This dog is eager to get on the doggie school bus

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The ingenious design of the drinking bird (and what it is hiding under its hat)

Bill the Engineer Guy made this interesting video about the design of the drinking bird toy. I didn't know Albert Einstein spent 3.5 months studying it.

Bill reveals the operation and engineering design underlying the famous drinking bird toy. In this video he explores the role played by the water the bird "drinks," shows what is under the bird's hat and demonstrates that it can operate using heat from a light bulb or by "drinking" whiskey.

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Watch speeding train crash into FedEx truck, slicing it into two pieces

A passenger train crashed into a FedEx truck, smashing it right in half during a snow storm last Saturday in North Salt Lake, Utah. With such dramatic dashcam footage, it's a wonder nobody was hurt.

According to CNN:

In a statement to CNN affiliate WJW, the transit authority said the crossing gates weren't working properly because of the weather conditions. Nor were the flashing lights and bells that warn of an approaching train. Onlookers said the crossing arms didn't come down until after the train was coming through.

"In the event of a power outage or lack of signal, crossing gates are programmed to default to the 'down and active'position as a safety precaution." the statement said. "Preliminary information indicates the gates were affected by the severe ice and snow conditions at the time and were in the default 'down and active' position, as they are programmed..."

A spokeswoman for FedEx told CNN: "We are aware of the incident in Salt Lake City and are grateful that no one was seriously injured. We worked with authorities during their investigation to quickly clean up the scene and minimize the impact on customers."

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Convicted criminal Silvio Berlusconi returns to Italian politics as a kingmaker

Silvio Berlusconi, a misogynist, racist creep-authoritarian who was caught paying a teenager for sex and then lied to cops to get them to stop investigating the case, is banned from holding public office in Italy thanks to a criminal conviction for fraud; but that hasn't kept Italy's media (a large slice of which he controls) from elevating him to the role of political kingmaker in the country's upcoming elections. (more…)

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The Santa Cruz Shredder is a much better weed grinder

The Santa Cruz Shredder actually does leave me with fluffier and more evenly burning weed.

Over time the very act of grinding weed wears out my herb grinders. Add to that the fact that I use them in the process of smoking dope and you'll understand why I tend to go through one or two a year. As I was recently replacing my Sativa grinder, which gets the most use, the weed wizard at my local shop introduced me to the Santa Cruz Shredder.

The squared off teeth and bottom affixed central post in the Santa Cruz Shredder leave your processed marijuana product fluffier and less 'ground down' -- this may be the shape of the teeth, or the slightly larger pass-thru holes for shredded stuff. Regardless, I find that bowls draw with more ease and the weed seems to burn more evenly in my Twisty Glass Blunt.

This isn't a run out and get one right now kind of improvement, but I'll be buying this style grinder going forward. If you need a new one, give it a try!

Santa Cruz Shredder 4 Piece Medium New (Black) via Amazon

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Happy Data Privacy Day! A turning point for anonymity, privacy, and the tools that deliver them

(more…)

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Berlin regulates Airbnb and safely deflates its housing bubble while returning 8,000 rentals to the market

Berlin is one of many European cities that have faced new housing crises -- or worsening existing ones -- attributed to Airbnb, where homes were converted to unlicensed, super-profitable hotel rooms, driving up housing prices, shrinking rental inventory, and making the city unaffordable for the people who lived and worked there. (more…)

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What youthquake? Jeremy Corbyn's election surge was drawn from all age groups, not a mob of first-time young voters

Jeremy Corbyn's incredible, odds-defying showing in the 2017 UK general election has been attributed to a "youthquake" of first-time young voters who were drawn to the polls by his progressive policies. (more…)

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Appeals Court: Britain's Snoopers Charter is illegal mass surveillance and must be urgently reformed

Just over a year ago, the top court in Europe ruled that the Snoopers Charter, a mass surveillance regime created by the ruling Tory party, was unconstitutional. (more…)

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Podcast: The Man Who Sold the Moon, Part 03

Here's part three of my reading (MP3) (part two, part one) of The Man Who Sold the Moon, my award-winning novella first published in 2015's Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer. It's my Burning Man/maker/first days of a better nation story and was a kind of practice run for my 2017 novel Walkaway.

MP3

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Inside big tech's last-minute scramble to comply with Europe's new privacy rules

The General Data Protection Regulation will be enforced as of May, and once it does, internet companies will no longer be able to collect or share your data unless they give you a clear, simple explanation of how it will be used, and get your consent, along with contact details for named individuals who report directly to the business's senior management. (more…)

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Japan TV show pranks unsuspecting people with elevator problem

Even by the hilariously sadistic standards of Japanese prank shows, this is outstanding.

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Animation: Pop culture typography

Izac Moores: "This reference riddled project has been in the works for almost a year. If you can't quite figure out where something is from, a labelled version of the video is available here: https://youtu.be/SGdnN8W30ho." The track is Pop Culture by Madeon [Amazon].

Previously: Justice - DVNO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiDsLRQg_g4

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Russia Begins Tests of New Unmanned Helicopter

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - A newly developed helicopter prototype is currently going through ground tests at the Saratov Design Bureau of Industrial Automation (KBPA), the press service of the Rostec state corporation said Wednesday.

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Seoul Uncovers Illegal Cryptocurrency Foreign Exchange Trading Worth $596mln

South Korea's customs service has made it plain that authorities will continue to keep a watchful eye on money laundering activities and violations of foreign exchange rules, especially relating to cryptocurrency.

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Democrats, Hollywood Lash Out at Trump's Address, Twitter Strikes Back

The State of the Union Address delivered by US President Donald Trump on January 30 became a hot topic in the United States, with lawmakers, Hollywood celebrities and ordinary people offering varying opinions about the speech.

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US Agencies Probing Securities Violation by Apple Over iPhone Slowdown - Reports

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The US Department of Justice and the US Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating potential securities violations by tech giant Apple, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.

