Fuck

These two sites are fantastic. Need somewhere nearby to drink? Or just stuck for what to cook this evening?

Where the fuck should I go for drinks is a simple, to-the-point way of making one of two of those decisions. All you need to do is tell it where the fuck you want to drink and, once you've been told to "wait the fuck up", the site will pull in the link to a nearby bar along with its location on Google Maps. Don't like the look of it? Location incorrect? Just click the appropriate fucking button. 


In the same vain, What the fuck should I make for dinner? alleviates the often difficult decision of what to eat. Randomly generating an evening treat, you're redirected to the recipe on an external website. Once again, you're given options, even if they are delivered bluntly: you can tell the site that you "don't fucking like that" or that you "don't fucking eat meat". 

What I love about these is not the excellent use of swearing - it's fun, but will inevitably wear thin - but the dogmatic nature of both sites. It doesn't sit on the fence, non-committally serving up a portfolio of suggestions for you to choose from. It makes a decision, albeit aggressively, and it ultimately commits. 

Wise Words...

eBay's Pop-up Christmas Boutique

The following video is a clip from the film 40 Year Old Virgin. We watch a mildly perplexed shopper attempting to buy a pair of boots from a shop called ‘We Sell Your Stuff On eBay’ only to be told “we don’t actually sell anything here, we just sell it on eBay”. We share in the idiocy of a shop existing for no real purpose other than to showcase things. "what's the point?" we ask ourselves? And then life imitates art (okay, I may be being slightly hyperbolic referring to a Steve Carrell film as art, but bear with me). 

On the surface, eBay’s pop-up shop that ran this weekend (1st to 5th December) is not too dissimilar. However, the difference between the two lies in the stores ability to bridge the gap between online and offline through use of smartphones. Taking over a store in Soho on what was anticipated to be the busiest online shopping weekend of the year, eBay stocked the shop with 350 of its bestsellers. This ranged from £12 bottles of perfume to digital cameras, flat-screen televisions and Vespa motorbikes. These products were organised into three rooms – one for men, one for women and one for family – and eBay representatives were placed throughout the shop to offer help and advice. 

One of the 3 rooms

Items ranged from the cheap... 

...to the expensive

There were no tills and nothing in store could be taken away. Capitalising on the growing number of smartphone users, people were instead encouraged to scan the QR codes associated with each product. These took people to the relevant payment screens or to an area where they could browse similar products. All orders placed would be delivered to users home address. For those without smartphones, HTC tablets were also available in-store, allowing people to access and/or set-up their eBay accounts and shop.

Step 1: Scan your item

Step 2: Exit into browser

Step 3: view and purchase item

The shop served to provide eBay with some real-world exposure and promote and educated on the use of QR Codes. It also highlighted its position as a platform for retailers – they are more than just an online car boot sale, with department stores and brand names hosting their own eBay storefront.

However, this is also reflective of several trends that have been pointed out by the likes of JWT’s 10 Trends for 2012 and trendwatching.com:

1. Cash-less transactions – running parallel to the launch of Google Wallet and Amazon’s one-click purchase option, this offers another means of purchase that allows the buying purchase to become almost frictionless. 
2. Screen Culture – screens are becoming more and more ubiquitous in more and more aspects day-to-day life. 
3. Point and Know – Consumers are able to source richer and more useful information on products at the touch of a button. 
4. Shop as showroom – the introduction of things like Amazon Remembers and Tesco’s AR app are turning physical shops into showrooms rather than places of purchase. They are a place we can go to explore and discover, but (increasingly) not necessarily to buy. 

As time goes on, the blending of online and physical stores is less likely to cause such a stir, as they become gateways into the actual buying experience. We are seeing it the above-mentioned Amazon Remembers, which allows book, music, DVD, clothing, furniture (and more) shops to become enormous catalogues. We are seeing it with the also-mentioned Tesco Augmented Reality app, which allows users to view 3D images of catalogue products, allowing stores to save valuable floor space. And we are already seeing it in more tech-savvy countries like South Korea, like this Tesco Homeplus example, which allowed time-poor commuters to do their food shopping via their mobile whilst waiting for a train. 

Thoughts? Comments? Always welcome...

The Origin of Zero

I was listening to one of the amazing WNYC Radiolab podcasts this week. If you don’t listen to them, I’d highly recommend them. This one covered loops and how they can “hurt us, heal us, make us laugh, and, sometimes, leave us wanting more”. Within the podcast, Alex Bellows, proponent of creative mathematics and author of Here's Looking at Eucilid,  discusses one of the oldest and – he claims – mystical and spiritual loops: the number zero. Here’s what he had to say.

"Zero is the obvious loop. Its loop shape is part of why zero is zero…When I was a kid, I used to think that it was the hole with nothing in it, but actually zero was chosen by the Indians as reflecting the eternal cycles of the faces of heaven. The Romans and the Greeks and the Jews didn’t have a zero. We just started at one. One reason why we didn’t was because we were afraid of the void…"

Jab Abumrad and Robert Krulwich go on to dicuss how you could possibly describe something that isn’t there? There’s nothing to say and isn't that somehow or somewhat scary? It’s an emptiness and a nothingness and it means that you’re so alone that you don’t know where you are.

"...and so this was a psychological barrier to us grasping this zero. But in India, everything and nothing was the same thing. They had this sense of fluidity and they grasped this idea that nothingness was something".

And the way that they decided to represent this nothing-ness was to take a little piece of nothing and draw a circle around it, turning the nothing into a something – a loop, allowing it to embody eternity, continuity and infinity. 

Waiting by Leah Beach

This observational photo series, Waiting, by Leah Beach is incredibly moving. All of the subjects for the photographs are Alzheimer's patients living in assisted accommodation in Delaware and none are staged. 


It's an interesting photography project to take on, trying to capture and visualise something that is in many ways intangible - a complex condition of the mind. I'm sure you'll agree, however, that the results are distressing, disturbing and insightful.


I've selected a few images below, but you can view the full series here.

Mobile Green Space

How cool is this? UIC Art and Design student Joe Baldwin came up with the idea of adding a flatbed carriage to Chicago’s equivalent of its tube carriages. The result is a mobile green space for all to enjoy and its intention is to promote the use of responsible materials as well as urban stewardship and sustainability.

The intention is for it to launch on Earth Day and travel through Chicago for a month. Permission has been granted from the Chicago Transit Authority, but it’s yet to be picked up and implemented (the above is a mock-up to the best of my knowledge). Hopefully we’ll see it kicking around on Kickstarter – if it’s not picked up and supported by a corporation – some time soon.

As an aside, this is reminiscent of the guerrilla gardening work that’s been taking place in various urban spaces of late. 

"Do You Hear the Screams for Help?"

Wonderful piece of print work for TEMA: “Do you hear the scream for help? Only forests can replace the burnt ones.”


(via Hello You Creatives)