Today I found most creative typography I have ever seen, so I would like to introduce it to you. Let’s take a look:

I gave it a try to write “PAPREE” by using this typography. Although readability is a bit low, it looks quite pretty, I think. How do you like it?

Here’s a guy who made a DIY fireball shooter. Even though the fireball this guy created is not even similar with what we have seen through movies, I think it is worth watching it.

This man creates movie clips every weekend according to the project title, “Weekend Project.” There are quite many of interesting stuffs among what he has done.

Let’s take a look.

NOTE: Don’t try this at home.

A popular example of multifunctional product is thermochromic materials:

These products changes its color when the temperature is changed, showing the user whether they are cool enough to drink.

A more common example of multifunctional device is found in our office:

Yes, the multifunctional printer these days allows you to print, fax, copy, and scan in a single device, thus eliminating the situation of having different devices to be scattered around your room. This example is closely related to the Consolidation principle as well.

In the programming world, we tend to make classes and methods into abstract forms, allowing us to use them in many different situations. This is also a way of solving problems with universality. We would like to ‘reuse’ our codes in numerous functions and refrain from generating and using redundant codes.

Next time, we’ll dive into the 7th principle: Nesting.

Today, I would like to introduce to you, the world’s first Sandcastle Hotel. Let’s take a look at them:

The hotel was the brainchild of sculptor Mark Anderson. It’s made from sand on Weymouth beach in Dorset UK, the finest in the world for making sand castles, says Anderson. So if you have an opportunity to visit UK, how about dropping by here?

via lifeinthefastlane

Moltov Mario World

Players really have to THINK their way out very hard to clear the game. There are a lot more videos in YouTube.

Now look at this one. I guess some of you who are not really into mario things a lot might have skipped the link above. But I really encourage you to see this one. Concentrate on the background music and see how the music and sound effects in game harmonize.

NikoNiko Song Played With Super Mario Game

It took its designers 6 months to make this one. Whew!

The whole debate of whether reading online is beneficial to the brain or not has been going on for a while. The founder of MIT Comparative Media Studies‘ Henry Jenkins has enlightened us with a thorough perspective on this matter in his book ‘Convergence Culture.’

More kids are reading, but that’s happening online. Kids seem to be do worse in offline reading and related tests, but are these problems or shifts in the way kids interact with media and reading? Kids who used to watch TV now spends a lot more time online reading and writing (at least, the comments.) They take part in creation and collaborative process of digital literature.

My thoughts on this matter are rather conflicting. I can call myself as an avid reader in the offline world, but I also try to get my hands on many blog articles as possible. After spending around half a decade online reading blogs and RSS, I began to feel the change in the way I read.

There seems to be a distinct change in the ‘mode’ when I read. When I am reading books, I am more focused and relieved in someway, taking all the time I can, to follow the footprints of the author. But when I go online to read RSS, I am more engaging and skimming, taking glimpse of titles and trying to dig out what grabs my attention. I become less focused, but rather, diversified and always wandering around. The reading habits became fragmented. No longer can I read a long post without feeling a bit of anxiety.

What is interesting is that some of these anxiety drift away when I leave the RSS reader and actually visit the sites. Is the number of articles ‘left to be read’ pressuring me to skim through the article in RSS reader, whereas visiting the site frees me from those immediate burdens and allow me to indulge myself in a more relaxing manner? Just the way people feel somewhat pressured to checkout all of their ‘real’ friends’ profile pages in Facebook, maybe this ‘knowing’ of what’s new and updated makes you feel the urge and pressure to keep your self informed.

What’s more disturbing is the fact that I can no longer read books without actually thinking about what needs to be read online right now. My reading habits offline began to be affected by the newly formed habits of online reading. I began to ‘unlearn’ how to read offline, and am newly gaining a way to cruise myself online.

