Rome is the latest result from a collaboration between Aaron Koblin and Mr.doob. They partnered up with the people from Google Chrome, North Kingdom, Radical Media, Mirada and Oddball Animation to create a music for the song ‘Black’ on Danger Mouse & Daniel Luppi’s new album called Rome.

The movie starts of with plane video footage, nicely shot, but nothing new. Once you fall asleep, you enter a 3D dream world where you are in control of what you see and how you change the environment. From changing a city into a green environment, to letting dark bulls and spiders run through a vast and open landscape, the animation is mesmerizing, jaw dropping and intensely inspirational.
And if that is not enough, the film ends in an open landscape where you can add your own pieces of artwork. When the films ends, you can enter the editor and add new objects in a similar style as Mindcraft. Your object will be added in the sky or on the surface of the last landscape where you and your birds will fly over.

Rome is one of the first good examples of what interactive experiences without Flash look like. It is mostly build in WebGL, a component that works inside HTML5′s canvas element and which enables hardware-accelerated 3D graphics. Apart from using this technology to its fullest, it uses Three.js for 3D generation and reflection and Processing.js as a simpler language to control the graphics. These are all open standards, which you can use yourself. Check out their Tech-page to learn more.

The film may not work in most browsers, nor on many computer, but it promises and exciting future for animation and rich interactive experiences on the web. For me it’s both an example and an inspiration for what is possible. And I hope many agree.

I know, another movie, but I think it’s a real nice project, watch it!

Inkquencer is an interaction design project by danish designer sebastian ronde thielke, which plays music based on a computer’s camera input. To interact with the project, users draw shapes and patterns on pieces of paper and hold them up to the camera on a computer. The computer captures an image of the drawing and compresses it into a 32×30 pixel version. The computer then plays the image, making a sound for each black pixel. The system can be applied to a drawing randomly or can be ‘played’ by uses with basic knowledge of the inkquencer’s process. Coming from a music background, ronde thielke wanted to find ways of bringing music sequencing into the physical world to allow for ‘a more direct tangible way of experimenting with sound and rhythm.’

Via Designboom

Today, Steve Jobs made rumors come true. The last weeks Apple fan websites were busy with all the rumors about the Apple Tablet. And today Steve Jobs finally unveiled the thing everyone was waiting on for years. As there was no way to watch the keynote live, I followed it at Engadgets live blog. At first I was a bit sceptic, no multitask, no revolutionary design, just a blown up iPhone. But after watching the promotional movie at the Apple website, I was sold. And my question to you readers is, how do they do it? 5 minutes before watching the movie I was like “now way i’m going to buy this thing”. And 13 minutes later, if it would all ready be for sale, I would pull out my credit card and buy myself the full option iPad.

This post is not about how great the iPad is (alright it is great and revolutionary and…), its about the presentation techniques Apple uses in their commercial video’s. We are all Apple fan-boys here at Parfois, but our iMacs, Macbook’s, Macbook pro’s and iPhones are to work on. their not just toys, we need them to do our daily work. I’m not the kind of person that buys everything Apple comes with, and during the keynote (not the movie but at Engadget in text and pictures) I was sure this was not a thing I needed. But Apple’s way of promoting it at this movie planted something in my brain that whispers “Buy the iPad Jonas, Buy the iPad…”. Want to experience it for yourself? Click the picture above to watch the movie, but watch out… It is dangerous for you financials. Let me know in the comments if Apple has imprinted the same special thing in your brain, as they did with mine. Read on to see some more iPad pictures.

Above I’ve stated that this post isn’t about how great the iPad is but off course, from a design prospective, it is fabulous. Look at the pictures below and feel the shiver.

Stewart Smith is an artist-programmer in New York City. Stewdio has had the pleasure of working with¬†O¬†R¬†G,Diller Scofidio + Renfro,¬†We Have Photoshop,¬†2×4,Warning Office, and more.

He has written some great and fun applications, such as Browser pong.

Browser Pong is a traditional Pong game played not in a browser window, but with browser windows.

On his website he has loads of Internet apps and strong idea’s. Check em out here!

Remember the good old days when you could just write your poems, diary or letters without being disturbed by numerous notifications of unread tweets, feeds and mail? Do you remember when you could just take your paper and pencil and go sit outside, inspiring yourself by the sound and view of nature? Well those days have long been gone. We can’t think of writing without a computer anymore. Even worse, the first things that comes to mind when we want to work outside is “Do we have an extension power cord that reaches that far?”. Some people still like the old school way of writing, not disturbed by alerts or notifications, enjoying the beauty of your surroundings. The guys behind Ommwriter took this even further. They tried to take the peace and quietness of that atmosphere and bring it to the digital age by making an intuitive and relaxing editor. OmmWriter let’s you concentrate on your writing. Choose an appropriate background-sound, wallpaper and text-format, and of you go. The application fills your entire screen, so no popups nor alerts will disturb you. And when you’re done, you save your file in the most usable format ever: txt. So wether you’re a blogger, journalist, copywriter, poet or screenwriter, try it out. Perhaps you feel a little less “digital” as you want to.