dopetastic

Three Great Elmo Video Clips

Dope Daddy — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 09:53:22 +0000

Recently, a friend’s tip on another post, reminded me of the importance of smiling… and to keep being child-like. So, with a tip’o the hat to Cesar, here are three of the best Elmo clips that I could find starring everyone’s favourite Muppet (except for Kermit… and you, Miss Peggy) Elmo, from Sesame Street.

Enjoy!

Andrea Boccelli sings Elmo a Lullabye:

Elmo Sings the Alphabet Song with a friend:

Nora Jones and Elmo sing “Don’t Know ‘Y’ Didn’t come :

Warner Bros Launches Elmo Video Game (shoppingblog.com)
Thursday’s pick of the day: Elmo’s World (timeoutny.com)
Elmo Gives Wendy Williams a Musical Tribute (tvsquad.com)
“Elmo/Broccoli” (economist.com)

Three Awesome Home-Made Optical Illusions

Dope Daddy — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 12:45:06 +0000

Proving that creativity is the mother of all things Dope, here are three awesome home-made optical illusions made with a simple home camera and everyday objects by Youtube user brusspup:

Lines (& faces) in Motion… (not!)

A floating super-sized Nintendo

An illusion made with candles.

Optimal Use of Space – Hong Kong “Morphing” Apartment

Dope Daddy — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 12:06:13 +0000

Space is a much valued commodity in many places around the world, and many cities in Asia are famous for making the most out of almost nothing. Watch this report from Discover Channels World’s Greenest Homes, and see how a Hong-Kong architect has designed the world’s first “morphing” apartment.

Move over transformers! This is Dope!

Poetry and girl power in the age of you tube…

Dope Daddy — Sun, 09 May 2010 02:53:31 +0000

These here two videos are proof positive that we live in times like none other before us. Video killed the radio star, indeed, but it also smashed so many other pre conceptions built on what I sometimes called the “old world order.” Here, two young women use a camera, a rhythm, the turn of a word, and brains to create poetry in motion. Moving pictures that paint a picture larger than the images, words, and sounds we watch, somewhere, on a cloud.

Before I ruin it with some bad poetry or whimsical lyrics of my own, I leave you with one great hope for girls everywhere, that in the future, beautiful girls will continue to make poetry with pictures, as they stand strong, and illuminate the way, for generations to come…

ZOMGitsChris asks us all to make a reflection:

and Rhaina Cohen asks us to walk on her shoes…

Dope!

Google Chrome Faster Than A Speeding Potato. (video)

Ed Celis — Wed, 05 May 2010 09:55:00 +0000

By defintion, Google has always been about speed and innovation, in this video they illustrate what exactly they mean by “speed” in terms that most of us can understand.

“At this point, Google realizes that simply talking about browser speed isn’t enough. They have to show you.Alongside the latest beta release of Google Chrome, the company has made a series of videos that intend to do just that. The Rube Goldberg-ian setup is fairly amazing. While the speed test videos themselves aren’t out just yet, Google has posted the making of the video (which I’ve embedded below). It’s a must-watch.”

WorldCard Mobile: iPhone App Saves You Time & Money

Dope Daddy — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:24:14 +0000

Dope Daddy has an iPhone, and he is happy for the thing. It makes calls, works great as an email and social networking tool (LinkedIn, Facebook apps are sweet), and is probably the gadget that has single-handedly shown the way to make money of the mobile space. But a business phone, it never was. Until now.

Leave it to a bunch of Chinese guys that have employed the same copy-writer for their web site as most Chines grills anywhere in the English-speaking world, and with a sense of graphic design more fit to the time when IBM ruled the world to alter this reviewer’s image of the iPhone.

It is now officially a tool for grown ups. With the awfully named WorldCard Contacts, and WorldCard Mobile Apps, Chinese innovator Penpower Technology Ltd. has turned the iPhone into a sleek business card scanner which not only recognizes the names, addresses, and other data on business cards, World Card Contacts allows you to sort through them on a visual wall, manipulate them at a flick of a finger, and matches the data to a number of iPhone’s native services, such as maps, the telephone, etc.