On the good side, now I can distinguish more effectively what kind of information is better digested online and what’s better left offline to be consumed slowly. Maybe, I am beginning to relearn the meaning of being literate. The jury is still out there, but more people will be reading online and we have to find a way to negotiate with that.

* First image: NYTimes, Second image courtesy of dinerdog

Which do you like the most? BBQ, watermelon or hamburger?

Of course, this is not a state-of-the-art technology product, nor a product with highly refined design, but I think this is one of the products with a noteworthy creative design, because not only is it strange and weird enough, but it also makes people to bear with them a sense of humor. If you think these designs are creative enough, try visiting the manufacturer’s website.

This product allows you to mark your spot without having to reach for that extra pen. The marker tip is embedded underneeth the measure. Clever!

One design convention to all 7 clamps, and all 7 clamps existing for one purpose.

Being omnipotent is a cool thing to dream about, so we want our inventions to be omnipotent in the category that our inventions belong. Well, maybe we CAN make an omnipotent thing if we accept the convention of module. But we should keep in mind that common standards (purpose, design conventions, etc.) has to be kept for all modules, and all modules should follow that standards.

Conventional perspective on “process” forces us to think in terms of waterfall-like steps, where there is no going back once a step is complete and set in stone. This article suggests ‘Design Thinking’ way of doing creative work: mixed-in loops of inspiration, ideation, and implementation. He urges the readers to go out and find their inspirations, come back and craft their inspirations into ideas, further detailing it into implementation.

This kind of flexible and evolutionary process gently frees us from the mental burden of downstream, one-way process and enlightens us with an approach embedded with continuous feedback loops.

Most of times, people cannot predict the future precisely nor design something so perfect that no modification is ever going to be needed. We usually have to go back to the drawing board and devise new and improved solutions. This comes as quite naturally in hindsight, but in everyday life, we tend to put others or even ourselves in a position where no “redo” is allowed without thinking about this.

It is absolutely crucial that we go find our inspirations, do experiments and revise with fervor. You need to figure out yourself what works for you and what doesn’t.

As barren as this may sound, this is how creative works are done.

* Image courtesy of Richard Sweeny

One of the most remarkable thing to focus on is what inspired such a shape into the architects. The picture below clearly shows that the source of the inspiration was relics of the analog age such as film and newspaper. It is ironic that probably the most futuristic building that will be built around 2010 is re-interpreting the legacy from 1950s.

Anyway, a new building inspired by old days inspires us again living in such a cutting-edge era.

Using Wordpress app for iPhone, it feels quite usable and reliable. Even though touch interface typing still feels quite unnatural to me, quality app like this would actually get bloggers to start conversations on their phones.

Check it out for free at app store near your iPhone and iPod Touch!

Today, we live in an era of multitasking, enabled through power of computing and windows-based GUI environment. We now have couple of, if not tens of, windows open at once on our screens, jotting away numbers on our spreadsheets while glancing over a newly received mail, and discussing about the upcoming dinner party over IM.

Multitasking

No.5 principle of invention: Consolidation is just that: do multiple things at once, process-wise.

In terms of programming and deploying software, a lot of work is done through batch-jobs — a series of tasks done automatically. While people at Paprika Lab are developing with Ruby on Rails, there used to be a tedious task of something called deployment. It is basically transferring of our latest codes onto staging or live servers, running some preparation processes (like database migrations), and then restarting our servers so that changes would take effect. Done by hand, this is somewhat laborious requiring a series of carefully conducted tasks done in exact sequence, but after getting used to this, it quickly becomes a repetitive and monotonous chore.

Then came along Capistrano, an easy, automated way of deploying our software. What this application does is simple and handy: automate the deployment process, so that we can do things faster, and spend some decent time-resource on other works that matter. Multiple specialized tasks were consolidated into a single process.

Consolidation can be done by the following process:

• Combine objects that serve same, similar, or related functions.
• Combine processes that serve same, similar, or related functions.
• They can be combined sequentially or simultaneously.

