New Dyson Bladeless Fan | Safe Enough to Let Your Little Kid Stick His Head Into It

"In a world where I feel so small I can't stop thinking big..." | Rush Caravan from Clockwork Angels

NOTE: Feel free to air drum or air guitar with the jam session within the song starting at 3:22

U2 | I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight

Cloudscapes | Storm vs. Chicago

Friday evening's storm over Chicago knocked out a window from Sears Tower (aka Willis Tower) the tallest building in North America (click image to enlarge)

Lost Art of Democratic Debate | Ted Talk By Michael Sandel

X Prize Radical Benefit for Humanity

YouTube and Copyright | Lesson on Why Letting People Use Content May Actually Be Good for Rights Holders

2010 Stanley Cup Pregame Music | Rush - Spirit of Radio and The Fratellis - Chelsea Dagger

Getting ready later tonight to watch Game 4 of the 2010 Stanley Cup Finals, Chicago Blackhawks at Philadelphia Flyers.

During Game 1 and 2 on the way toward the United Center in Chicago, I kept playing all this "pregame music" so since I didn't do it for Game 3 (road game at Philly which we lost in overtime), I'm starting again...one of the selections is Rush's Spirit of Radio.

See below for the song by the Fratellis that's played at the United Center after every goal...Go Blackhawks!

Google TV and Designing Websites for TV

Five years after YouTube was born, introducing Google TV.  While some say this is just another step similar to TiVo, it will likely accelerate the shift into microchannels, social media moving more to the TV screen, easy transfer of content (between computer, laptop, mobile device, tv, car, etc) and further disruption of the television broadcast "schedule" and old media business model.

Sony will start to integrate Google TV while Logitech will provide boxes to connect to the estimated 60 million HDTV market in the US, all powered by Intel.  Other partners coming include Best Buy, DISH and Adobe (yes, the flash guys).

Let me know when you're ready to develop some apps for Google TV.  Just remember...content is king.

And here's more on how to optimize the web for television use...

Designing for TV: A Primer

Here are a few tips for those who haven't designed for TV before. In a television environment, you must:

• Understand that content is king.
• Get users to the content as quickly and easily as possible.
• Don't interrupt when users are watching TV. Instead, make the viewing experience better.
• Respect the living room context.
• Think about what users will and won't want to do when viewing TV with their family and friends.
• Remember that TV is social.
• Consider how groups might use your website or application.
• Offer ways for individuals to use your site or apps in social settings.
• Learn the pros and cons of TV screens and audio.
• TV screens are wider and colors look different.
• Text must be readable from a distance.
• Sound is now a viable interface element.
• Make it easy.
• Offer simple choices and make actions obvious and easy to select.
• Provide navigation that is simple enough for a remote control.

:: Simplicity above all

Successful TV interfaces are simple in both concept and design. Very simple. Here are some ways to achieve an interface that is easy to understand and to use:

• Identify the vital parts of your interface before you start work.
• Group your content, controls, and interactions by priority.
• Throw out anything nonessential.
• Stick with one visible mode of navigation or one information hierarchy.
• Help users create a mental model that works for all your screens.
• When appropriate, take advantage of habits that people have learned on the web.
• Make the primary action reachable in one click.
• Make other onscreen actions few and prominent. Don't hide key features in a menu.
• Always display an easy way for users to return to their previous location. Don't rely on the back button.
• Preselect the user's next action when you can.
• For instance, move the insertion point into the next text box, or select the first item in a list.
• Avoid the temptation to use abstract icons.
• Use short, clear labels and test them with users.
• Limit vertical scrolling.
• Think about how your content will scale when it increases in size. What if a list becomes ten times longer?
• If you must scroll, make sure a portion of the lowest section is always visible on the screen.

:: Navigation is critical

Getting the navigation right is essential for success. Users will quickly abandon a screen whose navigation frustrates them.

• Remote controls, arrow keys, and directional pads

• All input devices for Google TV will have QWERTY keyboards, but users will often navigate using a directional pad. Like remote controls, these limit the navigation model to up, down, left, right, and enter.

Users need interactions that are fast and easy to do—at a distance, with one hand, in the dark. When designing a navigation scheme:

• Set arrow keys to navigate all visible, actionable items on the screen.
• If the down arrow key scrolls down a list, make sure the elements in the list are selectable and the selected item scrolls.

