All footage taken from the original Rear Window (1954) directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
The order of events is pretty much as seen in the movie.
more info: jeffdesom.com/hitch/
Hungarian Dance No. 5
composed by Johannes Brahms
arranged for easy listening by Hugo Winterhalter

Dramatising the new zero-emission technology, Mercedes literally made the car invisible to the environment through an impressive cloaking effect.

A relentless struggle towards an unseen sonic superpower eroding the believers into sculptural fragments. ’nuff said.

Created by the talented Matt Pyke [artist], Chris Perry [animation] and Simon Pyke [sound].

Nike has symbiotically fused gamification, socialisation and personal data together. This combination is at the heart of —and the focus of— many new products and services in development today.

Jawbone’s UP will track your diet and sleep patterns but Nike’s FuelBand truly signifies the advent of the ‘Quantified Self’. People are fascinated by their data and their timelines —Facebook’s recent UI update to the timeline profile page demonstrates this— and adding a simple gaming layer and point system creates a simple yet compelling proposition. Make it fun.

Nike+ 1st generation was revolutionary —and R/GA’s middleware solution was inspired— but FuelBand takes a massive leap in functionality by facilitating the measurement and tracking of all and any movement across all sports and activities.

The UK release can’t come quick enough. I’m counting…

Draconian changes to possibly the greatest digital tool ever?

Powerful Web properties, search engines and social media services recently displayed their collective power of the digital world. The Wikipedia blackout, Google’s blackout of its logo and the outspoken support of Mark Zuckerberg all played a vital role in this unprecedented act of Web activism.

Politicians gave up and SOPA has been shot down, but the sense of relief could be a short-lived mirage. A decision on PIPA (Protect IP Act) is nearing and Senate support seems to be high. Of course, the same was said about SOPA and we all know how that ended.

The voice of the Web transferred seamlessly to the political arena. It is fair to say SOPA and its aftermath will become a case study for years to come. The curious part is whether we can expect the same result for PIPA, which some believe has more legs.

It is imperative that the fight to secure the nature of the Web continues. This can be achieved by allowing social media to grow, not only in popularity but also in power and reach. If nothing else we learned that our online voices can yield offline results.

SOPA and PIPA aren’t necessarily malicious and evil acts against the Web and its users, but they are out-of-touch posturing based on ideas that do not match our love and use of the web.Ultimately, they have been born from people more concerned with political maneuvering than with the unadulterated freedom and purpose of the internet.

W+K 12.7 members Jin Ryu and Yi-Fan Lu’s short documentary on Cameron Books has been selected for 38th Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival. It’s absorbing and reflective; charming and sincere – an amble within the thirty year old second hand book store (the second-oldest in Portland city).

Cameron’s Books from Jin Ryu on Vimeo.

Arduino is a brilliant open-source single-board microcontroller designed to enable the use of programming to interface with electronics accessible. It’s brilliant and we’re currently using it at The Marketing Store on a few upcoming projects. But this new Twain concept really is the simplest way to talk to and receive messages from electronic objects. Over on Kickstarter the project has already received communal funding of £100,000 and rising. One to watch.

The Art Museum is the finest art collection ever assembled between two covers. Ten years in the making, this unique book was created with a global team of specialists in all fields of art, including museum curators and educators, who have collected together important works as they might be displayed in the ideal museum for the art lover. I’m rapt with awe. So is Boba Fett… Who has graciously agreed to stand in as an indicator of scale (top left) – this book is awesome in every way. ‘And would fetch a fine bounty’ So says Boba…

There are warehouses full of them.  Poor little :CueCats™ motionless on dusty shelves fooled into believing Barcode scanning Nirvana was their destiny.  Alas the 1990′s :CueCat concept was a commercial failure. ‘CRQ’ (anagram word-play on ‘see our cue‘) is software developed by Digital:Convergence intended to convert ‘Cues’ from television signals and the :Cuecat bar code reader into URLs.   Apple laptopPro users are using ‘declawed’ :CueCats with the movie/book/music catalogs program Delicious Library.  They can also use the :CueCat with the Pedia (Bookpedia, CDpedia, DVDpedia, Gamepedia) line of applications from Bruji.  Thanks to folks over at the Social Book Network LibraryThing it is now purring, clawing and devouring it’s way through my books with gusto.  I wish it’s tail would wag… And also that Goodreads.com also implemented CRQ. Hack anyone? (and don’t mention Kindle… Bibliophila in full effect)

Following the rules of Geek’dom can be expensive. I’ve just upgraded to the iPhone 4S. It’s made me all nostalgic. I loved the Nokia 3310 so much I bought three. Two to use and this one to tuck away in my tech-goodie-toy-box. Its a design classic in both product and interface design and makes me feel all warm-n-tingly inside.

Back in the 1960s, there was no better way for a larval engineer or scientist to stand out from those pursuing more mushy majors than swaggering around with a fancy slide rule in a spiffy leather holster dangling from their belt. iPhone App? Pffff…

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.

Almost as compelling as the final sequence. A brief look at the mesh, modeling and deformation techniques. Click on the image to watch the video. Stunning.

For the last two years, University of Illinois at Chicago graduate student Arthur Nishimoto has been working on this incredible-looking video game based around a multi-touch interface. According to the YouTube page, the game:

Dieter Rams: Less and More Interview from Gestalten on Vimeo.

Conceptualized by Yugo Nakamura of tha ltd and developed in collaboration with Yoshihiro Saitoh and Om, Inc., FRAMED* is “a new platform for digital art.” At first glance, it looks like your average 40″ HDTV screen hung vertically on a wall, but it also features a self-contained computer powered by a Core i5 processor and Windows 7, which seamlessly supports Processing, OpenFrameworks, Cinder and even Flash. Built-in WiFi connects the digital frame to a dedicated iPhone app where users can purchase works for display and control the interactive pieces (as seen in the video above). The screen also features a built-in camera and microphone to support various kinds of interaction. The first batch of artists includes work from some top notch names we love like Universal Everything, Flight 404, andTheo Watson.