Once a year we celebrate
With stupid hats and plastic plates
The fact that you were able to make
Another trip around the sun

And the whole clan gathers round
And gifts and laughter do abound
And we let out a joyful sound
And sing that stupid song

Happy birthday!
Now you’re one year older!
Happy birthday

Your life still isn’t over!
Happy birthday!
You did not accomplish much
But you didn’t die this year
I guess that’s good enough

The WIRED digital application

Last week Jeremy Clark from Adobe and Chris Anderson unveiled the first glimpse of the Wired Reader at TED. Above, you’ll see a video, narrated by Jeremy and Wired Creative Director Scott Dadich, who led the tablet team, that shows more. It explains why the tablet is such a groundbreaking opportunity for magazines such as WIRED.

Nice find by the Mikes.

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.

Massive Attack’s cg music video reminds me of a shiny black and white version of AKQA’s Halo 3 Believe video.

My boss just sent this to me so I’d thought I’d share. This one of the most unique, experiential, and beautiful games I’ve come across in a while: http://www.recordtripping.com/

I have been seriously neglecting this blog.. But really it just means we are busy here at MMB.

This is the video of the T-Mobile crowd action dance routine that took place in Liverpool a few days ago. Sometimes it’s better to have fun than just send out your static message, no?

watch in High Quality here

The dance was an example of a ‘flash mob’, which occurs when people arrange to meet at a certain place and time to carry out a quirky action, before disbanding minutes later.

Flash mobbing is seen as an anarchic, freedom-of-expression act, although this one was organised by T-Mobile for an advert which will debut on Channel 4 and YouTube.

Another great and Non-commercial flash mob was the “Frozen Event” in Paris.

Everything you could want to know about a Flash Mob

Nike Snowboarding: DK-YS

Change.gov

Created by Blue State Digital

The Obama administration could become the most technologically-savvy presidency so far. The President-Elect’s transition team has already put up change.gov, a website developed by Blue State Digital, the same firm that created Obama’s campaign website. Obama’s administration promises to be the first to include a Chief Technology Officer, and he supports net neutrality.

Another thing to note is that John Podesta has been appointed as Obama’s Head of his Transition Team. John Podesta is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for American Progress. The Center for American Progress is a think tank dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through ideas and action. We combine bold policy ideas with a modern communications platform to help shape the national debate, expose the hollowness of conservative governing philosophy, and challenge the media to cover the issues that truly matter. You can expect a good amount of the thinking that the Center has done will be rolled into Obama’s form of government.

Some Pretty interesting reads from the Center for American Progress are.

A National Innovation Agenda: Progressive Policies for Economic Growth and Opportunity Through Science and Technology

Green Recovery
A New Program to Create Good Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy

Strategic Reset
Reclaiming Control of U.S. Security in the Middle East

Think Again: What Obamedia?

Creative Curio » The Best InDesign Tip Ever!
Here is a simple but essential tip for working in InDesign.

Vectips
Illustrator tips, tricks and various awesomeness.

Daily Inspiration #27 | Abduzeedo - design inspiration & tutorials

Web Resources » Loon Design

8 Addictive and Fun Background Generators for Designers

45+ Sources and Sets of Photoshop Custom Shapes
For graphic designers, working with custom shapes in Photoshop can be a big time-saver. While free brushes get a lot of attention, custom shapes probably get less. Here is a rundown of some of the best resources to download free custom shapes for your own work in Photoshop.

TypeNEU
TypeNeu is an odyssey in typography. TypeNeu reports on the past, present and the future of typographic culture, with main focus on typefaces and applied typography in different forms. You can see many different typography from book, fashion, illustration, magazine, packaging, poster, print and etc…

DJ Z-Trip / Obama Mix - Download MP3

The Obama Mix MP3 (2008)- 55min Obama themed DJ set

Recently, Shepard Fairey and DJ Ztrip threw some fundraisers for the Obama campaign. They called them “The Party for Change”.

It’s a crazy eclectic and politically inspired dj set.

consume, enjoi, spread

GO VOTE

Lightable LED Dinner Table - Create a Halo of Light Around Any Object VIDEO

COLORBURNED - Professional Design Resources - 106 Delicious Water Color Illustrator Brushes

Water Color Illustrator Brushes - Set 2

Inside Google’s Design Process - BusinessWeek
While many eyes are trained on Mountain View for the official release of the new G1/Android phone from Google and T-Mobile, I got an insight into Google’s design process from the company’s VP of Product Management, Sundar Pichai, and Group Product Manager, Brian Rakowski.

