The upcoming HTML5 standard is an exciting one for us designers & developers, and its being integrated into modern browsers like Webkit (Chrome/Safari), Firefox and Opera quite quickly. There are lots of people doing interesting things with this new standard, but Hakim El Hattab’s HTML5 experiments are really impressive.

Impressive LED watch design from Japanese designer Hironao Tsuboi. Hironao recently was showcased in D&AD‘s Faces To Watch, which promotes new talent.

Does the internet, in it’s current form, need to be censored? Does the internet, in it’s current form, need compulsory censorship by the government?

Back in 2007, ‘Internet Filtering’ was an election promise from the Labour party during the Australian Federal Election. I’m not sure if, at that point, the extent of the policy was fully known. It certainly wasn’t a highly publicised policy. Nevertheless, the Rudd government is fulfilling it’s promise through Senator Conroy to protect Australia from websites which contain child pornography, drug use, crime, sex, cruelty, violence, and anything else deemed morally objectionable by the government.

I think the decision to censor anything, be it books, television, films, games, or the internet is something which should be decided based on the cultural values of the community. While Australia isn’t the most liberal of all countries, we do enjoy a high level of free speech and democracy which should be protected and defended wherever possible.

That’s why the decision by the government to push ahead with compulsory internet censorship despite widespread opposition from industry, the media, and internet users is very worrying to me.

Putting aside moral objections, the technical issues involved with censoring this type of content are too vast to properly police. The kind of illegal materials the government wish to censor are not shared on websites, they are shared in chat rooms, file sharing (P2P) programs, and newsgroups, because of the anonymity they provide. The government’s solution to provide ISPs a blacklist of websites which cannot be accessed will to absolutely nothing to stop the flow of illegal material to those who want it. This basic misunderstanding of the issue will leave tax-payers footing a huge bill, slower internet access (Australia already lags behind the rest of the world in this), and joining the ranks of China and the United Arab Emirates in compulsory internet censorship.

Today saw the leaking of the government’s blacklist, which has been widely covered in the media, and cemented how fickle and ridiculous this proposal really is. There is renewed hope that this will not get passed in the senate, but there is still a  chance it will get tacked on to existing legislation.

Here’s hoping thats not the case!

Perhaps I’m more stalker-ish than most people, but I find watching how creative professionals work fascinating. It’s hard not to be inspired by the passion that creatives have in their work, and in their process.

My favorite resource for this is Pretty Cool People Interviews. A fantastic selection of video interviews from creative people in all industries, and constantly updated. I watch a lot of these types of things on YouTube but never bookmark them! If anyone knows of any similar videos please post links below.

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RELATED: While many people were critical of her best-selling book Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert delivered a really special talk at the TED conference on creativity, and the pressures of success:

Today I’m happy to announce the completion of three new websites, designed by Phillips Design:

Talonsharp Street Art

Psychic Kara

Church of United Spiritualism of Australia – Toowoomba Branch

It’s impossible to turn on the TV or radio without hearing about the financial crisis, “market downturns”, or the implosion of the worldwide economy in general. With so much fear in the minds of business owners on decreasing customer spending (with no end in sight), you would be forgiven for running a fine-toothed comb over your marketing budget.

The budget for creating, maintaining or promoting your online presence, however, should definitely not be given the chop. If anything, you should be looking to increase the online budget, and heres three reasons why:

1. It’s cost effective

Past economic downturns have taught us that during tough times marketing dollars invested wisely reap big rewards. Depending on your business and target market, it can be much cheaper to find a new customer online than through traditional means such as print (newspaper ads, flyers, brochures) or television.

Gerry McGovern makes the argument that the web is 14 times cheaper to have a customer complete a task online (such as buying a product or updating billing information) than via the phone, and a startling 35 times cheaper than face-to-face interaction. 

2. It gets ahead of the competition

Warren Buffet advised stock market investors to “be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful”, which is why he is now buying up stock during this shaky economic situation. You can apply the same principle to your marketing budget. For example, there is now a great opportunity to advertise your website with Google AdWords as big companies trim their online advertising budgets and ad prices begin to drop.

3. It creates opportunity for clever marketing

Those with small online advertising budgets are not left out in the cold during this economic winter. You have at your disposal a wide variety of online services that can bring new customers with little to no cost. Social networking websites are great for this, as well as social media such as YouTube. The smarter you can be when using these mediums, the better your chances at success. These are easy to get started with but difficult to master, and not a silver-bullet for all your marketing needs. In my opinion, using these mediums along with traditional advertising is a winning combination.

From the maker of Helvetica (the movie) comes a documentary on industrial design and the creativity behind everyday objects. The trailer for the film has just been released:

The voice-overs comes from Jonathan Ive, Andrew Blauvelt, Marc Newson, and Karim Rashid. This looks really fantastic…I can’t wait to see this movie

Objectified Web Site

I’m a bit slow to get around to watching this, but the second series of Not Quite Art has been broadcast on ABC1. The show features various artists working outside of the mainstream art world, and how they are getting a global audience. Series 1 & 2 are available for download on the ABC’s website.

Here’s hoping the ABC commission a third season!

I’m totally in love with tilt-shifting, the photographic technique used to make everyday scenes look like miniature sets. Sydneysider Keith Loutit creates some amazing time-lapse videos of common scenes, such as beaches and harbors. The latest is a time-lapse of a monster truck rally:

After thinking how cool it would be to see this in a music video, I found Thom Yorke’s Harrowdown Hill video uses something similar (dubbed SmallGantics) to achieve the same effect.

Find out more: Flickr, Wikipedia, camera how-to, photoshop how-to

[via BoingBoing]

There is an interesting blog post at Smart Company on unprofessional web developer behavior.

“…needless to say, the design was messy, the e-commerce section (which we repeatedly said we did not want to go live yet) was incomplete as customers could not see prices next to items displayed, and to make matters worse, she held off removing inappropriate/incomplete material until we paid. We both felt that asking for the total of $9000 for a website that was incomplete and which we did not approve was not rational.”

It gets better:

“…I looked up our business name on Google and it led to her web design company and under our profile in her list of projects she states that the client (that would be us) “has been taken off line for their inability to pay their bills on time”.”

Unfortunately it’s an all to common occurrence for unprofessional web designers/developers to taint the online experience for the client. Many of the problems listed in the post could have been avoided by:

1. Agreeing on the scope of the project before work commences
2. Agreeing on the costs before work commences
3. The web developer behaving in a professional manner