Internet Access Is A Human Right

"Given that the Internet has become an indispensable tool for realizing a range of human rights, combating inequality, and accelerating development and human progress, ensuring universal access to the Internet should be a priority for all states." Such the spirit of the report on "the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression" to the United Nations by Frank La Rue, considering Internet access a Human Right.

We can't help but thinking about the numerous occasions in which the Internet is and has been an important medium of expression. Be it information, solidarity, protest or of the latest j'accuse.

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The Olympic Torch, Prototype Unveiled

The Torch is probably one of the most recognizable and significant symbols of the Olympic Games. This morning designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, who won the tender for its design, unveiled a first prototype in London.

The design itself connects the Torch Relay with its bearers using 8,000 circular holes in the golden aluminium alloy. It is of course the very number of inspirational figures, athletes and amateurs, who will bring the Torch to destination. 800 mm high and weighing around 800 grams, such remarkable symbology will be carried all the way to the opening ceremony.

Whether you are nominating Torchbearers or planning to assist to the sport competitions, you will probably be as thrilled as we by this first glimpse of Torch.
Yes, the Olympic Games are coming and we are proud to host the 2012 Edition in London.

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Open To A Panda Way Of Life

Browsing the internet brings up many cute little gadgets. If Google Panda (last April's major algorithm change) is still keeping you awake at night, you might just as well take it with some irony. We can't stop thinking of a similar speaker on Larry Page's desk...

Come In, It's Raining (Inside the House)

The sun is shining today in London, yesterday the weather was quite miserable. Yet in both cases we were in our cosy offices with big windows. The Glue Society, a quite irreverent Australian creative collective, made a great job by swapping things round.

Their contribution to the on-going Sculpture By the Sea  festival (2 June - 3 July, Aarhus, Denmark), is a big house where it actually rains inside. You visit it with pretty yellow rain jackets. The title of the work is I Wish You Hadn't Asked and it actually rains 200 litres of water per minute. There is a gloomy part to it all of course, because during the month of exposition the house will be slowly "transformed into a uncomfortable, hostile environment" by the rain itself.

Smile when you are indoors and it's raining then, or if you get curious of how things would be if it were the other way round, buy a ticket to Denmark. Totally worth it.

Image: Nicolai Lorenzen. Have a look at more.

Raising profile in UK and Middle East

Leading manufacturer of electronically switchable glass, SmartGlass™ International, was recommended to The Think Tank when it needed to its raise profile and make further inroads into some specific markets.

SmartGlass™ International is a key supplier to the healthcare, hospitality, and commercial sectors and is unique in that it only manufactures SmartGlass and is completely dedicated to this sector.  With a track record in supplying blue chip and bespoke clients worldwide, it asked The Think Tank to undertake a PR project to raise its profile in the UK and Middle East.

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Sit Up On Thin Air (Or On A Balloon Bench)

When you need something to lift up your spirit, or you simply want do daydream, you could not possibly find a better location that this Balloon Bench.

As passionate cinephiles, you will remember the French movie "Le Ballon Rouge" (1953) and the feeling of floating that the main character felt. Well, with great poetry the Japanese studio h220430 created this bench. In reality, it is suspended from the ceiling by 4 anchors concealed by the balloon shapes, which can actually work as lamps. This creates the illusion of being suspended, relying only on helium and romance.

Check out some more images and contact Gallery Somewhere in Tokyo if you want it for your flat, or office.

Promoting Safety in the Oil and Gas Sector

A new technical development, a corrosion monitoring system, developed by Permasense Ltd, provided The Think Tank with an opportunity to create press coverage in the international oil and gas trade press and raise the profile of this new company.

Permasense wanted to create a dialogue with the major International and National Oil Companies (IOCs and NOCs).  Its corrosion monitoring system, developed in partnership with Imperial College London and BP, heralds a new age of frequent, repeatable wall thickness monitoring giving previously unavailable insights into the condition and capability of critical oil and gas assets.

The Think Tank helped draft a press material and pitched the story ....

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Luce: A No Wires Required Laptop-pc

There are two ways of looking at this. First, drawing from Japan, we cannot ignore the reference in Andrea Ponti's work to the recent energy-related disaster in Fukushima. It is a stimulus to turn our attention to a concrete sustainable development in every day life.

