A little while ago I blogged about Peter Root’s cityscape staple art after seeing it on Fubiz. Now, after exploring more of the Fubiz archives I’ve fond some more staples art that I think I might enjoy even more.

It took the French artist, Baptiste Debombourg, 75 hours and 35,000 staples to create the pieces and you can see loads more of his awesome installations on his website.

I can imagine using this technique to make a nice TV, Print or Guerilla campaign for a stationary brand or chain like Rymans (or Staples of course!). I can see a stop motion TV spot with quirky music and an artwork or logo being created with staples in this technique. 

Just found these cool drawings from Ben Heine on the Daily Obsessional blog and thought that they were well worth sharing. I’m surprised I haven’t seen this technique used in some ads for an art shop or something. I think it’s a bit of a shame about the blatant Photoshop work though, I’d prefer if it was a little more subtle and realistic or if the pictures were actually being held up in front of those views.

This post was mostly written way back in January and after a conversation about Weight Watchers at work I thought it was about time I finished it off and published it once and for all. Enjoy…

Every now and then I go through a phase of eating like shit and drinking a lot of booze. Along with my severe lack of exercise (apart from walking up a couple of escalators each day) this tends to lead to a rather unsightly mound of belly that rolls into an even more unsightly flab show when I sit down. Don’t wince, it happens to you too and you know it!

At these times I turn to Weight Watchers and I’m not ashamed to say it. When I tell my mates that I sometimes follow a Weight Watchers diet I tend to fuel about an hour or so of mockery and bullying and they find it terribly amusing. Luckily for me they have larger bellies than me so I am always the last one laughing.

For those of you too busy laughing at me I shall explain how Weight Watchers works in a sentence or three… You are allocated a set amount of points per day based on your age, gender, height and weight. All foods are made up of a set amount of points based on the ratio of calories to saturated fat, for example the average slice of bread is 1.5 points. You eat whatever shit you want, just as long as you don’t eat more than your set amount of points.

The problem with the whole points thing is that you can never remember what each food is worth in terms of points. You can buy special calculators that work it out for you and you can get these chart things to work it out but they’re awkward and you’ll never remember to keep them with you all of the time.

So, why the fuck isn’t there a Weight Watchers iPhone app? It would be so easy for everyone and all it would need to consist of is the silly Weight Watchers calculator but just built into the application.

Then if Weight Watchers wanted to make it really fancy (and useful) they could build in a diary/log type thing so that you can record how many points you’ve used each day.

THEN, if they wanted to go REALLY fancy they could build in a barcode scanner (already existing technology in other iPhone apps) so that you could just scan the food in the supermarket or sandwich shop and it works out the points value for you while you’re stood there.

Although I’ve never seen it, I believe there’s a Weight Watchers magazine. This could easily be integrated into the application for an additional charge or even for free if the app is charged high enough in the first place.

The app could offer so much more than this too. These ideas are just the tip of the iceberg because the app could offer hints, tips, advice, recipe’s, reminders of your meetings and more.

So, Weight Watchers, if you’re reading this here’s a could of really really simple ideas that could get you started off with a half decent iPhone application that would be useful to much of your target audience. And before you say “oh but then people won’t pay for membership anymore” you can easily make it available only to existing members by having to enter in your unique membership number when you download it. You could also encourage more memberships by offering the app to buy and download with only half the functionality if you aren’t a member, thus driving users to upgrade their app by joining Weight Watchers.

I don’t even know why I’ve rambled on about this, I don’t even have a fucking iPhone.

Since meeting a few guys and girls from Yelp recently I’ve become a (slightly addicted) Yelp user and enjoy writing reviews a few times per week. As a result I’ve begun to notice some areas for improvement and thought I’d start a blog post to list my ideas to see if any other Yelp users agree?

Filtering

- When browsing in map view I want to be able to filter the results by checking/unchecking boxes to show places with/without my specific interests such as cuisine type, price range, outdoor seating, WiFi, etc. They have a system like this at the moment but it doesn’t allow you to uncheck or filter out something you know you’re not interested in. This would make browsing easier.

