Add-Art: The Entire Web as Art Gallery

Add-Art is a free FireFox add-on that transforms website advertising into a curated art show featuring rotating works by emerging artists that are selected from a submissions database. The open source project was developed by artist Steve Lambert with support from Eyebeam and Rhizome. The idea emerged from the popularity of existing “adblockers” that merely replace ads with blank space, providing clutter-free surfing. Lambert felt they could take this service a step further and offer a richer experience to users in the process, by simply converting browsers into virtual art galleries instead.

Introduction to Add-Art from Steve Lambert on Vimeo.
Read more here Source PSFK

The Economic Crisis in Song

What does a failing economy sound like? Johannes Kreidler offers his rendition with these computer-generated tunes created with Microsoft’s Songsmith program, Muzak-y compositions that follow the downward tumble of American financial institutions, as well as the unemployment rate and Iraq war statistics. Watch the video below to see how the melodies match the depressing stats they were built off of:

Source kottke

The P2P Alternative Social Economy

The Wall Street Journal reports that a peer to peer social currency based economy may be playing a large role in our future. Stan Stalnaker, founder of the Hub Culture social network is says “I don’t think anybody has any idea of how big a shift is coming in terms of our our view and perception of finance and money.” Clever social entrepreneurs are already bypassing the traditional banking world with micro lending services such as Kiva.org, and now other groups are creating their own units of exchange. Hub culture has it’s own digital currency called Ven that it’s worldwide members can use to swap for goods and services in place of local money. These alternative economic networks often value trust, transparency and reputation over any kind of physical collateral  More in the WSJ video below.

Source PSFK

GAMES TRUMP SOCIAL NETWORKS AMONG US TEENS

NEW YORK: A total of 78% of US teenagers regularly play online video games, compared with just 65% who use social networking websites likeFacebook and MySpace, according a new study by The Pew Internet & American Life Project. 
The "Generations Online in 2009" report also found that the number of 12–17 year-olds using email fell from 89% in 2005 to 73% last year, a drop attributed to the rise of social networking.
Says Sydney Jones, research assistant at Pew: "Teens really gravitate to these instant forms of communication. They're not likely to be sitting around waiting for e-mail."
Overall, 97% of teenagers play video games of some kind, but just 10% of 12–17 year-olds use "virtual worlds" like Second Life, a figure falling to 2% of older web users aged 18–32. 
Among the latter group, 50% of web users regularly play games online, and 67% are active users of social networking services. 
Members of both age ranges are more likely to use the web for entertainment than practical purposes according to the survey, which was conducted late last year among 2,253 internet users.

Data sourced from AdWeek (USA); additional content by WARC staff, 02 February 2009

Read more here IQblog: Sony запускает виртуальную вселенную Home

Open Source Urban Planning

Mark Gorton, creator of the Lime Wire file sharing software is now using his talents to improve urban transportation design. Using an open source software program he’s created along with data gathered from the collective population, Gorton aims to make urban transportation safer, more efficient and sustainable.

Wired reports:

The top-down culture of public planning stands to benefit by employing methods he’s lifting from the world of open-source software: crowdsourced development, freely-accessible data libraries, and web forums, as well as actual open-source software with which city planners can map transportation designs to people’s needs. Such modeling software and data existed in the past, but it was closed to citizens.

Gorton’s open-source model would have a positive impact on urban planning by opening up the process to a wider audience, says Thomas K. Wright, executive director of the Regional Plan Association, an organization that deals with urban planning issues in the New York metropolitan area.

“99 percent of planning in the United States is volunteer citizens on Tuesday nights in a high school gym,” Wright says. “Creating a software that can reach into that dynamic would be very profound, and open it up, and shine light on the decision-making. Right now, it becomes competing experts trying to out-credential each other in front of these citizen and volunteer boards… [Gorton] could actually change the whole playing field.”

Source WIRED

Definition of the day: ROI - Return on Ideas

Source: Idea Management

Eyebrow Dancing

The ad is by Fallon in London. I think I’m adding this to PSFK for personal reasons more than anything.

The parody is already placed in the UK.