I had a lot of fun photographing the Coney Island Mermaid Parade last year so I went back for seconds this year. As I process my photographs, I noticed that I am inherently attracted to really colorful things. The photographs bear similarity to my information design projects :)
Related Flickr Sets
+ Coney Island Mermaid Parade 2008
+ Coney Island Mermaid Parade 2007
©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe
Mozilla Labs posted a demo video of the Firefox Mobile on their site today and it's highly innovative using just a single-touch interface — providing yet another great example of how limitations can incubate innovation.
The interaction design is really sweet. For more information, check out the detailed description of all the features on Aza Raskin's blog. (Aza is the head of user experience at Mozilla Labs)
Firefox Mobile Concept Video from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.
via LifeHacker
©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe
Flickr kept on pumping out new features, like this map view, but I don't know how to get to it on their UI unless I type it into the URL:
www.flickr.com/photos/seeminglee/map
One thing I do like about this UI is that it only shows the related places relevant to the currently displayed photostrip, and only photos that are geo-tagged are displayed here.
The default view looks at the most recent photos only, with the option to sort by interestingness.
Other recently launched features include the ability the explore the world and places, allowing the user to either find out about popular cities, or little known destination — which is a great way to learn about the diversity of culture and humanity.
©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe
I never really got into buying songs online. When iTunes Store first opened, I bought a few albums from it because I own an iPod, but very quickly I was deterred by the fact that I can't even play my iTunes purchases on my Squeezebox because of the DRM-protection.
Annoyed by the situation, I subscribe to Rhapsody Unlimited, which let me cue up pretty much anything I want for a low monthly subsription fee of $12.99. When I find something I really want to own, I just go buy the CD and rip it to MP3 so I can play it anywhere.
Then Amazon introduced Amazon MP3 Downloads, and it changed everything. Really, what's not to love about being able to purchase DRM-free MP3s encoded at 256k? I thought that the 1-click and ship to feature was evil in getting many books that I probably do not need then.. that's until I discover the even more instantly gratifying 1-click and download MP3 :)
Just when I thought that there can't be anything better than 256k DRM-free MP3 downloads, I discovered Beatport yesterday. Beatport offers 320k DRM-free MP3! To top it off, it even offer WAV (16-bit 44 kHz) and 192kbps M4A!
Little did I know, the site was actually launched in 2004, and the latest version as seen above was released in August 2006. Beatport focuses on electronic music specifically, with an eye squarely focusing on DJs and electronica lovers. In other words, it's made for me.
The content is top-notch, and I am able to get to a lot of remix tracks that I would not otherwise been able to get my hands onto if I were to browse on mainstream music sites (such as those described above).
Highly recommended!
Related SML Universe
+ SML Music
+ SML Remix Music
+ Symphonic Electronica
©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe
Yet another fantastic play toy from Uniqlo:
Play the full thing at http://www.uniqlo.com/utloop
via IconSpam by RSNJ
©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe
Screenshot: http://www.tenthousandcents.com
Ten Thousand Cents is a digital artwork that creates a representation of a $100 bill. Using a custom drawing tool, thousands of individuals working in isolation from one another painted a tiny part of the bill without knowledge of the overall task. Workers were paid one cent each via Amazon's Mechanical Turk distributed labor tool. The total labor cost to create the bill, the artwork being created, and the reproductions available for purchase are all $100.
http://live.yahoo.com/
Kind of like Kyte, except with better UI – but it does not do video streaming captured on mobile phones which the Kyte platform allows.
In a gist: Yahoo Live allows anyone with a Yahoo ID to broadcast webcam video stream from multiple users at the same time. Y! Live was previously used at the Winter Music Conference which streamed live video stream from different events: http://live.yahoo.com/evt/wmc/
Y! Live is currently under an experimental release, and supports a highly customizable widget for your live feed. I will provide more details after I play around with this a little bit further.
Bonus: you can follow @ylive on Twitter to see if there’s anyone broadcasting live from the site: an interesting idea to get audience.
