Four Letter Words from Rob Seward on Vimeo.

Four Letter Words is an arrangement of fluorescent light fixtures as an alphabet controlled by algorithms. Consisting of four units, each one is capable of displaying all 26 letters of the alphabet.

The piece displays an algorithmically generated word sequence, derived from a word association database developed by the University of South Florida between 1976 and 1998. The algorithms take into account word meaning, rhyme, letter sequencing, and association.

In other words… WOW.

Why choose sides when you can choose… BINGLE! Let’s face it. With the advent of Microsoft’s new search engine Bing, the search engine wars are heating up. Google, which rules the roost – and has done so for quite some time — now has some stiff competition. Who will win? That has yet to be determined. Until then, the undecided masses can now rely on Bingle, a clever little “middleman” search site which gives you side by side results of your search term.

All joking aside, this could be a very powerful tool for many people who make a living with the internet, be it social media, marketing, blogging or general design and development. Be sure to bookmark this one for future use!

http://bingle.pwnij.com/

What do you get when you cross the Tour de France, a team of robot engineers and hundreds of gallons of liquid yellow chalk? You get Chalkbot, of course!!

It is a long-standing tradition at the Tour de France for fans to spend hours creating elaborate messages and illustrations along the course for riders to see as they whizz by. Chalkbot automates this process by allowing user-submitted messages of hope to be sprayed on the road about eight hours ahead of the riders. Once the message is approved, it is sent to the Chalkbot which will then spray the 40-character message, take a photo and then email the photo along with GPS coordinates to the person who submitted it. Pretty cool, isn’t it?

Built by DeepLocal and StandardRobot in partnership with Nike and Wieden+Kennedy, Chalkbot is like a giant self-contained pneumatic dot matrix printer that is mounted to a trailer pulled by a truck and can print messages and graphics of varying types on the road. Users can submit their own inspirational messages by Tweeting them @chalkbot, texting “LIVESTRONG,” followed by your message, to 36453 or directly at the official Chalkbot website.

Check the video for some action-shots and a little behind the scenes magic.

What do you get when you put a homeless father & daughter into The Sims 3 game with no money or food, giving the father traits of a crazy, mean spirited old man and the daughter traits of a kind young girl with low self esteem? You get Alice and Kev! This virtual social experiment has become a play-by-play of the daily lives of this father and daughter trying to make it with absolutely nothing. The blog is run by Robin Burkinshaw, a game design student based in the UK. It’s usually updated daily and will feature a group of events that happened to either Alice, Kev or both from the previous day.

Now, before you dismiss it – give it a shot. I thought it couldn’t even be remotely interesting – but you will grow to love the characters, the trials and tribulations they go through and the other strange people they meet. Keep in mind, these characters are running on ‘auto-pilot’ – meaning they are rarely interfered with… and THAT’S what makes it so interesting. The things they do, the relationships they form, the fights they get into – they are all done on the intuition of the character!

You can start with the introduction or you can jump right in to the first post. They also post when the blog updates via their Twitter account here. Definitely one you will want to check regularly!

Excellent new app from Nationwide Insurance helps both the customer and the company at the same time.

The app was developed through Nationwide’s partnership with Rosetta, which is the leading independent interactive agency in the U.S. Rosetta helped Nationwide conceive, create and launch the application, and purposely developed it to utilize the tools already available on the iPhone, such as the built-in GPS and camera.

“As with all of our initiatives, we wanted the Nationwide Mobile app to help simplify our customers’ lives, and the design and functionality Rosetta brought to the app are helping us do exactly that,” said Sue McManus, AVP of marketing for Nationwide. “We have plans to roll out additional features for the app in the coming months and are very excited about the direction Rosetta is providing as we evolve the app.”

The best part is that you don’t need to be a Nationwide customer to use it – although it does have specific features for Nationwide customers. Some of the features are:

Granted, this isn’t the first (and surely not the last) auto accident app. iWrecked, Car Accident Report, and Auto Accident provide similar features but are not nearly as well thought out as this Nationwide app is. Click here to check out the Nationwide Auto Accident app in the iTunes App Store.

Just when you thought you had the latest and greatest, think again. VIZIO, the once-bargain-priced value brand for LCD & Plasma TVs, throws itself into the spotlight with the announcement of an amazing line of next-gen LCD televisions. Feast your eyes upon the XVT series VIA™ HDTV (pictured above). So what exactly makes this TV so great?

The VIA™ (short for Vizio Internet Apps) Connected HDTV features include built-in 802.11n dual-band wireless (42”, 47” and 55” sizes only) and wired networking and a customized Bluetooth universal remote control with sliding QWERTY keyboard.

Why would your remote need a full keyboard, you might ask? Well, this puppy will have complete integration with: Accedo Broadband®, Amazon Video On Demand®, Blockbuster On Demand®, Flickr®, Netflix®, Pandora® and Rhapsody®, eBay®, Facebook®, RadioTime®, Revision3®, Rallypoint Sports®, Showtime®, Twitter® and Vudu®.

As if all of these features weren’t enough, this thing looks deadly and is priced to move… Model sizes from 32″ to 55″, starting at just $749 for the 32″ model available starting in July. In all models, VIZIO has integrated USB video inputs that are enhanced and offer high quality 1080p video playback, along with Mega Dynamic Contrast Ratio™ of up to 2,000,000:1 that makes for incredible black levels and almost three-dimensional imagery. All XVT series televisions include an advanced user interface control with picture in picture and picture on picture functionality as well as universal learning remote controls.

Superior TV audio is provided by SRS Labs’ TruSurround HD™ which enhances clarity and produces surround sound without external speakers, and TruVolume™ which eliminates annoying volume fluctuations when switching channels or during commercial breaks.

I don’t know about you, but seeing this kind of makes me regret buying a new 47″ TV less than a year ago. Might have to start the process of getting one of these XVT’s for the ol’ living room!! Anyone want to buy a slightly-used, not-as-cool LCD TV?

All images in this post provided by and copyright VIZIO, Inc.

The Photoshop® gods have finally answered the calls of the wild, untamed brush jungle!! Actually, this great little app has nothing to do with the fine folks at Adobe – rather it’s from Mr. Jay Hilgert, better known as BittBox. As if providing us with endless amounts of free textures and brushes wasn’t enough, his latest effort is an app to keep things a bit organized. Brush Pilot is a very affordable $15 and can bring some sanity to your brush collection by providing scalable previews of all your brush collections. It will automatically find your brush folder and search out all of your collections, display them as only a Mac app could and also let you delete those crappy ones you downloaded and thought you would use .

Seriously, I can’t remember the last time I spent $15 and was so happy about it. Make like the wind and show Jay a little love over at http://www.brushpilotapp.com/. If your brush collection is even remotely like mine, you will be indebted forever!! Also, be sure to follow BittBox and Brush Pilot on Twitter.

goodby, silverstein & partners gives us a plethora of information wrapped up into one graphic website for an onslaught of information. this site was created to promote sprint’s mobile broadband card and gives you data on everything from the number of homes being built at that moment, to the number of eggs being produced, to the current flights in the air, to… well you get it. tons of info you never thought you would need, yet somehow get hypnotized into watching. none of the data is made up and is all based off of real-time feeds and computational data. be sure to check it out. make sure you have some free time, you’ll need it!