Fluidesign Blog

Finding ARPANET: The First (Physical) Site of the Internet from Brad Fidler on Vimeo.

Gee o golly gosh, congrats to Tripkick.com for making it to Time Magazine’s top 50 websites of 2008. Read all about it here.

For even more info on tripkick.com, click here.

How come some brands are more loveable than other brands? Perhaps because some brands facilitate an easy way to get all intimate, emotional, and passionate with them.

Take these two interactive, immersive, game experiences involving a very intimate act, kissing.

Here at the Happiness Factory, you get to control some ridiculously adorable puppy creatures on their adventure path, to ultimately win each level by kissing the gold at the end of the rainbow, in this case the bottle of coke. The whole experience is awesome, try it out here. Let me know if you can taste the coca-cola, k?

(Shift Control won the Webby for this one.)

Mentos came up with a pretty clever fight game concept where you have to out kiss your component. I’d say there’s a place in everyone’s heart for a well played passionate kiss fight. You can try it out here.

(Props to BBH.)

Blip, dubbed “twitter for music”, has been up for about a month or so and last week I finally had a chance to check it out. So, this is how it works.

Let’s say you are listening to a song and you want to share it, you go to blip, and if you integrated last.fm, you’ll see that song already listed in the “What are you listening to?” field. Then all you have to do is “blip” (post) it with a comment.

Like twitter, you can direct the post at someone, and because they allow twitter integration, you can direct it at someone on twitter as well, and your blip gets posted there too. On blip, all your music posts gets organized into an ongoing playlist. And like muxtape, the interface is awesome, as you can use you arrow controls to navigate through the list. And again, like Twitter, people follow your ongoing playlist (feed) and can see your new blips on their homepage where all of their follow’s blips live into a combined playlist.

Here’s a screenshot:

Now check out this music industry predication graph by Enders Analysis:

Via Heavy Bag Media

My prediction is that if people start using blip, you’ll see a higher “listen-to-buy ratio” because 1) as a user, you’re getting very qualified music recommendations without having to do any active work, as your friend’s blips automatically are added to your home page 2) blip makes it really easy to buy; each song has a “buy” link to amazon.

This is different than lastfm.com where you have to literally, consciously, decide on which friend’s music to review, go to that page, read through what they have been listening to lately (not songs they especially like), and possibly listen to it. With imeem.com you have to do the same, but it’s a little better because you can check out their playlists, which is obviously songs they like. And with ilike.com, it’s pretty annoying because if a friend does send you a song they like, in most cases the full song is not available to listen to, and you come to a dead end because we’re all too busy to go to another music service, try to find the full song, and then maybe or maybe not buy it.

So here’s my tip to the music industry, specifically to record labels. Go create an account now, and promote it a bit, and have fans follow your feed of all of your musician’s new music. Then come back and tell us what your “listen-to-buy” ratio is compared to all the other music social networks. Seriously, as mentioned in a previous post, I’d really like to see the music industry start making money again.

Follow me on blip here!
To read my last music industry tip, click here.

Last Friday marked one of my twice yearly trips to the movie theatre to take in a flick the old fashioned way. First I’d like to point out that seeing a movie in the theatre really is more fun! It’s easy to forget this when you only venture out of the comfort of your living room two times a year.

And second you should TOTALLY go see The Go-Getter this week! (trailer here). It’s a beautiful little film about, well, self discovery by means of a road trip I suppose. And yes the concept has been done before, but honestly who cares? The cinematography is light and ethereal, the characters are believable, and the music (mostly by M. Ward) is perfect. It’s an all out feel good indie movie and it’s only playing this week in LA, New York, Portland, Toronto, and Orange County.

It’s gotten great reviews from Rolling Stone, The New York Times, New York Magazine, and the New York Daily News… AND for you office-mates, it’s playing not a half block from the office at the Laemmle Monica 4 on 2nd street.

And while I am a teeny bit biased, (one of the producers is a friend), you should still GO SEE IT. NOW.

If you don’t Zooey Deschanel will shoot you.

Check out the Feltron Annual Report. This last one is a visualization of designer Nicholas Felton’s life last year.

As sites like lastfm.com, mint.com, twitter.com, etc. record and graph our life’s minutes, we will begin to see everything getting aggregated, spewing out reports on us and the world amongst us.

So we were at a DealMaker event at MTV a couple weeks back and Michael Schneider, our very own CEO, did a quick interview with TechZulu.

Check it out now.

This pretty song just feels like a weekend roadtrip with the windows down. Despite feeling like my head is incased in a jelly-like concrete substance (read: i am sick, ugh), this video makes me excited for the weekend, for the end of may (get out of here already spring!) and finally SUMMER.

Take a looksie

This is a great commentary on the hyperreal bombardment of youtube “stars” we experience everyday. Weezer just literally brought them to life! Great concept.

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