A mannequin from Uncanny Valley

Tokyo department store Takashimiya has teamed up with Dr Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University to install a new visual merchandising concept using a lifelike android mannequin that has shoppers stopping in their tracks.  Dr Ishiguro imagines his androids as the future of visual merchandising.

Cuba is a colour

Cuban Color Temperature on Vimeo: Cuban Color Temperature Locations: Havana, Trinidad (Cuba). Everything looks so worn out.

Cuban Color Temperature from Ezaram Vambe on Vimeo.

Meet #MrToilet

Focus Forward Films: For those without access to a simple toilet, poop can be poison. Businessman-turned-sanitation-superhero Jack Sim fights this oft-neglected crisis affecting 2.6 billion people. The idea: making the toilet a status symbol.

Meet Mr. Toilet | Jessica Yu from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.

What defines a person?

At schema.org a person (alive, dead, undead, or fictional) is defined by e.g. other persons, like children, parents, siblings, spouse but also who he or she follows ("The most generic uni-directional social relation") or knows ("The most generic bi-directional social/work relation"). Other properties from person are location related, like PostalAddress, others are more about ContactPoints, like e-mail addresses. The home address is a hybrid Place/Contactpoint.

Schema.org provides a collection of schemas, i.e., html tags, that webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways recognized by major search providers. Search engines including Bing, Google, Yahoo! and Yandex rely on this markup to improve the display of search results, making it easier for people to find the right web pages.

Daft Punk Helmet

Harrison Krix is "a 29 year old dork living in Atlanta and working as a freelance props and replica artist." He outlines his processes on his blog hoping that his work "will inspire others to take on the DIY mantle and tackle some projects of their own." His Daft Punk helmet looks amazing! Why can't biker helmets look more like these? I want to look like Robocop but end up looking like a Transformer when I wear bike gear...

Storming Blackberry girl

Somewhere in 2007 I switched from Sony Ericssons (who had the first real smart phones, like the awesome but fragile P800 and P900) to Blackberry and never looked back. Right from the start, Blackberry was perceived as the most reliable device to access your work emails and calendar items on the road. So it's no surprise that the image of Blackberry users was one of "guys in a suit". I don't care if iOS devices have cooler apps: I'm just happy with the way Blackberries handle connectivity and data input. And to be honest, Blackberry Messenger is one of the best messaging solutions I've used... It's just a shame that the amount of people who are on this network is an incredibly shrinking crowd.

Last Tuesday I got to play with Blackberry's latest Bold smartphone (they kept the keyboard but turned the screen into a touch screen), their Porsche P9981 Design smartphone (yours for 1,500 euros), and the PlayBook (made to fit in your suit's inside pocket or in your handbag). Most news apps (Facebook for Playbook, BBM Music, Angry Birds etc) suggest a Mullet Strategy: business upfront, party in the back. I'm not so sure if this will turn the tide. If you look at Amplicate scores for Blackberry, it's between 67% en 85% hate. Only the Blackberry PlayBook gets 65% love, but sales are low.
But if my current Bold would were out or get stolen, would I pick a Bold again? Definitely, yes.
I don't buy iPhones or Androids because I'm afraid I'd just fall in love with their apps and play Angry Birds, Tiny Towers and Word Feud all day. I choose Blackberry to police myself, just like in that Tori Amos song:

Loaded, full of winter you are
Storming Blackberry girl
Will you strike before he's
Loaded, full of winter you are storming
Blackberry girl will you strike
Before he's loaded
Full of winter you are

I use other stuff, like my iPad and the Wii, for playing around and relaxing.
Not every mobile device has to be a "one device to rule them all". Just like you don't have to "suit up" every day.

25 degrees of freedom

NAO Next Gen : the new robot of Aldebaran Robotics: "Aldebaran Robotics, the world leader in humanoid robotics, has released its latest version of the NAO robot — NAO Next Gen. The power of NAO Next Gen, the new fully programmable humanoid robot that has the most extensive worldwide use, is opening up new perspectives and fields of application for its users."

Wow, they've made really big progress... This robot is battling uncanny valley with cuteness. Just not sure what the "25 degrees of freedom" feature is (shown at 3:00). How much more degrees would this little fella need to get back at the heartless woman that runs him over?

A hug is a handshake from the heart

Welcome to the nicest place on the internet: "Having one of those days? Yeah, we've been there too. And sometimes, a little pick-me-up is hard to come by. So we'd like to help you turn the sad into happy and the happy into a celebration."

The song is I have never loved someone by My Brightest Diamond.

If everything is a remix, editing is everything

Shark Song on Vimeo: "Camp Kuleshov" is a competition in NYC, CHI and LA between assistant editors. They are given a film and asked to edit a trailer for the movie taking it from its original genre into another genre. Columbia College film/video major Caleb Hepler's Shark Song took first place.

The contest has been named after the Kulsehov Effect [YT], a study in the impact of film editing on viewers by Russian film maker Lev Kuleshov in the 1920s.

Looking for gift ideas? Try @IceWatchBrand @HandpickedC @NoPresentNoProb

For his 15th birthday I got my son an ice watch (@IceWatchBrand - designed in Bastogne, Belgium!). Buying gifts for teenage boys is, as gift inspiration site the handpicked collection (@HandpickedC) calls it, the holy grail of gift shopping but I'm glad I pulled if off. Amazon's always been very good at recommendations for just about everyone in your life but I like the editorial approach of the handpicked collection.

