Last Friday, I attended XMediaLab (X stands for “Cross”) in Auckland, a combination think-tank and creative workshop with a focus on the design, development and business of digital media ideas across multiple platforms. The talks were exciting, inspiring and filled my head with ideas. So much so that I’ve exported my brain of links and notes for later reference. Perhaps you’ll find them useful as well.

Here’s a summary of what stood out for me along with some possible points of entry:

Parmesh Shahani filled the room with the dynamic energy and pop cosmopolitanism of Mumbai along with tons of examples of emerging creative ecosystems and entry points to the Indian startup economy. I think about his framing questions a lot: “What does it means to be local in a global world? What does it meant to be global in a local world?” He and Vishal Gondal of India Games both extolled India’s virtue of jugaad – the can-do spirit of adaptive improvisational ingenuity which maps well to New Zealand’s “Number 8 Wire.”

“Games will save us all” emerged as a major recurring theme and wish. Zhan Ye illuminated the history and emerging trends and opportunities of the online game market in China and offered lessons for abroad. Susan Bonds of 42 Entertainment shared lessons from the ARGs (Alternative Reality Games) she’s produced, including ilovebees for Halo 2 and Year Zero for Nine Inch Nails. I loved her vision of the world as a platform for storytelling and method of writing a linear story then throwing it away and providing evidence that it actually happened. Rajat Paharia taught how to use game mechanics to create zombie armies.

Other themes included how we interact with “whatever wherever screens” (public/tv/personal) using distance and touch gestures. Dale Herigstad designed the interfaces for “Minority Report”, and now he’s designed some interesting new ways to visualize and organize time as well as space. He encourages the rapid sketching of ideas, blowing me away with what he created using Apple’s Keynote.

Getting down to business, it’s all about the hybrid media and business model with multiple revenue streams; no one’s thriving on ad revenue alone. Adrian Sexton addresses hybrid media from a media+entertainment perspective. Richard Cardran explores hybrid business models in depth, and there are lots of good examples in Parmesh Shahani and Zhan Ye’s talks. “Jadedly optimistic” (in his own words) Tim Chang of Norwest Partners gave a nutritionally dense talk on what he sees unfolding in the next few years and spilled some VC secrets.

Vincent Heeringa, the thoughtful director of HB Media which publishes the excellent Idealog, Good, and Inspire, shared how he launches stuff and also his concerns about the future of business, attention and longform writing with great photography in printed form distributed by post. He bravely open sourced his challenges and raised some great questions.

Juliette Powell addressed bravery directly in a moving talk that cut to the heart – investing in people. She highlighted ways to build and develop social and cultural capital and take responsibility for our dreams, even when funding’s hard to find.

Mike McGraw’s building bridges from people stories to product stories with lots of examples of what’s working now.

Even though the title was “commercialising ideas,” I was surprised that so few presentations addressed social and environmental concerns in any context. Parmesh Shahani and Juliette Powell stood out as exceptions, looking at companies that do well and good and creating value through authenticity.

The convergence of tools, media and knowledge available to all of us now is so awesome, harnessing it to create zombie armies hungry for more snack chips chaps my soul. I’d like to see and be commercializing ideas that improve lives and empower citizens rather than just entice consumers. Many of the lab project teams are doing just that, like BrightMind Labs, focused on improving lives of children with mental health issues, and Minimonos, a virtual world of fun for kids with core values of generosity and sustainability.

For what it’s worth (in any currency), this was the first conference where I’ve heard people qualify using US dollars as reference in measuring and comparing business: “it’s still worth something,” “…since we don’t have another standard.”

Overall, a fantastic day of learning from and connecting with some great creative people. If this touches your areas of interest and you have the opportunity to participate in a future XMediaLab, do it.

Full list of speakers linked to notes on their talks:
Susan Bonds, Richard Cardran, Tim Chang, Vishal Gondal, Andrew Hamilton, Vincent Heeringa, Dale Herigstad, Hugh Mason, Mike McGraw, Rajat Paharia, Juliette Powell, Greg Seuss, Adrian Sexton, Parmesh Shahani, Doug Whatley, Zhan Ye

I had noted I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley as a book I would probably enjoy reading, but without a sense of urgency. Then comes this short film and these diorama diaries. Sloane creates elaborate multi-media dioramas in lucite boxes for a bunch of her stories and brings them to life in these videos. Ha! I am falling in love. And ordering your book. Thanks for making me laugh!

“Like most people I imagine do, I have three sets of magnetic poetry. I don’t know why you wouldn’t. One of them is cat themed, which is in no way pathetic.” (from Diary of a Diorama: Smell This)

Once uploaded, people can bookmark, share and comment on it. Text is searchable so the document is easy to find. You can subscribe to an RSS feed of publications. Finally, you can also post and embed Issuu documents on any external site.

