Video | Zaha Hadid – The Opus

Although I appreciate Zaha’s work, I can’t really say she isn’t lazily copy/pasting her old stuff a lot of the time, kind of suffering from the Gehry syndrome, if you will. But this time, I’ve gotta hand it to her, she’s definitely realized where her strengths lie and has shifted away from generic organic shapes on the outside to make better use of them in the core of the building. In one word, her new buildding in Dubai, The Opus, looks awesome, and the trailer below is nothing shy of hypnotic due to clever use of atmospheric music, smooth voice-over and good renders.  More info here.

Links: Zaha Hadid | The Opus | more Opus

(via: architectural videos*)

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Random stuff I found this week (cos I’m too lazy to post everything in separate posts)

USEFUL STUFF

• [IT] Some much needed improvements (Watch Seth Godin’s video below to get a better idea of what I mean)
• [Eco] Should They be Generation E?
• [Nature] When under attack, plants can signal microbial friends for help (amazing stuff)
  
• [Man-made] 3D Virtual Heart So Real Doctors’ Own Hearts Go Pitter Patter
• [Man-made] Seth Godin’s Tribes (great presentation on video…I really can’t describe in words how much I feel exactly, EXACTLY(!!!!!!!!!!!!!)  like Seth on this one:). Of all the futurists, he is easily the most pragmatic one!)
• [Sociology] [Psychology] Does the use of hand gestures slow language learning? (I drool over this type of empirical research data)

ENTERTAINMENT

• Not Photoshopped: Li Wei’s Astounding Action Art
• Dolls and Toys that Creep us Out
• That’s Worlds Highest Bungee Jump @ Helicopter @ 500m/1640ft
• Tuttuki Bako (after seeing the video…spechless!)
• When Robot Programmers get bored
• Improv Everywhere Creates Epic Balloon Battles Using MP3 Players (IE still rocks)

WEEKLY TRIBUTE
A small tribute to PBwiki. I’ve tried a couple of online wiki‘s, and this one’s price-performance (for personal use, cost-zero!) is by far the best I’ve seen and used thus far. The interface is incredibly slick and easy to use and is a big time-saver. They also put strong emphasis on back-up (which you can also manually download onto your pc) and guarantee that loss of data will not occur on their watch (how much that can be trusted is of course up to you). What’s also pretty sweet is the ability to invite guests and have them look only at a particular page of your wiki and not the whole thing (so personal info and to-do lists of celebrity hotties are safe from prying eyes). Other cool features: RSS (comes in handy if/when many users update pages), downloading pages as .pdf’s, interface flexibility…

My personal thought is that every single company (even a one-man band) MUST have a personal wiki (or anything that allows fluid and user-friendly knowledge-transfer that will be put to good use) to handle the abundance of info they deal with.

One of those things that simply make my life so much easier and better! Simply a must:) For more on IT that I think is really practical and useful, click here.

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(via: all the usual and unusual blogs and sites that I’ve got in Google Reader)

For more random stuff subscribe to Geekofriendly.

Random stuff I found this week (cos I’m too lazy to post everything in separate posts)

USEFUL STUFF

• [IT] Guess who’s got your passwords and emails stored on their servers…?
• [IT] Google Health: A Quick Hands-On Look
• [Nano] New Nanotech Products Hitting the Market at the Rate of 3-4 Per Week (in Your Mouth and On Your Face)
• [Economy] The Real Face of the European Union
• [Man-made] Burj Dubai Becomes World’s Tallest Man-Made Structure Today
• [Psychology] Brain rules for PowerPoint & Keynote presenters

ENTERTAINMENT

• Something to wear on mother’s day;)
• 10 Private Islands You Can’t Afford to Live On: Amazing, Exotic and Remote Luxury Retreats
• 40 Hours Of Illustrator, Time-Lapsed (for design freaks who can stand to listen to the background music)
• YouTomb: Where Videos Go to Die
• The Danish language & some more Danish language
• The 9 Most Devastating Insults From Around the World (so the Danish can feel a little better)

WEEKLY TRIBUTE
Well, I’ve thus far managed to rip on mothers, my email provider (ooopsies), the Danish, and pretty much everybody else…so here’s a totally uninspired, totally random miniscule “tribute” to those who can sell their own shit and get away with it (…more than 5 times!!!?!?!)
I give you this a**hole….(disclaimer: watch the videos in order, FSM knows you can barely make sense of it anyway:P)

Link: Click | Click | Click

And please, even if you’ve never seen them, even if you’ve never heard of them…do your civic duty and friggin put the HerrBoll out of his misery!;)

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(via: all the usual blogs and sites that I’ve got in Google Reader)