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The Bill Does not Add Up: Norway, Finland Lose Track of Jihadists

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since "fremmedkriger" (or "foreign fighter," a euphemism for "jihadist") was voted Norway's word of the year in 2014. Today, the Nordic country is still at pains to reform its flock of returned jihadists and locate dozens more people whose whereabouts are still unknown.

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Assange: After 'Butcher' of Libyan Women, Clinton 'Covers Up Sexual Impropriety'

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has lambasted Hillary Clinton for her reportedly refusing to fire her adviser accused of sexual harassment during the 2018 presidential campaign.

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'True Identity': Pyongyang Slams US as 'Gross Violator of Human Rights'

The release of Pyongyang's "white paper" coincided with Trump's State of the Union address, during which he praised a defector from North Korea.

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US 'Kremlin Report' a Short-Sighted Step - Russian Security Council Secretary

ALGIERS (Sputnik) - The so-called “Kremlin report” released by the United States is the short-sighted step, which will have a negative impact on bilateral relations, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said Wednesday.

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Shocking PHOTOS Show Deadly Helicopter Crash Into Home in California

"You just knew something horrible had happened," an eyewitness reportedly said.

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US Constitutional Rights Center Slams Trump's Decision to Keep Guantanamo Open

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the New York-based advocacy organization, issued a statement, criticizing the decision of US President Donald Trump to keep the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba open.

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South Korean Skiers Head for DPRK to Hold Joint Training - Reports (VIDEO)

TOKYO (Sputnik) - A team of South Korean athletes headed on Wednesday for the North Korean resort town of Masikryong to hold joint training on the threshold of the Winter Olympics that will be held in South Korea's Pyeongchang, local media reported.

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'Max Pressure' on N Korea: Highlights of Trump's State of the Union Address

Read the excerpts of the President Trump’s first State of the Union Address, delivered 11 months after being elected into office.

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Sochi Paves Solid Way for Syrian Peace Settlement, Now Geneva's Turn

SOCHI (Sputnik) - The National Dialogue Congress in Sochi, a pinnacle event of the Russian diplomacy on Syria, has agreed to set up the Constitutional Commission out of the Syrians themselves and to give it in hands of UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, to dispel any doubts that the forum was meant to disrespect UN Security Council.

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US 'Kremlin Report' Reveals Russian Business 'Risk Group'

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The so-called "Kremlin report," a list of 114 Russian politicians and 96 business people, published by the US Treasury on Tuesday, has sparked some anxiety on the Russian market, even though the document does not stipulate automatic sanctioning, it potentially paves the way for more anti-Russian restrictions.

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Ex-US Senate Aide: 'Kremlin Report' Triggers 'Chilling Effect' for Investors

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The US list identifying top Russian officials and business leaders for possible sanctions will have a chilling effect on American investors, the former adviser to Senate Republican leaders Jim Jatras told Sputnik.

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Legal Conflict: French Legislation Unable to Prosecute Nationals Abroad

France gets in an awkward situation facing a threat of executions of the country’s citizens accused of terrorism in Iraq and Syria, French Socialist Party’s lawmaker Gerard Bapt told Sputnik commenting on the justice minister’s remarks about Paris’ plans to protect those, who may face death penalties.

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US Sanctions Laos-Based Crime Network Leaders

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The United States sanctioned the Laos-based Zhao Wei Transnational Criminal Organization, four of its leaders, and three associated entities for engaging in human and drug trafficking, among other crimes, facilitated through the group’s casino operations, the Treasury Department said in a press release.

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Hawaii Emergency Management Chief Resigns Over False Missile Alert

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - US state of Hawaii Emergency Management Administrator Maj. Gen. Vern Miyagi stepped down after taking full responsibility for a false ballistic missile alert incident, state Adjutant General Maj. Gen. Joe Logan said during a press conference.

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Lawyer: Linking Jobs, Income to Medicaid Coverage Will Leave Many Without Care

On Friday, Kentucky became the first state in the United States to receive approval from the Trump administration to begin imposing work requirements for those on Medicaid.

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Journalist: FBI Memo Won’t ‘Change the Culture of Washington’

The US House Intelligence Committee voted on Monday to release the memo that allegedly proves FBI surveillance abuses against US President Donald Trump during the 2016 election. Democrats and the Justice Department have opposed the memo’s release as misleading, salacious and potentially a threat to national security.

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CIA Prediction of Russian Meddling in US Midterm Elections ‘Nonsense’

CIA Director Mike Pompeo is convinced Russia is seeking to meddle in the upcoming 2018 midterm elections, and, of course, nobody in the US intelligence community has ever lied to the public.

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‘The Whole Police Force Is Broken’: Corrupt Baltimore Force Must Be Rebuilt

The trial of two officers with the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force began on Monday for widespread corruption.

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Hatton Garden Heist Ringleaders Must Pay £27.5m Or Serve Seven Years More

The four ringleaders behind the Hatton Garden raid must pay back £27.5 million or each face another seven years in jail.

John “Kenny” Collins, 77, Daniel Jones, 63, and Terry Perkins, 69, are serving seven-year sentences, while Brian Reader, 78, is serving six years and three months in jail, for their roles in the notorious burglary in April 2015. 

Judge Christopher Kinch QC said each jointly benefited from an estimated £13.69 million worth of cash, gold and gems stolen from boxes at Hatton Garden Safe Deposit in London’s jewellery quarter after a drill was used to bore a hole into the vault wall.

At a confiscation hearing at Woolwich Crown Court on Tuesday, the men were each ordered to pay millions of pounds based on their “available assets”.

If they fail to pay their share of a total of £27.5 million, each will have seven years added onto their current jail sentences, which could mean some of the group, who are unwell, could die behind bars.

Handing down his ruling, the judge said: “A number of these defendants are not only of a certain age, but have in some cases serious health problems.

