Feast your eyes on this beautiful Flash animation by Renaud Hallée. Hypnotizing yet soothing visuals this good are usually scripted or done by other fancy mumbo-jumbo – but not here! Renaud painstakingly hand-animated each object on the screen using nothing but the timeline. My words do not do it justice, so just go check it out.

Four Letter Words from Rob Seward on Vimeo.

Four Letter Words is an arrangement of fluorescent light fixtures as an alphabet controlled by algorithms. Consisting of four units, each one is capable of displaying all 26 letters of the alphabet.

The piece displays an algorithmically generated word sequence, derived from a word association database developed by the University of South Florida between 1976 and 1998. The algorithms take into account word meaning, rhyme, letter sequencing, and association.

In other words… WOW.

Amazing integrated ad by Tostitos + Vimeo. Click the picture to see for yourself…

When AfterEffects & Cinema 4D make sweet, sweet love…

Looking for that perfect pattern for your next design project? Well look no further… Pattern Wall – brought to you by Caleb Kimbrough at Lost and Taken and Oscar Godson at Knee Deep In Code – has a great collection of patterns free for the taking to use on anything from a Twitter background to that rad new MySpace layout you’ve been working on for weeks – and anything else you can think of that requires a tiling background. While it may not be the largest collection of patterns you’ve ever seen, the interface is silky smooth and simple to use. Both of their blogs are great reads as well, so be sure to bookmark them for future reading…

Do yourself a favor and follow Caleb and Oscar on Twitter. While you’re at it, be sure to tell them thanks for solving all your pattern deficiencies!!

Why choose sides when you can choose… BINGLE! Let’s face it. With the advent of Microsoft’s new search engine Bing, the search engine wars are heating up. Google, which rules the roost – and has done so for quite some time — now has some stiff competition. Who will win? That has yet to be determined. Until then, the undecided masses can now rely on Bingle, a clever little “middleman” search site which gives you side by side results of your search term.

All joking aside, this could be a very powerful tool for many people who make a living with the internet, be it social media, marketing, blogging or general design and development. Be sure to bookmark this one for future use!

http://bingle.pwnij.com/

Ethereal Icelandic sounds consume this debut release from Sigur Rós’s singer Jón Þór Birgisson and Alex Somers. Riceboy Sleeps was released on July 20, 2009 and features acoustic instrumental music and the collaboration of the string quartet Amiina and the Kópavogsdætur Choir.

If you are looking for some excellent soothing music for your work day or while relaxing, this is without a doubt it. This album is by far the most refreshing thing I have heard in quite some time. You can purchase the full release in several different formats on the Jónsi and Alex website – including 12″ vinyl, cd, special edition box set and more - or you can instantly download at iTunes. If you are more of a try-before-you-buy kind of person, they have provided a free streaming version of the entire album, available on the music section of their website.

Also on their website you will many other things including recipes, news, visual art galleries and more. So be sure to visit jonsiandalex.com.

Here is the video for one of the singles off the album, “All The Big Trees”

A four-and-a-half minute window into the sea…This incredible video was shot by Jon Rawlinson using a Canon 5DMKII with a 28-135mm lens and was filmed at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan. It is the world’s second largest aquarium tank and holds 1,981,290 gallons of water. Whale sharks and manta rays are kept amongst many other fish species in the main tank.

This stunning video is set to the sounds of Barcelona – Please Don’t Go. If you like the video, you can download the 720p HD version here. Be sure to follow Jon on Twitter!

Awesome multi-level integrated viral campaign from Discovery Channel for Shark Week ‘09.

frenziedwaters.com is a well done component of a new viral campaign making the rounds for Discovery Channel’s Shark Week 2009, which begins August 2. There are four floating jars in the sea, two of which you can click on – with dates corresponding to certain historical dates. The third jar is dated 7/20/09, which was not click-able at the time of this writing.

If you click on one of the jars, you are taken to a cinematic of a first-person shark attack, although the violence and gore you would expect isn’t there. It is stylized in such a way only to elude to the fact you are getting attacked without actually forcing it on you.

The fourth jar, labeled “My Story,” brings you to a Facebook app which integrates your profile photo, your occupation, your status updates and generates a story using you as the main character.

In addition to this mysterious website, several ‘care packages’ were sent out to bloggers and entertainment writers nation-wide that contain a frosted glass jar, along with a floating keychain labeled “Discovery Marina – SW09,” a beach closed sign with a phone number to call, an obituary personalized for the specific recipient and several other items.

All-in-all, this is definitely one of the best and most integrated viral’s I have ever seen. If anyone has additional info or knows more about the Frenzied Waters site, please email me or leave a comment below!

What do you get when you cross the Tour de France, a team of robot engineers and hundreds of gallons of liquid yellow chalk? You get Chalkbot, of course!!

It is a long-standing tradition at the Tour de France for fans to spend hours creating elaborate messages and illustrations along the course for riders to see as they whizz by. Chalkbot automates this process by allowing user-submitted messages of hope to be sprayed on the road about eight hours ahead of the riders. Once the message is approved, it is sent to the Chalkbot which will then spray the 40-character message, take a photo and then email the photo along with GPS coordinates to the person who submitted it. Pretty cool, isn’t it?

Built by DeepLocal and StandardRobot in partnership with Nike and Wieden+Kennedy, Chalkbot is like a giant self-contained pneumatic dot matrix printer that is mounted to a trailer pulled by a truck and can print messages and graphics of varying types on the road. Users can submit their own inspirational messages by Tweeting them @chalkbot, texting “LIVESTRONG,” followed by your message, to 36453 or directly at the official Chalkbot website.

Check the video for some action-shots and a little behind the scenes magic.