Bloody hell, it’s great to be back to normality after being away on a pain management course, being swamped in pitch-related madness, a couple of days off by the sea, and then back into more pitch madness.

Hence blog hiatus.

And overflowing inbox.

So lots of things I’d ordinarily have blogged about are a bit, well, old hat.

NESTA Innovation Edge

[photo courtesy of ]

Like seeing Tim Berners-Lee, Bob Geldof, Charles Leadbeater, Sam Pitroda and Gordon Brown (yes, that Gordon Brown) speak at the NESTA Innovation Edge Conference, as well as catching up with Neil, who’s already blogged the day.

Tim Berners-Lee was utterly awe-inspiring (the phrase “that’s why I invented the web” was a particular standout) and his discussion of his Web Science research initiative absolutely fascinating - the central point being that it’s not about technology in and of itself, it’s human behaviour enabled and facilitated by technology:

The web really has to be thought of not as a system of connections between computers, or even as links between web pages, but really as humanity connected.

[ See the rest of the session on Web Science at NESTA ]

The World’s First Internet Balloon Race

Or the World’s First Internet Balloon Race (as others have already observed).

Beautifully executed, it deftly brings the joy of the real-life balloon race into the digital space, encouraging participation by offering all manner of elegant widgets and applications to users - and best of all, engaging site owners as partners in the whole event.

It’s not just viral, social, web 2.0, or whatever other buzz words will no doubt be attached when describing it. It’s bloody genius. And utterly delightful.

Naked Anonymous

Or Untitled Anonymous, the recent anonymous art exhibition put on by Naked, featuring pieces submitted by employees from across the agency (including an exceptionally underwhelming entry from yours truly)

Conceived by the always-fabulous Kyle and Hass, it was a fantastic experiment and experience, and fantastic to see everyone from all different disciplines get involved. In their own words:

We wanted to see how well creativity would function when it has to speak for itself, stripped naked of everything but the expression – no title, no statement, no background.

So we briefed everyone who works at Naked London (the strategists, the creatives, the founding partners, even the cleaning lady) to create a piece of original art to be shown in an exclusive, one-night-only exhibition.

The twist was that every piece of art would be shown anonymously and without a title (this would all be revealed in a special online gallery the following week).

Phase two of the project has just gone live and the creators, titles, statements and inspirations have all been revealed.

You simply click on the work to discover the information.

So, just a few of the things I would have blogged, but, er, didn’t.

Normal service should now resume - back to your regularly scheduled programming…

It seems we can’t get enough of literature in bite sized portions - and are choosing to consume said portions in a number of different ways

If Tankbooks aren’t your thing (although lots of people are loving em), then maybe you’d prefer to get your lit on digitally?

Kindle, Amazon’s new electronic paper wireless reading device claims to be the future of book reading.

Or perhaps you’d prefer not to invest in a pricey e-reader, and would rather use your mobile phone? If you sign up to the Swedish service Storytel, you can download audiobooks split into chunks of about 50 and 150 minutes long - you can even download comic books to browse on-screen.

Now Daily Lit will send you a snippet of your chosen book by email or RSS at the date/time of your choosing - with each instalment small enough to be read in 5 minutes or less.

The makers of Daily Lit admit that they got the idea from newspaper serialisations of classic novels: books they had always meant to read but never got round to - but finally read because each chapter became part of their daily routine of reading the newspaper. They observed that the only thing they did more . The only thing they did more consistently than read the paper was to read their email - and lo, Daily Lit was born,

Ironically it seems we’ve come full circle - whilst we might be accustomed to reading entire volumes of Dickens novels, most of his work was originally published in episodic format, in monthly or weekly instalments in journals - resulting in that famous anecdote of American fans waiting at the docks in New York for the arrival of the latest installment of The Old Curiousity Shop, shouting clamours of ‘Is little Nell dead?’. Whilst the accessibility of literature has meant such anticipation is a rare occasion (with the exception of Harry Potter and the like), it’s fascinating to see that whilst the medium may have changed, how we consume literature seems to have come right back round again…

So I’m sure you’ve all seen the story about Corey Delaney, the 16 year old Melbourne dude who threw a massive party while his folks were out of town last week, racking up A$20,000 (about £9,000) worth of damages, and (with balls of steel) proclaimed it on-air to b e the “best party EVER”.

The video of which made its way onto YouTube where it, not surprisingly went down a storm.

But such is the speed of microcelebrity in the digital age that it didn’t stop there.

You can now not only see the video, but you can buy the t-shirt

Annoyed by his slacker smugness? You can slap some sense into Corey

Hell, even Paris Hilton’s in on the game (OK so that one might be made up)

The man himself has allegedly signed a A$10,000 deal with Zoo magazine, and is said to be launching his career as a party planner.

When Andy Warhol said that everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame, I doubt he could have forecast how quickly microcelebrity would be generated by the power of the internet.

Or, no doubt, how quickly their 15 minutes (seconds?) would be over…

Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails was stumped as to how to create context for his latest album, since mp3s lacked the artwork and liner notes of the 12″ concept albums of the 60s…the solution ended up being the development of a fully immersive ARG (alternate reality game) which involved and was shaped by the fans who partook in it.

Reznor said he wanted to wanted to give his fans a taste of life in a massively dysfunctional theocratic police state - both through his music, and through the ARG which ended up involving millions of players worldwide.

Hints and clues were seeded in t-shirts sold on the band’s tour, in USB flash drives left in the toilets at tour venues, on websites and in phone messages - fragments of which were assembled to form an interactive narrative which told a story to contextualise and complement the story told in the album.

Although Reznor says it wasn’t intended as a form of marketing, there’s no doubt that it created enormous excitement about the album - and in fact helped to create the narrative of the album itself. It’s also another fantastic example of collective intelligence working together to create something greater than the sum of its parts - in this case the audience pieced together the clues to solve the mysteries posed along the way - and in the process told and shaped and reformed the story online.

ARGs aren’t anything new (my friend Dan Hon’s work on Cloudmakers and Perplex City being two shining examples) but the collective intelligence and participation which drives them is now being used more frequently and in more exciting ways - and it’s particularly gratifying to see big brands such as P&G, Dell and Intel are recognising the value of the hive mind in driving innovation - with the minds of the many undoubtedly eliciting far greater results than the minds of the few.

[via Wired ]