And then there's the new kid in town when it comes to gift idea generators: No Present? No Problem. Still in beta, but I absolutely love the "hippie" and "cowboy" parameters.
Which sites to you use to get your gift ideas? Or are you a champion in regifting?

Turtles all the way down

From Stephen Hawking’s 1988 book A Brief History of Time:

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

Bullies thrive wherever authority is weak

Losers: A film about bullying. Made by Everynone everynone.com.

Losers from Everynone on Vimeo.

We live in public

On 7 November I was one of the speakers at TEDxUHasselt. I used the platform to collect feedback on a number of have-baked ideas on identity, privacy, and reputation online. Here's the video:

The accompanying slides are up on Slideshare:

We live in public

View more presentations from Clo Willaerts

A collection of starlings is called a murmuration

Murmuration on Vimeo: "A chance encounter and shared moment with one of natures greatest and most fleeting phenomena."

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

I'm not sure if I would have been able to keep the camera that still if you see a thing like that while canoeing.

Women of @TEDxBrussels

TEDxBrussels (on 22 November 2011 in Bozar, Brussels) is one of the many independently organised TED events, but for the Brussels chapter it's already the 3rd edition. I'm part of the blogging team this year, and in this first post I'm having a look at the women in this year's speaker list. More or less in order of preference:

Entrepreneur, investor and business adviser Julie Meyer (@JulieMarieMeyer) is U.S. based, but most know her as one of the dragons on BBC's Dragon's Den. She is the founder and CEO of Ariadne Capital and the Managing Partner of Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund (ACE).

"Kaliya Hamlin is @IdentityWoman" sounds a little like a cheesy trailer for a female superhero tv series. But Kaliya is really a user-centric ID expert, who facilitates numerous internet ID workshops and unconferences. I'm playing with the idea to write a book about online identity and reputation, so I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how she's managed to convince companies and organisations to innovate identity tools and systems that work for people on an internet scale.

Leila Chirayath Janah (@Leila_C) is mostly known as the CEO and founder of Samasource, a social enterprise that gives digital work to impoverished people around the world. But in her Twitter bio she describes herself also as a bit of an "adventurette". While attending Harvard, she did field work in Mozambique, Senegal and Rwanda and she's a visiting scholar at Stanford, Yale, and the University of Calgary. Her main mission is to alleviate poverty by empowering the world's poor as producers of goods and services in the global economy, because "the greatest natural resource in the world that has been overlooked is the brainpower at the bottom of the pyramid." Check out her blog and official site for more.

Interesting idea: the X Prize FoundationX PRIZE Foundation, an organization dedicated to developing radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity through incentive prize competitions. Or, in other words, gamifying doing social good by rewarding the most groundbreaking ideas in a competition. TEDx speaker Eileen Bartholomew (@ebartholomew) has been a Senior Director, Life Sciences, Prize Development at the X Prize Foundation for over 2 years now. She describes her mission as "Relentlessly pursuing creativity and style in a world of necessary engagements."

You Suck On Waffels

The title of this post was conveniently generated by the Youtube Insult Generator: "basically a "search engine for insults." Type in a search term, and it'll give you insults you can use against a person who doesn't like that term. For example, enter "the godfather," and it'll give you "You sleep with the fishes," "You sleeps with horsehead in bed" and "You will get an offer you can't refuse." Enter "alfred hitchcock" and it'll say "You had your eyes plucked out by crows" and "You have Vertigo." Enter "mario brothers" and it'll say "You aren't Super enough for Mario," "You can't beat world 1-1" and "You are bowser." You get the idea. It finds stuff only about 50% of the time, but it works surprisingly well when it does work. Try general terms ("car") and pop culture ("michael jordan", "i love lucy"). Each insult includes a link to its source YouTube video. "

My boy lollipop

Take This Lollipop is an Interactive Live Action Facebook Connect experience. And a very creepy one, too.

I'm sorry, Elke.

Practice life through play

Auti is "an interactive toy developed especially for autistic children. [It] shuts down in response to negative behaviour such as hitting or screaming, but quickly responds to the slightest positive interaction. Each sensor can be adjusted to respond appropriately to each child’s individual characteristics, making Auti immediately compatible with the child."

This toy can teach autistic children how to be less "rough" when seeking contact with other children. But what I like most about this concept is that it is suitable for not just autistic children, but anyone else.

Auti from Helen Andreae on Vimeo.

Dinner signs

Sign Dining - Op-Art - NYTimes.com: "In 1944, Alfred Eisenstaedt shot a photo essay for Life magazine, depicting the secret hand signals Sherman Billingsley used to communicate with the staff of this famous nightspot, the Stork Club."

I've used these numerous times (adding the universal "pinkie" sign for one glass of beer). Most of the time the people at my table laugh at me, but the waiters always get what I mean. Bless them.

[EDIT]There are more, like the "one thumb, one pinkie" devil sign for Duvel beer, and flapping your hands if you want "light" Coke. Got any signs of your own for noisy bars or restaurants?

To live not knowing

You'll probably remember the 7 part Sagan Series, and now the Feynman Series have just started.

Richard Feynman was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium. He died in 1988, aged 69.

From part 1, about Beauty:

Feynman: “I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in this mysterious universe without having any purpose.”

“I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than having answers which might be wrong”