World Expo, Box Office and STACKD -Some Latest Amazing Stuffs

Shanghaied

Shanghaied

2010 World Expo opens in Shanghai on May 1st. It’s planned to be the largest World’s Fair in history, with 190 countries participating. The theme of the Expo is “Better City, Better Life”, and is scheduled to run until October 31, 2010. Check out the pavilions. The “Seed Cathedral” (UK pavilion) by Thomas Heatherwick, is an amazing structure. Each of the 60,000 transparent acrylic rods that emanate from the building and waft in the breeze contain the seeds of different plants.

Box Office

Box Office

A successful information graphic visually organizes and juxtaposes good information in such a way that the sum is greater than its parts. Good visualizations make information useful and enjoyable. If the designer knows the difference between Goudy and Gaudy, all the better. We like a well-designed infographic, and we like film. OnlineMBA has created one focusing on the film industry’s economics, showing that even in a recession, Hollywood is alive and well. No explanation for a $6 medium popcorn, however.

STACKD

De-virtualize

STACKD is an interesting new social networking tool for bringing people together who work in the same building, but who don’t yet know each other. From their Web site: “STACKD helps people in office buildings get in touch – for business or beers. We would like to think that it’s the people around you that should be part of your social network: people you meet in the elevator rather than on Facebook, people you follow to the 14th floor instead of on Twitter. Online social networks are great for what they are. We built STACKD to tap the potential of the place you stick around most: the office.”

Punk’d

Punk’d

Pop-culture anarchist and Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren is dead at 64. Malcolm Mclaren’s influence on rock music is unmatched. While he didn’t invent punk (Stooges, MC5, Ramones) he dressed it up and gave it somewhere to go. He understood the strange appeal of punk: it made ugliness beautiful and made it cool for disaffected kids everywhere to hate everything. How do you manage to get a song to the top of the charts with little marketing budget? Get it banned by the BBC, of course.

Let it snow

Let it snow

Zoe Papadopoulou and Cathrine Kramer, interaction design students at London’s Royal College of Art, are going to “make clouds snow ice cream.” From the project Web site: “Developments in nanotechnology and planetary-scale engineering point to new possibilities for us to conform the global environment to our needs. These advances combined with a dream to make clouds snow ice cream have inspired a series of experiments that look at ways to alter the composition of clouds to make new and delicious sensory experiences. Using ice-cream as a catalyst for dialog, the project’s focus is to let new audiences experience and imagine emerging scientific developments and their consequences.”

Thanks to Bambera for sharing this amazing information with me. I hope you guys enjoyed the post. Have a question or want to include your thoughts, please use the comment box below. Cheers