Updates
+ 2008-04-27: In the original blog post published on 2008-04-25, I have incorrectly stated that Yahoo! Live does not have native Facebook and MySpace support, and i was informed by the development team that there is in fact two Facebook apps and MySpace implementation developed. Details to be posted shortly.
©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe
Found this nifty site called Dipity yesterday which will turn any RSS feeds (Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, you name it) into an interactive timeline.
The most straight-forward thing to do is of course to visualize your own data:
Interactive version:
http://www.dipity.com/user/seeminglee/timeline/See_ming_Lee
Since it's RSS-driven, you can create anything. Here's a visualization of IconSpam:
http://www.dipity.com/user/seeminglee/timeline/IconSpam
Source: via Lifehacker
©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe
I don't know how I managed to not know anything about PicLens until today.
PicLens is a browser plug-in which transforms image streams into a full-screen browsing experience. I installed the Firefox extension this morning and I'm in image surfing heaven moments after.
Here's a quick demo on YouTube before my review:
I have been on Flickr for a while now and have accumulated a lot of contacts over time. All of my non-friend contacts on Flickr are folks that I have made a decisive choice to maintain contact because I respect their photographic creation. 1000+ sounds like a lot, but when you consider that more than 24 million people are active on Flickr everyday, a thousand is actually quite a small amount.
While my intention is to be amazed by my colleagues' work, the paging mechanism + thumbnail clicking has also become rather annoying overtime. I tried using the Slideshow module to go through my contacts' photos, but the 200 count limit imposed by Flickr still create some problem.
PicLens does not impose image count limit to any browsing. The browsing model is also so fluid, transparent and intuitive that require zero learning-curve.
With this tool, I did something I have never done on Flickr today:
1. I browsed through every single image posted to my contacts' recent photos.
2. I browsed through the entire photostream from a contact I recently added.
There is no way I could have tolerated this process if I were to do this in Flickr's native interface. It has also replaces the need for flickrleech now, which I must say have served me quite well before PicLens.
But PicLens does not only do Flickr, it also does Facebook, YouTube, Google Image Search, Yahoo Image Search, and the list goes on... I tested it on Google Image Search and had the first tolerable experience on Google Image Search today.
This tool is indispensible. Highly recommended!
Related SML Universe
+ SML Del.icio.us: Flickr + Tools
+ SML Tools
+ SML Wiki: PicLens
Source: via IconSpam
©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe
is... a collaborative exhibition produced by BrooklynArtProject.com and the Brooklyn Academy of Music featuring work by 15 top emerging artists from around the world.
Opening night is tomorrow (Thursday, April 17, 2008) 6-8pm Free at BAM with free cocktails, but you should RSVP.
(below is C+P'ed)
Connected Unconscious is a collaborative exhibition produced by Brooklyn Art Project and
BAM celebrating the creative possibilities of our web 2.0 connected world. Featured work includes 15 original pieces from members of the BrooklynArtProject.com community of 1100+ members from over 22 countries.
RSVP NOW // ART, COCKTAILS & REMIXES
In addition to all the great art, we'll be playing Connected Unconscious theme based video and music remixes created for the exhibtion by rising star Brooklyn DJ's, curated by Halcyonline.com. Enjoy free cocktails courtesy of BAM and meet all the artists flying in from around the world to
participate.
Opening Night // April 17th - 6-8:00 pm // Free -
Exhibition dates // April 17th - May 11
Venue // BAM Natman Room located at 30 Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn, NY
Featured Brooklyn Art Project Members:
+ Foon Foono — Singapore
+ Josh Heilaman — Oklahoma city, OK
+ Derek Lerner — Brooklyn, NY
+ Maya Bloch — Tel Aviv, Israel
+ James Cospito — Brooklyn, NY
+ Sarah Nicole Phillips— Brooklyn, NY
+ Stephan Fowlkes — Brooklyn, NY
+ Kim McCarthy — Seattle, WA
+ Jun-Jun Sta.Ana —Chicago, IL
JURIED WINNERS
+ Maria Sochaniewicz
+ BriAnna Olson
+ Louis Caldarola
+ Erica Falke (Drexel)
+ Jax Chachitz
HALCYON AUDIO/VIDEO REMIXES
+ Crybaby — Romeo Alaeff
+ The Pimps of Joytime/Bonita — Remix by Dj OBaH
+ Displaced Construction #1 — Ezekiel Honig and Joshua Ott
+ Bedroomz — Levon Vincent and Brian Crumley
Cost: FREE!