WiFi

- Yelp should include an option to give a star rating of the WiFi for a cafe/bar/restaurant etc because the quality of WiFi at each place varies so much. WiFi sometimes comes up in the ‘Show more survey questions’ but it should also be one of the check boxes that always comes up.

Rating System

- When you write a review you get the option to answer a set of survey questions about what services the establishment offers (e.g. Takeaway? Delivery? Smoking Area?). This is good but without reading through all the reviews it doesn’t tell us about the quality of services. For example I’d like to see a star rating system for things such as quality of food, quality of drinks, quality of atmosphere,  good/bad music, speed of delivery, sheltered smoking area, quality of WiFi, etc

Writing more than one review per place

Sometimes I’ll check out a club or sandwich shop or wherever and I’ll come away feeling really happy, knowing I’ll go back at some point. But then when I go back it’s awful. I don’t know why this is, perhaps I was served by someone else or I just go unlucky.

Also, I’ve been to a bar before to have lunch and thought it was amazing with great service and good food but then when I’ve been in the evening for drinks it’s been slow service and poor quality.

Yelp should let you write multiple reviews for occasions like this because at the moment you can only update your previous review. This would give readers a better idea as to the consistency of a place, what it’s good (and not good) for and it would show how many times particular Yelpers go to that place (it must be good if they go a lot). For example, Tossed is unpredictable but Gaucho is consistently amazing and readers could see that I go there a lot.

Blog Synchronising

I think it’d be great if your Yelp reviews synchronised with your blog. So when I write a review on Yelp it gives me an option to publish the review to my blog also, just like it does now with Twitter and Facebook.

This would encourage people to put more effort into writing a good quality review, rather than just posting quickly without thought or care. It would also spread the word of Yelp further as each synchronised blog post could come with a link to the Yelp review, thus diverting more traffic to Yelp.

Embedding photographs and links

In the same way that I write a blog post with embedded photographs and links it would we good to be able to do this with Yelp too. Then you can use the photographs to help explain what you’re talking about and they’d help break up the text, making large reviews easier to digest. These embedded images could be pulled automatically from within the reviews and put in the photos section for each business.

If you have any to add, feel free to do so in the comments or mail them to me and I’ll add them in. Once there’s a decent amount I’ll send them to Yelp via their Feedback page.

There, that’s it for now. It’s not a rant at Yelp, because they’ve got great usability already, it’s just some idea of how it could be improved further. Apologies if I’ve said something that they already do, let me know if I have!

A pretty neat installation in a gallery in Australia using bouncy balls.

This would have made a cool stunt for Sony Bravia TVs back when their Bouncy Balls ad came out. They could have erected a huge Sony Bravia TV with suspended bouncy balls (as above) and viewing members of the public could have stepped inside and walked around the suspended, pixel-like bouncy balls. In fact, they should do it if they bring out 3D TVs with some copy that’s reminiscent of their pre-existing campaign…

‘3D. Like No Other’

They could even re-shoot the bouncy balls ad using 3D cameras and air it on telly and cinema after dishing out Sony branded 3D glasses.

There you go, Fallon, this one’s on me. The next you’ll have to pay for. And don’t forget to credit me, yeah.

Pictures from Fubiz blog

I can’t remember who brought this thought to my attention but ever since they did I’ve been wondering if anyone actually uses telephone boxes anymore. Do you?

I’m sure you don’t because you probably have a mobile phone, like me, and everyone else that can speak. Well anyway, after much thought and a little inspiration I’ve found the solution…

Hooker Cubicles

Yes, that’s right, Hooker Cubicles. After walking past this defaced phone box advert I had a light bulb moment and I think I’ve cracked it. That bright light you see in the photograph is my light bulb moment.

It works like this…

Telephone boxes (such as the one above) adopt price lists (such as the one above) and red lights in the ceiling. A prostitute can then rent the booth to tout business (or ‘clients’ as they probably don’t call them) and use the phone for whatever it is that they use telephones for. They’re usually plastered with prossy cards anyway so it seems to fit.

There you go. That’s it. My idea for what to do with phone booths. If you don’t like it, suggest something better.