RIBA Stirling Prize shortlist announced

This year's RIBA Stirling Prize shortlist has been announced with six buildings, including the London Olympic Stadium by Populous and two projects by OMA.

The six that will compete for the £20,000 prize for the Best Building by a British-registered architect are:

The Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire by David Chipperfield Architects (pic 1)
London Olympic Stadium by Populous (pic 2)
The Lyric Theatre, Belfast by O’Donnell + Tuomey
Maggie’s Centre, Gartnavel, Glasgow by OMA
New Court, London by OMA with Allies and Morrison
Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge by Stanton Williams (pic 3)

See more about the shortlist here.

3D lenticular images by The Saline Project

The Saline Project are a Brooklyn based trio who are best known for creating music videos for the likes of Eminem, 50cent, and The Cure.

Their most recent project focusses on evolving the gif format to something they're calling 3D lenticular… to great effect.

The Saline Project is an award winning group of artists and have worked on many projects including when they were commissioned by ABC to make a title sequence to 110 Stories (below) which involved manipulating photographs taken on 9/11 in New York to give them depth.

Find out more here.

Dance through your life with 'Me the Musical'

See your life in dance with this adorable app, Me the Musical, by Intel that links to your Facebook profile and takes you from birth to today in your very own musical.

It's great fun and brought a smile to our face on a rainy afternoon.

Get started here - Enjoy.

Who's buying which book around the world

Have you ever wondered what books are being bought around the world?

Well maybe not, but just in case The Book Depository has launched a Live site that allows you to see what books are being bought worldwide in real time.

Very interesting.

See the live site here.

Create your own modern artwork

Ever wanted to be a modern artist, then take a look at this website, jacksonpollock.org.

With the movement of your mouse and a few clicks you can create your own piece of modern art.

Enjoy.

Click here to get started.

Olympic postage stamps designs launched - great #olympics #design #london2012 http://bit.ly/O9hfK7

Olympics stamps designs are a winner

Hat-trick Design has created a series of stamps to celebrate the London 2012 Olympics which feature iconic London landmarks alongside various sports. 

Great design.

They are on sale now.

Making sense of lip reading

We found this strange but funny blog called 'Bad Lip Reading' which takes video clips from films and the news and lays new audio over the top. 

The result is an amusing take on what the actors, politicians and musicians are saying - but the audio matches their lips.

Un-nerving.

There are many more of these clips here. 

Amazing images caught by Google Street View

The 'Nine Eyes of Google Street View' is a photo project by artist Jon Rafman named after the nine lenses mounted on a Google Street View camera.

He has collected many of the strange and beautiful images that Google has capture by accident from around the world.

See more of these amazing, weird, frightening and striking images here.

Olympics Opening Ceremony Fun

At no time does The Think Tank condone excessive drinking however this Olympics Opening Ceremony Drinking Game is great fun.

Something to keep you occupied tonight!

Issued by truelad.com

A Dash for Gold with Actuate

BIRT (Business Information Reporting Tools) developer and founder Actuate has launched a fantastic microsite, Dash for Gold,  that allows you to investigate and explore the results of sports competitions of the past and compare them to this year’s games.  

Using their intuitive reporting dashboard they interrogate a wide range of economic, demographic and geographical data to hunt out the trends and enable users to analyse and predict their own medal winners in simple and easy to understand graphical interfaces.  

The Think Tank was asked to create a brand identity for the online application including a detailed infographic which explains what users can expect when they delve into its data.  

The branding was extended to a series of multi-lingual online banners and a video that guides users through the experience. Working closely with Actuate during the app’s development, The Think Tank has provided advice on messaging, design and graphical execution of the microsite and application as well as the marketing collateral that promotes it.  

This simple to use app puts you in control of the data past and present, allowing you to predict this year’s winners alongside a competition for the best dashboard created by users.  

Actuate Dash for Gold includes:  

Did you know: Sports and competition data at your fingertips

All historic and current information at one glance in a dashboard application with sports data that is updated daily. Compare and analyse historic results by country or by discipline. Get timely information on your country's medal count.    

