DISQUS

Wow, Laura, these are fantastic. Really. I'll tweet this up tomorrow, what a wonderfully curated showcase.

Stephen:

It's on DesignFloat because Shepard Fairey, the most iconic graphic designer of our time, designed all the posters and other propaganda materials for the effort. If you had read the article, you would've noticed that. And a big part of design is looking to those doing the best, most inspiring, most culturally significant work in the field for inspiration – this is certainly among them.

Kimmo, thank you so much. No wonder I couldn't even find a website for him – I did think it strange for a designer. Damn AdAge, I should never trust them to do their research right, ha.

I'm fixing it immediately, thank you again.

Excellent list. Let's also not forget:

- Architecture for Humanity (http://twitter.com/archforhumanity)
- Acumen Fund (http://twitter.com/acumenfund)
- the mother of most philanthropic organizations: TED (@TED_Tweets, @ted2009, @TEDChris)

Spoken like a true creator. Right on.

Allen:

I suppose, to the extend that "memory" is a literal interpretation of events past. But I was referring to a broader concept that encompasses everything -- experiential memory, sure, but also emotional memory, the pool of fleeting thoughts that once crossed your mind too quick to congeal into ideas and now come back to fully evolve and ripen.

It's semantics, really, but yes, I do agree that the novelty of thought does exist.

Danae:

Well, think of it this way -- everything is a memory, including your own skills. Creativity is simply the ability to pull the right resources from memory at the right time (be they your own skills or the inspiration for your work), that's all there is. So don't be too hard on yourself.

Ah, a very very dear friend of mine (with impeccable music taste, I should add, and by "impeccable" I mean similar to mine, ha) has the time to sift through MySpace and the graciousness to share the gems she finds with me.

Glad you dig.

Really puts communication monopoly in perspective. Even when not ill-willed (I freely admit I'm from the Google-can-do-no-wrong camp), technology fails. Here's to 70% of the emailing world putting all our eggs in one imperfect basket...

James, these are fantastic. I love it when big, rigid companies partner with indie talent. Although I must give it to Penguin for being anything but rigid, especially in light of their brilliant social media storytelling initiative. Glad to see they're really pushing the innovation thing across all platforms.

You know, I kinda got that impression as well, especially because he was laying the aphorisms one after another, in an endless and rapidly spoken string of fluff-lined phrases. Aw well, I do respect (some of) his work though.

Or, you know, it's simply the best one of them all, ha.

urbayj02,

This article is mostly about innovation in design. (Not to mention it's rather tongue-in-cheek altogether.)

No doubt the initiatives you mention are all brilliant examples of social innovation – we're actually big proponents of bike-share programs and similar smart social initiatives we've featured before. This piece just has a lighter, more design-oriented focus.

Thanks for the feedback though.

Yeah, Sagmeister's book is a must-have. I actually just gave it to my friend Eric for New Year's, he's a top-notch designer and really dug it.

Sure, I'll get it for you. Maybe same time you get me that music?

Not surprising – this has actually been a feature of the Better YouTube Firefox extension for a long while, a rather popular one with the Firefox crowd. It's only natural that YouTube would look to the most popular open-source improvements of their service and, um, "close-source" them and make their own version to use straight on YouTube.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, since it's clearly informed by a user need. So good for them, I guess. In fact, it shouldn't have taken them that long to come up with in the first place.

True, although the surprising thing is that Chuck is actually extremely environmentally-conscious, far above average (one of the few people I know who went out of their way to find an alternative energy provider for their house) AND a programmer more than superficially familiar with Apple. Yet even so, he did make that assumption.

As far as "fooling" customers goes, I don't believe it was Apple's intention. (Certainly no evidence of any proactive communication on their behalf to allude to greenness prior to the ranking.) It's just a matter of what I call "goodness by association," or the halo effect of coolness. Customers who see Apple as "cool" (which, these days, is pretty much everyone, including PC-users, as much as they hate to admit it) assume that this "coolness" extends to all the company's touchpoints, thereby assuming what is true of Apple's design and software is also true of its environmental policy.

In Apple's defense, they have made significant strides towards a more sustainable production and distribution process over the past year, from packaging to the plastics used in computer casing. BUT, the disappointing part to me is that it's clearly reactive and not a genuine principle that should've been embedded in the company's DNA.