Official Site: http://www.brooklynartproject.com
©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe
Never seen this sort of thing before: rap music on web standards and design. Pretty nifty:
Lyric highlights:
easy to look at with a nice navigation
when you can't find what you want it causes frustration
a clear Call to action to increase the temptation
use appealing graphics they create motivation
if you have animation
use with moderation
cause search engines can't index the information
when you use CSS, you page will load quicker
client satisfied like they eating on a snicker
they stuck on your page like you made it with a sticker
and then they convert now that's the real kicker
make you a lil richer, your site a lil slicker
Ever since I switched my Flickr stream to Creative Commons, I noted that my photos are starting to pop up on various sites. The license requires the articles to provide a link back to the original post, and in turn the credits transformed to an interesting PR link that drive traffic to my stream.
A photo I shot during gay pride got used in a German blog called kruez.net yesterday. I don't read German so I don't really know what it's about, but what I do know is that it threw 1000+ views to that photo in a single day:
Source: http://kreuz.net/article.6903.html
To be exact, Flickr Stats reported that 1,565 visits came from that article, which amounts to 92% of its overall traffic. This was surprising to me considering that the link to the photograph appears at the very end of the article.
Needless to say, my original fear where of losing control is all gone. I am quite happy with the decision to switch.
©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe.
Design and the Elastic Mind is the latest exhibition at MoMA with a focus on "the ability of designers to grasp momentous advances in technology, science and human behavior and convert those changes into objects and systems that people can understand and use." ...Huh?
Don't get it. No problem, fire up your browser and get an overview of the exhibit on the project's site to check out the projects together with an innovative navigational model that link you to related projects. Pretty nifty.
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind
Source: Andrew Carlson, via email
+++
Here's one video shot by David Oyler at the show: Shadow Monsters is a piece that was created by Philip Worthington using Processing
Source: David Oyler, via email
©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.
As reported by Mashable, the color war on Twitter is the latest collaborative fun to show your support for your favorite color.
Apparently how this thing works is you go through the list of color teams that exist, decide which one you want to back, and then follow that color. You get to choose between red, green, yellow, blue, orange, pink, gold, off-white, plaid, fuscia, clear, white, purple, stripe and puce (and Ze Frank is seemingly heavily supporting the green team)
See a list of all the teams at ColorWar2008.com
SML Universe, in association with SML AIDS and SML Life, is fully supporting the rainbowteam, because life celebrates diversity.
©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.
This is a quick post because Twitter has now become my number 1 English killer: my sentences are malformed and I can no longer write beautiful proses that Mr Herz can manifest.
That said, I am becoming increasingly annoyed by what it appears to be the end of an era of transparent UIs: there is not just an explosion of sites in "beta" but also sites filled with rounded corners and gradient-ware that I believe is stealing the audience from the content and function that a webapp is trying to do.
While Tufte held his flag against the chart junk that's obscuring the presentation of chart data, I proclaim the that UI junk must die: they are adding more visual stuff to adjust which adds no value to your app.
An interface, like well-set typography, should be transparent: that is, that the user should not be made aware that its existence. As soon as you attract users to look at how beautiful your tabs and buttons are, your content is nowhere to be focused. Surely your content is more important?
©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.
The French newspaper LeMonde published a map on 2008-01-14 showing a divided world for social network preferences across the world. 
Source: Le Monde.fr: Réseaux sociaux : des audiences différentes selon les continents
No clear winner here, though the front-runners are definitely Facebook, Orkut (Google) and MySpace (News Corp).
What is particularly surprising to me is Friendster is still alive and well—in South East Asia. This map does not represent Chinese social network sites though, which I think will likely tip the figures.
©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.
Today was the first time I see a seamless integration of music + processing. It's an amazing beauty created by flight404. Enjoy!
Solar, with lyrics. from flight404 (aka Robert Hodgin) on Vimeo.