* Image courtesy of Señor Maniac

Our work is almost done, so please stay tuned in Papree.com. To give you a glimpse of what the Japanese version of Papree.com would look like:

もうすぐでPapree.comの日本語版ができます. Papreeサービスの特徴,例えば美しいイメージをウェブからコレックトしたり,コレックトしたイメージを使って皆と一緒に話を作ったりするのが日本人が結構好きになるそうだと思います,

僕の日本人友たちからPapreeの日本語版を作ることをお進められた後,色んな議論の上日本語版を準備しようと決めることになりました.

Papreeの日本語版のランチはもういよいよなので,日本語でサービスされるPapreeをお楽しみに待っていて下さい.

A Scene is the Movie

I think my favorite Hollywood man became Tom Cruise from then.

Anyway, I searched around youtube and found out that the time when we can manipulate that kind of interface system in our everyday lives is not so far from now on.

Minority Report at CeBIT 2008

Well, I think engineers still have a long way to go to make the interface more look like the movie. But still, I just can’t stop my heart from beating when I imagine myself maneuvering digital machines with the interface similar to that in the movie!

Here’s two examples that can eliminate such a fixed idea about solar panel.

One is solar backpack. It is equipped with solar panel on the external surface, so you can charge your portable electonic devices while you are in transit. (Of course you should be exposed to sunlight, though. )

The other is Solarcell, which is an battery that can be recharged by solar energy. It won the coveted, Best of Best Red Dot Design Concept Award in 2007. The solar panel in it is scrollable so that you can pull out when you need to charge it. You can see the full description of the concept here.

We are surrounded by symmetry: cups, cars, buildings, bridges, and even features on our faces are filled with symmetry. This nature of our environment makes us think in terms of symmetry when we design something new. Such mental inertia prevents us from coming up with solutions using asymmetry.

One of the most common example of a problem solving using asymmetry is found in our cell phones. The motor that enables the vibration of our phones uses asymmetric part as shown in the picture below:

The rotating part is designed asymmetrically, so that when electricity is supplied to the motor, this part creates slight skewing of gravitational center in circular motion. Done in small scale, we feel the tingling vibration in our pockets.

Here are few guidelines you can follow to apply asymmetrical problem solving:

• If an object or system is symmetrical make it asymmetrical, or introduce lines of asymmetries.
• If an object is already asymmetrical, increase the degree of asymmetry.
• Change the shape of an object or system to suite external asymmetries (e.g. ergonomic features)

n-dimension hypercube can be constructed from (n-1)-dimension hypercube (….or to make it more Rubish….n-1-dimension….) by copying (n-1) one into the n-dimension space and connecting the original vertices with corresponding copied vertices. For example, a point is a hypercube of dimension zero. Copying the point into the second dimension space and connecting the two points makes a line segment, namely, a hypercube of dimension one. Also, copying the line segment into the third dimension space and connecting corresponding edges makes a square which is a hypercube of dimension two. Same thing is done to make a cube. Now let’s look at the last one. Here is a more clear image.

Although it is not exactly 4-dimensional, it is clear that the same theory as described above is applied to construct it from a cube. (Actually, I think it’s a 3-dim projection of 4-dim hypercube..isn’t it?)

Let’s take a look at rotating hypercubes to get some idea of how they look.
(this animation is too slow on Safari.. try Firefox)

4-dim:

5-dim:

not a hypercube..but still..@_@

When we are watching movie or listening to music, we all know that the sound is coming out from the speakers. Holophonics is a technology that coaxes listeners into feeling that they are actually hearing the “real” sound.

The movie clip below is a representative example of holophonics application. In the clip, you are a customer at a barbershop. Try it and feel how realistic it is.

!NOTE: It is highly recommended that you use earphones or headphones to experience holophonics appropriately.

You can find many more impressive examples to indulge in by looking up ‘holophonics’ on YouTube.

