List: The Last 10 Years in Digital

I made this list for a little project and thought I'd share it.

Warning! This list is by no means 100% accurate and is mostly just a compliation of random facts from various places around the internet. It's on there, somewhere, but I'm not citing it (for now, at least).

2000- Email viruses “Love Bug” and “Stages” attack address books
2000- Pandora launched
2000- The M-Systems DiskOnKey is the first USB drive
September 2000 - There are 20,000,000 websites on the Internet, numbers doubling since February 2000

2001- Kodak begins selling digital cameras
2001 - US regulators approve the merger of AOL and Time Warner
2001- Napster shut down
January 9, 2001- iTunes released
October 23, 2001 - iPod released


2002- The first Blackberry is released
2002- The Sanyo SCP-5300 is the first camera phone in the US
November 2002- Microsoft launches Xbox live, allowing players to play games with others online

2003- Broadband internet allows for faster surfing that dial-up
May 2003 - Wordpress launched
September 2003 - The RIAA sues 261 individuals for allegedly distributing copyright music files over peer-to-peer networks

Feb 2004- Google indexes 6 billion pages
Feb 2004- Facebook created by Mark Zukerberg, Chris Hughs, Dustin Moskovitz, and Eduardo Saverin
December 5, 2004- Digg launched

2005- Web 2.0 is coined
2005- Chuck Norris hits the web by force
2005- the One Laptop Per Child project begins
2005- The term “sexting” is created for explicit text, photo, and video messages
2005- Sunnydale, California launches the first city-wide free wifi
Feb 2005 – YouTube launched
May 2005- CVS creates the first disposable video camera
Dec 2005- Study shows Wikipedia is as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica, if not more

2006- First silent disco flash mob in London where 4,000 suddenly broke into dance
2006- Skype allows for video conferencing between two people
June 2006 - Myspace becomes the most popular social networking site
July 2006- The Motorola Razor sells over 50 million units
November 19, 2006- Nintendo released the Wii, revolutionizing console

2007- Rick Rolling infuriates millions
2007- Tumblr Launched
2007- eHarmony reports that 19% of married couples met online
2007- World of Warcraft hits a milestone when it surpasses 9 million subscribers worldwide in July.
February 2007 - Apple surpasses one billion iTunes downloads.
September 13, 2007- iPod Touch released

Feb 2008- Toshiba stops making HD DVDs conceding to the format war between Blu ray
Oct 21, 2008- Android OS launched

2009 - Actor Ashton Kutcher becomes the first person on Twitter to have a million followers subscribing to his 'tweets'.
March 11, 2009 – Foursquare launched
April 2009- Twitter’s use in a Moldovan protest cements it as a necessary news source
June 2009 - Facebook becomes most widely used social networking site
Dec 2009- Avatar takes 3D to the next level by including photorealistic CGI technology

March 2010 - Facebook becomes most visited website
2010- Google is word of the decade
Febuary 2010- Samsung releases the first 3D TV in the US
April 3, 2010- iPad released
July 1, 2010- China blocks Google service

Creativity Nouvelle

Lately, I've noticed people discussing how the internet is changing art, especially in terms of the loss of spontaneity (check out Ben Malbon, Kevin Rothermel, and Ana Andjelic have been writing).

Another way that I've seen art changing is more in terms of the evolution of creativity. Thanks to the ease of involvement, more people are expressing their creativity through social media.

One of the main usages cited for social media is people’s desire for self expression.

While content creators are a small but powerful selection of users, a larger group is expressing themselves in new ways through social media. Examples include editing MySpace and Twitter design, filling out Facebook’s 25 Questions meme, contributing to open source projects, customizing products online, Tumblr blogs, and creating fashion collages on Polyvore.

By allowing anyone to easily modify, publish, and spread their own unique additions, social media allows everyday people who would not normally produce their own work a creative outlet for self-expression. Social media eliminates factors limiting this group offline, such as lack of confidence, inspiration, or time.

Reasons driving the surge of creativity through social media include:

• Existing creative framework. People don’t need to invent and produce entirely new ideas, they simply tweak what already exists. This saves them the effort of creating a new idea and the time of actually developing that new idea.
• Low involvement of entry. Most sites that encourage creativity are free and, because of the existing creative framework, require less time than individual endeavors.
• Anonymity. By concealing their identity, some people feel more comfortable about sharing their creative ventures.
• Encouragement from the community. Positive reviews motivate people to continue their efforts.
• Potential popularity. Acceptance is still a driving factor for human action, and social media facilitates the hunt for popularity.

And takeaways, esp. for brands:

• The ratio of effort vs. output is a driving factor for the evolution of creativity online
• Allowing websites or applications to be uniquely modifiable engages consumers
• Creative expression is a non-tangible benefit to give to consumers
• When attempting to generate UGC for themselves, brands should guide users with parameters to encourage widespread participation

Idea: Amazon Book Search by Book Cover Image

Ever tried to recall the name of a book, but absolutely can't do it? The best you can think of is "well, the book was red...and the name was really big and gold"? The problem is actually not that rare.

My solution to this? Amazon Book Search by Book Cover Image

Here's how it works: you start to doodle a rough version on the book, and Amazon returns with all the book covers that mildly resemble your sketch.

Something similar was created for Flickr in 2006 called Retrievr. Check it out:


Success-ish!

Amazon has a bajillion book cover images in its system thanks to the ability for customers to add their own covers in addition to its own collection. In fact, Amazon's constantly innovative search and referral methods has influenced their overwhelming success.

If Retrivr could do it in 2006, Amazon can do it now. And perhaps better, especially as image search technology improves (as evidenced by Google's new project called Similar Image Search, which is super rad).

Just Google It

The trailer for the disaster movie 2012 has an great twist.



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Instead of having a silly-sounding but nonetheless x-treme call to action like many other movies have, this trailer encourages the viewers to educate themselves about the events inspiring the movie.

Typically, it's very bad if your website isn't one of the first results on Google. But in this case, the movie is making this fact work for them. It's actually making Google work for it, too.

Following examples like the Blair Witch project ("No, man, that stuff is REAL"), 2012 is attempting to utilize outside information that will hopefully create more hype about the movie.

The accompanying line is notable, too. "Find out the truth" corresponds with the online emphasis on truth and reality, as evidenced in numerous studies and websites devoted to uncovering scams.

View the trailer here and of course, google 2012 for yourself.

Interaction in London

Two of my less-strange but still diverse interests* are technology and art and I've gotten to see some interesting public art in London recently. There's a great and surprising exhibit in Trafalgar Square right now called Under Scan by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.



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Lozano-Hemmer set up two projectors that create videos in passerby's shadows. It's a strange concept because when people in Trafalgar Square look down, they are greeted by an image of a person waving at them. The exhibit is set up so that the projected people look directly at a viewer, interact with them, and appear to lose interest as the viewer walks away.

Neato. And a lot less eerie than the exhbit I just saw in the Saatchi Gallery, where aged models of world leaders in electric wheelchairs roll around in the basement.



More information on Under Scan here.




* Example: I'm graduating with a Minor in Visual Art and a Liberal Arts Concentration in Political Science. Woooo.

Pictures from BBC, Three Cities and the Saatchi Gallery