“But as a matter of principle and policy it is very difficult to endorse any approach that there is a particular treatment for someone who chooses to go out and commit offences at the advanced stage of their lives that some of these defendants were.”

Collins, of Islington, north London, was ordered to pay £7,686,039 after the court heard he had assets in “liquid form” and property in this jurisdiction and abroad.

Perkins, of Enfield, was told he must pay £6,526,571.

His barrister Peter Rowlands said Perkins’ flat in Portugal would have to be sold, but said his client, who has been diagnosed with severe heart failure, would have to serve the default sentence as there was “no prospect” of any further funds being recovered.

Jones of Enfield, north London, was ordered to hand over £6,649,827.

His barrister Graham Trembath QC said Jones’ only assets were cash in a bank account and he “will have to serve the default term”.

Reader, who was not in court, was told he must pay back £6,644,951, including the sale of his £639,800 home and development land worth £533,000.

Tom Wainwright, representing Reader, said his client’s sentence “does not have to be very long for it to mean, in reality, he will serve the rest of his life in custody”.

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‘Nobody Wants to Talk’: Expert Says Chances of US, Taliban Dialogue Soon Slim

The Taliban’s media office has told US President Donald Trump to let them know when he is ready to discuss Washington’s exit from Afghanistan, responding to Trump’s rejection of the idea of holding peace talks with the terrorist group.

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North Korean Army Seen Preparing For Potential Military Parade

The North Korean military has been rehearsing for a military parade in Pyongyang ahead of the newly declared founding anniversary of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) on February 8, according to recent commercial satellite imagery.

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New Political Cleavages in Britain Revealed After Brexit Vote

Written by 27 leading British academics, the study concludes that the voting decisions of the general public in the referendum and their views of the European Union and Britain's place in it are shaped their personal value systems.

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Texas Teacher Behind Bars After Allegedly Performing Oral Sex on Sleeping Teen

On Wednesday, Manuel Alejandro Gamboa, a former substitute teacher at Texas' Dekaney High School, was arrested for sexually assaulting a 17-year-old student while the student was asleep, according to court records.

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CIA Director Claims North Korea Months Away from Being Able to Strike US

In an interview with the BBC on Monday, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said that his agency was concerned that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may be mere months away from having full nuclear capabilities, able to launch a missile at any target in the US in the very near future.

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The latest The Marketing Daily! https://t.co/mPIyP7RRME Thanks to @cmoconfessor #socialmedia

The latest The Marketing Daily! https://t.co/mPIyP7RRME Thanks to @cmoconfessor #socialmedia (via Twitter http://twitter.com/thebestofthelot/status/958522236507475968)

Skyrocket your digital marketing game to the next level with these TED Talks https://t.co/CM9Qb15v0V

Skyrocket your digital marketing game to the next level with these TED Talks https://t.co/CM9Qb15v0V (via Twitter http://twitter.com/thebestofthelot/status/958461882976923648)

The latest The Marketing Daily! https://t.co/mPIyP7RRME #marketing #socialmedia

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The latest The Affiliate Marketing Daily! https://t.co/7PFBQxYiXX #crypto

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Nextgen Paid Surveys https://t.co/cp0udhfDyw https://t.co/KcElZAODTu

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50 Best Digital Marketing Experts to Follow in 2018 (By Category) https://t.co/B2yLAFvdOp #strategy

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The latest The Affiliate Marketing Daily! https://t.co/7PFBQxYiXX Thanks to @UKStartupEvents @AI_IoT_IIoT_IoE @BenjaminEnfield #entrepreneur

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How to Schedule Time for an Imaginative Process, Rather Than an Exact Task

I’m pretty happy with my current writing process. Once you’ve accepted that you don’t need to convince anyone that your creative job is actually work, you’re free to focus on optimizing the processes that allow you to produce creativity on demand. And that’s exactly what I’m up to right now … although my creative process
Read More...

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Ways and Stages in which Team Communication Benefits Innovation

Innovation and communication are two intertwined concepts. Innovation cannot happen without communication. Communication without innovation would be severely impaired. Just think of all the technological innovations that led to the communication means we use today. From letters and the telegraph to mobile phones and the internet.

In this article, we’ll be exploring the tight relationship between team communication and innovation. We’ll also be taking a close look at how communication influences single stage of innovation.

The role of communication in the process of innovation

Have you noticed that in the recent history large companies have rarely come up with something innovative? It’s usually startups that disrupt the industry with innovative products and ideas. As companies grow bigger, innovation becomes less of a priority.

Innovation affects all sides of a business, and communicating its true value can be quite difficult. Sometimes the effects of innovation cannot be seen immediately, which makes it harder to acknowledge the value in it. Case in point – the Post-it, inventend by 3M specialist Dr. Spencer Silver, who was in fact trying to develop a stronger adhesive.

The ROI, the criteria most commonly used to measure the efficiency of a project, cannot actually cover the true business value of innovation. Most often, people talk about innovative projects in terms of promises, risks and opportunities. This makes communication – especially to stakeholders – even more difficult.

Be that as it may, innovation projects must be valued and supported inside the company. Externally, they need to be seen as useful and appealing. Poor communication comes with high costs in terms of resources and productivity. And communicating the value of innovation at various hierarchical levels can be a challenging endeavor. Even when senior execs manage to do that, the consistency of the message across vertical lines hardly remains intact. What’s more, it gets even harder for employees to understand the necessity of their engagement throughout the different phases of innovation.

So, let’s explore the importance of team communication in all the four stages of the innovation process. We’ll use this context to analyze what communication strategies you could implement throughout the process. Read further for detailed explanations.

How team communication impacts innovation

Communication in general and team communication in particular play a crucial role in all innovation stages. Let’s go through each stage at the time and see what strategies you can apply along the way.