Luce, "light" in Italian, is a solar panel powered laptop with a transparent finishing, which enables it to recharge continuously, during stand-by and use mode. The concept is that of creating wireless devices, self-powered and totally cable free. It is not by chance that Andrea was shortlisted in the the Fujitsu Design Competition 2011.

Second, we cannot help but thinking how incredibly handy it would be not to worry about clumsy cables anymore!

Images : Andrea Ponti

Stormtrooper's Dream by Honda

We can get excited about many things. What about a chopper design that brings out the Star Wars fan that is in you?

They did it again. With Peter Norris (who is probably better known for having recently designed the Pininfarina Coupe Concept), Honda developed this electric motorcycle concept, called Honda Chopper. Not only there is a very evident Star Wars inspiration, but with the extra long front suspension, the feet-forward seating position and the in-wheel motors, the Chopper is uber efficient and fast.

Back in 2007, there was some rumour of Star Wars X-Wing Starfighters being spotted around the US. Ironically enough, it was a Honda Civic. We couldn't help but re-posting this.

This is a green bike; will Honda actually bring it to the market?

While you think about it, check out these images.

The Beauty Behind QR Codes

When was the last time you saw a QR a code? If you have walked into a Tube station recently or if you have opened a magazine, you surely will have spotted at least a couple. QR (quick response) codes are used to facilitate the interaction with the digital world: they are a rapid access to the potential of your smartphone.

Whether these little black and white boxes should be used or not when they fight with an advert's graphics, that is Pandora's box.

We can point out though that they can become beautiful and meaningful things. Scott Blake created this portrait of Amy Goodman using the staggering amount of 2,304 QR codes.

The image is surprisingly detailed and the codes actually take the viewers to a nine year span of Democracy Now!, Amy's independent news program. We think that this makes the portrait a proper symbol: not only for the likeliness of the person featured, but for representing her life's work as well.

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A Floating Stadium Concept

Massive floating structures are fascinating and cool; and some represent interesting alternatives to the enormous investments that follow itinerant sport events like the FIFA World Cup. For the 2022 edition, German architects stadiumconcept developed the Floating Offshore Stadium.

Along the lines of the South Africa World Cup and the fixed costs arising from empty, large-scale football stadiums ("White Elephants"), this alternative investment focuses on mobility and multi-decade utilisation. Once the large event is over, the small isle can be shipped to the next venue and potentially host, for example, more than one FIFA tournament. This, maintaining a smart use of renewable energies, being eco-efficiently powered by a blend of hybrid energies such as water, wind and solar power.

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Apple Hits the 500,000 Apps Mark on iTunes

It happened in the early hours of Tuesday: in less than three years the App Store reached the half-million mark.

For some interesting stats, like on the image, a giant infographic was produced by three app-related companies. Mobile app blog 148apps, the search company Chomp together with game developer Chilingo collected a number of curiosities, including a timeline and a various facts.

To understand this data better and make a brief comparison, there have been 10 billion iOS app downloads through the App Store as of January. Although having been on the market 8 months less, the applications Google's Android currently count almost 300,000 apps and 3 billion downloads.

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Image : 148Apps, Chomp and Chillingo

Compressive: Abu Dhabi's Intuitive Parking Lot

You look at the picture and you imagine many different uses. But this is Compressive, the latest cutting-edge and futuristically designed sky-scraper in Abu Dhabi, and it is an intuitive parking lot.

Together with the design itself, what is truly amazing of this structure is that its intuitive thinking reacts to the weight of both you and your car. The uniqueness of Compressive is that it can sense occupancy, compressing the floors according to the need and depending on the cars parked on them. Groups of up to 5 floors can actually begin to sag, following the programmed use throughout the day. Or, the bright yellow pedestrian paths detect users and create an on-the-spot inverted speed bump to slow cars down.
Isn't this just amazing?

As part of the advanced Exotic Variables and States of Change studio, the project is led by Thom Faulders.

