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March 28, 2006

Web 2.0 Break Down

The whole Web 2.0 is spoon fed to the public in this cover story of the April 3 issue of Newsweek (also my birthday btw). It doesn't get any buzzier.

Posted by Dane Troup at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)

The Brainstorming Problem

I was looking over my blog rss feeds (bloglines is a great tool) and came across Wired's article about brainstorming. I never thought about the history of the concept and why it came about. The article introduces this and goes on to explain why in this day and age it doesn't work as well.

I always had a problem with brainstorming sessions especially when they were briefed on the spot. How does one expect someone to come up with a creative solution on the spot? When it comes to creative solutions, I do have a bag of tricks but why reuse an idea if there are fresh solutions to be found.

There have been many times when I found myself sitting in a room with a random sampling from a company to come up with a creative solution to a business problem. I never found myself in a meeting to come up with an accounting solution or a client relation’s solution but for some reason everyone is capable of coming up with creative solutions. This atmosphere is on par with "the chain is as strong as the weakest link". You begin to defer to the lowest common denominator, the biggest mouth or someone trying to prove their importance to the company.

I'm in a room where there is a range of qualifications/understanding. The problem is presented and then its go time. In my head, I eliminate every trite, banal and obvious solution and try to come up with a solution that will be set apart from the rest. However, before I can process the problem, around me starts to fly every obvious solution there is. So what happens is we get a long list of obvious solutions. How do you quantify what makes an idea better then another? Well if you have experience and training in the field of design you understand the principles and know that they rely on trends and the audience that the material will end up in front of. Also, you need to keep in mind budget, resources and turnaround time. If the group is a random sampling from a company, they will all have different levels of understanding. However, they will have perfect understanding of the obvious solutions. Is it possible to educate each person on what makes good ideas and bad ideas? Maybe. Is it realistic? No! So inevitably what happens is the idea that is the strongest obvious solution prevails.

This is not to say that I do not brainstorm. I brainstorm best with people on my level of understanding or people who complement my understanding with strengths of their own and we defer to the other in our areas of weakness. Creative problems have hundreds of solutions and the best solution is not always the best idea. It is the idea that will work best within the parameters of the problem. Experience, creativity and training are needed to achieve this solution, not a desire to be creative.

Posted by Dane Troup at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2006

Seth Godin Emailed me Back

Seth Godin, an idol of my own, originaly posted the Blog about Googleidol and Pomme & Kelly's blog - PommeKelly

I reposted the link here and, I guess, so did a lot of other people. In the 2 days since the post, Pomme & Kelly's vote went from 8000 to 47,000 and climbing. I emailed him about the numbers and suprisingly he emailed me back promptly - twice!

Read the emails below.

Seth Godin, an idol of my own, originaly posted the Blog about Googleidol and Pomme & Kelly's blog - PommeKelly

I reposted the link here and, I guess, so did a lot of other people. In the 2 days since the post, Pomme & Kelly's vote went from 8000 to 47,000 and climbing. I emailed him about the numbers and suprisingly he emailed me back promptly - twice!

Read the emails below.
__________________________________________________________

thanks for asking

----------------------------------------------------------
seth godin <sethgodin@yahoo.com> wrote:

I never poked fun at Kelly. I adore her.

but yes, you are absolutely right about the numbers!

=============================


Seth Godin
Do You Zoom, Inc.
3 West Main Street, Suite 103
Irvington NY 10533

(914) 674 9666
fax 914 674 4387

http://www.sethgodin.com (click on my head!)

my lens: http://www.squidoo.com/seth

Subscribe to my blog: http://feeds.feedburner.com/typepad/sethsmainblog

This note is off the record (blogs, too) unless we agree otherwise.

Posted by Dane Troup at 12:34 PM | Comments (2)

March 23, 2006

Color schemes generator 2

This is a neat little tool to get color schemes for interactive projects in a jiffy. Not real sophisticated but it is a good starting point. Color schemes generator 2 Go check it out.

