I really love this project, it’s one of those artworks that makes you smile and makes your day a little bit happier. It reminds me of a living “Stick Figures In Peril” group.

It is incredibly well researched and it looks like a lot of time and energy has gone into this project.

Some of the comments from the kids are hilarious (gotta love the point of view of a 6 year old) but some are so insightful they are heartbreaking. Take this comment from a teenager from Liberia -

“In Africa you get kids everywhere and it’s not hard to make friends. In England, look outside: you can’t see no one.”

Or this 13 year old from Tunisia -

“Wearing the veil, I do get quite a lot of discrimination. I went on this ferry to the Isle of Wight. And when they say Isle of Wight, they don’t lie - all white people. I was wearing my scarf, and I asked the man on the ferry could I have a tissue and he said, ‘Why can’t you use your scarf?’”
…
Some people commit suicide because of [bullying]. I know some people, they bully this person because they’re from Pakistan and they’re Muslim. And they say, ‘Oh, you wash in curry instead of shampoo.’ When they’re born, I bet every parent wants their child to grow up polite, clever, nice and kind to everyone else. Racism isn’t nice. Discrimination isn’t nice. I don’t think anyone likes it. But some people do it for fun. Some people hurt other people because they’ve been hurt.

Or a 15 year old from the Ivory Coast -

“In Africa, if you see anyone walking around, you just say hello. But in England if you see anyone and say hello, they will not say hello back. They have to get to know you properly.”

If you have some time to spare, definitely go and check it out. From a technology and interaction design perspective, there is a lot more they could have done - it would be nice to browse by picture, or experience, or age, rather than just country - but the content is really solid and engaging and well worth your time, if only to read about Colombian chocolate and plastic surgery.

It has some pretty big interaction design changes - they have now combined all the latest activity, so new comments/favourites/notes/tags on your photo show up in the same area as comments you’ve made on other photos.

Groups have now been given more prominence on the homepage - the latest photos are pulled in, rather than just a notice that there are new messages in your groups.

They’ve also used the same area for recent uploads and recent activity - you toggle between them both. I love this little design feature - if I went for weeks without uploading new photos, I’d get really sick of my “latest” photos being the most prominent part of the homepage on the old design.

My favourite bit is you can now adjust your own activity settings. You can choose which activity you’d like to be notified about (comments, sharing, etc) but you can also mute particular photos. I think this is a brilliant new feature - if I comment on a photo, I can mute it and not receive followup comments. This is going to be really handy, especially for photos like Dan and Cybele’s, where they generally receive about 30 comments on a photo - I’d previously have been alerted to them for weeks if I’d left a comment. That would be weeks of being incredibly jealous of their photography talents - now I can just mute all the followups.

They’ve also really brought out the stats. They only introduced stats about 6-12 months ago but it looks like it’s been so useful to everyone they’ve pulled them into the latest activity page. I actually get a bit sad about my stats - the most popular photos are from such typically boring search terms, people are searching for things like “eurasian girls”, “naked”, etc. My photos are totally innocent but searchers still end up there.

The homepage has changed a little bit since they released the sneak preview so it looks like they’ve really listened and taken feedback on board and made tweaks and changes based on user behaviour.

I admit when I saw the sneak preview my initial reaction was that I hated it and I didn’t want it to change - but I recognised that this was a fear of change rather than the fact that the changes weren’t good. It’s going to take a little bit of getting used to, but I think the changes they’ve made are going to be really positive once we all get used to them.

What is Ignite? It started in Seattle by O’Reilly and it’s a night of presentations and entertainment. Each presenter has 5 minutes and has 20 slides - each slide goes for 15 seconds before automatically forwarding.

My favourite Ignite talk is Matt Harding (of Where the Hell is Matt fame) talking about how he got so many people to dance with him.

Ignite talks can be on anything, although Ignite Spatial has a general mapping/geo-spatial theme. They are still looking for some presenters so if you know much about maps, GIS, or anything else location-y then put your hand up to present.

If, like me, you can’t even read a map, come along anyway for a drink and some socialising and to hear some interesting talks.

More details are at the site at www.ignitespatial.com

I love this part.

Among the initial batch of envelopes was a letter with the address written in mirror writing. But it was not until sorting office staff forwarded one in which her street name and number were the answer to a series of crossword clues that she realised someone was taking their job very seriously indeed. Especially when the letter eventually flopped on to her mat with the boxes filled in and bearing the proud message: “Solved by the Glasgow Mail Centre.”

Of the 130 letters she sent herself, only 10 didn’t make it to their destination. I love little bits of sunshine like this, both from the artist who originally created the puzzles to the persistence of Royal Mail in ensuring the letters reached their destination.

They have 8 articles written from different perspectives and on different angles about being deaf. I first learnt of the difference between Deaf and deaf in Lisa Herrod’s article on A List Apart, which is excellent reading.

I had first hand experience when I worked at 3 as videophones led to unanticipated advantages for deaf users - suddenly they could video call and sign over the phone. They are about the only group for whom video-calling is actually useful, apart from people travelling and drunk users. I spoke to someone from the Deaf Institute, who pointed out that deaf users had huge take-up of texting as mobiles were useless to them apart from that.

So it’s great to read in the article that Vlogging is also taking off for similar reasons.

It is not surprising, then, that deaf people have seized upon the web 2.0 revolution, and more specifically vlogging. User-created sign language videos can be uploaded to public hosting sites such as YouTube or Sign-tube, the deaf community’s version, and then embedded on blogs, meaning that content is easily accessible to sign-language users; albeit a mere drop in an internet-sized ocean of English content.

I just think it’s nice when technology can make such a difference to someone’s life in a really positive way, whether it be in connecting people, improving their day or enriching their life in some way.

Head over to the Guardian now - there are some great articles on a deaf nightclub in Finland, a deaf comedian, and career case studies.

Molt:n has decided to take this post down due to the resulting media shitstorm - this little blog post was blown out of proportion. Nothing to see here - how about you go and see some kittens instead?

It’s a fantastic use of Flash, incorporating maps, story-telling, photographs and CCTV footage of the incident, as reported in the trial of the police officers. It’s also hauntingly tragic and shows all the human and technical errors that contributed to Jean Charles de Menezes’ death. The surveillance team were taking a leak when Jean Charles left the building. He was incorrectly identified as a suspect. The radio transmitters between the shooting team and surveillance team didn’t work in the tube. The shooting team also nearly shot someone in the surveillance team after they killed Jean Charles.

It’s a pity the Flash piece stops at Jean Charles’ death and doesn’t then go into the timeline of the cover-up and media manipulation by the police force.

The use of Flash really brings that morning to life, more so than reading about it in the papers or hearing about it on the radio. It actually makes me want to cry thinking about the stupid waste of a life, and the unnecessary torture inflicted on Jean Charles’ family by the police trying to cover up shooting an innocent man.

via Jessica Hagy.

I first heard of him when he decapitated Sarah Jessica Parker for the Sex and the City movie.

Original poster

Carrie Bradshaw decapitated

He’s just uploaded some new photos from his latest prey, Halifax Mortgages.

I’ll never think of bank tellers in the same way again. I think this is the best way of culture jamming - instead of destroying or graffiting the billboards, he has his own style and he seems to put a lot of thought and work into each board.

You can see all his work at his Flickr stream - http://flickr.com/photos/the_decapitator/. He’s done some awesome posters for fashion, dance parties, DJs and others.