Also see HD version on Vimeo and Flight404's blog post about his process.
©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.
FastCompany.com redesign launched with many social features (Web 2.0)
+ Member profile
+ Comment box
+ Ability to start your own blog
+ Ability to add 3rd party feeds onto your own page (function as blog reader)
+ Professional networking features for opportunities + ventures
+ Article recommendation
+ Inline poll (agree / disagree)
+ Article tagging
+ Article bookmarking
All these things are not new, but I'm glad that finally there's a business entity who recognize the power of networks to add value to their content.
We'll see how this rolls out.
©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.
dipdive.com
THE YES WE CAN SONG WAS RECORDED AT ETHER AND RECORD PLANT IN LA ON JANUARY 30 AND 31ST, 2008.
ceo of inspiration:
barack obama:
song produced by:
will.i.am
guitar by:
george pajon
video produced by:
will.i.am and mike jurkovac
director:
jesse dylan for cYclops form
executive producers:
will.i.am
mike jurkovac
fred goldring
jesse dylan
priscilla cohen
sheri howell
associate producers:
sean larkin
sarah pantera
carol cohen
steve koskie
wendi morris
scott spanjich
talent:
adam rodriguez
alfonso ribeiro
amaury nolasco
amber valletta
auden mccaw
anson mount
austin nichols
aisha tyler
bryan greenberg
cliff collins
common
derek watkins
ed kowalczyk
enrique murciano
eric balfour
eric olsen
esthero
fred goldring
harold perrineau
herbie hancock
hill harper
john legend
john schaech
kareem abdul jabbar
kate walsh
kelly hu
maya rubin
nick cannon
nicole scherzinger
sam page
sarah wright
scarlett johansson
shoshannah stern
taryn manning
tatyana ali
tracee ellis ross
will.i.am
crew:
carol cohen LINE PRODUCER
matt harrison PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR
adam martin 1ST AD
kevin o’neil 2ND AD
araeia robinson PRODUCTION ASST.
patrick mcgovern PRODUCTION ASST.
rolf kestermann DP
ryan brown 1ST AC
justin rhoads DIT
marek kanievska 2ND UNIT DP
torre catalano 3RD UNIT DP
jamie banfield GAFFER
kevin shipley ELECTRIC
braydon baldwin GRIP
adam joeseph SOUND
damon d’amato TELEPROMPTER
adam kleinfield STILLS DIT
brett freedman HAIR AND MAKE-UP
asia geiger HAIR AND MAKE-UP
terrence “biff” butler EDITOR
carold lynn weaver POST PRODUCER
anton capaldo-smith ASSISTANT EDITOR
vendors:
rock paper scissors EDITORIAL
indie rentals CAMERA
cinelease LIGHTING AND GRIP
film this! PERMIT
image mechanics STILLS
rushes TELECINE
greenberg teleprompting SCRIPTING
line 204 WALKIES
©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.
At a time when you are getting bored with yet another social networking site with a professional twist following LinkedIn's success, Notchup joined the game with a truly innovative twist to the game: get paid of interview for jobs.
That's right folks: Notchup asks the companies to pay up for a time of you sitting in for an interview.
How much is your time worth? Apparently a whole lot. In fact, it looks like that I can possibly make a living out of going to job interviews.
Here's more: the company gives its users incentive to invite their friends who might be interested in other jobs: for each friend you invite, they'll pay you a bonus equal to 10% of what your friend earns on every interview they do for a year.
It sounds kind of like a pyramid scheme to me but I signed up anyway. We'll see what happens. Like Ziki, Notchup has a LinkedIn profile import option, which is very handy because who wants to enter yet another profile these days?
In my opinion, all network data ought to be stored on the user's end and an open API ought to be made available to import user data instead.
There's no direct profile linking yet and the site is fairly barebones--the news of its availability also appears to be causing some server load issues, but the idea is sound and I look forward to seeing how well it goes.
via email from Kit Latham (Flickr / SML Wiki)
Related SML Universe
+ SML LinkedIn
+ SML Network
+ SML Ziki
©2008 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.