1st stage of innovation – idea generation

The first step in any innovation process is coming up with new ideas. Team communication is of uttermost importance here. It’s important to create channels so that team members can easily exchange them. When communication channels are available, everyone gains access to information and feels safe to share and discuss new ideas. Encourage people to leave the comfort zone and give up conventional ways of thinking.

Implementation strategy: Create an “ideas team” and establish a communication platform – such as a dedicated group in your team collaboration app. Encourage all employees to contribute with personal opinions.

Some companies go as far as creating channels of communication where customers can come up with new ideas and suggestions. At this point, you should take into consideration all ideas, no matter how far-fetched they might seem.

2nd stage of innovation – idea screening

This is when your team should screen and filter the ideas gathered during the first stage. Basically, it’s the stage of screening for feasible ideas. This is when team communication becomes essential. You should refine rough ideas in brainstorming sessions, and the whole team should lend a hand to cut a diamond out of a rough stone.

Oftentimes, those who come up with great ideas are not the best communicators. That’s why the best ideas should be advocated for by different members of the team. Advocates should be able to communicate such ideas to a broader audience and convince upper management and others that they’re worth pursuing.

Implementation strategy: Create a clear process for idea screening. Select ideas based on their potential for innovation and for achieving the goals of your company. Most innovative companies use peer screening.

Google, for example, encourages employees to share ideas through emails and suggestion boxes. Then they make them publicly available and allow people to rate and review them. Ideas with the higher ratings are clearly worth to be considered more seriously.

3rd stage of innovation – experimentation

This is when you test and evaluate ideas that made it through the screening process. You can create prototypes, test marketing response, assess manufacturing capabilities, etc. All such activities require detailed planning. So, your team should be able to communicate and collaborate at its best.

Team decisions can sometimes be hard to make, especially if you don’t have a proven system to rely on. Other than that, things can no longer remain at the level of the team or the company.  You need to pitch ideas to stakeholders, make demos and presentations to suppliers and manufacturers, and other third-parties.

Your team of advocates should know how to communicate the benefits. At the same time, they should be able to maintain a healthy distance lest they should get attached and miss the red flags. They need to stay alert and assess the chances of success. Once tested, the idea returns to the screening phase, where the team needs to decide whether it’s worth implementing or not.

Implementation strategy: Encourage collaborative experimentation. Make prototypes available to employees and other stakeholders. Give them time to test the product. Set a deadline to gather feedback on how you can improve the product. Ask the implementation team to communicate with their peers and get first-hand feedback.

4th stage of innovation – commercialization

This is the last and the most complicated phase of an innovation project, particularly at the level of communication. This is when your idea, now a product, reaches the public.

Team communication is crucial here. The product team needs to help the marketing team understand and learn everything about the product. The marketing people are the ones who educate the public, explaining the utility of your innovative product. The customer service team needs training in the way they communicate with and attend to customers. The technical team might need to fix bugs and other issues, and so on.

There’s a lot of communication during this stage, and the success or failure of your project depends on it.

Implementation strategy: Create innovative channels of communication. Because communication matters inside and between teams. Create social hubs, where members from different teams can shared ideas and find solutions together in a relaxed atmosphere.

Creating meaningful relationships at work makes employees happier and more effective. When happy, they’re more likely to collaborate and come up with innovative ideas.

In short, each stage of the innovation process comes with different communication needs that you should consider and pursue. Each stage entails its own challenges, and most of them can be anticipated and solved through innovative solutions.

Effective team communication is crucial every step of the way, since it’s the engine that keeps the wheels spinning. Encourage your teams to collaborate, offer them several communication solutions, and try to support them in taking decisions. Last but not least, allow them to make mistakes and learn from failure whenever it occurs.

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New video by HomemadeEntrepreneur on YouTube

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The social media updates to keep from 2017

There’s no quiet year in social media updates and 2017 wasn’t an exception. All the big social platforms had a busy year, either trying to recover from past losses or gearing up for new directions that will help them grow.

The domination of Instagram Stories and the ability to follow hashtags

Instagram Stories may have been launched in 2016, but 2017 was the year that they skyrocketed Instagram’s popularity. Instagram introduced several additions through the year to make Stories more engaging, including:

• New filters and stickers
• New fonts
• Superzoom
• Stories Highlights
• Stories Archives

The last two of them can improve the lifespan of your brand’s Instagram Stories and it can be a great addition to your new campaigns.

What makes Instagram Stories special is that it feels that the right feature found the right platform. An engaging feature was introduced in a platform with a growing momentum and it managed to leave Snapchat behind and become one of the most trending social platforms of 2017. As of October, Instagram had 300 million daily active Stories users, up from 200 million in April.

Another useful addition on Instagram was the option to follow hashtags. This allows brands to focus more on the use of hashtags as part of their campaigns, encouraging people to follow their news or their latest campaigns. Moreover, it can also help brands with social monitoring, keeping an eye on their competitors or the user-generated content they want to track.

Facebook Stories

Facebook has decided to introduce its own Stories, without being yet anywhere near Instagram’s success. At first, it introduced Facebook Stories and Messenger Day, two different types of ephemeral content. While these two weren’t particularly popular during the year, they have been merged into one simple feature named Stories.

What makes it interesting is the fact that you can also post Stories on Pages, Groups, or Event Pages, exploring all the different uses you could benefit from the ephemeral content.

Instagram introduces a “paid partnerships” tag

Influencer marketing won’t be the same anymore after Instagram’s decision to promote transparency over branded content.

As more partnerships take place on Instagram, the idea is to help the community understand when there’s a collaboration between a person and a brand. 

This strengthens the relationship between brands and the community, while it should serve as a good experiment on how the audience interacts when a paid partnership is clearly mentioned.

Twitter expands its limit to 280 characters and introduces “Threads”

Twitter has finally decided to make our lives easier by doubling its number of allowed characters.

Brands can now improve their creativity on their tweets and great examples have already showed up.