Posted by Dane Troup at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

March 22, 2006

Web 2.0 - The Machine Matures

If you care at all about the direction of the web read - Web 2.0: A Pattern Library by Tim Ziegler 21 Mar 2006

I will quote a piece of the summary that most striking for me :

The next stage of the internet is "Publishability." MySpace is all the rage, but it only lets you publish the simplest of content types, with no fine-tunability of exactly who you are publishing for. Watch the "Publishability" space for publishing tools that let you publish in different ways to different communities. The new tools will build off the initial model of meeting new people to include sharing more intimately with your existing relationships. These tools will also incorporate automated and templated publishing or community management for small business audiences.

Web 2.0 - See what interacting with this giant interconnected machine is going to mean going forward.

Posted by Dane Troup at 08:19 AM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2006

the Slivercast Is Born

For some time now I have been toying with the idea that there is a market for mini content. Not just video feeds but interactive content or mini-sites that can be carried from their birthplace and posted and shared from any portal where the author chooses to post it. It would even still be served up from the original server so it could be updated, archived and tracked.

As Internet TV Aims at Niche Audiences, the Slivercast Is Born came to my attention and thought I would share... It is just focused on video but I like the idea of Slivercast.

Posted by Dane Troup at 09:00 AM | Comments (0)

Googleidol

Googleidol Oh lord what is going on out there.

Posted by Dane Troup at 08:46 AM | Comments (0)

March 17, 2006

Some Strange Jpop

This is just wacky. A love song with a bear going around mauling people. I don't know japanese but it sounds like a love song. I like the style as well.

Posted by Dane Troup at 03:46 PM | Comments (0)

Work From the Past

I was pestering someone to show some of their work on their MySpace page and realized I have never posted any of my sculpture work. I majored in sculpture as an undergrad at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. The department is excellent and I enjoyed the conceptual nature of the program. i found a lot of emphasise was placed on thinking about how different things communicate different ideas to different people and it has stuck with me in all of the directions I have gone.

I was pestering someone to show some of their work on their MySpace page and realized I have never posted any of my sculpture work. I majored in sculpture as an undergrad at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. The department is excellent and I enjoyed the conceptual nature of the program. i found a lot of emphasise was placed on thinking about how different things communicate different ideas to different people and it has stuck with me in all of the directions I have gone.

This is the first thing I made my freshman year - I was studying a lot of Art History and had to memorize lots of Madonna and Child works. I decided to make a version with a plexiglass madonna with a see through tummy with this fetus inside my own "Madonna and Child"



Crack cocaine was still sold in little plastic files back then and a friend of mine found a crack vile with rock cocaine still in it. I mad ethis cage to house the vile. In the center, there is a steel tube cut in the middle with a plastic tube containing the crack vile. This was also mounted on a pole about 8 feet off the ground. You had to climb up the pole to see what it was. - Welding was fun - I miss it!



This I created in a bronze foundry class. Working in the foundry was very cool. It is a long process to make the bronze cast but woth the experience. I was looking at a lot of Rodin and I guess this is influenced by his "Gates of Hell" (the big doors on the Rodin Museum in Philly).


This was one of my favorite pieces. More conceptual... It was installed on the wall in a Gallery at school and is titled "Candy, Coins and Condems". They were all placed in little plastic bags like they sold "dime" bags of pot on the streets.

I was trying to get across the idea of living in an instant gradification society. Condems for sex without the intent of reproducing and probably casual is a means to personnal gradification. The coins are tokens from arcades. A video game gives you fun for as long as the credits last. The last being candy is also a little piece of pleasure.




This was the last piece I made - ever. I never did another sculpture once I graduated. I did this as the final project in my Senior Studio class. I through all "high art" ideas out the window and produced something I thought would just look cool. To my suprise it broke the barriers that the conceptual work created and was appreciated by everone at the school. Even the nuns next door really liked it. I've allways wanted to make work for everyone. Not just people who "understand" art and the history of it.

Posted by Dane Troup at 03:38 PM | Comments (0)

March 02, 2006

Microsoft Designs the Packaging for the Ipod

This is for all the designers out there....

Posted by Dane Troup at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)