Just found out about these folks in a review of the upcoming Animation Show 4. In America, they’re best-known product was the Coca-Cola ad “Videogame,” which I unabashedly love. In clicking around their filmography (requires a little digging), I found “Grand Classics” an engaging retelling of the history of cinema with a rabbit as a main character. See how many film references you can spot!

In catching up with various media after my vacation, I got around to listening to a BusinessWeek Innovation Podcast with graphic design luminary Steven Heller on The Business of Web Design.

Given the podcast’s title, I wasn’t at all ready for the conversation that occurs, wherein Mr. Heller blathers a misguided, outdated, outmoded, and mostly pathetic commentary on the state of design online.

Anyone familiar with the history of web design, could tell you that his commentary is reminiscent of what was spouted in 1996-1997 when graphic designers realized they were going to lose their battle to gussy up the web with “aesthetics” and that, god forbid, people just wanted to get shit done online.

This is not to diminish the role of great visual design online. But why do old guard graphic designers have to declaim that the current state of design on the web is so bad, and that it must be thrown out in favor of a more aesthetic one? The web is a remarkably successful medium and content platform. I’d pay more attention to the likes of Mr. Heller if he demonstrated an appreciation for the nature of the medium, and articulated a desire to mix in great graphic design with what’s already there, instead of grousing about clutter.

It’s just appalling that after 12 or so years of web design practice, we’re still having to address these inane views.

Considered by many to still be the best car chase ever filmed, the classic scene from Bullitt has long amused San Franciscans as automobiles seemingly leap through wormholes to get to totally different parts of the city. Now a fan has provided a real-time-map to go along with the chase, so you can see just how much territory is covered.

Here Comes Everybody, by Clay Shirky. In retrospect, it’s surprising that it took this long for Clay to write a book. Given my past run-ins with his postulations, I approached the book with some skepticism. It won me over, though, because, unlike when he’s addressing issues of information science, when he talks about social software and social movements online, he knows what he’s talking about. In some ways, this is Smart Mobs 6 years later (which I blogged extensively at the time.)

Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely. However much I liked Here Comes Everybody, I actually believe this to be a more important, and fundamental, book. It’s a quick read — a few hours at most. It details a series of experiments that the author, with a variety of colleagues, conducted in order to probe the economic irrationality of humans. It turns out much of our economic behavior makes little rational sense. Thankfully, Ariely doesn’t propose any explanations for this irrationality (many others would be tempted to weave some evolutionary psychobabble)… But he does propose a set of implications, usually having to do with regulating our economy, because if people are simply not going to be rational, a “free market” ends up doing harm, because it inadvertently (or not) takes advantage of such irrationality. Ariely maintains an active blog on this subject.

I enjoyed the insights Ariely provides into understand human behavior. My only frustration with the book is that, because Ariely treats the population as a whole, and he’s interested in how populations behave, he doesn’t provide any insights into classes of people, and I think it would be interesting to know if there are, say, people who *do* behave rationally, and what characteristics do they possess?