some weird way, the simple looking grid seems to demand low cognitive effort. More probably though, there is lots of cognition involved, which is lubricated by the emotional response to color. To locate the energy level of a song in terms of your emotional response, there is a vast and complex relationship at work.

Ludwig van Beethoven:

Musik ist höhere Offenbarung als alle Weisheit und Philosophie. Wem meine Musik sich verständlich macht, der muß frei werden von all dem Elend, womit sich die anderen schleppen.

In the context of Moody, I consider a good tag to be one that doesn't get in the way—one that doesn't obfuscate the colorspot I initialy choose. Of all the things that a color, say red, can stand for, it can be either more specific than a word, or more generic, and therefore more flexible. Music is too rich to be subsumable under a single, lowly, word. Yet, the words are essential, as if I wouldn't be able to pinpoint a feeling (or to ensure that one exists) without them. Our emotions are enslaved by our brain.

I feel orange.

When Royal Glamsters submitted his Hooly designs, i knew i was onto something. If images transport memes, this one does. Hooly immediately reminded me of Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night. Both art pieces share a certain, unmistakable, wooly dilemma.

Hooly World was a finalist in the YayArtist'08 competition. It was rated as one of the 24 most popular pieces, out of almost 400 submissions. All 24 finalist art pieces were displayed on giant cubes at Kings New Square in Copenhargen, Denmark.

Source: YayArt'08 exhibition opposite the Royal Danish Theater

YayArt offers reproductions on canvas, based on digitally processed master copies. The pieces are “produced on real canvas, using only quality materials and the latest technology available”.

As somebody who also relies on “quality materials and the latest technology” i can tell you that this is the hardest part to demonstrate on the Internet. In the realm of fine art prints, you get what you see, but you have to touch to see clearly. With other words, the only way to judge quality is with your own eyes and hands on the real product. Photos on the Internet are the only other, lossy, way to get an impression beforehand—and that is why feedback is very welcome.

Hooly World on canvas is available until 500 pieces are sold.

Sabine Groten will exhibit her work as part of a showcase of Photography, Mixed Media and Digital Art.

Experience Florian Beckers' dealing with "The Vanishing of the Images" or the results of Sabine Groten's Fusion of Design and Photography, or Andrej Glusgold's contemporary "Fairy Tales" and Wolfgang Herbold's "Digital Mapping to Human Nature"... Yoko Mazuki's approach to the "innocence of Insects and Plants" or Brooke Lydecker's latest "Untitled" photographs and Djani Ivancevic's atmospheric dense B&W Photography of his "Melancholic Diary".

Take A Chance is an invitation to become familiar with and go for the work of upcoming talent. An inspiring chance to start a collection or turn the page to open a new chapter for an existing collection.

June 15 — August 31, 2008
The OMC Gallery for Contemporary Art

#shflsmprice - in one word, denotes and represents a pricing model i have recently introduced. I'll have to dwell on this topic for a while, until it eventually catches on. Basically, customers, and people interested in Shufflesome stickers, can participate in setting the price. Although Shufflesome stickers are not that much of a community project to draw in a large amount of people and make emerging patterns statistically viable, the principle of participatory pricing alone is worth the experiment to me.

This time, i'll point out some of the differences between traditional advertising, and Shufflesome participatory pricing:

Nite Stories consists of 11 acrylic paintings, capturing unusual and unconventional moments of young peoples' nights out. Aleosa will be at the exhibition opening on Thursday, June 5th 2008, to present her work. "I worked on the Nite Stories project for the last couple of months, and I'm finally ready to show it".

The images are based on photographs by Mark Hunter—thecobrasnake, who will be there, too. For this project, Aleosa used dark backgrounds offset by brightly coloured characters from Mark Hunter's photographs, giving them a mysterious touch.

The project is inspired and encouraged by Soulwax Nite Versions. Stephen Dewaele:

In a day and age where everyone takes digital pictures, posed in almost globally similar ways, posted instantly all over the web, it's refreshing to see someone adapt this world to canvas and blow up these little mini-observations of nite-life...

Use the hashtag #shflsmprice in one of your tweets, and you'll get one Shufflesome sticker of your choice for free. The following conditions have to be met:

• Tweet contains #shflsmprice
• Tweet is sent to a person who follows you
• Follower uses/owns an iPod
• You're one of the first 5 people (besides me) to use #shflsmprice in a tweet

What should the tweet be about? At the least, it should make sense to the person you're sending it to. At the most, you'll enourage somebody to check out shufflesome.com, because that somebody could be interested in sticker designs.

So, your tweet could look something like this:

@follower your message here #shflsmprice

I'd like to see if such promo tweets could help to engender a tweet-to-visits-to-price pattern. For background, read this post: #shflsmprice: a keyword coupon to move prices.