Notes on Design » Blog Archive » Michael Cina: YouWorkForThem
Michael Cina is the cofounder of the renowned design studio YouWorkForThem and currently runs the Minneapolis, MN studio. He has experimented with many forms of design and is well known for his remarkable typographic work that can be found at youworkforthem.com With a current client list including EA Sports, Victoria’s Secret, Pepsi, and MTV, Michael’s passion for custom typography is changing the design landscape in which we all live.
Can well-designed dwellings really be built for this price? Pam Dorr is championing the cause.
Nationwide balloon-hunt contest tests online networking - CNN.com
(CNN) — On Saturday, thousands of people nationwide will search the skies in a high-tech scavenger hunt designed to test how far-flung groups can use the Internet and technology to work together.
The DARPA Network Challenge calls on groups to pinpoint the locations of 10 red weather balloons scattered around the country — with a $40,000 prize going to the first team to find them all. DARPA, which stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is the U.S. military’s research arm.
This year’s contest is designed to test the the way social networking, crowdsourcing or lesser-known Web-based techniques can help accomplish a large-scale, time-critical task.
Johanna Jones, a spokeswoman for the military’s DARPA, said the hunt — set to begin Saturday at 10 a.m. ET — is designed in part to give the military new ideas on ways to operate in a range of situations, from natural disasters to combat.
“It’s an opportunity to reach out to groups that are very comfortable with social networking,” she said. “Reaching out to some of these groups, they may actually come up with some great ideas for the future.”
The contest is the latest in a series that the agency has been hosting since 2004. The past competitions have focused largely on robotics. But this year — the 40th anniversary of the invention of the Internet — DARPA is focusing on techniques emerging as real-time communication online continues to expand and change.
At 10 a.m. ET, the 8-foot-wide red weather balloons will be released on property accessible to the public.
“They’re not going to be out in the middle of nowhere,” Jones said. “They’re going to be near places where there is traffic.”
She said the balloons will be tethered and will remain aloft for at least six hours. Each will be accompanied by a DARPA representative.
The first person to report the latitude and longitude coordinates of all 10 balloons will win the prize. The competition will remain open until December 14.
The challenge was announced on October 29 — 40 years after the first message was sent on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet, in 1969. DARPA hopes the contest will lead to advances in the way the military communicates and coordinates activities among multiple, geographically separated groups.
“The DARPA Network Challenge taps into the same fresh thinking that made the earlier competitions a success,” said Norman Whitaker, who led DARPA’s most recent robotics challenge. “Future innovation depends on the upcoming generation of technologists who are discovering new, collaborative ways to approach problems that were not dreamt of 40 years ago.”
As of Thursday, about 1,000 people had registered for the hunt. Twenty-eight groups had registered on the challenge’s public wiki page, although organizers said many more are working in private.
Many of the teams are recruiting members and some say that, if they win, they’ll donate the proceeds to charity. They boast of tools ranging from an iPhone application to a GPS-enabled mobile site to use in the hunt.
Jason Brindel, 42, an advertising consultant from San Rafael, California, has organized a team of about 140 people to try to locate the balloons. He’s also created a Web site and a Twitter account for team members to use to communicate.
On Saturday, he plans to activate a Web page that will allow anyone to submit information to his team — as long as they provide details about how they confirmed their information.
If his group wins, Brindel plans to divide the prize money 11 ways — between himself and the person who reports the location of each of the 10 balloons.
“It’s going to be fun,” he said. “And $40,000 split 11 ways is not a lot of money, but it’s enough for a few days’ effort to try to go for it. It makes it a little more interesting.”
While some team members plan to fan out in their regions of the country and scan the skies for the balloons, Brindel thinks a better method will be scouring the Internet for obscure mentions of the balloons on news sites, blogs and Twitter feeds.
He said he’s a fan of the concept of “crowdsourcing” — throwing work that would traditionally be done by one person, or a few people, to the masses via the Internet — and looks forward to seeing it applied in ways that would have been impossible before.
“Things have definitely changed in the last decade and a half,” he said. “We live in a different world that most of us couldn’t imagine 20 to 30 years ago.”
Jones believes Saturday’s scavenger hunt is not that different from DARPA’s past robotics competitions, like the one that challenged teams to build a robot that could walk from Los Angeles to Las Vegas (it proved unsuccessful).
“This is very similar in a way,” she said. “They’re going to be building things, but the tools are pretty much all there. It’s how you put it together in an ingenious way … that’s interesting.”
MFR - VIDEO: Jimmy Fallon Performs “Fresh Prince” Theme As Neil Young
This is outstanding.
Sainthood in hand, Holloway gives status report
Holloway updates progress on restoration efforts
Mayor A.J. Holloway this morning gave a Biloxi Chamber of Commerce audience a progress report on the city’s multi-million-dollar efforts to restore nearly a dozen historic properties, but first he recited two pledges of allegiance, one to the United States, and one that someone had emailed to his office Monday.
“I want to share this with you”, Holloway said after leading the audience in the traditional Pledge of Allegiance. “It’s a pledge of allegiance to the New Orleans Saints:
“I pledge allegiance to the Saints and to the great city of New Orleans, and to the Super Bowl for which we will win, one city, below sea level, under Brees, with Mardi Gras and alcohol for all.”
Ahh. Mississippi. Got that in the B-Mail today (City of Biloxi e.mail updates).
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Mulligan Stu’s Do-Over Revue
A night of poetic whoopsies, epistolary flubs and other creative bloopers.Mulligan Stu’s Do-Over Revue is a new monthly variety show a bunch of us are working on that invites courageous individuals on stage to share their most cringe-worthy artistic output in front of their sure-to-be-entertained peers. Teenage poetry, embarrassing diary confessions, Keith Sweat-heavy mix tapes, unsent love letters, pop star-inspired collage and other bad creations. Call it a celebration of misguided creativity or simply an exorcism of bad art. Whatever you do, don’t call it good. Because it’s not, and that’s the point.
Our house band is Seasonal Concepts and the song above is a rough cut of their MSDOR theme song.
Yeah, this is gonna kick ass.
@ The Nomad World Pub (map) tonight at 7PM // $3 Cover // Beer specials // Hilarity // Join the FB group // RSVP for the event (not reacquired!)
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