Now actually, it’s still not a joy to quote, because you apparently can’t deep link in there, and you can’t copy and paste text and do all the things you could do with a standard webpage (or PDF for that matter). But it’s so close… you can almost taste it. And you can just embed the whole darn thing… In any case, this is a wonderful way to share the experience of a printed thing (without the waste and expense of printing and shipping).

N.B. to those who like to tear, save and share the parts they like out of printed things… you’ll love Skitch.

Location based MyMaps GeoBlogger

MyMaps GeoBlogger makes it easy to blog from Google Maps and create a geo-aware RSS feed. Perfect for adding a location context to your posts. Trend from chronological towards location-based.

(tags: locative blogging googlemaps location-based geo-aware geoblogging)

I fell in love (again) with New Zealand and Australia over the holidays. (I’m sorry too!) But I couldn’t believe people put up with their bits being metered. Even coming from laggard U.S., I felt like I was sucking bandwidth out of a cocktail straw.

Hotels charged $30 a day as an ante — a few YouTube shorts is all it takes to reach the daily limit, after which you pay for every mb. (Exception: Hotel So with free broadband wifi.) Forget about uploading all your photos. Cafes with wifi charged high fees too. Few non-geek friends had broadband at home.

Immediately after I returned to the U.S., things started looking up down under. Australia’s getting faster and cheaper broadband with a new undersea cable, and NZ’s making changes too. Good on ya!

Meanwhile, in the UpSide down, Time Warner’s starting to test pay-per-bit pricing. Other providers are watching closely. And still other providers are watching us closely. With immunity! Feh.

These developments get me really chuffed:

Facebookers net wi-fi – Wireless & BroadBand

FRUSTRATED by the NSW Government’s stalled free wi-fi project, a group of Facebookers have decided to start their own. It was inspired by futurist Mark Pesce (Mob Rules!) to create a free wireless network, which the group hopes will one day cover Sydney and make it easy for anyone to enjoy the convenience of free internet access for quick tasks such as checking email.

(tags: wireless WiFi socialnetworking networking Meraki free meshnetworking markpesce sydney australia)

Free Sydney Wireless – SydneyFreeNet

What if there was free Wifi across the whole city of Sydney, Australia? It is perfectly possible. And YOU can help make it happen. The Technology: the Meraki wireless mesh hardware, cheap, easy to set up and easier to share. Sydney is bootstrapping right now, and you can say “I was part of the free Wifi revolution in Sydney!” We are not related to Meraki in any way – we are a collection of individuals who are interested in changing the world, one neighborhood at a time.

(tags: free wifi wireless sydney australia, meraki mesh)

TheFreeNet – Aotearoa | Google Groups

We want to build a free community wireless network with our neighbours, using our spare bandwidth.

(tags: wellington nz newzealand freenet mesh meraki wifi free wireless aotearoa)

TheFreeNet – mesh wi-fi in Wellington metropolitan areas

At the end of the day you will be hard pressed to find individuals who can afford sharing their bandwidth in the current New Zealand broadband landscape. In this country there’s no concept of “unlimited” bandwidth. People are still being charged in plans that go from a minimum of 1GB (yes, believe me), going through 5GB, 10GB and so on.

(tags: nz newzealand aeotearoa wifi internet freenet wellington mesh meraki pay-per-bit bitlimits)

Ironic Sans: Idea: Scientist Valentines

Darwin, Sagan, Newton, Einstein and Curie do valentines greetings.

(tags: scientists valentinesday funny woo)

The Coming Ad Revolution – Esther Dyson

Social networks create a trusted environment for reaching high-value, frequent purchasers of airline tickets, electronics, clothes or other items. Where does that leave less-frequent buyers? Looking to their friends rather than to advertising for advice.

(tags: advertising socialnetwork facebook experts walledgardens communities)

Tinfoil hats are so passé. So what should you wear to Faraday’s Cafe?

Check out the latest collection of electromagnetic field blocking and “anti-identity theft” clothing at DDCLAB (427 W 14th St, New York NY 10014 map).

Here’s the text from the windows:

EMF: Electro Magnetic Field Block
Anti•Identity•Theft•Fabric
Electric Resistivity
measure of how strongly a material opposes the flow of electric current and allows the movement of electrical charge.

DDCLAB
Woven of super sheer mesh polyester fibers coated with blackened copper, this high performance ultra thin, light weight and flexible mesh shield has a high ohm/sq resistivity that protects against identity theft by blocking high tech scanners from lifting valuable passport and ID information.

On every street in Buenos Aires, I fell in love with the handpainted signs and lettering. Delighted to discover these fonts below by Alejandro Paul that capture the Argentinian style and energy. Paul is one of the founders of Sudtipos project, the first Argentinian type foundry collective, whose site is filled with fonty goodness.

Regarding the adorable pinguinos, I didn’t see any in Argentina, but here are some pictures of the pinguinos of Patagonia (Chile) and the Galapagos (Ecuador).