GOLDMINE!

elegant CSS typography
The main advantage of elegant CSS typography lies in its ability to be both attractive and improves the user experience. When chosen wisely and used carefully, it can be very effective to support the overall design. There are many outstanding examples of how we can do this, and below you will find some of the best ideas and tips when it comes to using Fonts and typography in your CSS based sites.

very small array » Every Filter

220+ Stunning Creative Skateboard Graphics | Blog.SpoonGraphics
T-shirts, album art and skateboard graphics are often used by designers and illustrators as a blank canvas to express their personal creativity, with no limits holding back the creative ideas there are many stunning examples to be seen. This collection of 223 skateboard deck graphics from various designers and illustrators will be sure to get your creative juices flowing!

Typechart lets you flip through, preview and compare web typography while retrieving the CSS.

Pixel Perfect

Make sure that the developers stay true to the designs.

Google on Google Chrome - comic book
Google Chrome is Google’s browser project; this comic book by Google, drawn by Scott McCloud, is scanned here and shown under its Creative Commons license.

Bacon Salt - Everything should taste like bacon.
Our mission in life is to make everything taste like real, delicious bacon, without the fat or calories. Choose from 3 bacon-filled flavors — Original, Hickory and Peppered — or buy all 3!

Free Download: Creative Doodles Photoshop Brushes | Tutorial9 - Tutorial Bliss.
Download a bunch of doodle-ized photoshop brushes.

Sketchy Icons
In web design and graphic design today, the “sketchy” trend is ever increasing. However, there seems to be a real lack of decent sketchy icon sets. I’ve managed to locate just 10 decent sets:

Watercolors
This past year inspiredology.com has found that more and more websites have some sort of watercolour effect on them. This effect or style has really come alive in 2008. There are many websites that use this effect to create depth and texture. Though in most cases, watercolour being a very subtle effect, your aesthetics of your site can improve greatly.

TheDieline.com:
Wow! An amazingly good Packaging Design blog. Check it out and be inspired

Brendan’s Recap

1st Quarter: The bus ride to the race track

As if a full day of gambling on horses wasn’t enough for us, we had to make the bus ride more interesting with a few wacky wagers of our own. Kristin nabbed some cash for correctly guessing how many creamers were in the Dunkin Donuts bag. (Kristin, Mia says you can leave her cut on her desk. I don’t know what that means, but it certainly sounds legitimate). Paul became $100 richer by coming closest to guessing Mambro’s car mileage. And Ed correctly predicted that the “short bus” (Mambro, Mike and Jerry) wouldn’t pass us on the way to the track. I have a hunch that Ed paid the bus driver to drive 95 mph the entire way so they couldn’t catch up with us. On the plus side, we did make it to the track in good time. Not sure what was going on in the back of the bus, but if you were in the front of the bus you got to hear how excited Maura was to see some horses. Maura, do you like horses? I can’t recall. Amazingly we were able to pass the time without a drop of booze. I didn’t think it was possible. Congrats everyone!

Score:
MMB’s Sobriety: 1
AA: 0

2nd Quarter: Arrival & Learning how not to lose your money

After stepping off the bus and making our way through the scores of geriatric security guards (seriously, did anyone see that one old lady?! I’m pretty sure she’s old enough to have cashed in her social security checks to bet on Seabiscuit!), we arrived at the trackside tent which would be home base for our day of debauchery. Danielle made a big splash by winning $300+ in the Trifecta Box in the opening race. Caroline, on the other hand, lost and resigned herself to a lifetime of equine hatred. (I think I saw her punch a jockey). The food was pretty good, although I’m still waiting for a beer I order around 2 pm.

Score:
MMB’s Sobriety: -5
Our Waiter: Not able to keep up with our drinking pace

3rd Quarter: Coping with loses, Celebrating victories

As the day progressed, the Subway girls (Danielle, Miranda and Webby) were cleaning up… Well I should say Webby was cleaning up while Miranda and Danielle piggy backed their way to some serious greenbacks. (Editor’s note: I’m not sure how I lost when I swear I bet all the same horses Webby did. I have a sneaking suspicion she was giving me fake horses to bet on. I should have known not to bet on the 3 legged horse, but Webby said he was a lock!) Despite several hours of drinking, everyone was still in pretty good shape. I guess we can chalk that up to MMB’s high level of tolerance for booze. Way to go team!