Although there has been a conversation whether this feature alters Twitter’s initial brand identity, it can be a useful change when trying to tell a story through your tweets.

If you still feel that 280 characters are not enough to tell a story, you can benefit from Twitter’s new “Threads”. Tweetstorms, or else a series of tweets on one topic, are not new. Twitter decided to make their marking easier though by allowing you to create one tweet after another through the same posting.

This way, you can respond to a breaking story, tell your campaign’s message, or start a conversation by making it clear how tweets are linked together.

Budget advertising with Twitter Promote Mode

SMBs don’t have to worry anymore about the reach of their tweets and when they need to promote them. Twitter introduced a “Promote Mode”, a new subscription service that helps businesses promote their tweets for $99/month.

This is a quick and budget-friendly solution to activate an advertising mode for your Twitter presence to grow your audience and improve the engagement.

Snapchat brought Sponsored Filters right before the big redesign

Snapchat became popular among other reasons for the fun filters and it now turned them into an ad format. Brands are now able to create their own animated filters to promote their campaign in a fun and engaging way.

The most important topic of the year though for Snapchat was the decision to redesign its app to split social from media. Or else, Snapchat announced the decision to keep friends and publishers on different swipes, keeping conversations on the left swipe and the Discover section to the right.

Although the visual design hasn’t significantly changed, the app tried to eliminate the confusion between personal and professional use. It’s now clearer than ever how private communication is different than media consumption. This way it aims to maintain its popularity in two different directions, allowing people to decide how they’ll use the app.

LinkedIn launches Website Demographics, native video and improved lead gen forms

LinkedIn introduced Website Demographics, a new tool to help B2B companies and marketers understand their visitors and their professional traits. The free reporting tool is helping in the personalization of the campaigns, helping marketers create the right content for the right audience.

An interesting idea was LinkedIn’s decision to focus on native video. Users are now able to post their videos of up to 30 seconds as on other platforms, talking about professional topics in a new format. This can help with the platform’s engagement, while it taps into the general trend of video content.

Moreover, LinkedIn has seen great success with its Lead Gen Forms. They quickly became a popular ad format as a way to capture email addresses through useful content. LinkedIn wanted to improve these forms even more by introducing custom questions, lead gen forms for Sponsored InMail and also lead generation for Dynamic ads. All these additions aim to lower the cost per lead, while they facilitate the customization of each form.

For example, a lead generation form through Sponsored InMail can reduce the required number of steps for a prospect to fill out a form and it was LinkedIn’s decision to benefit from the average open rate of 40% for the Sponsored InMails to focus more on lead generation.

Pinterest improves its visual search

Pinterest has become a growing visual search, aiming to blend the power of visual content with actionable steps for ecommerce brands. Thus, as it currently counts more than 300 million visual searches every month, it decided to introduce three new features to make visual search even more effective:

• Lens Your Look
• Shop the Look
• Responsive Visual Search

Lens You Look makes it easier to combine existing photos with the visual search to find the perfect match. Shop the Look helps brands and people benefit from ‘shoppable’ images, while Responsive Visual Search facilitates mobile searches with a simple pinch to zoom in objects within pins bringing new results.

Youtube launches its own stories and helps advertisers with new tools

Youtube has decided to create its own version of stories, naming them Reels. The new Youtube Reels introduce a new video format to the popular video platform, encouraging creators to explore all the varying uses of videos that last up to 30 seconds. The big difference is that Reels are not disappearing after 24 hours, which means that the format is the same, with Youtube not feeling the need to dive into ephemeral content.

A great addition in 2017 for Youtube was the series of tools that help advertisers appeal to their audience in a more personalized way.

• Custom Affinity Audiences: This tool helps marketers reach people based on their searches. Intent-based searches improve ad relevance for brands, increasing their effectiveness.
• Director Mix: Youtube helps brands create numerous different personalized versions of their creatives, assisting them in saving time while creating personalized content.
• Video Ads Sequencing: This tool makes it easier to create a sequence in storytelling to help brands benefit from stories as part of their ads.
• Matched Panel Analysis: Nielsen MPA helps marketers measure the attention earned from each campaign to examine the best-performing ones both for online and offline sales.

What can we learn from these?

2017 offered many interesting updates in social media. Not all them will be successful in the long term, but they’re all worth our time in testing what works better for a brand.

It becomes evident that every social platform moves in a different direction, aiming to come up with new features that will maintain their popularity.

The best lesson to learn is that social media marketing should be evaluated at least once a year. All these updates require from marketers to stay constantly up-to-date. A successful social media marketing strategy understands the best ways to use each social network while marketers are aware that they cannot afford to stay behind if they want to beat their competitors.

The post The social media updates to keep from 2017 appeared first on ClickZ.

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What does living in a dictatorship feel like?

According to writer G. Willow Wilson, living in an authoritarian society does not look like “something off the Syfy channel”.

It’s a mistake to think a dictatorship feels intrinsically different on a day-to-day basis than a democracy does. I’ve lived in one dictatorship and visited several others—there are still movies and work and school and shopping and memes and holidays.

The difference is the steady disappearance of dissent from the public sphere. Anti-regime bloggers disappear. Dissident political parties are declared “illegal.” Certain books vanish from the libraries.

How does a society go from a democracy to an autocracy? It’s like that line of Hemingway’s from The Sun Also Rises about how to go bankrupt: “Gradually and then suddenly.”

So if you’re waiting for the grand moment when the scales tip and we are no longer a functioning democracy, you needn’t bother. It’ll be much more subtle than that. It’ll be more of the president ignoring laws passed by congress. It’ll be more demonizing of the press.

Until one day we wake up and discover the regime has decided to postpone the 2020 elections until its lawyers are finished investigating something or other. Or until it can ‘ensure’ that the voting process is ‘fair.’

