Here are a few links:

COME OUT AND PLAY
http://www.comeoutandplay.org/blog/

MIT LAB
http://www.projectnml.org/exemplars/07biggames/#

Jane McGonigal
http://www.avantgame.com/

Frank Lantz
http://gothamist.com/2004/05/04/frank_lantz_game_designerteacher.php

Area Code
http://www.playareacode.com/

Conflux
http://confluxfestival.org/conflux2007/

Eric Paulos
http://www.paulos.net/

Julian Bleecker
http://www.techkwondo.com/

This flickr user has transformed Edward Hopper’s diners into a generic corporate site with a great deal of complexity. I love this photo. I should hate it. Maybe. But I love the McDonald’s Sundae’s. I found this while working on my presentation for Capture The Corporation. Go to the site for more: http://www.capturethecorporation.com

What’s happening NOW…elsewhere? This is a camera that takes pictures of someone else’s pictures. huh?

First heard about this via Kevin Slavin + Adam Greenfield and then via Julian Bleecker’s blog and finally, through the source.

1. a blank camera with no lens…

2. takes a picture…

3. which then reveals a picture that was taken…. but this is not the picture you took. it is rather, a picture SOMEONE ELSE took – at the exact time you pressed the button. a shared photographic moment, if you will.

see the site
http://www.pohflepp.com/

I just heard about (or re-heard about) Jane McGonigal, a game designer.  She went to UC Berkely and is in the big games field. She designed Cruel2BeKind, which was featured in Come Out & Play. Interesting research, writings, and ideas about big games, performance, and other things good. Definitely a person to keep on your radar, whoever you are.

You can read her blog HERE.

A few days ago, Ellen Moynihan and a few friends redecorated the subways (mainly the F line). It took her and her friends only 40 minutes to re-outfit the entire subway with welcome mats, rugs, and un-advertisements.

Read her blog post about it.
HERE and HERE (there are photos here)

This reminded me of an Ikea Marketing Campaign I read about some time ago.
http://www.businessinnovationinsider.com/2006/05/good_design_can_make_the_every.php

The campaign: Ikea redecorates a bus stop and other urban areas with their furniture.
Picture from Curbed:
http://www.curbed.com/archives/2006/05/19/ikea_pimps_your_bus_stop.php

My favorite comment: “That’s not a bus shelter, it’s a $600/month studio apartment with lots of outdoor space.” In New York, that’s not so far from the truth.

oh no. bluetooth marketing. it’s in NYC. i saw this animated video billboard in a bus stop while walking down 14th street and 3rd Ave. supposedly, you can get stuff from the billboard if you activate your bluetooth device. i got nothing but a chilly spine on this cold night.

i’ll save you the hassle – it’s a yahoo music site with videos.

i just found out about Rice to Riches, a rice pudding shop in Little Italy. Was it actually a front for a gambling operation????

From the NYTimes article: There has always been something strange about the business on Spring Street. It seems too beautiful, too expensive an operation, given that it sells only coffee and 20 flavors of rice pudding. Beyond that beauty — the serving case with specially designed pudding bowls, the oval glass entryway sculptured like a grain of rice, the quirky flavors like Stubborn Banana and No Guts, No Carrot Cake — lies a tight-lipped tale.

Mr. Moceo, 45, displayed an artist’s delicacy and care with his rice pudding store that was not apparent in what prosecutors say were his rough dealings in an illegal underworld. In announcing the arrests and charges against Mr. Moceo and 19 other men — including his father, also named Peter Moceo, 69 — the Suffolk County district attorney, Thomas Spota, said the ring was ”probably one of the largest gambling operations ever in Suffolk County.”

Mr. Scotto also represented the elder Mr. Moceo and said that his clients were not guilty. ”I have to laugh,” Mr. Scotto said, when asked about a link between his clients and organized crime. ”Too many people watch ‘The Sopranos,’ so everyone thinks they’re half an expert on all this stuff, you know what I mean?”

Before Mr. Moceo was arrested, I had begun reporting an article trying to answer the question, How do you make money from rice pudding? Sales at Rice to Riches averaged $15,000 to $18,000 a week, according to the trade publication Nation’s Restaurant News. While ”moby” portions (serving 10) go for $35, most customers order the two smallest sizes at $4.75 and $6, which I found out in my research.

A Proposal for a Mobile Project in the Urban Landscape

:: My ::
hactivists, corporations, the man, tourists, flickr’ers

:: The Intervention ::
I will be placing stickers underneath corporate logos

People will be encouraged to “Shoot the Corporation,” using their camera phones as a weapon against consumerism. When people shoot the logos and send them to the appropriate address, they will get a message in return. The message might contain facts about the corporation, and perhaps even a coupon as provocation.:: The Reason ::
Corporations have polluted our cities, lives, and urban landscapes. “This used to be a small mom&pop shop,” is a common lamentation heard in the streets. On a world level, corporations have polluted our culture. Ford and GM’s combined revenue was greater than the entire GDP (gross domestic product) of Sub-Saharan Africa. It’s a crime what they’re doing. So, is it really a crime to shoot a corporation (or its logo)?

Like the situationists, commuters, and critical masser’s before us, we must not be discouraged by this logo polluting. Instead, I propose using the ubiquitous nature of these logos to discern a higher level of discussion.

The urban landscape can divided into several layers or levels:

The material level of a city is difficult to deny – it is a hard fact. The usage and interpretation of a city, however, is more malleable.

Shoot the corporation.

This is a window into the multiple array of doors in brooklyn, NYC. With multiple doors, and multiple users, you must wonder – who is using all these doors ? i particularly like the steps leading up to the doors.

In Ubik by Philip K Dick, doors require fees in order to let tenants outside their homes.

Kind of like a metrocard for your house

The McCarren Pool in Williamsburg had been in disuse for many decades. In 2005, it was used by artist Noemie LaFrance as a performance space. The pool/site is currently undergoing a transformation and is seeking submissions/proposals for reinterpretation.

Seems to me that the whole process should be an open-source kind of process. The community should vote, the community should submit, the community should participate. The space should be dictated by the community, and there should be openings built throughout the decision process.

THE PROPOSAL
From http://sensproduction.org/current/pool2.php

Our intention is to reopen the McCarren Park Pool site permanently to the public by summer of 2007 with ongoing festivities through out the year. The McCarren Park Pool would become a facility to present and promote local and international, emerging and established artists, combined with an exciting range of recreational activities and educational programs for all.

It will give community members a way to develop and manage their own activities and programs within the facility for all to participate. The organization’s programming and proposed infrastructure is non-unilateral. A network of partnering institutions are to use the space and generate programs for it, gathering the effort of many NYC groups and organizations such as universities, cultural institutions or community groups in need of an outdoor open space.

We envision that the entire neighborhood will join to celebrate the space’s new interim purpose and future and enjoy activities that are for everyone. Please join our efforts in creating a space for originality and diversity.