To anyone that has ever attended an event of any size and has collected business cards gallore, it is nothing short of a miracle. Dope Daddy spent a couple an hours last night with his iPhone and managed to capture and sort out over 200 business cards at the same time as he watched some CSI with the misses. While the truth is that neither of the apps are perfect, fact is that for the price NOTHING beats the iPhone and these two for capturing and organizing your business contacts. Nothing, and that is a tall order, considering that the cheapest business card scanner with OCR will set you up, at a minimum close to 60€ (and that is for a black and white model), whereas the industry’s leader CardScan from Dymo sets you up close to 200€.

Dope!

Spotify 0.4.3 Free Music Re-Invented.

Ed Celis — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:27:45 +0000

From the land of Abba, Saab, 1/2 of Skype and the Volvo, comes the new version of Spotify; the dopest on-line music service. Sure, you have infinite possibilities to listen to music these days: there are plenty of streaming music services, online radio stations, iTunes, and that soon to become obsolete collection of CDs that your brother left behind when he moved in with his girlfriend. Still, there is nothing quite like the new upgraded Spotify 0.4.3.

Granted, Spotify’s service is only available on a handful of European countries, but just like old Europe has lead the US on the wide adoption of mobile technologies, I predict that services such as Spotify will soon make the jump or be copied across the pond. It is inevitable.

So, what has Dope Daddy almost wishing to cash in his frequent travel miles and book a ticket to the nearest Spotify-active country? Where to begin? Not only does Spotify provide you with a way to listen to “All Music, All the Time”, with it you can find and play “any track you like, any time you like… Any artist, any album, any genre – all available instantly. With Spotify, there are no limits to the amount of music you could listen to. Just help yourself to whatever you want, whenever you want it”- did I mention that it was free?

Well it is, and so you may be wondering how the damned thing got any better? Well, the new version of Spotify now counts with over 17 new features, all of which make it a breeze to create collections of music and share them with your friends using social media sites such as Facebook. If you thought that it was hard to improve on “free”, well these guys did.

Watch:

The Art of Effective Online Story Telling (video)

Ed Celis — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 11:36:13 +0000

The ability to create effective, entertaining, and simple communication materials is a much sought-after skill-set in this digital Age. There plenty of examples of bad communications online, and a few that shine on their simplicity and brilliance.

Commoncraft is a small company out of Seattle that makes videos to educate in a clean and simple way services, concepts, and ideas on-line. Their technique, which has often been copied, masters the use of white space, stick figures, and paper cut outs, together with scripts brilliant in their simplicity that would make any corporate communications manager worth his salt, green with envy.

In addition to their work, the company also created a network of companies that produce similar online story telling services, and has a page directing traffic to their partners. They developed a concept, spread it around, and are not adverse to sharing the wealth! Kudos, from here. Very, very, very dope indeed!

Watch a couple of videos from Common Craft:

Skitch: the Dopest way to grab anything (v review)

Dope Daddy — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:16:12 +0000

Making “screen grabs” or simple captures/ downloads of pictures from your desktop or from the web, is something that is almost as natural as breathing these days, that’s why I am glad to review Skitch, a softeware package and online servce that make this oh-so-mundane function a breeze. Dope!

Watch the review:

or the video introduction at www.skitch.com

One good hour Spent: The Last Lecture (video)

Ed Celis — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:45:39 +0000

Randy Pausch was a successful. but definitely not famous young American professor of Computer Science at Carnagie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. In 2006, he learned that he had Pancreatic cancer- a form of cancer currently terminal - and set his mind to making the most with his time left on this earth. He concentrated on living right, and things that really matter.

A year later, in 2007, he gave an upbeat lecture based on his conclusions and life learning. The video of this unassuming, young, vibrant man living with a life sentence quickly became an internet sensation: in an era dominated by short viral videos, Pausche’s talk to a roomful of students sitting in an auditorium is a sensation with over 12,000,000 million views on YouTube, and counting.