Anna Von Mertens paints aura readings taken from classical portraits and photographs of iconic people, commenting on the ‘soul’ in art in the digital age with the resulting ghostly images.
http://www.annavonmertens.com/portfolio.php

Many artists use pencils to create works of art. Dalton Ghetti, on the other hand creates miniature masterpieces on the tips of pencils!
http://bit.ly/9Rw8l6

Eyebeam is the leading not-for-profit art and technology center in the United States. Founded in 1997, Eyebeam was conceived as a non-profit art and technology center dedicated to exposing broad and diverse audiences to new technologies and media arts, while simultaneously establishing and demonstrating new media as a significant genre of cultural production.
http://www.eyebeam.org/

Closer to home, Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa has an exhibition in IMMA at the moment. He has been working since the early 1990s using a multidisciplinary approach that includes architecture, urbanism, narrative, history, and politics.
http://www.imma.ie/en/page_212197.htm

Well, finally the long wait is over. Facebook has taken the plunge into the world of geo-location with their long awaited Facebook Places. Not good news for Foursquare as highlighted in Nick O’Neill’s AllFacebook piece “Facebook Punks Foursquare, Gets Them To Announce Nothing”. Foursquare will have to pull something pretty special out of the bag to counteract this maneuver from Facebook. As for the new offering, well essentially according to the Facebook’s Graph API documentation, developers will be able to access the read and search APIs as of today. However the write APIs are to remain in “private beta” with a limited set of partners.

Over the last few weeks Facebook has been tweaking Notes and changing ‘Like’ buttons but this really could be the coup de grace for other LBS services. This announcement now enables a new class of location-powered applications to reach the mass market for the first time and drive significant value to businesses and developers. So what is possible?

Well there are three key components: share where you are, find where your friends are, and discover new places around you. It will be available on mobile devices (web) and on the company’s new iPhone app as of tonight.

Check-ins are part of the platform and so is adding places. It has photo tagging functionality so you can “tag” friends that are with you at a specific location so everybody doesn’t have to check-in on their own. What does this mean from a privacy perspective? Well you can remove any check-in and settings are defaulted to friends only. “Here Now” is on after you check-in and tagging only lets you tag your friends while notifying you whenever you’re tagged. In addition you can remove any tag and turn off being tagged in Facebook Places. On the iPhone app, you can report a place if it’s inaccurate or don’t want it on the system.

And from a developer’s point of view? Well according to Justin Smith from InsideFacebook, Facebook has created new extended permissions for Places. To be able to get a user’s check-ins, developers will need to request the “user_checkins” extended permission. To be able to get a user’s friends’ check-ins as well, developers will request the “friends_checkins” extended permission.

Once that is done, Facebook says developers can do three things starting tomorrow:

1. You can get details on individual check-ins
GET https://graph.facebook.com/[checkin_id]

2. You can get a list of check-in information about specific places, pages, or users
GET https://graph.facebook.com/[place/Page/user_id]/checkins

3. You can search for recent check-ins for an authorized user and his or her friends

Let the games begin!

Given the recent environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, this particular image struck a chord with us. Used as part of a Humble campaign back in the 1960s, the oil company openly boasts about its ability to melt a glacier! The accompanying text reads as follows:

“EACH DAY HUMBLE SUPPLIES ENOUGH ENERGY TO MELT 7 MILLION TONS OF GLACIER!

This giant glacier has remained unmelted for centuries. Yet, the petroleum energy Humble supplies- if converted into heat- could melt it at the rate of 80 tons each second! To meet the nation’s growing needs for energy, Humble has applied science to nature’s resources to become America’s Leading Energy Company. Working wonders with oil through research, Humble provides energy in many forms- to help heat our homes, power our transportation, and to furnish industry with a great variety of versatile chemicals. Stop at a Humble station for new Enco Extra gasoline, and see why the “Happy Motoring” sign is the World’s First Choice!

‘Rumble Bug’ is a simple but addictive flash game created by Cybercom for Coca-Cola. Navigate the bugs through 5 levels of game play to be in with a chance of ‘Rumbling’ some daily prizes along the way!

Make your own massive paper head à la Converse’s ‘All Summer’ which previously featured on FBotW.

Find out if you are suffering from Friday fatigue on XV Rescue. Subaru’s recently launched website for the Impresa uses interactive games to diagnose how bored the visitor is as part of it’s avoid the mundane campaign.

The new Social website for Puma applauds the champions of late night games and the after hours athlete. Be social and join the club or watch the cool videos of the real Social Club in NYC.

Recently relaunched Kult House is home to the expansive portfolio from 25 year old designer/ director Josh Rhode. Totally digital!

‘Project H Design is a team of designers and builders engaging locally to improve the quality of life for the socially overlooked’ Their work ranges from Design for Mental Health in London to redesigning water transport devices in Johannesburg. Proof in the pudding that more and more designers are moving towards a humanitarian approach.

Sweet by Design is another good example of crowdsourcing. Steffan Postaer (EuroRSCG CCO) is publishing his latest novel chapter by chapter on his blog and he wants you to design the cover.

