Martin Hofmann

a personal blog about technology, communications and other stuff that interests me

Great stuff

OCAD University’s new morphing logo

by ·

OCADU logo - via BlogTO

I always liked Google’s playful treatment of its corporate logo with many different “doodles” over the years. The idea of logo variations was added on after the original logo was created. Toronto’s OCAD University unveiled a new logo last week that has this type of creativity built in from the get-go. I am not a designer but I love the concept.

“[T]he new logo is a triumvirate of Mondrian-esque frames, with ‘OCAD’ in one frame and ‘U’ in another. The third, largest frame, is left open for whatever the university wants to throw inside. It could, for instance say ‘OCAD University.’ It could also say ‘Imagination Is Everything,’ the school’s battle cry. But its primary purpose is to show off students’ creative toils. Each year, graduating student medal winners will be invited to mine their portfolios and contribute a piece to the logo, whether a sculpture, a graphic work or a painting, providing a set of logos for the following year.”
– Suzanne Labarre, Senior Editor at Fast Company Co.Design in Bruce Mau’s Smart Art-School Logo Is A Mini Art Gallery For Student Work

More perspectives and images can be found at blogTO, Fast Company Co.Design and OCAD University’s visual identity pages.

[Image Source: blogTO – Video Source: Fast Company Co.Design]

Jeff Bezos: In the end, we are our choices

by ·

Outstanding speech from Jeff Bezos to Princeton students: “In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story.”

Here is a longer excerpt. Full speech can be found here.

Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life — the life you author from scratch on your own — begins. How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?

Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?

Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?

Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?

Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?

Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologize?

Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?

Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?

When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?

Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?

Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?

I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story.

TopLinks plugin for WordPress

TopLinks plugin for WordPress

by ·

Thornley Fallis and 76Design have released two plugins for the WordPress blogging platform today: TopLinks and FriendsRoll.

“TopLinks replaces the manually edited blogroll with a widget that automatically generates a list of the Blogs and sites that I most often link to. […] FriendsRoll enables your readers to sign up to appear on your list of Friends. Any data they provide will stay with the blogger, not reside on some external site. So the relationship is directly between us.”

Joe Thornley, CEO, Thornley Fallis

I tried out TopLinks on my blog. It works well but I couldn’t get it to look right (yet). It doesn’t fit the way my sidebar is set up (1 custom column on top, and 2 widget-enabled columns on the bottom). Maybe I’ll find a way to customize it and reduce the width of the TopLinks box.

Not sure whether TopLinks really needs to be a replacement for the traditional blogroll. For my blog, I’d see it more as an addition.

Congrats to TF and 76Design for a great idea! if you have a WordPress blog, definitely check it out.

toplinks_logo

Does Europe lead in using web technology for grassroots democracy?

by ·

On Friday, members of a German grassroots democracy project launched a new website called Abgeordnetenwatch.de (that’s “MPwatch” in English), which allows people to find the members of the German federal parliament for their region, read about their voting records, and get in contact with them.

A similar site was first launched for the federal state of Hamburg in 2004. Now they have expanded it to the federal parliament. They have also received funding from BonVenture and attracted major media partners in German news portals Spiegel.de, Tagesspiegel.de and Welt.de. According to an article in Welt.de, not all MPs are happy about this development. One politician said the site is indirectly pressuring politicans to come up with responses or get a reputation of being “anti-democrats” (I’d agree that there might be unrealistic expectations for the speed of response but, in general, this politician might want to read his job description again. Maybe he skipped the part about communicating with constituents).

A little while ago, I wrote about another German grassroots democracy project, where people can submit questions to the German chancellor and get them answered by the Federal Press Office.

Today I read about great projects in the UK (hat tip to Neville Hobson). Simon Dickson has created a Google Map of all MPs in the United Kingdom, which links to a database of House of Commons Hansard Debates, Written Answers and Statements via an API by TheyWorkforYou.com. TheyWorkforYou.com is an awesome resource for citizens in the UK.

It is fascinating to see citizens – not governments – come up with all these ideas of using new web technology to make government and democracy more transparent and accessible.

Does Europe lead in this type of online grassroots democracy? What about Canada? And other countries? I am asking not as an accusation but because I have no idea about Canada yet and I’d like to find out more about developments. If you know about any projects, please let me know in the comment section or send me an email (see contact page).

Chancellor 2.0 – Bonding with citizens on the Web

by ·

First German Chancellor Angela Merkel started her own video-podcast series. Then a bunch of smart students and university graduates turned the tables on her and launched Direkt zur Kanzlerin! (“Direct to Chancellor!”), a platform where citizens can post questions for Angela Merkel. Anybody can submit a text, audio or video message for her on the site. Then people can vote for their favourite questions by mouse click. 

After getting blog buzz and media coverage for their idea, the students got Angela Merkel’s attention. The Federal Press Office has now stepped up and agreed to answer the top three question each week on behalf of the Chancellor. 

It is a different kind of Web 2.0 success story – a great little example of the potential that the ongoing spread of new, user-friendly technologies holds. What a great example of a couple people getting together and trying to make a difference through tech-driven grassroots democracy!

Consultant and author Anthony D. Williams recently blogged about the question: “is government ready for the Web 2.0 era?” Looks like the German government is playing catch-up with its people.  But the Federal Press Office deserves credit, too. At least they are ready to participate in the project. It’s a start.

Note: The “Direct to Chancellor!” site is only available in German.

(via Welt.de)

Radio Paradise meets Flickr

by ·

It is a good thing that Sun Labs researcher Paul Lamere loves Radio Paradise as much as I do (or more). He has created a mashup of Radio Paradise and Flickr which he calls Snapp Radio. He has found a way to connect Flickr images with songs that play on Radio Paradise (also works with Last FM). So instead of looking at weird geometric shapes evolve in your regular run-of-the-mill visualization program, Snapp Radio serves up concert photos from the artists as well conceptual images. Sometimes the choice of photos can be a bit strange but a) what a great idea and b) it’s addictive!

How does it work?

Snapp Radio will connect to Radio Paradise or Last.FM to figure out what song you are currently listening to. Snapp Radio augments this information by connecting to Last.FM and finding any social tags that have been attached to this song and artist. Snapp Radio then uses all of this information to fashion a set of queries to Flickr to find a set of interesting images that are related to the song. Snapp Radio collects the images, orders them in an interesting way and presents them to you in your Web browser.

Snapp Radio FAQ