I don’t know about you, but Trump and the Republican Congress working to “postpone the 2020 elections until its lawyers are finished investigating something or other” seems like a completely plausible scenario. I would not be surprised if we see conservative pundits start floating this idea, slowly normalizing it over a matter of months until it seems like a plausible option. After all, it’s much easier for Republicans to remain in office if they got rid of those pesky elections (in lieu of gerrymandering and voter ID laws).

Tags: Donald Trump   G. Willow Wilson   politics   USA

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Verena, an iOS app to help protect people in abusive situations

Verena is an iOS app designed to protect and help guide you through situations like “domestic violence, hate crimes, abuse, and bullying”. The app was developed with the LGBTQ+ community in mind, but can be used by anyone facing abuse or harassment.

Create an account, and develop a network of emergency contacts, who can be alerted without leaving a trace on your phone.

Use the emergency feature to be guided through your problem, giving you the resources you need to get out of the emergency safely.

Create incident logs to keep track of abuse, hate crimes, or bullying for reference and later reportation.

Select the preferences that match your situation, such as using incognito mode to hide the app behind a math user interface, shutdown which can permanently disable the app if found by an abuser, and emergency access which allows you to alert all of your contacts with the press of a button.

Open resources to find and get routed to hospitals, shelters, and police stations near you.

Use timer to set a specified amount of time. If the timer isn’t canceled, Verena will send an emergency alert to all contacts with your last known location.

Select location to see your current location, the distance between you and your different contacts, and get routed to them as well.

Verena was built by Amanda Southworth, a 16-year-old iOS developer who created the app to help her LGBTQ+ friends in the aftermath of the election of a known abuser to the White House in 2016:

Seeing her friends — many of whom are part of the LGBT community — worry the day after the presidential election in November 2016 inspired her to create the app. “That day I saw all of my friends crying and it was really upsetting, you know, when people you love are scared,” she says. “So I decided, I’m going to make something so that I know they’re safe.”

Verena, which takes its name from a German name that means “protector,” allows users to find police stations, hospitals, shelters, and other places of refuge in times of need. They can also designate a list of contacts to be alerted via the app in an emergency.

Southworth, whose first iOS app was a “mental health toolkit” called anxietyhelper, attended Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference this past summer and wrote about it for Teen Vogue. She also gave a TEDx talk about “how her struggle with mental illness and suicidal thoughts inspired her start coding”.

Tags: Amanda Southworth   iPhone apps   LGBT

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A visual introduction to the Fourier Transform

The Fourier Transform is an incredibly useful mathematical function that can be used to show the different parts of a continuous signal. As you can see from the Wikipedia page, the formula and the mathematical explanation of the Fourier Transform can get quite complicated. But as with many complex mathematical subjects, the FT can also be explained visually. In the video above, 3blue1brown breaks down the Fourier Transform into a really intuitive visual system that’s surprisingly easy to follow if you’re not a science or math person. This would have been super helpful in my physics and math classes in college.

See also Better Explained’s interactive guide to the Fourier Transform, which describes the FT metaphorically like so:

What does the Fourier Transform do? Given a smoothie, it finds the recipe.
How? Run the smoothie through filters to extract each ingredient.
Why? Recipes are easier to analyze, compare, and modify than the smoothie itself.
How do we get the smoothie back? Blend the ingredients.

The guide includes interactive graphs that you can play around with. Stuff like this always gets me so fired up about math and science. Ah, the path not taken…

Tags: mathematics   science   video

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A pair of oil paintings algorithmically pixelized into treemaps of color

Greek visual designer Dimitris Ladopoulos took two of his favorite oil paintings, one by Rembrandt and the other (confusingly) by Rembrandt Peale, and used a piece of 3D modeling software called Houdini and pixelized them into treemaps of color. They look great in 2D (above), but he also rendered them in 3D with a worn texture:

Those worn plastic rectangles with the beveled edges are reminding me of something in particular, like a piece of electronics. Something from Sony maybe? Anyone? (via colossal)

Tags: art   Dimitris Ladopoulos   infoviz   remix

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A Mister Rogers biopic starring Tom Hanks (WHAT!!?)

Variety is reporting that Tom Hanks is set to play Fred Rogers in a biopic called You Are My Friend.

“Now more than ever, we all need a re-introduction to Fred Rogers’ message of uncompromising love and kindness between all living things. Mari Heller is the perfect visionary filmmaker to bring Noah and Micah’s script to life and because of her vision and this remarkable script, we have the quintessential actor to play Fred Rogers,” said Turtletaub and Saraf.

The script is loosely based on Tom Junod’s Esquire piece about Rogers, Can You Say…Hero?, which is very much worth a read if you’ve never had the pleasure.

Nearly every morning of his life, Mister Rogers has gone swimming, and now, here he is, standing in a locker room, seventy years old and as white as the Easter Bunny, rimed with frost wherever he has hair, gnawed pink in the spots where his dry skin has gone to flaking, slightly wattled at the neck, slightly stooped at the shoulder, slightly sunken in the chest, slightly curvy at the hips, slightly pigeoned at the toes, slightly aswing at the fine bobbing nest of himself… and yet when he speaks, it is in that voice, his voice, the famous one, the unmistakable one, the televised one, the voice dressed in sweater and sneakers, the soft one, the reassuring one, the curious and expository one, the sly voice that sounds adult to the ears of children and childish to the ears of adults, and what he says, in the midst of all his bobbing nudity, is as understated as it is obvious: “Well, Tom, I guess you’ve already gotten a deeper glimpse into my daily routine than most people have.”

Oh, I hope this doesn’t get derailed. Unless it’s going to be bad, in which case: shelve away!

Tags: Fred Rogers   movies   Tom Hanks   Tom Junod   TV

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John Williams conducting the opening fanfare for Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Director Rian Johnson has posted a short clip of the legendary John Williams conducting the opening fanfare (aka the Star Wars theme) for The Last Jedi. It is difficult to think of the Star Wars films without Williams’ music.

