Turbines that look sexy? Engines that make you feel naughty? Welcome to the lascivious world of General Electric. The equation goes like this: Duchampian approach + everyday object + decontextualisation + recontestualisation + a vintage effect obtained with an Instagram filter = a new way to look at a washing machine. ‘The spectator experiences the phenomenon of transmutation; through the change from inert matter into a work of art, an actual transubstantiation has taken place...All in all, the creative act is not performed by t... [More]

Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion. Everybody knows it. A river of “oh, no!”, “meh” and “OMG” flooded Twitter and blogs and forums and threads all over the world in the last two days, describing the atmosphere. Just over a month ago, we asked ‘What is the biggest threat to Facebook? The Apocalypse? Google and Twitter and Chuck Norris and Godzilla together against the common enemy? Nope. According to Business Insider, the real menace is Instagram, ‘the out-of-nowhere startup that allow... [More]

Everyone of us has been in a relationship in which, whatever one says, the other is going to say the opposite. It is not very pleasant, and it often ends with one of the partners running down the stairs with his/her collection of rare Studio One records, expressing unfriendly opinions and thoughs in a rather loud voice. This is what seems to happen between Vodafone and its Facebook "fans". As you can see from the following images, there is no need to explain what has gone wrong, as virtually every post receives a sarcastic / aggre... [More]

Today’s big news is about video eCommerce, as SSENSE and Barneys New York are about to release two new fully shoppable videos. Several brands started to play with the medium since last year, but now things are getting more interesting and sophisticated. Look at SSENSE’s music video featuring Iggy Azalea et al. – read below – for instance, which pushes the boundaries of the storytelling-plus-shopping-experience: watch the singer dance in a Givenchy catsuit, feel the rhythm and buy the outfit by clicking directly on the ... [More]

‘Talent borrows, genius steals.’ Oscar Wilde. The gentle art of copying. It all began seven years ago with Yupoo, the weird-named Flickr clone founded in China; since then, the idea of clone evolved, following the latest trends in the fields of social networks, platforms and technology. Now, after the huge success of Pinterest, the same guys behind Flickr’s evil twin created Huaban, and many other copycats appeared overnight. VentureBeat’s Jason Lim argues that ‘Cloning or copycatting ideas, companies... [More]

What is the biggest thread to Facebook? The Apocalypse? Google and Twitter and Chuck Norris and Godzilla together against the common enemy? Nope. According to Business Insider, the real menace is Instagram, ‘the out-of-nowhere startup that allows people to do what they like to do on Facebook easier and faster.’ For a simple reason: Facebook’s blindspot, argues the website, ‘is that it is not the easiest way to share photos of your friends and family over your phone. It's too slow.’ Morgan Stanley&#... [More]

Do you remember Baywatch? Gorgeous ladies running in slow motion, humble heroes with abs of steel and bulletproof hairdos, yes, that’s the one. It was entertaining, even funny at times, and it featured everybody’s idol, David Hasselhoff. But it was faker that fake. Too much of everything. So we went back to a simpler life, with real problems and real kids (supposedly), and came up with Dawson’s Creek. Still fake, but closer to reality. Every ten years, more or less, we need to go back to the tabula rasa, to start everyth... [More]

In Italy, if you expect too much they say you want ‘a full cask and a drunk wife’. You cannot have it both ways, according to popular wisdom. That is not true in the case of crowdsourcing, though. Recently, everybody has been talking about Yayoi Kusama’s installation at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, based on a elementary, genius intuition: build a domestic environment inside the gallery, then let the kids use it as a canvas, putting thousands of stickers everywhere – sofa, table, chairs, piano and walls. T... [More]

Are you ready for the big celebration? Or will you stay in and eat pizza, wearing bear-shaped slippers? If you are planning to go out and lose the plot, you might find these apps very interesting. iToastU ‘Display a selection of 100 traditional, contemporary, fun and inspirational toasts whether you are toasting with beer, wine or champagne.’ Never quote German philosophers if you want to impress a lady, by the way. iYule Log ‘A Yule log is a large wooden log which is burned all over the world; whether... [More]

Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader, is dead. Twitter, as usual, broke the news. Then, the rest of the web was flooded with memes, news, jokes, serious analysis of the situation and facetious points of view. Videos of a nation mourning in a way that reminded of over-the-top, oversaturated, over exaggerated Godzilla movies (the Dear Leader’s favourite flicks) went viral, as well as the ultimate masterpiece of the Tumblrsphere - Kim Jong Il Looking at Things, a collection of pictures of the Dear Leader, well, looking at things. The Internet a... [More]

The obvious – Give your website a look and feel the will never forget (at least in the next six months, when everything will change again). Users are now more aware of what’s hot and what’s not when it comes to web design. Perhaps, thanks to Apple, our conception of electronic/online/nerdy stuff aesthetics has changed forever, from a “must be functional, the rest is useless grooming” approach to the epiphany that appealing design, user-friendly websites, and smart branding can make a company’s fortune. ... [More]

iHobo. An app with a serious purpose, it is a sort of Tamagotchi that helps raise awareness about the homeless. An intelligent move from Depaul UK, the largest homeless charity in the UK.   Talking Fat Cat. Another amazing how-could-I-live-my-life-without-this? app about cats. Talking Fat Cat is, well, a fat cat that talks.  “Fun for EVERYONE! Kids, adults, friends, co-workers, and more. Everyone loves Talking Fat Cat!” Your boss is going to love it big time.   Porn... [More]

A friend told me, the other day: “now that I’ve got an iPhone 4s, I don’t need no girlfriend”; the Apple device solves many problems, he said, whilst a girlfriend creates many problems. Although I don’t agree with such a strong statement – partially inspired by the sixth pint of stout – I have to admit you can almost do anything with an iPhone, even find a way to speak to your cat, and other people/entities/deities.   Human-to-Cat Translator. Another cat-related classy app. We all k... [More]

I woke up this morning, with the usual tea + milk + genius idea: we should create an iPhone app for the end of the world, I thought, and we should call it APPocalypse. Then, as usual, I found out that it has been already done. But I kept looking for unusual apps, and found some interesting stuff. 2012 Apocalypse. Your device is going to tell you when it will be over. As you see, you can check predictions, videos and so on. When it comes to News, well, that’s an easy one: we are going to die.  Cat-O-Matic... [More]

To say ‘content is king’ is like saying ‘Martin Scorsese is a good director’ or ‘John Lennon was a singer with a nice voice’: it is just brutally reductive. The truth is content is EMPEROR, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Czar of the web and Summus Arbiter of the Internet. Let’s see why. Facebook changes its look more often than David Beckham – we know that, and we are almost getting used to it. But the last wave of changes is rather interesting: very soon we will be able to switch to Time... [More]

Shoreditch, East London, party at Keira’s post-post-no wave flat. I recently had a chat with a young lady belonging to the “OMGeneration”: ‘What do you do?’ ‘I’m a blogger’, she said, ‘it’s like claiming you’re a professional footballer’ I said ‘just because you kick a ball around on a Sunday, in a grassless traffic island in Mile End, with a couple of friends suffering from a monumental hangover’. She left. I knew there are “fashion bloggers&rdq... [More]

The printed magazine and TV ads still work as the immaculate wall of the Prado, the images evoking the allure of a world painted by Cy Twombly, in which kids never scream and your life is like a Boboli garden where you walk in slow motion, hand in hand with Kate Moss. When a brand tries to tell you the same story online, it does not work that well; in fact, it looks rather bad. Search ads and display ads work, but they sound like the coughing exhaust of a Tata Nano, instead of the melody gently sung by a Maserati Merak. Things are about to cha... [More]

A few days ago, on the bus to Goose Green, I overheard this sentence: 'What’s the matter with all them tablets? What’s the point in something that looks like a phone on steroids, but can’t be used as a phone and doesn’t fit in your pocket?' This is more or less the general feeling about tablets, at least on the 37 towards Peckham. But numbers tell a different story: tablet owners are generally male, 18-34 year-olds, with a good income (around $50k per annum). They are increasingly using the devices fo... [More]

Appnova Web will not be dismissing the latest product yet. We think that there will be more to offer in the future. [More]