NYC Underground Park

Design site Inhabitat has a video that looks at the idea of creating an underground park in an abandoned part of the New York subway system. 
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/855802805/lowline-an-underground-park-on-nycs-lower-east-sid

Grammy Nominee Daily Song Alarm
Uniqlo’s Wake Up iPhone app collaboration with Grammy nominated artist Cornelius is a melodic alarm clock with a difference. Changing according to the weather forecast, you can be serenaded awake with a musical rousing that is outside Apple’s 20 nominated and highly annoying ringtones. 
http://www.psfk.com/2012/05/uniqlo-grammy-nominee-alarm-song.html

Clothing Store Displays Real-Time Facebook “Like Counter” on Hangers

C&A Brazil, a Brazilian clothing store,  has figured out a way to help alleviate a common anxiety women experience while shopping:”What will my friends think? Will they like this outfit?” by merging social media activity with in-store shopping behavior. 
http://mashable.com/2012/05/08/hangers-update-facebook-likes/ 

Tumblr of the Week:

http://fuckingcreatives.tumblr.com/

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Google Launches Augmented Reality Glasses in Beta
Google has released a sneak peek at Project Glass, an effort to replace the smartphone with glasses that can beam texts, emails, music, weather, and more directly to your field of vision. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/04/project-glass-google_n_1403174.html

Snoop Dogg’s Smokable Songbook
Rolling Words, a self-advertised “smokable songbook”, contains pages that can be ripped out for use as rolling papers. Baked with lyrics from many of Snoop’s popular hits such as "Gin and Juice" and "Drop it Like Its Hot," you can sing along as you're smokin' up. http://www.psfk.com/2012/04/snoop-dogg-smokable-book.html 

Buy Designer Clothes Straight from Music Video
Online fashion store SSENSE has created the world’s first shoppable music video. The integration they are introducing between technology, entertainment and retail with this video not only creates a unique experience for the audience, but also has utility. http://www.ssense.com

Tumblr of the week:
See some of Siri's finest moments. http://shitthatsirisays.tumblr.com/

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DK’s Director of User Experience, Cristin Siegel, has an article in Target Marketing Magazine this week sharing her expertise on website design concept testing. “Concept testing – which is different from usability testing,” she explains, “puts two different website design treatments in front of representative users to see if one concept is perceive to be more usable or engaging than the other. Once a design is chosen and client-approved, the build phase can begin.” Dive into the rest of her thoughts here.

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Cameron Friedlander, VP, Creative Technology, and Chris Stewart, Associate Creative Director will judge this year's Seattle and Cleveland ADDY awards, respectively. Occuring in the communities worldwide, the competition - one of the largest in the advertising world - explores creative excellence at all levels. Click here to learn more.

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The DK Holi-Cray-Matic™ is an open-source, Twitter-controlled, Arduino-connected (http://arduino.cc/), node.js (http://nodejs.org) application.

There is a self-hosted Node.js web server sitting at holiday.designkitchen.com that is the central hub of the project. It opens up a connection to Twitter’s Stream API and listens for any tweets mentioning @designkitchen and creates a random event job for them – snow machine, table lights, wall lights, beacon lights, inflatable sky dancer. Every 40 tweets, an all-on-holicray event is triggered. Once the jobs have been created, an event is broadcast via websockets to all the webclients (the website) to update the real-time website. These jobs are processed one at a time and sent to the Arduino node.js application sitting in the conference room.

On the Mac Pro, there is a local Node.js application that is connected to the web server via websockets (socket.io). This server is responsible for accepting job instructions from the web server, turning on Arduinio for 9 seconds, and then turning it off, and then reporting back to the web server to say the action took place.

We built out our own power circuits using PowerSwitch Tail II hooked up to an Arduino Uno board connected to a Mac Pro in the conference room. All of the holiday decorations are then plugged in downstream on those PowerSwitches, always on, waiting for the control pin on Arduino to complete the circuit and make stuff go HoliCray!

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We’re letting clients, friends and the general twittersphere take control of our holiday happenings this year. Tweet at @designkitchen to activate a holiday zone in one of our conference rooms. Once we hit that magic number the room will get Holi-Cray! Watch the live feed while you tweet so you can see your favorite employees go Holicray for the Holidays! Because simply celebrating just isn’t enough.
http://holiday.designkitchen.com/

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The 2012 International CES, the world’s largest consumer electronic tradeshow, is kicking off Tuesday, January 10th with speakers and panelists ready to discuss our future with smart devices.

Wrapped up in our lives as a form of entertainment and relied on to help make us better at our jobs, these devices shape our lifestyles. And these sessions address the newest technologies, and explore how smartphones and tablets are revolutionizing the consumption and monetization of content.

Tuesday at noon, moderator Shawn Gold of Cocodot will lead CES attendees in “iPad-Tablet-Smartphone Advertising – The Premium Advertising Platform.” Tablets are giving advertisers more options than any other smart device today. With its connections to TV as well as smartphones, tablets are proving to be more valuable given the constant changes in technology.