Tags: John Williams   movies   music   Rian Johnson   Star Wars   video

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An HBO documentary about Andre the Giant

A documentary film about pro wrestler Andre the Giant is going to air on HBO starting on April 10.

André René Roussimoff was born in 1946 in Grenoble, France. In his early teens, he exhibited signs of gigantism though he was not diagnosed with acromegaly until his twenties. He began his training in Paris at 17 and eventually became known in wrestling circuits around the world. In 1973, Andre joined the organization now known as World Wrestling Entertainment, where he became a superstar and rival of WWE legend Hulk Hogan.

I loved watching pro wrestling when I was a kid and Andre was always a favorite.

Tags: Andre the Giant   sports   trailers   video   wrestling

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The original US patent drawing for the Lego brick, filed 60 years ago

This is one of two drawings that accompanied Godtfred Kirk Christiansen’s US patent application for the Lego toy building brick. The application was submitted 60 years ago yesterday on Jan 28, 1958, an occasion that is celebrated annually as International LEGO Day. (thx, david)

Tags: Godtfred Kirk Christiansen   Legos   patents

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Surfer rides a wave 115 feet tall

The waves off the coast of Portugal near Nazaré are some of the biggest in the world. Nearly two weeks ago, a German pro surfer named Sebastian Steudtner rode a wave estimated at 115 feet high and didn’t crash or kill himself. If you watch the video, even at a larger size, it’s difficult to pick Steudtner out from the wall of the cartoonishly massive wave.

Curiously, the current world record for the largest wave ever ridden (also set at Nazaré) is 78 feet. And if you look at the video and compare, Steudtner’s wave is definitely much bigger.

Tags: Sebastian Steudtner   sports   surfing   video

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Recommendation: Slate’s podcast series about Watergate, Slow Burn

There are many cultural and political lenses through which to view the Trump Presidency — reality TV, Mike Judge’s alarmingly prescient Idiocracy, the OJ Simpson case, Germany in the 1930s — but perhaps the most relevant is through the lens of Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal. A lot of what I know about Watergate came through cultural osmosis (Johnny Carson and SNL were still doing Watergate jokes in the 80s when I started watching) and movies like All the President’s Men, and I suspect that’s true of many Americans who are too young to have lived through it. We may know the broad strokes, but that’s about it.

Enter Slow Burn, a podcast by Slate about some of the lesser known stories surrounding Watergate and what it felt like to experience it as the scandal unfolded. Here’s series host Leon Neyfakh describing what the show is about:

Why are we revisiting Watergate now? The connections between the Nixon era and today are obvious enough. But to me, the similarity that’s most striking is not between Donald Trump and Richard Nixon (although they’re both paranoid, vengeful, and preoccupied with “loyalty”), or their alleged crimes (although they both involved cheating to win an election), or the legal issues in the two cases (although they both center on obstruction of justice).

Rather, it’s that people who lived through Watergate had no idea what was going to happen from one day to the next, or how it was all going to end. I recognize that feeling. The Trump administration has made many of us feel like the country is in an unfamiliar, precarious situation. Some days it seems like our democratic institutions won’t survive, or that permanent damage has already been done. Pretty much every day, we are buffeted by news stories that sound like they’ve been ripped out of highly stressful and very unrealistic novels.

The point of Slow Burn is to look back on the most recent time Americans went through this en masse, and to put ourselves in their shoes.

Historical events like these make great podcast subjects; I’ve also listened to LBJ’s War recently. Reading articles or books about these topics is one thing, but actually listening to the investigators, journalists, lawyers, and Congressmen talk about about their roles in and perceptions of Watergate, both in contemporary interviews and recordings from that period, adds a lively and engaging aspect to these stories. I mean, just hearing Nixon on those secret tapes and then in press conferences saying that he had done nothing wrong…it’s completely gripping. I’ve been thinking up excuses to go for drives this past week just so I can get my Slow Burn fix.

Tags: Donald Trump   podcasts   politics   Richard Nixon   Watergate

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A woman’s place is at the South Pole

Why is this 16-year-old girl holding a ham & cheese sandwich at the South Pole?

At 14, Jade Hameister became the youngest person to ski to the North Pole from outside the last degree of latitude. After she gave a talk about the journey at TEDx Melbourne, a video of the talk was posted online and the comments — like “Make me a sandwich” — rolled in from men presumably upset that Hameister isn’t preparing for a life of cooking & cleaning rather than polar exploration. After skiing across Greenland and then to the South Pole, Hameister had a message (and some lunch) for those men:

Tonight (it never gets dark this time of year) I skied back to the Pole again… to take this photo for all those men who commented “Make me a sandwich” on my TEDX Talk. I made you a sandwich (ham & cheese), now ski 37 days and 600km to the South Pole and you can eat it xx

How’s that Hameister & cheese sandwich taste, fellows? *bicep flex emoji* *dancing woman emoji*

Tags: Antarctica   food   Jade Hameister   skiing   sports

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Tycho DJ set from Dec 2017

Tycho is one of my favorite electronic artists and he recently did this 90-minute DJ set at the SnowGlobe music festival that’s currently powering me through some lazy Sunday chores and work.

See also his most recent Burning Man DJ set. Oh, and he’s also got some sets coming up in Boston, NYC, Houston, and DC.

Tags: music   Tycho

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The improbability of Mark E. Smith

Geeta Dayal writes about the late singer, founder, and driving force behind The Fall, one of the most influential and least likely indie bands of the last forty years.

The members of the group shifted constantly and erratically from album to album, or even from month to month, with Smith as the only constant presence. Nearly 70 people have been members of The Fall over the course of the past four decades — an eye-popping number. “If it’s me and your granny on bongos, it’s The Fall,” Smith once famously quipped — less a joke than a statement of fact.

On Twitter, I described it this way: Mark E. Smith was like Old Dirty Bastard, if ODB had somehow managed to assemble and reassemble two dozen different versions of the Wu-Tang Clan, they released an album every year, and half of them were unpredictable masterpieces.

