Sir Peter’s bum film review: a writer’s perspective

By Peter Griffin, 2010-07-02 11:47:33

Imagine you’ve had a massive fight with the taxman over how much you owe, then the Prime Minister specially picks you to come up with a plan to re-engineer the department. That’s the sort of gift Peter Jackson was handed when John Key asked him to report on the New Zealand Film Commission.

Today, give something you love a hug

By Matt Cooney, 2010-06-29 11:17:12

What day is it? That’s right, it’s World Industrial Design Day. So find something you love and let it know how you really feel about it. This year, Icsid, the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design, has chosen the theme “Industrial Design: Humane Solutions for a Resilient World”. The plan is to remind us all that design can indeed save the world, or, in Icsid-speak, to “facilitate collaboration within the industrial design community with the goal of producing tangible solutions to world problems”

The geek Tri-Nations is a game of two halves

By Hadyn Green, 2010-06-22 13:47:40 | 2 comments

Our man inside the Code Blacks reports from the floor of this year’s FullCodePress

The man who makes grown geeks tremble

By Julie Starr, 2010-06-18 10:33:14

FullCodePress is back this weekend—and this time a US team is here with some serious star power.

‘The mysteries of the pixel aesthetic’

By Matt Cooney, 2010-05-27 10:16:36

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mqAZ06dwKU

Meet Pixel, a cool ten-minute documentary on the heyday of the mighty dot.

The Jonze boy

By Matt Cooney, 2010-04-21 09:50:47

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdRaf3-OEh4

Good to see that Spike Jonze hasn’t giving up making music vids just yet. Here’s his spot for LCD Soundsystem’s new toon, ‘Drunk Girls’ (what’s not to like?)

Meet an angel, get advice and maybe some money—for free

By Vincent Heeringa, 2010-03-18 11:10:00

Idealog presents a rare opportunity to meet angel investors and mentors—for free. But hurry, we're only taking 80 people.

Bigger, faster, more productive

By Peter Griffin, 2010-03-11 16:20:53 | 2 comments

An entrepreneurial dream team is set to finally give Kiwis the internet as it should be—fast and uncapped. Oh, and lend a hand to our Australian cobbers too.

Taskforce rips open CRIs' agenda

By Vincent Heeringa, 2010-03-04 11:38:00

The weird world occupied by the Crown Research Institutes has finally been set right with a ground-breaking report by businessman Neville Jordan.

NZ Institute thumbs down Key's agenda

By Vincent Heeringa, 2010-03-03 06:59:00 | 3 comments

Rick Boven of the NZ Institute may be late to the party but he's come dressed in black. The latest statement from the Kiwi think tank gives a ringing thumbs down to the government's plan to catch Australia by 2025

Tarantastic

By Matt Cooney, 2010-03-02 11:11:11

If Quentin Tarantino had spent 20 years trapped in branding hell, his first film might have looked something like Logorama. The full version is a 16 minutes long, complete with car chases, a hostage crisis and an apocalyptic Los Angeles—check it out at the official website.

Permalink

Back to the backbone

By Vincent Heeringa, 2010-02-23 22:44:00 | 1 comment

A new report by IBM and the Univerity of Auckland into the state of Kiwi innovation reveals two surprising facts, and one dismally old one

From office paper to toilet paper

By Su Yin Khoo, 2010-02-23 17:37:23

It is now possible to recycle your monthly reports into something more useful

Rives - The Word Wild Web

By Ben Kepes, 2010-02-19 17:31:23

One poet's journey from page to stage, with pit stops in HTML, travel, weird fortune, memes, happiness and other fancy stuff.

Mark Pesce - Dense and Thick

By Ben Kepes, 2010-02-19 17:26:39

It may be hard to believe, but we're only just at the very beginnings of the web revolution. In the first fifteen years (1994-2009), the human world of culture and civilization was sucked into the black hole of cyberspace. Now the real world is poised to follow.

Kevin Rose — a Baroque aria

By Ben Kepes, 2010-02-19 14:42:13

More like a blessing than a performance, Kevin will perform a baroque aria by Handel with his signature emotional depth and subtlety.

Bek Hodgson — Designing for Participation

By Ben Kepes, 2010-02-19 13:51:01

Most everyone has something of value they long to share or contribute. Whether an artisan is seeking out a market for their handmade goods on Etsy, an unpublished author finding an audience on Blurb, or a hungry mind adding context and relevance to a Wiki page, empowering participation is invaluable.

Amy Hoy — Double click to edit

By Ben Kepes, 2010-02-19 11:42:05

Watch out, there's a plague afoot! A plague of what, you ask? A plague of same-y-ness! Blogs, apps, sites—they all look the same. The web has become a place of templates rather than innovation. That means big wins are available for he and she who would dare to break the mould. Learn how to break out of the same-y rut, catch your accidentally copying, and create sites and apps that dare to be different. It'll be just like Zero-Based Accounting, but fun.

Daniel Burka — Iterative Design Strategies

By Ben Kepes, 2010-02-19 10:33:24

User interface design is an iterative process — the design of Digg and Pownce have been a study in evolution and adaptation. This talk will inspect the why and how of these iterations by looking at specific case studies from the two projects as well as previous client work Daniel has tackled.

Eric Ries - The Lean Startup

By Ben Kepes, 2010-02-19 09:46:48

High-tech product development projects are notoriously difficult to manage. They come in over budget and behind schedule, draining cash reserves and squandering revenue opportunities. Many fail outright. Often times, when customers hands finally touch the product, it is unusable, buggy, or defective. Worst of all, the software may work as specified, but there are simply no customers willing to purchase it. All of these problems share a common cause: the tremendous waste inherent in an undisciplined approach to imagining, designing, and building new products.

Shelley Bernstein Fostering Personal Connection to Place

By Ben Kepes, 2010-02-18 14:48:23

How does a museum in Brooklyn foster community? Through a willingness to recognize the what the power of people can bring to its content, an understanding that experimentation is key and failing (fast) is optimal and working to do more with less by empowering our community to help tell our story.

Lachlan Hardy - Building The Open Web

By Ben Kepes, 2010-02-18 13:07:10

The Open Web is an evolving term that encompasses technologies from web standards stalwarts like HTML, to almost-mainstream buzzwords such as OpenID, and on to emerging specifications like PortableContacts, but it's more than that. It is a philosophy.

Brian Fling Brian does the Andrew Sisters

By Ben Kepes, 2010-02-18 10:20:39 | 4 comments

Brian Fling performs songs by The Andrew Sisters and from popular Broadway musicals.

Scott Thomas - Web design that grabs people

By Ben Kepes, 2010-02-18 09:54:00

Online communities? Useless without adoption - Scott Thomas gives us the ins and outs of building attention grabbing sites

TED2010 Day Four

By James Hurman, 2010-02-15 10:41:07 | 2 comments

Many of the speakers at TED touch on their lack of education or conventional intelligence. But there's one thing they all have in common.