BMW recently opened a museum in Munich. They are showcasing a kinetic sculpture composed of 714 metallic orbs hanging from the ceiling with thin wires that allows the orbs’ movements to be controlled. By distributing the orbs evenly across the horizontal plane and controlling the vertical axis with the wires, orbs can be coordinated to create beautiful and elegant motion in three dimensional space.

The result is quite mesmerizing, but better yet, take a look at the video below to see for it yourself:

via BMWCCA

However, it is still inside the boundary: text-based search. Today, I would like to share some attempts to overcome the text-based search.

musicovery

Musicovery is a web radio service playing music that matches user’s both explicit and implicit needs. You can search music by genre or even by your emotion. Seeing is believing, so go ahead and check it out.

retrivr

Retrivr is a new way of searching images. As you can see in the picture above, you can scribble on the small canvas to look for similar images. I drew a red circle and got some photos like strawberry, balloon, and a lady bug. Do you think it works?

Solar cells are usually made with homogeneous materials, using the whole white light as the source of energy, but by breaking down the light into different spectrum and using optimized materials and methods for each band of spectrum, efficiency can be raised to a greater level.

By definition, principle of local quality is about changing an object’s structure or external environment from uniform to non-uniform state. It can also mean changing functionality of a certain part, such as a hammer with a nail puller on one side.

In business, implementing localization is about local quality. Fast food franchise usually mix-in a variation of local/national food with the standard menus. In terms of organizations, embracing flexible workhours to a group of employees can be considered principle of local quality as well.

So, how would you change a part of your work to increase efficiency? How can you make it less uniform to raise its effectiveness?

ADESF, one of the anti-smoking associations in Brazil, has recently launched stop consuming your body campaign. Take a look at the pictures below:

The campaign is very straightforward and easy to understand. Its tagline, “stop consuming your body”, is also well-written.

No-smoking campaign probably exists in every country out there, but how direct the message is and how much emphasis is on the harm from smoking may vary depending on the countries. If we can investigate these over all of the countries, we might be able to figure out the affinity between the public and the smoker community. This might turn out to be a very interesting project to dig.

[via adgoodness]

By Taking Out, we separate an interfering part or property from an object, or separate an interfering part or property from an object, or single out the only necessary part (or property) of an object. Well, this is basically the definition, and now let’s take a look at some examples.

The most commonly quoted example of this principle is air conditioner and its external compressor:

The noisy compressor is located outside the building, leaving the comparatively quiet and pleasant air conditioner on the inside. By taking out the compressor, problem of noisy air conditioner was fixed.

Second example is fiber optic cables, where light pipe is used to separate the hot light source from the location where light is needed:

As in flash lights, in general, lights are used directly toward the surface where light is needed. By separating the light from the source, we can transfer and use the light in places where we want them, and by further developing the idea, technologies now enable us to transfer data through fiber optics.

Third example is from a rather conceptual approach, but became quite effective as a result. By taking out the sound of a barking dog, we can implement the sound as a burglar alarm.

There is an analogy of extraction and open API, now found widely among new web services. By taking out the functionality through open API, we can extend its use across different services, allowing new and creative mash-up services to emerge.

ProgrammableWeb holds a huge collection of mash-ups out there, and the chart below shows a healthy growth of new mash-ups around the web.

In business management, the practice of outsourcing can be considered taking out as well. Sometimes, business requires a function beyond its core capabilities, thus building that function by itself might not be as efficient as it hopes to be. In such case, the business may then outsource the functionality to a more specialized company in that field, to reduce risk as well as to increase effectiveness at the same time. Obviously, this may not always turn out to be successful, but you get the idea.

So, that was the second principle of inventive problem solving! See you next time.

Let’s take a look how the cloud works:

The Cloud - from mitmobileexperiencelab on Vimeo.

It detects users’ presence and engages with users through its multi-touch interface via fibers. This multi-modal interface generates various responses ranging from ambient lighting to animation and sound.