Mouse navigation

On a TV screen, the mouse moves a pointer that is small and far away from the user. Mouse control is difficult.

To assist your users:

Make each click target (link, button, and the like) large with ample padding for an expanded target area.

Add a hover state to links and buttons to highlight when the pointer has hit its target.

:: A new kind of screen

TV screens and computer screens differ in canvas size, aspect ratio, safe areas, resolution, cropping, and pixel shape.

When designing for TV screens, you should:

• Avoid highly saturated and very bright colors.
• Make UI elements slightly larger, specifically:
• Keep the sections of the screen over-sized.
• Add more padding to your elements.
• Make buttons and other click targets larger.
• Take advantage of the wide screen.
• Design for 1280x720 and 1920x1080 resolutions.
• Screen resolution

TV screens have a fixed number of pixels in width and height. The native resolution of the screen determines whether the screen is HD ready or not. If your image has the same dimensions as the screen, it will be shown as it is. If not, it will be scaled to fit the screen with a slight reduction in image quality.

The safe area

Televisions have a safe central display area surrounded by a small amount of screen space that can vary in size. If you place graphics or text outside the safe area, they may not be visible. to be sure that users can see all your interface elements lay out your pages with flexible layouts. At the very least, include at least a 10 percent margin at each resolution:

• 1280x720 resolution. Recommended width is 1152x648.
• 1920x1080 resolution. Recommended width is 1728x972.
• The Google TV browser zooms a webpage to fit the width of the screen. So you can design a page for the 720 pixel resolution, and it will work just as well in 1080 pixel resolution. However, if your page uses many images, it's best to create two separate versions to avoid scaling the images.

If you must choose one resolution, design for 720p resolution and Google TV will scale it up on 1080p resolution.

You can specify a property that controls the width of the page in your CSS.

Color

TV screens have higher contrast and saturation levels than computer monitors. Follow these guidelines when working with solid colors:

• Use pure white (#FFFFFF) sparingly. Pure whites cause vibrancy or image ghosting in TV displays. Instead use #F1F1F1 or 240/240/240 (RGB).
• Bright whites, reds, and oranges cause particularly bad distortion.
• Be conscious of various display modes that TVs may have. These include Standard, Vivid, Cinema/Theater, Game, etc. Be sure to test your webpages in all these modes.
• Be conscious of using large spanning gradients, it may result in banding if not properly tested.
• Test your website on lower quality displays which may have poor gamma and color settings.

:: Even TV needs text

For TV, avoid lightweight fonts or fonts with both very narrow and broad strokes. Use simply constructed sans serif fonts and apply anti-aliasing to increase readability.

Google TV currently supports only the Droid Sans and Droid Serif font families, but you can use font embedding techniques to create a more customized appearance. However, keep in mind that font embedding, which relies on Flash, will be slower than other methods.

Here are some ways to improve the readability of your text:

• Limit each paragraph to no more than 90 words.
• Break text into small chunks that can be read at a glance.
• Keep line length at about 5–7 words per line. Never go shorter than 3 or longer than 12.
• Remember that light text on a dark background is slightly easier to read on TV (compared to dark text on a light background).
• Target body text to be around 21pt on 720p and 28pt on 1080p.
• Don't use any text smaller than 18pt on 720p and 24pt on 1080p.
• Add more leading (larger line spacing) for onscreen text than print text.

:: Sound matters

Google TV will often be connected to the best speakers in the household. Sound is not disruptive on TV (as it often is on a computer), So think about ways to use sound in your interface.

Keep in mind:

• Sounds should be appropriate to the living room environment.
• By default, the volume should be low.
• Some users will be listening to music from a player application running in the background. Provide a simple way to mute your website or application, and don't make interactions entirely dependent on audio cues.

:: Flash on Google TV

Google TV is capable of playing 720p and 1080p Flash videos. For best performance:

• Use h.264 encoding for all video content. Avoid encoding your videos in h.263 or vp6.
• Avoid adding continuous-playing, Flash-based banner or sidebar ads on a page that includes a video. If you cannot avoid such ads, unload or stop them when a user starts watching the primary video or goes to full screen.
• To ensure a smooth video-watching experience, make sure your content uses only one instance of the media player at a time. For example, make sure that your primary content and the ads are not running two parallel streams of the media player. Two parallel streams can significantly degrade system performance.
• Be conscious of system memory, check availability and limitations when running Flash. Consume only what is necessary and test for memory leaks.
• Handle errors or crashes gracefully with proper recovery messaging.
• Perceived vs. actual performance

Users are the ultimate judges of whether your application performs well. Developers may measure application performance in terms of how long certain operations take or how many instances of objects are created.

