crgslst
February 22, 2008 | Categories: Design / Internet

Craigslist is probably one of the best “inventions” of the last 20 years, taking a the really simple idea of uniting people who are looking for something (anything) and put it online and made it geocentrically searchable. Now media designer Ian Coyle has taken this ultra-simple service and streamlined it even more. It’s called crgslst, and it’s like the hot, skinny, younger brother of craigslist.

Now instead of the clunky, jumbled (but classic) way of searching, everything is taken down to it’s bare bones and put into a cleaner search interface. It’s pretty interesting to see what can be done with something that people are used to with just a little bit of ingenuity.

Found through Paul Isakson

Bobby

Kitsune Noir on Alltop
February 20, 2008 | Categories: Design / Internet

Last night I received an IM from the lovely Jean over at NOTCOT, and this morning an email from Guy Kawasaki letting me know that Kitsune Noir has been included into a new aggregation site called Alltop. The site features the best 30 or so websites in certain topics such as Autos, Celebrities, and in my case, Design. This way you can see what’s happening across the board on these blogs. It’s totally a copy of popurls, but with more topics and with much cleaner design.

Personally, I’m just shocked to see the blog up there. I know people read +KN, but it’s still odd to me. I kinda’ feel like the homely girl who grew giant boobs in high school. Anyhow, check out the site, it’s certainly well done and interesting to go through.

Bobby

Free Jens Lekman EP’s
February 17, 2008 | Categories: Internet / Music

I dunno about everyone else, but Jens Lekman is one of my favorite singers, so finding new things by him is always good. Well I was on his site a few weeks ago and noticed that he was giving away 3 EP’s for free, most likely because he recorded them when he was 15. The EP’s were released between May 2004 and October 2005, two of them have 4 songs, and one has 5, so you’re basically getting an albums worth of free songs. Who can beat that?

One of the EP’s had a negative attached to it, which you could get developed, another EP has a song featuring El Perro Del Mar, and the last is filled with “drunken, sad, teenage confessions”. Definitely check them out.

Bobby

Letters & Numbers / Steve Rura
February 4, 2008 | Categories: Design / Films / Food & Drinks / Internet

Earlier today I came across Letters & Numbers, the portfolio site of Steve Rura, and was so excited by how creative his work is. Steve graduated from Cooper Union in 2002 and now does freelance design from Brooklyn, New York. His site is a breeze to go through, and it’s also kind of fun because you have to click on a project’s name in order to see it, otherwise there’s just a gray back there. He works in a ton of mediums, including package and graphic design, motion design, sound design… you name it and he has it on there.

My favorite of his projects are the cans and brand identity he did for Nestea, and the calender books he created. The Nestea campaign is absolutely stunning, with a ton of variation as well as making the brand something extremely hip. It’s too bad that Nestea didn’t take his advice, it’s this kind of direction they could really use.
The calender he created is made of blank moleskine books with bold photos on the fronts of each one. You have one for every month of the year, and you fill it as you go. I think this is such a great idea because you could totally keep these on your shelf forever! How cool would it be to look back 5 years ago and see all the stuff you were doing? It could potentially be bad, especially if you started dating someone new, but whatever.

Also be sure to check out the concept spots he did for a television channel that never came to be called The Rabbit Hole. Beautiful imagery and awesome sounds.

Bobby

Air’s Pocket Symphony Site
January 28, 2008 | Categories: Internet / Music

Since I was listening to Air all weekend, I decided to check out their website, wondering if they came out with any more new music videos. Upon visiting, I couldn’t believe how simple and beautiful their site was! I love that their whole site is presented on a desk, with all of the objects representing links to the rest of the site. The small figures of the band members is the bio section, the speakers is the audio section, the TV is music videos, so on and so forth. To top it all off is the atmospheric lights and the big, beautiful window showing what looks like the dawn coming up, with birds flying by. I’ve also seen it before where there are stars in the sky, so possibly the window’s view changes?

