Speak Visual from NVIDIA. The 'hide-away' navigation on the spotlight page is smart and the transitions from section to section are also really smooth.

I will admit that I actually clicked on a banner ad to get to the microsite. Reason? There was a funny shot of a great digital artist, Joshua Davis.

- John Maeda aka Professor X
from the book, Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists

Then I came across Nicholas Felton's portfolio and I found my in.

Felton has done what I've always recommended to people who don't have enough work in their portfolios - make stuff up.

He's created annual reports of himself for 2007, 2006 and 2005.

Top tracks in iTunes listened to, miles traveled (and how far that is from the moon), digital photos taken, photos per country, books read, food eaten - the sum of Felton's parts.

Brilliant idea.

His work has inspired me to not only visualize data in my own life, but how to do it for client work, how to find new connections with existing data.

Doing something something new with something old - this is the essence of innovation.

Once you 'get it', the world starts to look like visualizations, like Neo in the Matrix (but in a much more interesting way, no so numbery and greeny).

update: Victor tipped me off to this post at Cool Hunting, Andrew Kuo: No Lifeguard on Duty

RSS Voyage (via)

Portfolio of Andy Biggs

I'm now on my third replacement pair of v-moda Vibe Duo earbuds and they have successful busted. I no longer get sound from the right side. Wiggling the cord near the jack has revealed that there's a short in the wire.

I'm going back to a nice, sturdy, and decent sounding pair of Sonys (for half the price of the v-moda pair too).

*see my original post on these earbuds to get the full story.

Safe Trip Home

Dido askd film directors in specific countries around the world to create pieces based on their idea of what home means to them, using a chosen song from her album, Safe Trip Home, for inspiration. So far the resulting film have been made in Brazil, New Zealand, Thailand, England, India, Portugal and the US.

(via Creativity)

Marblehead

Beautiful.

It has Instant Hit written all over it.

Design and the Elastic Mind
I've been slacking ...this site passed under my radar when it launched. The style and sounds have Yugop written all over it. (thanks vb)

Looks like Adidas is doing creating some fun microsites. Hit their fun landing page and start exploring.

The strength of his opinion rests in the collective power of all the points he makes. This makes sense, since it's all about the details with design.

Here are the main points, read the full post for the meat:

Staying power
It’s straightforward
It’s unique
This is important
It’s good cluttered
Breaking news is breaking news
One guy can run it
No news is the news
It sends people away to keep them coming back
It’s fast
It’s cheap to maintain
It’s one page
It makes him a great living

One of the pieces I found the most interesting is something I've forgotten about regarding the 'stickiness' of a site:

There’s actually no content on the Drudge Report. Well, sometimes he will post an email or a memo on his site, but it’s 99% links out to other news sources. His site is designed to send you away to bring you back. The more often you hit his site to go somewhere else the more often you’ll return to go somewhere else again. You visit the Drudge Report more because you leave the Drudge Report more. This is one of the secrets to building traffic: The more you send people away the more they’ll come back.