today and tomorrow

The Web Trend Map 2008 is finally out of beta, get your copy now! It definitely looks clearer as last years one, now let’s compare them.

Vinyl Remarks is a website where you can find and submit text, which you sometimes find between the run-out groove and the record label . I really like this idea and the look and feel of it.

‘Design and the Elastic Mind‘ is an exhibition at MoMA, New York, about the relation between science and design. I think this is one of the most exciting subjects these days and I would love to go and check out that exhibition. Fortunately, tha ltd. build this website where you can find over 300 projects. The navigation may seem a little awkward at first, but once you get the hang of it …

Swisstrains.ch is an impressive Google Maps application, you can follow every single train in Switzerland. It’s not GPS based, but on the punctual timetable, hé it’s Switzerland. You can click on a station to see which trains are leaving soon, but you can also click on a train, a small popup appears where you can click ‘Follow’. Now you’re a virtual bird’s eye view trainride through Switzerland.

‘Absolut Machines‘ is quite an amazing project by Absolut Vodka. Basically, Absolut commissioned 2 interactive sound sculptures, which you can control through the website, you’ll have to wait in line though.
‘Absolut Quartet’ is a robotic mechanical orchestra, by playing the piano you can inspire the 3 robotic ‘musicians’. You can find some making of pictures in this Flickr set. The other one, ‘Absolut Choir’ is a machine consisting of 22 choir members, by typing in words and sentences you inspire them to sing. Both are just amazing!
On the website you can choose from different camera angles, see some documentation, download your composition as a video etc. It’s just a pain to use it. I think it’s a shame that the website doesn’t match the quality of the installations.
Here is a tip, just go to the press website if you want to get straight to the info.

A few weeks ago, Nike launched the Jordan XX3, the last signature Micheal Jordan sneaker ever (ok we’ll see about that). Ofcourse they made a website to go along with it: XX3. Blast Radius did an excellent job there!
You arrive in some sort of hall from where you can enter 4 diffentent rooms. And when I say rooms, I mean 3D rooms where you can ‘walk’ around thanks to a nice interface. For those of you who don’t like this kind of explorative browsing, there’s a nice and clean alternative navigation at top of the page.
I think this is one of the best implementations of 3D Flash I’ve seen since a long time. It looks like Papervision3D, an open source 3D flash engine, is getting some real momentum here.
And as a bonus: the Nike M4 website, a few months old but definitely worth checking out too.

180 Amsterdam made this animation for adidas, it’s all about Adi Dassler and his achievements. The details and the technique are amazing, you have to watch the ‘Behind the Scenes’ video too! You can find the micro website here.

found @ the weirdest website of the day: littledagger.org

Takashi Okada is graphic and web designer, his experimental personal works are worth watching!

It’s that time of the year again, when ecards show up on every website. ‘Love for 2007‘ is the current ecard by Issey Miyake and it’s a damn simple but stylish one.