Absurdity all around. Reminds me of that stupid case of the brilliant, critically-acclaimed animated film that got banned because it uses 80-year-old copyrighted music.

When will copyright holders, especially those in the creative sphere, realize that inclusion in content is a word-of-mouth powerhouse on their side, not an offense? Ridiculous.

I hear you on the whole planned/perceived obsolescence thing – Apple has truly mastered that game, where they use technology to plan the obsolescence and marketing strategy to make sure it is perceived so.

However, you're actually wrong about Apple's claim to green fame. (And I say this as a devoted Maccie as well as a realistic eco-evangelist.) They're actually among the LOWEST-rated companies on Greenpeace's infamous Green Ranking chart. Any emphasis on green in the last two Keynotes has been the result of precisely that pressure by more and more environmental organizations pointing the blame finger at Apple's sub-par sustainability policies. So, in that respect, you're right it's all PR – what I call reactive rather than proactive. Mostly, I'm just surprised where you got your idea that Apple was eco-conscious in the first place.

Why is everyone forgetting that when Facebook first launched newsfeed, there used to be a Digg-like thumbs-up/thumbs-down voting system? They took that away a few months later, but it was there in the first place – so Facebook seems to simply be resurrecting it in a new incarnation. Sure, a marginally ripped off one, but still an iteration of an old feature they used to have.

Either way, it's clearly a need-driven addition. As people start to use the status update feature more and more, some even as a substitute for Twitter, there's "friend data overload" – it'll be neat to have a way for controlling the kind of information you're shown in the future, almost like choosing whom to follow on Twitter. Not everyone who's a "friend" or even an interesting person makes for interesting updates.

Evelyn,

Thanks for the heads-up. And while I suspect you work for the company, that's quite alright -- I just looked them up and I love that they plant a tree for every product you buy from them. Talk about putting your money where your mouth is. Right on.

Mostly valid points that I personally agree with. (Except for Pan's Labyrinth, which I haven't seen and thus can't really say.) I do, however, disagree with your fundamental assumption that emotion is all there is, the only holy grail of artistic impact. There's a lot to be said for powerful visceral stimuli and even just a good head-scratcher. So EVEN if The Fall falls flat on emotion for you (which I don't entirely agree with, but that's a different discussion), denying its total artistic footprint because it fails to deliver on the emotional front is a bit narrow.

As far as "this type of movie" goes, I don't really think this film can be typified. And while, subjectively speaking, it reminds me of a weird lovechild of German Expressionism and early avant-garde cinema, it stands on its own two feet well enough to warrant some recognition. Saying how this film "should" be done is, frankly, a bit arrogant -- as much as I respect your cinematic insight and knowledge -- especially given the director's incredible journey of bringing his vision to life. I don't believe that just because we may not like or even get it, we should feel entitled to question its artistic merit.

While I agree that the "why" factor is questionable (I personally, as you know, didn't really "like" the movie), I disagree that all art has to answer the "why" question literally. It's like looking at a Jackson Pollock and asking why the blue specks are exactly where they are, or listening to Bjork and asking why she's sings the off-kilter way she does.

I think a lot of art isn't "about" a concrete thing that answers a "why" question. It's "about" a mood. Creating a moment, a different reality -- or un-reality -- for you to contemplate, and from that contemplation itself comes your takeaway. It can be an abstract feeling that you got, or a fleeting thought, but regardless -- regardless of its not being a linear "message" -- it has somehow enriched you... but only as much as you're willing to let it.

See, I'm all for P2P filesharing (as you can see), but I do draw the line at indie productions. Because I think studios and major labels are fundamentally broken and unfair business models, but independent work by artists of all types is well worth the modest financial support of "fans" -- so I always pay for indie stuff, be it music or film.

RaShell,

Thank you (and your traffic analytics service) for stopping by. :)

You're most welcome -- I'm always happy to feature truly unique ideas born simply out of someone's passion for something. Rock on.

Aaron,

I must admit I hadn't heard of memristors until now, so I just Wikipediaed it. Very geeky-technical, but also very neat. And even though, not unlike buckypaper, in and of itself a memristor isn't really a "product," it could yield some truly world-changing ones.

Good call.