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Massive Energy-Generating Wind Tower for Japan

Take wind energy; imagine the "traditional" wind mill scenery. Three-sails white giants down to the horizon. This may not happen, as producers are starting to "think big". ZENA Systems is developing a new dimension in wind energy generation, dwarfing all its predecessors. 50 metres in height, the Wind Tower is an ambitious project that compressed wind from any direction using a three-point compression technique.

What is most relevant is that the system apparently would not be constrained by the "Bets limit value theory", which places the maximum efficiency of wind power generators at 59%. Higher values, together with the on-site energy storage of this project, would revolutionise the way in which wind is harvested.

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Make Your Way With the Clerkenwell Design Week App

We are proud of our neighbourhood and excited about tomorrow's opening of Clerkenwell Design Week, home to over 60 showrooms and a multitude of architectural and creative practices. Using a digital "guide" was mandatory and we loved the iPhone app, to remind you of the coolest events and make your way through the cutting edge design.

A veritable cultural hub, the festival will be attracting visitors from Tuesday 24th to Thursday 26th May 2011, encompassing an amazing 150 events, pop up exhibitions, installations, talks... Register online for your free entry!

Paper Holds Water at Milan Expo 2015

Eco-friendly design is Andrea Ponti's answer to a very contingent issue: what to do with the thousands of plastic bottles that will be used every day in Milan Expo 2015. The idea is to conceive the whole water problem differently: to use the Life (this is the name of the container) as a refillable solution with water fountains around the global exposition to meet visitors' daily demand.

Crafted in natural cotton and a recycled paper layer, it does not use any chemical ink or adhesives, truly becoming a one-day-use bottle. Eco-green strap to carry along, relevant printed information and there you go: paper holds water.

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Take a Break, Live Your Roof

Have you ever walked on your roof, for the very pleasure of doing so? Have you ever dreamed of living up there when you were a kid?

The Living Roof appears to be made exactly for that purpose: it is a refuge to recover, plan excursions into the city, or simply stare into the stars.

Clean, minimal interiors allow for concentration and thought, but the real wonders are eco-friendly. Based on the assumption that the contemporary citizen seeks mobility, but does not want to drain the environment, NAU designed Living Roof. Astonishingly, this small housing unit produces more energy than it consumes.

All the functions of daily life are condensed in a compact and self-sustaining capsule (it measures only 8.5 metres), which is ready to be airlifted from your rooftop. The beautiful twist of the windows gives you the chance to see both the sky or the street below. Real life or sci-fi, it is worth dreaming of.

Read more and be fascinated.

Images © NAU

Social media campaign improves visibility for OKI C300/C500

The Think Tank was asked to extend a pan-European OKI product launch campaign in the UK marketplace using social media channels to widen reach and promote the product in a non-traditional manner.

The creative campaign that was developed for the launch of the OKI C300 and C500 series of printers featured the products as real 'stars' on the covers of leading publications. A fanzine style micro site was developed to act as a focal point for the campaign and this included a blog which was used to deliver content for the social media element of promotion in the UK. The regular addition of content to this blog was communicated via Twitter over a six month period, with additional content being added to Flickr and YouTube to provide additional links back to the micro site. 

The campaign resulted in almost 12,000 views of content over the period and engaged a wide range of sector specific individuals, with Twitter followers reaching more than 1,300.

The Demographics of Social Media

Did you know that 86.5% of the people who like cats on Facebook are Women? An interesting fact, but have a look at the demographics pulled together in this table. We are often debating on the value Social Media and on their role in a company's life. It was quite time that we shared some stats.

Be it that you are looking at the ever growing 35-54 demographics or that you are considering Twitter's penetration (less than 10%), how should this affect your Social Marketing?

Read more on Advertising Age.

Top Five Building Product Brands Chosen by Architects

A new survey of UK architects lists Kingspan, Trespa, Velux, Schüco and Otis as the "strongest brands in building materials."

In the Q1 2011 research from the European Architectural Barometer, which is a quarterly study of attitudes of 1200 architects across Europe, architects were asked which brands they perceived as "strongest" in building materials such as bricks, concrete, mortar, insulation, facade and cladding material, aluminium systems, construction floors and roofing material. The top five firms for the UK were Kingspan (with 40% of responses), Trespa (15%), VELUX (8%), Schüco (7%) and Otis (6%).  

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