Big iPlayer news today - the service has had it’s first launch onto a TV platform, starting off with the Virgin Media set top boxes with other services to follow. More info on the BBC internet blog

Wow I think Smashing Magazine definitely gets the favourite blog of the month award - a great post here all about retro and vintage design (I particularly love James White’s “retro cosmic” stuff!)

Stumbled upon this in Make Magazine, it’s pretty random - there’s something I really like about it though? (Reminds me of something you’d see in the Terry Gilliam film, Brazil?)

Check out this clip of it in action

I had a quick flick through the Apple Quicktime site to see if there was any cool trailers for upcoming films over the summer. Unfortunately it seems that yet again Hollywood seems to be churning out film adaptations of comic-book superheroes?! I understand that by doing so they tap into an already established fan base and so potentially stand to make more money - BUT (with a couple of exceptions) they are generally ALWAYS rubbish?!

Whether it’s sequels (Hellboy 2), film versions of minor superheroes (Ironman), or remakes of previous superhero films (Hulk) it always seems to guarantee an interesting trailer and a boring film? It seems particularly ridiculous that the Incredible Hulk has already had a bad remake a few years back and yet the 2008 CGI-Hulk seems to look just as unbelievable as the 2003 CGI-Hulk?

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UPDATE: This spoof news report by the Onion sums up my feelings nicely I think!

I really enjoyed the Future of Web Design conference today, most of the talks were really interesting. I particularly enjoyed Andy Budd (Clearleft) talking about the ‘user experience design curve’, Paul Farnell (Litmus) talking about unconventional ways of promoting sites, Daniel Burka (Digg) on iterative and adaptive design and a great presentation from Steve Pearce from Poke (pictured below) all about user experience vs brand experience.

Another thing that struck me about the day was virtually everyone there was a pasty, skinny, white guy with thick glasses! … Concerning!

Picture by jkleske

I watched this the other week - the Family Guy episode “Blue Harvest” which is essentially a big parody of the original Star Wars film. However this is easily my favourite clip - who knew that the whole story kicked off because of bad user interface design?! Watch on YouTube

Thought it was time to get the podcasts up and happening again, I think (like blogging) it’s a case of little and often, so here’s a little mix to celebrate that it’s now still sunny when you finish work - hooray!

Download file:
(Right click the link below and select “Save Target As”):
http://cdn2.libsyn.com/benhanbury/Daylight_Savings_Mix.m4a

Subscribe to podcast:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=207664846

So I have to say a massive congratulations to the artist Rydal Hanbury (my mum) for winning a competition at the Tower of London, which essentially meant that one of her drawings got blown up to over 90ft high to cover the central tower while it’s being refurbished for the next three years!

We all went down to the unveiling this morning, and there was a surprising amount of press coverage there, in fact you can watch the lunchtime report from BBC London news here. I was also very interested to find out that apparently getting a picture blown up and printed to that size costs £35,000! (good job it wasn’t in colour?!)

More info on the BBC news site + check out my photo’s on Flickr

There’s nothing better that a good bit of typography (particularly when it’s drawn by hand), and Smashing magazine has done a smashing post on some nice examples of caligraphy, lettering, and experiments with type - check it out here

Interesting to hear that Flickr are now moving into video sharing territory, everything seems to work in that minimal Flickr-like way - though I found it interesting that they’re limiting video’s to being only 90-seconds long to promote the idea of the “long-photo”:

“Video on Flickr grew out of the idea of “long photos” and as such, we’ve implemented what might seem like an arbitrary limit of playing back the first 90 seconds of a video. 90 seconds?We’re not trying to limit your artistic freedom, we’re trying something new.

Everyone has endured that wedding video, where even the bride will fast-forward to the “good bit.” In fact, even Tara at FlickrHQ hasn’t made it past the first 90 seconds of her own wedding video”

View examples on the Flickr ‘Video! Video! Video!‘ group

This is a great little blog by a guy called Todd Hart who basically buys up old cassette tapes from the Oxfam shop in Dalston then digitizes them and shares them on his site. Having a quick flick through I’ve found some pretty cool tracks by Gill Scott-Heron, Groove Train and a nice James Brown mix by Matt Black (right-click and select “Save Target As” on the links). www.dalstonoxfamshop.blogspot.com

Thanks for the link Chris

Following on from that last post, I quite like these from Japanese design firm D-Barcode which specialises in sprucing up barcodes to make them easier to incorporate into an overall package design.

Quick Response Codes – what what what? Well they act in a similar way to a barcode except when you take a picture of them with an internet-enabled camera phone, your phone will bring up information or take you to a link of a particular website.

It’s something we’ve trialed a bit at the BBC (we ran an experiment in London zoo a couple of years back with these images next to the animal cages so visitors could get more information), also I noticed when I was in Japan last year that they got used quite a lot on billboards and advertising to provide a link back to the product.

Anyway I thought this was quite an interesting use of the technology by Munich-based clothing label Emma Cott, basically you can generate a link to your own website, social networking site etc, they’ll then print it out on to a t-shirt. Here’s the code to my facebook profile (I’m sure there could be some interesting uses for this?):

Really like this video by the artist C215 workin his magic across London. To find more stuff check his flickr account or myspace page.

There’s something I really love about this Muxtape site, it basically allows you to upload mp3’s and create online playlists or mixtapes. However I think it’s the interface which is almost over-the-top simple, but there’s something really beautiful and art-like about it?