What is it about this little game that’s so addictive? Why is my Facebook news reel littered with Bejeweled Blitz score posts with the caption titles “I want my life back!” and “Where did the last two hours go?”?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it has something to do with bright colours and fun sound effects. Not to mention the voice that encourages you during solo gaming, “INCREDIBLE!” Maybe this is all an effect of our collective short attention span, but with the new Blitz version of the game they’ve taken it a step further. Now there are leader boards and progress graphs so you can track how much better, or worse, of a bejeweler you are than your friends.

I’m not saying that Bejewled is on the same level as really addictive games like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XI, which both sport in-game reminders that there exists a real world outside of the online fiction. But those games are persistent online worlds geared towards serious gamers who invest time and money into the characters they’re playing. Bejeweled appeals to all markets, casual to pro, and can be just as intense for some.

Still, why is it so addictive? “I want my life back!”

The Japanese company states on their website that their conceptual goal is to “give people a small ‘!’ moment.” With this simple, rectangular chair they have accomplished just that. The chair is constructed of wood and clear acrylic painted to mimic wood grain. The paint on the legs trails off about halfway down to give the illusion that the chair is floating above the ground.

I want to have these around my dining room table.

The first I want to talk about is a highway map after the London underground map. I’m not kidding, it’s the United States highway system plotted in the manner of H.C. Beck’s original London Underground diagram. And it’s pretty awesome.

The next is a crazy awesome video from NuFormer Digital Media. Basically what’s happening here is NuFormer is projecting animations on buildings with such clarity that it’s almost 100% believable. My favourite is the roof collapse at 00:35.

Projection on Buildings from NuFormer Digital Media on Vimeo.

The EyeWriter Project is an “ongoing collaborative research effort to empower people, who are suffering from ALS, with creative technologies.” Basically, with fifty dollars, a computer, and some free software the EWP team puts together some hardware that enables people paralysed with ALS (or Lou Gehrig’s disease) to draw and create using only the movement of their eyes. What they create can be projected in real time (or at least the real time bit is implied by the video) or saved and projected or printed later in a gallery setting.

Check out their WEBSITE.
Or just watch the VIDEO.

Read the far more interesting full article by Chris Jacob at GIZMODO.com. While you do that, I’m gonna go download DOOM and destroy my phone’s battery life.

In the words of my good friend Rossi Dixon, “this makes fonts sexy again.” Fontplore is, quite possibly, the best use of the Microsoft Surface table technology I have seen thusfar. As an interactive font exploration device it is miles and miles ahead and above any organisational tool yet devised for typeface management. I want one. No really, I want one right now. Unfortunately it’s not ready yet… and even when it is I’m sure the cost will place it farther out of my grasp than a trip to the moon.

From the website: “As the development and distribution of interactive tables is still in its early days, we see the Fontplore Table as some kind of customer attraction for the bigger design agencies, where clients and designers get together and share the experience of selecting a suitable typeface for the project.” The video of the prototype in action is quite exciting. In fact Rossi and I both watched it over and over while frantically typing out messages of awe and excitement to each other over AIM… but we’re geeky that way. You may or may not have the same reaction, assuming you’re equally geeky about design and technology and have a friend also equally geeky. The music is also rather awesome.

Fontplore Showreel from Mphasize on Vimeo.

The project is a creative lifestyle magazine that with each issue will visit a new theme and then explore topics within that theme. We plan on inviting artists, photographers, designers, and writers to participate with each issue theme and truly live up to the name variantMethod. Our brand inspirations are publications like GOOD and WIRED magazine, but we’ll be bringing a bit more attitude to the page.

We’ll be using Hewlett-Packard’s MagCloud service as our printing solution, EXCITING!

Look for it in 2010. Or keep the website on your radar for any project updates.

In July Stefan Sagmeister gave his third TED conference talk at TED GLOBAL. This time he spoke about the power of time off. Essentially taking time every couple of years to stop working and start enjoying. Enough of my drivel, watch the talk:

I really love that carved chair. DO WANT!

Mameshiba

“Gameplay is not everything,” said Silicon Knights (Eternal Darkness) founder and president Denis Dyack. “If you look at the most popular games today, they are far more narrative-focused.”

Dyack’s controversial message was delivered during a talk at Brighton, UK’s Develop Conference calling for games to be considered as “the Eighth Art.” He highlighted the writings of Ricciotto Canudo, an Italian author and one of the first theorists of film who considered cinema to be the Seventh Art.

“That video games are art is quite obvious to me,” he continued. “The new synthesis is interactivity and gameplay. Instead of moving pictures, that which movies brought to art, we now have interactivity as the glue that brings together all the previous artistic elements.”

Read that again. “That video games are art is quite obvious to me [...] we now have interactivity as the glue that brings together all the previous artistic elements.” Yeah, Dyack summarises it perfectly there. This is something that’s been hotly debated for a long time in the gaming world, “are video games art.” And while I’ve been a fan of Silicon Knights for a while, Denis Dyack just scored innumerable points with me personally. But I digress, read the full Gamasutra interview with Denis Dyack here.