Discussing the versatility of tablets in advertising are panelists Yahav Isak, Digitas Health; Alexandre Mars, Publicis Group; Bryan Moffett, NPR; Mark Pavia, Starcom USA; Mandar Shinde, AOL; Ashley Swartz, Digitas; and Designkitchen’s own Cameron Friedlander.

http://www.cesweb.org

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Come see Designkitchen’s VP and head of Creative Technology, Cameron Friedlander, as he joins the prominent ranks of South by Southwest Conference speakers. Cameron will present on the following topic: “A Tale of Loyalty: Virtual Brand Currency Wars”.  Next year’s SXSW is March 8-18, 2012 in Austin, TX. Visit the website for more details.

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Patricia Odell of The Big Fat Marketing Blog recently recognized Wunderman3 and Designkitchen’s collaborative work on the “7 Wonders of the USA”, created especially for Wonder Bread. The promotion allowed users to nominate inspirational teachers as part of the Wonder Honors America’s Everyday Heroes campaign. In Ms. Odell’s words, “Since the start of the promotion in July and its end on October 24, more than 3,000 nominations came streaming in, exceeding a previous version of the program by 230%.” Great job, DK! To read more, check out her article here. 

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Designkitchen’s very own Executive Creative Director, Scott Yanzy, will be judging Promo Magazine’s 2011 Interactive Marketing Awards. The contest aims to recognize the best in this year’s digital initiatives, especially those using interactive channels in direct-response campaigns. To learn more about the IMA Awards, check out the website here. 

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October 17-20, Digital Hollywood will take over Marina del Rey, California to talk about how technology is changing, enhancing and shaping entertainment.

Speakers from across technical divides, like Matt Shaw, Mobile Strategist for Google and Ted Hong, CMO of Fandango will talk about next generation mobile devices and their effect on the entertainment industry. While our very own Cameron Friedlander, VP/Director of Creative Technology will discuss how consumer demand is driving the need for the perfect device.

Even Jon Favreau will take the stage to engage, debate and define the latest technological developments in entertainment, encouraging companies and individuals alike to capitalize on innovation.

A co-production of Variety and Digital Hollywood, The Variety Entertainment and Technology Summit is at the intersection of content, technology and entertainment and we couldn’t be prouder to be a part of it.  

http://digitalhollywood.com/varietysummit/

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The Designkitchen team worked in tandem with its sister agency, Wunderman, to release a highly interactive web site that reflects the dynamic, global scope of the company.

All in all, we’re thrilled. Want to check out the site? You can view it here: http://www.wunderman.com/

And, if you feel so inclined, you can learn about the WebAwards here: http://www.webaward.org/winner.asp?eid=17698

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Talented photographer, Sylvia Krzysztofek, recently came to the Designkitchen office to take some snazzy shots of DK personalities.

Hope you like your picture guys, because this is as good as you can look.

See all Faces of DK here:

And don’t forget to check out Sylvia’s portfolio:  http://www.thisgirlsylvia.com/  

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SXSW is when the world comes to Austin to celebrate Interactive, Film and Music.

Hosting a slew of the most creative minds from across the globe, SXSW is reaching out to all corners of the Earth to ask qualified individuals to strut their stuff on stage and share their thoughts on prevalent creative and technological issues that influence the industry today.

A community-driven event, it’s important that the speakers chosen for the people are chosen by the people. And knowing what kinds of topics the people want to hear is, by nature, important. That’s why SXSW is throwing the SXSW PanelPicker call for entry. Allowing the community to have a significant voice in programming Interactive, Film, and Music conference activities for SXSWeek 2012 (March 9-18), the SXSW PanelPicker saves 30% of the decision-making process for public votes.

A few Designkitchen industry professionals have chosen to lend their creative expertise to SXSW, to reach out on a large scale, to invigorate the audience with their ideas, and to learn a great deal from their experiences as well. Check out their proposals and give them a vote to help send them to speak on the SXSW Interactive Panel!

Cameron Friedlander
A Tale of Loyalty: Virtual Brand Currency Wars     

Shawn Fenton  
Have LOLz Made Us Funnier?

Martin Davis
Bubble Planning Ecosystems Like an Architect

Todd Larsen
Real-Time: A Catalyst For Innovation

Jon Stookey
School Sucked. Contra Still Rules.

Voting ends Friday September 2, 2011. So, click the link and vote for who you think has the best panel topic. Winners will be announced around December 19th, 2011.

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/index/10/company:Designkitchen#idea_11626

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Earlier this year, Motorola and strategic partner Bulldog Solutions contracted IDC to create a collection of industry-focused content centered on innovation; including trends, best practices and guidance on how enterprise and government organizations can operate more efficiently with Motorola Solutions.

Notorious for its leadership in product development and services, Motorola believed that this effort was a fundamental undertaking—one that provided its customers with relevant, non-biased content, and in turn, encouraged them to engage with Motorola products and services.

With the content creation phase complete, Motorola turned to Designkitchen and Eliason Media to create a depository that not only facilitated the user experience, but collected essential consumer data.

Together, we are proud to present The Innovation Paradox—a content-rich hub that integrates Eloqua software and a custom-built Rails CMS. Here, visitors are invited to register to gain access to premium thought leadership resources, such as white papers, implementation guides, technology and solutions briefs, and more. Through registration, Motorola captures massive quantities of detailed consumer data that aid in tailored conversations and sales leads, as well as deliver indispensable content to enterprise and government agencies.

https://theinnovationparadox.com/

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