Flicking through this year’s Webby Awars winners, I’m a bit baffled by the people’s voice for the employment category. Yes, Monster’s new career site looks a lot better than it did. And yes, it’s tweaked some of its features. But no, what they’re doing is not exactly ‘new’.

I’d say VisualCV – one of the other nominees – comes much closer to actually innovating on the recruitment front. But as people and voices go, Monster probably got a fair share from its truckload of employees.

I gave 8tracks a big thumbs up in the music category (didn’t win), and I love IBM’s Wordle (won ‘best typography’; something I’m definitely going to use more often – see image below).

(photo silly chair monster by massdistraction on Flickr)

Any idea, burst of creativity, drop of genius or innovation, is always a recombination of things past – whether we like it or not.

But I find this a comforting thought, because all I have to do to get one, is devour films, music, books, paintings, poems, photographs, conversations, dreams, trees, architecture, street signs, clouds, light and shadows.

And then I’m to proceed as follows:

‘Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.

Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul.

If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic.

Don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it.

And remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”‘

(I celebrate that I stole this from Paul Arden’s Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite, which celebrated that it stole from Jim Jarmusch, who celebrated what he stole from Jean-Luc Godard.)

This is how I first put theory to the audiovisual test, and with the art work above this phrase I show how Mark Malazarte did it (whom I found through Faris Yakob’s ‘talent imitates, genius steals’ blogpost Nothing is Original, which I found through some other site, but I can’t back-track that far.

(photo theft insurance stolen from myriapod on flickr)

Witty and often hilarious – and obviously with plenty of examples, this is surely on of the best and most entertaining seminars ever dished out to the Library of Congress.

Having watched this, I strongly believe that if Google ever tries to shut the platform down (it still struggles to make money from Youtube), there’ll be murder and mayhem everywhere.

Click play below to watch (it lasts almost an hour, but worth every minute).

(photo watching the anthropology of Youtube on the iPhone by ~C4Chaos)

Alluding to George Orwell’s 1984, it proved a masterly teaser to Jobs’ (also masterly) personal introduction of the Macintosh two days later. For one, the ad became a free publicity stunt when it was shown in full on several of the major news networks. But, according to Murray, its real success was striking a specific chord with the audience. Have a look at both ad and presentation, and a short explanation of how and why.

In this CNBC interview, Murray explains how the board deemed the commercial too radical and initially didn’t want to air it. But with the Super Bowl slot already paid for, and no suitable replacement commercial, they reluctantly agreed to have it shown.

Why it struck such a chord? Murray: ‘What that commercial did was it picked up on a particular vibe of a large segment of American society. Young people, innovators, creative people, people who don’t want to feel like they’re just stuck in the masses. And we felt that way, but I think we also perhaps underestimated what a strong vibe that is.’

And now for Jobs on stage, introducing the world’s first graphical user interface, mouse operated personal computer:

Thanks to Zee and his The Next Web post Today Marks the 25th Anniversary of Apple’s 1984 Ad. What Are Your Memories?
(photo Bastelstunde: Mac by dersVen)

Brilliant street art/animation combo by Argentine-based artist Blu, even more so when you consider how it was made. Once shot, a mural painting had to be destroyed to make room for the next one, so there was no possibility of reworking and re-touching old frames in the studio.

Click play on the screen below to watch the 7-minute film, and have a look at the brilliant blublu.org website.

Also check out Baptiste Buonomo’s 2005 film Virus (further down).

Thanks to Ime for passing it to me.

(photo IMG_5043.jpg by Matt Woolner)

Five-minute audiovisual teaser for Open Content

We stole and re-arranged some inspiring thoughts as we saw fit; I put them into sound and images.

To watch, click play on the screen below; for plot and (management) summary, read on.

What to do when your content can be infinitely copied by anyone with access to the Internet? How can you add value to your content when it’s be found anywhere, for free? Where’s the business in open content? How can you make it work for you – instead of against. How can users make open content work for you?

Summary

Today’s world is one of super-abundance: digital and/or digitized content will be found, sooner or later, by anyone prepared to look for it on the web. So what does this mean for people working with content?

Many – across different industries – are starting to realize that sealing it up, fighting something that’s turning into common practice, is futile. But the clever ones are seeing opportunities.

Actively freeing up content, dropping it into the web for everyone to see and share, hugely increases your potential audience. Better still, a small part of that audience is very eager to become a partner – or co-creator. This part fills in the blanks, places context and conversation around your content, passes it on, and adds value for thousands or millions of others in your potential audience.

Free doesn’t mean it’s being given away -  only that someone else is picking up the tab. And it doesn’t stop there. There are ways to turn your end-users into clients again; the trick is to build something around your content, something better than free.

(photo opencontent by jlori)