What I most anticipate among the interactions with the cloud is the tactile engagement. I love to touch the soft things. Of course, optical fibers are one of them. After seeing the film of The Cloud, I came to imagine about an iPhone with a multi-fiber touch interface. What do you think about a hairy iPhone? Don’t you think it might be lovely?

Around late 1940s, a Soviet engineer and researcher named Genrich Altshulle, and his colleagues developed a methodology called TRIZ (Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch; Russian) which means “The Theory of Inventor’s Problem Solving.” It systematically drives problem solving through processes and framework, along with its 40 principles of invention.

It is widely adopted by Fortune 500 companies, mostly in manufacturing business like BAE Systems, CSC, Procter & Gamble, Ford Motor Company, Boeing, Philips Semiconductors, Samsung, LG Electronics, but let’s not get into too much detail about TRIZ itself. Instead, I want to focus on the 40 principles of invention, and perhaps run a few articles on these principles.

First of them is Segmentation: Asking the question of ‘What if we segment this?’

We can segment something by dividing it into independent subsystems and making it more modular. As a programmer, we do this everyday. I’m sure there are still arguments about efficiency and effectiveness besieging this, but the whole concept of ‘object-oriented’ programming, decoupling, plugins, and alike are basically process of segmentation. When something becomes too complex and monolithic, it becomes unmanageable, the progress becomes sluggish, project renders itself inert.

Take a look at the excavator below:

As you know, excavators basically dig, and when they keep digging hard surfaces, teeth worn out pretty easily. Older generation of models had teeth molded together into one single tooth, which brought out a lot of waste during replacement. Engineers thought through this problem and came up with segmented teeth as you can see in the picture above.

Conceptually, marketers do this as well. The STP method in marketing starts by segmenting the market, targeting it, then positioning in the market. Although we can simply just yell to everyone about the product, which is basically what the first generation of web advertisement banners were doing, we can segment the market (by demographics, user behavior, etc.) and increase efficiency and effectiveness all together.

People often apply segmentation without thinking about it, but it often comes in handy to explicitly search for solutions by systematically sorting through possible approaches.

I’m a big fan of optical illusions, and Samsung made a nice video of putting 10 different optical illusions in 2 minutes, and it’s also a promo video for their Soul phone, so check out the video below:

via Engadget

Manchester band, The Get Out Clause, has used CCTV to make their music video. They played music in front of the CCTV in the British streets, and requested footage under the Freedom of Information Act. You can read the story in full detail here.

This kind of case reminds us that constraints stimulate creativity. For creative individuals, limitations is not just a limitation. They turn limitation into innovation, taking it as an opportunity.

(visit the link for the layout of her full day)

It reveals quite a lot about her to a pretty funny and private detail.

If this kind of data can be gathered from a larger number of people, they will be priceless for people working in marketing business.

What the person spends on nicely captures the identity of that person, as it indirectly shows the level of expendable income as well as level of taste or preference towards certain brands.

Given a 24-hours a day and 7-days a week limitation, a brand can grab a specific portion of a day, or hold on to a rather wider spread of timeshare throughout a day.

Some meaningful questions to ask yourself:

• Which timeframe is your product trying to capture?
• What is the typical place or occasion  your product is being used in that timeframe?
• What are the complementary products in the same timeframe?
• What products come before and after your product’s timeframe?
• What other products are introduced to your product’s timeframe in other days of the week?

Watch the movie below to see it.

After watching the ceiling clock, it does not seem something of a big deal, but had I not seen the movie, I probably would not have come up with such idea. I believe this to be an intrinsic feature of creativity. Looking back, creative ideas seem quite obvious, but looking forward, it is extremely difficult to come up with something original.

The ceiling clock in the movie might not be practical in today’s sense, but further development of the idea with a spice of creativity will make this idea become more useful and attractive.