Dayal quotes Mark Fisher, one of The Fall’s best critics, who also died in the past year:

A group like The Fall — working class and experimental, popular and modernist — could not and should not exist, and The Fall are remarkable for the way in which they draw out a cultural politics of the weird and the grotesque.

If you’re looking for a place to start with The Fall, I recommend four albums that bridge their early art-damaged punk period with their 1980s pop-damaged indie rock peak:

1. Totally Wired: The Rough Trade Anthology
2. Hex Enduction Hour
3. The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall
4. This Nation’s Saving Grace

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Pope Francis’s definition of ‘fake news’

“Fake news” is kind of a catch-all family-resemblance concept that’s abused as often as it’s used with real insight. But I was impressed by Pope Francis’s clear definition, given as part of an official message by the Vatican to mark World Communication Day:

While President Donald Trump has often dismissed news outlets and stories as “fake news,” Francis defined it as “the spreading of disinformation online or in the traditional media. It has to do with false information based on non-existent or distorted data meant to deceive and manipulate the reader.”

He added, “Spreading fake news can serve to advance specific goals, influence political decisions, and serve economic interests.”

Francis’s main example of fake news? The serpent’s message to Eve and Adam about the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This example shows that “there is no such thing as harmless disinformation; on the contrary, trusting in falsehood can have dire consequences. Even a seemingly slight distortion of the truth can have dangerous effects.”

Maybe along with Bishop of Rome and father of the Church, the Pope would make a good public editor.

Tags: fake news   journalism   Pope Francis

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How to write a comic book

Greg Pak is one of my favorite comic book writers, an intellectual and superfan who really knows how to do world-building and get into his characters’ heads. Among other books, he wrote Planet Hulk, a huge part of the basis for Thor: Ragnarok (minus Thor) that’s also one of the best (largely) self-contained comic book stories ever.

The other day, Pak took a moment on Twitter to describe his process for writing comics. It’s really good descriptive/prescriptive advice for any kind of writing, and well worth a read:

How I write a comic book script:
1. Outline the whole thing.
2. Break the outline down into pages.
3. Write from the beginning, but if I get stuck, skip around and write the easier scenes first.
4. Go back and write the harder scenes, which are easier now that I’ve done the rest.
5. Rewrite the easier scenes now that I’ve written the harder scenes and know my story better.
6. Go through and edit everything multiple times.
7. Turn it in when I run out of time.
8. Enjoy that fourteen minutes of calm you get after turning in a script.
9. Work on revisions.
10. Figure out what it’s REALLY all about and make the subtle dialogue tweaks that bring out that deeper theme/emotional thread.

The whole thread includes lots of dynamite numbered (3A, 3B, 4A) and unnumbered supplementary notes (the work of revision is never done). This one is probably my favorite:

Two general notes to myself that always seems to work is give your characters quiet moments that dramatize character, especially early in the script/story, and give the big emotional beats time to play out. Let it breathe when it needs to breathe.

Tags: comics   Greg Pak   Hulk   writing

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Slowly shredding some pow to classical music

Glide along with this snowboarder as he surfs his way through a powdery forest to the strains of Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune. I’ve watched this twice now; it’s super relaxing. A fine antidote to the typical extreme sports video. (via the kid should see this)

Tags: music   snowboarding   video

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Going Fishing, an amazingly fluid stop motion animated film

Animator and sculptor Guldies has combined his passions and made this short stop motion animated film out of 2500 still photos. The result is remarkably fluid, particularly in the scenes with the human hand.

After months of hard work GOING FISHING is finally here. I have never worked so hard. The animation is filled to the brim with new stuff I’ve never tried before. I animated with branches and leaves, paper, clay, fabric, fishing lures, forks and stones and moss and EVERYTHING I could think of.

It’s a joy to experience things made with such evident love of craft.

Tags: stop motion   video

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The invention of the bendy straw

In September of 1937, Joseph Friedman was awarded a U.S. Patent for a “drinking tube” with a flexible neck, aka the bendy straw.

My invention provides a flexible portion in the straw positioned near one end so that a bend may be made at a point above the rim or lip of the container and the upper, or mouthpiece end of the straw may then be angularly directed to enter the mouth readily without the customer assuming an awkward position.

Derek Thompson describes the moment of inspiration and subsequent experimentation that led to the bendy straw’s invention:

Half a century after Marvin Chester Stone found grass in his julep, Joseph B. Friedman was sitting at his brother’s fountain parlor, the Varsity Sweet Shop, in the 1930s, watching his little daughter Judith fuss over a milkshake. She was drinking out of a paper straw, so we can be assured that the milkshake did not taste like grass. But since Stone’s paper straw was designed to be straight, little Judith was struggling to drink it up.

Friedman had an idea. As the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center explains, he brought a straw to his home, where he liked to tinker with inventions like “lighted pencils” and other newfangled writing equipment. The straw would be a simple tinker. A screw and some string would do.

Friedman inserted a screw into the straw toward the top (see image). Then he wrapped dental floss around the paper, tracing grooves made by the inserted screw. Finally, he removed the screw, leaving a accordion-like ridge in the middle of the once-straight straw. Voila! he had created a straw that could bend around its grooves to reach a child’s face over the edge of a glass.

Both straws and corrugated tubing had long existed, but no one thought to put them together until Friedman’s malt shop eureka.

Tags: design   Joseph Friedman

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Seeing with your ears, the importance of sound design in film

Using a scene from Steven Spielberg’s Munich that features very little dialogue, Evan Puschak shows how much sound design contributes to the feeling and tension of a film. I love the two head fakes Puschak does with the sound at the beginning of the video. It’s like, oh wait, he fooled me a bit there, so I need to pay more attention.

Tags: audio   Evan Puschak   film school   movies   Munich   Steven Spielberg   video

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