Score:
MMB’s Sobriety: out the window
Anyone within earshot of our table: pissed off

4th Quarter: Pockets empty or stuffed with cash

After a dozen races, it was time to call it a day and stumble to Siro’s. Aside from the New York Racing Association, the big winners of the day were Danielle, Miranda, Webby, Teresa, and Karie. The big losers: My personal savings account, and presumably everyone who entered the Hot Dog Eating contest (How did I miss this?!).

Score:
Unofficial (protest by horse #8)

Overtime: Siro’s & the Bus Ride

At Siro’s, we dined on post-racing grub and subjected our livers to more abuse. By the way, did anyone else’s “chicken” quesadilla taste a little horsey? A live band massacred paid tribute to the likes of the Rolling Stones and Tom Petty with heart-rending surprisingly melodious abominations renditions. (Read in a Rodney Dangerfield voice: I’m kidding. You guys were all right.) We had a good time regaling each other with our trackside stories (yes I know Miranda. You won. I didn’t. Get over it. I hate you!), but, as the sun set and the realization that we were paying the bus driver by the hour set in, it was time to depart Saratoga. Aboard the bus we all settled in for a nice nap to prepare ourselves for an efficient workday on Tuesday (read: found the cooler of beer and kept the party going). I can’t recall who sang Biz Markie, but sweet damn he had a good voice.

All in all it was a great trip. No one “refunded” their liquor. No one made out with another co-worker, although I did notice Hatteberg getting awful chummy with a jockey. Some made money, some lost money (p.s. for those of you that did lose money be sure to bill your time yesterday to Subway), but all had fun.

For those of you keeping score at home the final was:

MMB’s next day productivity: (the sound of a plane crash)
Number of Degenerate Gamblers gained by the NYRA: 33

Digital Designers Rediscover Their Hands
GEVER TULLEY has only one qualification for training software designers how to become more creative. He teaches children how to build objects like gravity-powered wooden roller coasters with their hands, at his Tinkering School in Montara, Calif., south of San Francisco.

Now Mr. Tulley does the same thing for dozens of adults who are in the front ranks of software design at Adobe, the big software supplier based in San Jose, Calif. In daylong workshops, about 100 Adobe designers wrestle with plastic beads, small electronic displays, Ikea water glasses and tiny sensors to create wacky motion games. Usually, about the only thing these folks touch on the job is a computer mouse.

Creative Code: 14 Ways to Learn From Creative Programmers | LifeDev
The common stereotype for programmers is this: nerdy, pocket-protector wielding, and very, very boring. One doesn’t typically link a programmer as a creative individual. However, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Working with code is one of the most creative jobs one can have. Programmers have to balance two very different worlds: a world of structure and a world of imagination. They create abstract concepts using very structured programming languages like PHP or Java. It’s not an easy task.

Great article on Email and Web 3.0

Web 1.0 was pure information-gathering. People used it to answer data- or fact-oriented questions like, “How are the White Sox doing today?”

Web 2.0 wedded information-gathering to collaboration. Today, the ‘net answers two questions: “How are the White Sox doing? And what do my friends think about how the White Sox are doing?”

The theory behind Web 3.0 — the so-called Semantic Web — is that the ‘net won’t just be a place for interacting with friends and colleagues. The web itself will interact with you, learning what you want, who you are, and what you are likely to do in the future.

The new delicious.com finally launched!

Graph with 3D Effects
In this tutorial, Corey demonstrates how easy it is to create 3D graphs using Illustrator.

Searchme Visual Search - Beta

Cuil - better search algorithym than google? maybe…

2007 Logo Trends
2008 Logo Trends

As the internet’s largest database of logos ?over 50,000 to date ?you can’t help notice the evolution of design ?and trends.

For instance, we have seen many more 3-D logos that are designed to be in motion, never still or flat. These designs have completely shaken the earthly bonds of CMYK and exist only in ethereal RGB: The old logo design rules just don’t apply to them.

Labs At Night
A pretty cool little photo project being shown over at seedmagazine.com

Photoshop Lady
Good collection of PS tutorials from a variety of sources around

http://www.liptoncleargreen.nl/

http://www.aaatown.com/

http://nolaf.org/

http://www.icelandsocks.com/

http://www.4060.com.ar/

http://www.playsmart.jp/index.html

Find or Start New Trends.

Abstract Satellite Images of Earth
“It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it - just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations.” Albert Camus

Adidas | Originals watch the video it’s great. Created by Adidas, writer/artist and skater Micheal Sieben and Juice Design.

Cartoon characters created by Sieben come to life and accompany him on a treasure hunt From Texas to the the Bay Area.

See the video here
View The Data Visualizations