Eyebeam is pleased to present a daylong Shopdropping Workshop led by the Anti-Advertising Agency. Shopdropping (the opposite of shoplifting) is a tactic used by artists and activists to clandestinely place objects in retail stores. “Dropped” objects are usually versions of consumer products altered or recreated to detourn the retail experience. Shopdropping is a fun and easy form of culture jamming, gently subverting dominant cultural forms to create new meanings.

Starting at noon, participants will receive a shopdropping overview, including artists’ shopdropping projects information and demonstrations of the necessary tools for shopdropping, and time will be given to test out some of the techniques discussed. Immediately following, participants will head into the field to help distribute a new, unreleased Anti-Advertising Agency project (as well as some creations of their own) into stores around Manhattan. This workshop will begin at Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st Street (between 10th & 11th Aves), and is open to the public free of charge.

 If you have a digital camera of any kind, please bring it.
Your hosts:
Steve Lambert – Eyebeam OpenLab Fellow, Steve is the founder of the Anti-Advertising Agency, and former undercover store investigator. Steve will share the secrets he learned on the job leading to the arrest of dozens of shoplifters. Learn the top three things store investigators watch for and how to shopdrop undetected! (He also knows a few things about art.)

Amanda Eicher – Anti-Advertising Agency “Art Director,” Amanda has been developing a project that will visually rejoin products and the labor that creates them. Drawing on two years of research in production factories in Central America, her project incorporates portraits of workers there with the products they have made here.

Marisa Jahn – is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes natural and social systems. Marisa is also the Curator of “Shopdropping: Experiments in the Aisle” and will entertain participants with an overview of artists shopdropping projects.

Eyebeam is an art and technology center that provides a fertile context and state-of-the-art tools for digital research and experimentation. It is a lively incubator of creativity and thought, where artists and technologists actively engage with culture, addressing the issues and concerns of our time. Eyebeam challenges convention, celebrates the hack, educates the next generation, encourages collaboration, freely offers its contributions to the community, and invites the public to share in a spirit of openness: open source, open content and open distribution.

Eyebeam’s current programs are made possible through the generous support of the Atlantic Foundation, Time Warner Youth Media and Arts Fund, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, the Experimental Television Center, the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. For a list of past supporters, please visit www.eyebeam.org.

540 West 21st Street
New York, NY 10011
[T] 212.937.6580
[F] 212.937.6582
www.eyebeam.org

Hours: Tues-Sat, 12-6pm

Chandler Burr translates scent into words so powerfully, i just want to close my eyes and inhale his prose. Tonka beans mixed with clouds! His recent article “Synthetic No. 5,” reminded me how little we know about what we’re sniffing.

His first assertions seem sensible:

But this part made me wonder…

“Synthetic sandalwoods are eco-friendly. The sandalwood forests of India are being destroyed at a terrible rate, and the price of natural sandalwood is skyrocketing (currently heading up to $800 a pound). One perfumer I know told me that because of this, he now refuses to use natural materials in perfumes.”

Synthetic sandalwood is friendlier to sandalwood trees than the natural kind, but what does it do once released into the environment? Even if it is benign, can we really extend that to all natural compounds and their synthetic counterparts? How do our bodies handle synthetic sandalwood? synthetic musk? What about the nonfragrant components like phthalates affecting our endocrine systems and specifically male genitalia?

Usually it’s hard to find out what’s in a perfume or cosmetic, since ingredients can be lumped in as trade secret “fragrance.” Even when ingredients are identified, safety information is scarce since testing is not required and the industry is self-regulated.

A senate hearing on August 2nd convened by Sen. James M. Inhofe to consider revamping the Toxic Substances Control Act ended up with agreement that the 30 year old statute was strong enough to protect health. The EPA has used its authority to require testing for fewer than 200 of the 62,000 chemicals in commerce in 1979, when the EPA program began, and in 30 years, the EPA has issued regulations to ban or restrict the use of only 5 chemicals (from the statements of Sen. James Jeffords.)

Thank you Sen. Barbara Boxer for speaking to health and our right to know what we’re putting into in our bodies and environment:

She pointed out that the European Union had banned chemicals called phthalates in plastic toys because of reproductive risks while the U.S. had not. “I don’t want my grandchildren or anyone’s grandchildren or great-grandchildren or children to put this stuff in their mouths,” she said. Boxer criticized the EPA’s position on the law, saying the public did not know which chemicals were used in which products and what dangers they posed because of the law’s confidentiality requirements. “We are left in the dark, to our peril,” Boxer said. (LA Times)

Here are my current favorite scents… the four on the right are all natural, the four on the left incorporate synthetics as well (I’m not sure about Nanadebary – there’s not enough information, so I’m guessing synthetics.) Ooh, I hate to have to give any up. From left to right: Frederic Malle Editions En Passant by Olivia Giacobetti, Prada Amber, Nanadebary Bronze, Jasmin 17 by Le Labo, Moroccan Rose Otto by Ren, Bliss and Rockstar by Rich Hippie, and a Jasmin absolute essential oil gifted me by fabulous friend Lily B.