Julien Vallée uses physical materials to construct his graphic design away from a computer screen. Receiving a serious amount of recognition and having worked with a variety of clients, Julien is considered an expert in the field of designing static and moving images. Lots of amazing videos here that showcase his extraordinary work.

This week we have chosen four sites that are all sort of loosely related to photography…

Could The iOScars be the future of The Oscars? The capabilities of the 4th generation iPhone are incredible so if the best camera is the one you have with you all the time maybe you could be collecting a golden statue soon.

If you want a great laugh check out Photoshop Disasters. How some of these fatal errors were not picked up is a mystery. The site if full of examples of brutal displays of negligence by designers from all over the world and it a definite guide of what not to do!

The Guinness Storehouse Photo Competition is continuing with great prizes up for grabs every month. If you have visited the Home of Guinness upload your photo to be in with a chance of winning a digital photo frame (and if you haven’t perhaps this long weekend could be the ideal opportunity…)

Pop culture packs a punch with Touchpuppet an online cultural magazine for lovers of art, fashion and photography that’s updated multiple times daily.

Dlvr.it provides bloggers, publishers and brands a simple way to instantly syndicate content and expand their reach on the social web and into new channels. This cool little tool publishes your media, your blogs, and all your content to your social channels, ensuring your audience sees it instantly. Nice!

Why buy when you can borrow? Save money and resources by sharing with your friends and neighbors with Neighborgoods.net a kind of social networking site for borrowing and lending. What a great idea.

Jerry Kennelly the man behind Stockbyte has a new startup; Tweak.com bills itself as an online self-service design library, which makes tweakable press advertising and marketing collateral available to users at the touch of a button.

Overacting poses, exacerbated similes, pretentious backgrounds, freaky characters, you will find all these kind of stuff and much more at the Awkward Family Photos site.

The extraordinary growth in mobile within the last few months will no doubt encourage more and more people to get involved with the latest online, or more to the point, offline trend of Mass Mingling. According to Trend Watching’s June briefing ‘reality’ is back in Vogue.

Mobile is already liberating people from the shackles of the desktop and allowing them to get back in touch with their locality. The butcher, the baker, and rumor has it, the candle stick maker are all going loco about local as the rise of location based services like Foursquare continue to grow. In a recent TechCrunch piece Mark Zukerberg hinted that location based features are coming to the platform and set to put location on the map.

Meetup recently launched a service for organizations, companies and movements to launch global events via the web. Meetup Everywhere is an open and free platform which aims to spark offline events amongst communities of like-minded individuals, across the globe. The website enables organizers to map the meet-ups and share announcements and updates through users Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Online communities like ReadyMade and Etsy.com are working with DIY crafters to host their own local “craft ups” where organizers receive a free downloadable Craft Party Kit containing crafty project ideas, instructions and templates, along with tips and ideas for hosting their crafty meetup party.

June 14, 2010 if you didn’t know was the worldwide-meet-the-tribe-of-Linchpins Internet guru Seth Godin. If you are part of the Tumblr tribe then you now have the opportunity to put a face to the interesting tumblog you’ve been following.

The power of the Mass Mingling cannot be under estimated from and business and marketing perspective but more importantly for its power to affect real and positive social change in the ‘real’ world. Are you aware of any Meet Up events in Ireland? If so please let us know.

Science fiction often has an uncanny way of predicting the future and turning into science fact. Forty years before the first atom bomb was dropped on Japan, HG Wells was writing about it, while more recently, William Gibson predicted the spread of the internet and virtual reality in his cult classic Neuromancer. In 1982 Bruce Sterling coined the term “spimes” to describe objects that can be “tracked through space and time throughout the lifetime of the object.”

It now seems that time is upon us as we enter into an era where the cost of sensors, processors and transmitters are so low that it’s fast becoming cost effective to put them inside everyday objects. Even your humble toothbrush may soon sense and communicate socially about where it is and how it’s being used in space and time.

In last weeks post we looked at Stickybits the people helping you to ‘tag your world’ through threaded conversations around objects and confirming that the age of the ‘Internet Of Things’ is truly upon us.

The possibility now exists for brands to track the consumer’s usage of their products while uncovering a mountain of data about customer habits. Combine this with what your customers are saying on social networks like Facebook and Twitter and hey presto! You have the ability understand how they use the product, what features they use and where they use it.

The possibilities are endless, DoGood Headquarters has developed an ambitious concept for a reusable foldable coffee cup that can be folded back into your pocket or purse. It’s BPA free – and possesses a solar powered clock, Bluetooth integration with your mobile phone and respective real-time Twitter feed. Not to mention automatic Foursquare check-in.

All this of this signals the transformation of Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 where more and more things/objects/appliances become connected to the web and communicate with each other. Sounds a bit like Skynet from the movie Terminator? Who can tell? But this much is certain; when products are connected to the Internet it will open up a whole new world of commercial possibilities for manufacturers and retailers alike who can rub their hands together with glee at the future ahead.