More sites should evoke such simple beauty as this, the internet would be better for it.

Bobby

Jeff and I Are Famous
January 28, 2008 | Categories: Internet / Photography

Okay, so this is totally bizarre.
I just got an e-mail from my friend Graham, telling me that Jeff and I are on Getty. We both work for and are friends with photographers, so there are photos of us on Getty. But he attached a screen shot, and we’re on the FRONT PAGE! We represent all creative photos in the Getty universe! So totally weird!

The photo was taken by our friend Christa Renee, who shoots for companies like Pacific Sunwear, Roxy, and Apple. She’s really rad and takes some awesome photos, as evidenced by what you see above!

Bobby

Black Mirror / rorriM kcalB
January 27, 2008 | Categories: Internet / Music

The Arcade Fire has released a new interactive online video, this time featuring the song ‘Black Mirror’. This is definitely one of the better songs off of Neon Bible, and the video (and experience involved) is pretty rad.

The video is pretty ambiguous, but it seems like a giant head in the ocean sinks a Titanic-esque ship, forcing people to boats. In one of the boats is a man with a glowing jar, possibly what the giant head monster was looking for? The man with the bottle then swims out to the giant head, and allows him to eat him a la Pinocchio. Inside the head, the man is captured by pyramid creatures, thrown down a sort of conveyer belt until he reaches then end, where the black mirror resides. Inside the mirror are dancers, and bubbles/pearls…. I really don’t know.

The video is very cool looking, and like I said earlier, interactive. You can hit the number keys 1-6, which start and stop certain instruments in the song. I think they threw in some additional instrumentation as well, to give the song more depth and to allow you more things to control.

Also be sure to check out the previous video they did like this for Neon Bible.

Bobby

Newsweeks’ Oscar Roundtable
January 27, 2008 | Categories: Films / Internet / Magazine

Last week, Newsweek posted it’s 11th Annual Oscar Roundtable, which brings together six of the biggest Oscar contenders and has a nice chat with them. The conversation comes in 14 parts, each running anywhere from 2 to 8 minutes, all of them being extremely interesting. This years roundup brought Angelina Jolie, Daniel Day-Lewis, Ellen Page, George Clooney, Marion Cotillard, and James McAvoy.

The conversation goes all over the place, from their first job, politics, and obnoxious neighbors. George Clooney provided the best story of the night, talking about an encounter he had with helicopters flying over his because Britney Spears lives 300 km away from his house. Listening to him tell his stories, it’s very evident how extremely nice and genuine he is. I also learned that every actor in the world is in utter awe of Daniel Day-Lewis and the performances he gives. Definitely worth the hour investment.

Bobby

Clean Your Computer Screen Instantly!
January 24, 2008 | Categories: Internet

This could quite possibly the cutest/funniest/grossest thing I’ve seen in a while. If you’ve got a dirty screen, simply click here and magically your screen will be cleaned! I promise this isn’t some sort of virus, or anything weird, it’s just funny. I realize how dorky this is, but I could stare at it all day!

Bobby

Super Mario Bros. 2 with Drums
January 24, 2008 | Categories: Games / Internet

Growing up, I was a hardcore Super Mario Bros 2 fan. I wasn’t cool like all of the other kids who played Super Mario 3, I enjoyed the campyness of Mario 2. You got four character to choose from, the slot machine after each level to win more lives, the potions that opened doors to bizarro worlds… what wasn’t to love?

Andrea Vadrucci must have been like me, as you can see in the video above, who’s spiced up the classic soundtrack with some punk-ish drumming. My favorite part is at about 2:05 when he gets to the boss battle music.I can totally picture Princess jumping on the eggs that Bird-O shot out and throwing it at her, and when it hits her she makes that pained sound. That sound brought me such pleasure as a small child.
Also, his double bass pedals are pretty fun. It’s a pretty dorky idea, but it certainly made me smile this morning.

Found through Joystiq

Bobby