Sargasso - Philip Beesley & team will launch new installation during Luminato! Can Not Wait!

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Description:

"A visionary architectural pioneer creates a responsive landscape to infuse one of downtown's busiest spaces with astonishing new life.

A worldwide pioneer in the fast-growing field of responsive architecture, Beesley and his team of collaborators pose the question “could architecture come alive?” In reply he creates spaces that dissolve into forest-like hovering fields, kin to primitive life-forms within dense jungles and ocean reefs. These responsive environments offer bodily immersion and wide-flung perception. In this new installation, Beesley combines visionary design with high-tech digital engineering to turn an everyday public space into a world of wonder.
Sargasso refers to the vast, tangled floating masses of living matter and cast-off material that drifts at the centre of the Atlantic. The environment within the sweeping atrium of the Allen Lambert Galleria makes a vast canopy, a sanctuary that slowly shifts and floats above the city. The building is no longer an entity of steel, glass, and stone but a participant in a symbiotic artistic event that shapes the nature of the environment itself.

Commissioned by Luminato."

Holy Mothra is this AWESOME! Dot: 360º video capture for the iPhone 4 by Jeff Glasse — Kickstarter

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I Love this!

538 BACKERS

$63,543 PLEDGED OF $20,000 GOAL

34 DAYS TO GO

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

Hey Kickstarter-onians,

Thanks for checking out our project! We call it Dot.

It’s a stylish, durable and downright pocketable 360º (panoramic) lens attachment and app for the iPhone 4.

What does it do?

Dot lets your iPhone capture immersive, fully navigable, panoramic video in real-time - and share with friends on your phone, as well as on Facebook and Twitter, or streamed online using our awesome panoramic video web platform and player.

Cool, right?

We're excited too. Why? Because we're uber lazy, and we'd rather put down the camera and enjoy the party. We're making a bet you will too. (Not that we think you're lazy...)

But seriously, our secret beta testers have already had a lot of fun taking it to concerts, the park, on moped rides in Italy, and showing cramped apartments to mothers halfway around the world.

So? Well, up until recently it took major moolah and hefty gear to make a decent panoramic video. Now all you need is your phone and the world around you.

We haven’t slept much.

We’ve spent the past few months researching, designing, prototyping and coding. This means we have working hardware and software prototypes. Now we need your help to finish the 2nd phase of engineering around the lens and begin tooling for volume production.

Let's do it!

We’re excited to bring our cutting-edge (read: magical) panoramic technology to a much wider audience – and even more excited to see what you guys will do with it.

Thanks for your support.

Project location: New York, NY

The Trouble with the Online Echo Chamber - No Surprise = Affirm Biases. NY Times

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By NATASHA SINGER
Published: May 28, 2011

"ON the Web, we often see what we like, and like what we see. Whether we know it or not, the Internet creates personalized e-comfort zones for each one of us.

Give a thumbs up to a movie on Netflix or a thumbs down to a song on Pandora, de-friend a bore on Facebook or search for just about anything on Google: all of these actions feed into algorithms that then try to predict what we want or don’t want online.

And what’s wrong with that?

Plenty, according to Eli Pariser, the author of “The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You.” Personalization on the Web, he says, is becoming so pervasive that we may not even know what we’re missing: the views and voices that challenge our own thinking.

“People love the idea of having their feelings affirmed,” Mr. Pariser told me earlier this month. “If you can provide that warm, comfortable sense without tipping your hand that your algorithm is pandering to people, then all the better.”

Mr. Pariser, the board president of the progressive advocacy group MoveOn.org, recounted a recent experience he had on Facebook. He went out of his way to “friend” people with conservative politics. When he didn’t click on their updates as often as those of his like-minded contacts, he says, the system dropped the outliers from his news feed.

Personalization, he argues, channels people into feedback loops, or “filter bubbles,” of their own predilections.

Facebook did not respond to e-mails seeking comment...."

Very Interesting. On Gulfnews : Gulf governments take to social media

"....A growing number of officials across the Gulf are beginning to understand the significance of social media's outreach. The experience of Saudi blogger Fouad Al Farhan illustrates this change. Al Farhan was arrested in Jeddah in December 2007 and held in solitary confinement until April 2008 after posting a controversial blog naming his ten least favourite Saudis whom he never wants to meet that included a senior Islamic cleric, a billionaire prince and a cabinet minister. In a sign of changing times, Al Farhan, whose popularity only grew after his release (he has over 15,600 followers on Twitter) was one of five Saudis invited earlier this year to meet the Governor of Makkah, Prince Khalid Al Faisal, following the 2011 Jeddah floods. The meeting, held to explain the government's efforts to deal with the floods, was broadcast on national television and the Prince asked Al Farhan to give his regards to his followers on Twitter .

Another impressive presence on Twitter is that of Abdul Aziz Khoja, the Saudi minister of information and culture. The 69-year-old former diplomat personally updates his Twitter profile and interacts with Saudi as well as non-Saudi users, even asking a journalist why he hasn't been active on Facebook recently ....

SO FRIGGING AWESOME! Dot: 360º video capture for the iPhone 4 by Jeff Glasse — Kickstarter

From the site:

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

Hey Kickstarter-onians,

Thanks for checking out our project! We call it Dot.

It’s a stylish, durable and downright pocketable 360º (panoramic) lens attachment and app for the iPhone 4.

What does it do?

Dot lets your iPhone capture immersive, fully navigable, panoramic video in real-time - and share with friends on your phone, as well as on Facebook and Twitter, or streamed online using our awesome panoramic video web platform and player.

Cool, right?

We're excited too. Why? Because we're uber lazy, and we'd rather put down the camera and enjoy the party. We're making a bet you will too. (Not that we think you're lazy...)

But seriously, our secret beta testers have already had a lot of fun taking it to concerts, the park, on moped rides in Italy, and showing cramped apartments to mothers halfway around the world.

So? Well, up until recently it took major moolah and hefty gear to make a decent panoramic video. Now all you need is your phone and the world around you.

We haven’t slept much.

We’ve spent the past few months researching, designing, prototyping and coding. This means we have working hardware and software prototypes. Now we need your help to finish the 2nd phase of engineering around the lens and begin tooling for volume production.

Let's do it!

We’re excited to bring our cutting-edge (read: magical) panoramic technology to a much wider audience – and even more excited to see what you guys will do with it.

Thanks for your support.

Project location: New York, NY

I Like This Blog. Crowdfunding for Creativity | Brain Pickings

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By Maria Popova:

Excerpt:

"Success via strangers, or what Transylvania has to do with an 8-bit tribute to Miles Davis.

One of the most exciting things about the social web is its tendency to democratize the creative industry, allowing creators — artists, musicians, publishers, filmmakers, writers, entrepreneurs — to bypass the traditional industry distribution model and self-publish their creative output by crowdfunding it through platforms that connect them with their audience. Today, we look at three brilliant platforms for funding creative projects, plus a few more options specific to narrower creative fields.

KICKSTARTER