Interactive Analytics: Explore & Play  

The interactive analytics section of the Dash for Gold app allows you to correlate sports and medal information with external data and gain completely original insights. The app brings together different public databases with geopolitical and economic data by country as well as some fun facts. Review performance against world economic and demographic factors such as wine consumption, CO2 emissions or fertility rates. Or maybe you already knew that countries with a low birth rate under perform in swimming?    

BIRT Dash for Gold Contest: Join the athletes and compete  

From 27th July you will have the opportunity to create your own interactive dashboards to uncover trends and fun facts about the world’s top sporting competitions by applying economic, climatic, historical and other indicators to sports data. You'll be amazed at what you find as you drag and drop Google-style gadgets to discover hidden correlations and expose exciting information about your favourite countries and sporting events.  

When you're ready, submit your dashboards to the competition and they'll be published to the community for all to see. Judges will evaluate and choose the top four dashboards and each will win a 32GB 3rd generation Apple iPad with WiFi.  

To get in the game you can find out more and register here to keep current on the latest updates and contest announcements.    

On the go – Mobile Dash for Gold  

Keep your sporting facts handy wherever you are with mobile access to Dash for Gold. After registering, you will receive a link to access daily updates to the latest competition results and figures. Dash for Gold Mobile has been optimized for iPad and viewable on most tablet browsers.

Get predicting here and delve into the facts.

How to deal with cold callers

If you are sick of receiving annoying sales calls then this clip from the States could give you some ideas of how to make sure they never call again.

A very amusing prank.

Inappropriate domains that seemed a good idea at the time

Here are some great domain names that have unintentional meanings - seemed like a good idea at the time.

See many more on makeuseof.com - good for a giggle.

Push-Up bus comes to London

Czech artist David Cerny has brought his London bus that does push ups to Islington in time for the Olympics.

He created The London Booster by attaching huge arms, suspension mechanics and adding groaning sound effects to the 1957 double decker bus.

The Czech artist commented that the piece could be seen as ironic because push-ups are "a common exercise for every sportsman" but also punishment.

It has been placed outside the Czech team headquarters in Islington, London for the duration of the games.

See it in action below:

Striking illustrations of unusual words

These great illustrations are part of a series of bold graphics and visual wit that are used to interpret and represent a collection of strange, unusual and lost words.

The designs are produced by The Project Twins, a graphic design and illustration studio in Cork, Ireland.

The full collection was exhibited at the MadArt Gallery Dublin during DesignWeek 2011. It consisted of 26 50cm X 70cm Giclee Prints on Hahnemühle 100% Cotton Rag (each in a limited edition of 10).

You can see many more of these striking designs, in fact a complete A-Z,  here.

These works are: 

1. Acersecomic    - A person whose hair has never been cut.

2. Biblioclasm    - The practice of destroying, often ceremoniously, books or other written material and media.

3. Dactylion    - An anatomical landmark located at the tip of the middle finger.

Funny ads do no better that straight ads

Here's some interesting research from the States that funny ads are no more effective than others.

Ace Metric looked at the ads that ran during the Super Bowl. Apparently one in five TV ads in the States are funny, and Super Bowl ads are three times funnier than the rest. But none of this makes much difference in selling stuff, according to new research by syndicated ad-testing firm Ace Metrix

The Index compares brand to average, so Doritos ads had 6.35 times as many people who found them funny as an average ad in the study. The Ace effectiveness score takes into account a variety of rating factors, including how much consumers like the ad, pay attention to it, and are persuaded by it to want the product or service.

Find out more about this study on AdAge. Makes interesting reading.

Does anyone know of similar studies in the UK?

See one of the funniest ads below:

Giant penguin towers over London

London Zoo has announced plans to to transform London's iconic Gherkin building into ‘The Penguin’  over the summer.

ZSL London Zoo has commissioned a production team to draw up a dramatic redesign of the famed skyscraper to remind visitors to the capital not to miss their penguins in 2012.

They plan to approach city bigwigs with the bold concept of turning the prominent Swiss Re Building – more commonly known as The Gherkin – into a giant penguin.

Not sure whether this idea will fly, especially being a penguin.

See more over on London Zoo's website.

Giant fish wash up on beach in Rio

This enormous outdoor installation of fish is part of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20)  and was constructed using discarded plastic bottles on Botafogo beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The sculptures are illuminated from the inside creating a pretty spectacular light show at night.

See more over on this Rio+20 Flicker set.