If you’ve been to CES before, you already know it’s a glittering, gadgety onslaught of technology wonder (and to be honest) a hoard of electronic chest thumping.  Throw in a tsunami of technology sales people, marketers, game geeks and aisles and aisles of mediocre third party accessory manufacturers you’ve suddenly ventured into strange land. A land where Best Buy has just taken over Times Square New Years Eve, moved it to Vegas while a porn conventionsets up next door. Welcome to 2012 International CES in all it’s sales glam, technology girth and corporate gimme.

Which of course is why it’s glooooorious to observe…

But it’s also why you need to do a little pre-work to make sure you’re not sucked into 4 miles of convention floor with several hours of iPad docking stations and 500 inch 3D plasma screen televisions.

Here’s a basic, but handy guide to the “big picture” of CES 2012 for those of you that head to the show.

Ipsos-IOTX Austin Futures Group and UPSTREAM Design Innovation teams take a look at this years 2012 International CES pre-show, with trend observations, technology examples and recommended panels and exhibits. Co-Authored by Andy Hunter, Paul Noble Campbell, Jerry Courtney & Jeff Mulhausen.

[Repost from my entry at the openexchange.org.]

Created by Google Creative Labs,”3 Dream’s In Black” is part art experiment, musical collaboration, part CGI video and breakthrough web coding assignment. Driving a culture of experimentation, all Googler’s are encouraged to pursue experiments both relatable and non-relatable to Google’s business. All to drive a passion of innovation.

How Google makes innovation part of the cultural fabric, not a project or a siloed process.

• Democratizing Ideas. Engage “the people.” Have people magnify the mania and become your evangelists. The user is your marketer.
• Gaining Credibility through the right partners: With finesse of smart salesmanship to make ideas happen.
• Challenging conventions. Question how things should be done (e.g., YouTube and the Guggenheim??)
• Don’t do marketing. Solve problems.
• Know the user. Know the magic. Connect the two. What’s the emotion behind the idea? * taken from Jeffrey Davis’s blog, post his visit to Google Creative Labs.

Rome: 3 Dream’s in Black is an impressive feat with famous musicians including DJ Dangermouse of Gnarls Barkley fame, Jack White and Nora Jones. For most of us it might appear interesting, but not far from what we expect from video games and animated movies. The true stunner, is that this was essentially built with web code, “Web GL-JavaScript” and HTML 5. And.. through a Google Chrome Browser, you can steer and immerse yourself within it.

Amazing. Say hello to the future, the 3D virtual web experience.

Great stuff under the direction Chris Milk, Google Creative Director, Aaron Koblin and @radical media. More about the project at Mashable.

SXSWi is sooo close you can taste it, yes?  Taste the beer that is ;)

Townholler + Beersphere SXSWi is back in 2011 at Club Deville – so mark it on your calendar!  The beer ain’t free, but the awesome company of interesting people most certainly is.  RSVP via Facebook event and Plancast.

Hope to see you there!  Photos from last years festivities after the break:

via whatconsumesme.com

an update of the XKCD classic

Posted via email from reeboot’s posterous

via img117.imageshack.us

This is quite old, but one of my favorite infographics of all time from Wired Magazine. Tracing the technology lineage of the Star Wars films and the impact of Industrial Light and Magic’s breakthroughs on multimedia, film and interactive technology it’s really interesting to dig into.

Check out the fully interactive version on wired.com.

Posted via web from experiencefreak

Visualisation Magazine by Visualthinkmap: Infographic curation at it’s best
(above cover of Volume 2).  Check out the newest edition (volume 3) published by here:

Posted via web from experiencefreak

via rosiesiman.tumblr.com

I guess I know what I’ll be doing this afternoon at the office.

Posted via web from experiencefreak

(if you haven’t already, be sure to enjoy one of my favorite media traditions next year, the WGN Chicago Yule Log broadcast. Complete with the best in old skool christmas music.)