However, those metrics aren't important to end users. Sometimes users measure performance by different criteria. For example, does the application operate quickly and smoothly, and respond quickly to input? Does it have a negative effect on the performance of the system as a whole?

Ask yourself the following questions to measure perceived performance:

• Are animations smooth or choppy?
• Does video content look smooth or choppy?
• Do audioclips play continuously, or do they pause and resume?
• Does the window flicker or turn blank during long operations?
• When you type, does the text input keep up or lag behind?
• If you click, does something happen immediately, or is there a delay?
• Do other applications respond poorly when the application is running?
• The distinction between perceived performance and actual performance is important. The way to achieve the best perceived performance isn't always the same as the way to get the absolute fastest performance. Make sure your application never executes So much code that the runtime isn't able to frequently update the screen and gather user input. In some cases, achieving this balance involves dividing up a program task into parts So that, between parts, the runtime updates the screen.

Using bitmaps

Using vectors, especially in large numbers, dramatically increases the need for CPU or GPU resources. Using bitmaps is a good way to optimize rendering, because the Flash player needs fewer processing resources to draw pixels on the screen than to render vector content.

Tweening syndrome

Limit the use of tweening to save CPU processing and memory. Designers and developers producing content for Flash tend to use many motion tweens in their applications. Try to minimize the use of motion tweens to help your content run faster.

Some flash guidelines referenced from Adobe, Inc.

Come Fly With Me | 2010 Le Tour de France

Weekend around July 4th is obviously a big deal in the United States, but will also be around the world as three of the world's biggest sports events happen around the same time, FIFA World Cup in South Africa, Tour de France and Wimbeldon.

I had the opportunity to visit Paris recently and it's an amazing city, but one of these days would like to see more of the other portions of France as well.

Tour de France starts Saturday, July 3rd in Rotterdam and finishes Sunday, July 25th on Champs-Ellysees in Paris.

The route

Running from Saturday July 3^rd to Sunday July 25^th 2010, the 97^th Tour de France will be made up of 1 prologue and 20 stages and will cover a total distance of 3,600 kilometres.

These stages have the following profiles:

• 1 prologue,
• 9 flat stages,
• 6 mountain stages and 3 summit finishes,
• 4 medium mountain stages,
• 1 individual time-trial stage (51 km).

Distinctive aspects of the race

• le Tourmalet climbed twice,
• a hint of the Classics and cobblestones,
• 2 rest days,
• 23 level 1, level 2 and highest level mountain passes.

11 new stage towns

Arenberg Porte du Hainaut, Bourg-de-Péage, Bourg-lès-Valence, Gueugnon, Longjumeau, Pamiers, Pauillac, Sisteron, Station des Rousses, Tournus, Wanze (Belgium).

Miss USA Rima Fakih and Crashing the Next White House State Dinner

Miss Michigan, 24 year old Rima Fakih, born in Lebanon, grew up in New York and lives in Dearborn, Michigan, was crowned Miss USA last night.

Lots of talk about how she is apparently the first Arab-American and Muslim as Miss USA, but on a more personal and/or political note, I was talking to a friend in Washington DC about the next official White House State Dinner (Chicago's Rick Bayless will be the chef) coming up on Wednesday to honor Mexico and President Felipe Calderon and the security thanks to what happened last time with Michaele & Tareq Salahi, so he speculated there's probably one person I (or anyone) could show up with invitation-less and get in...Miss USA Rima Fakih.

Seriously, who can deny Miss USA entry to the White House for dinner?

Barack Obama's Latest Facebook Page From Second City

via Chicago Tribune

Commencement Speeches | President Barack Obama at University of Michigan and Hampton University

President Obama at University of Michigan


President Obama at Hampton University

Flight Pix

How to Give 2,000 New Yorkers a High Five

Food Science | Chef Jose Andres on 60 Minutes

60 Minutes did a story (watch above) about Chef Jose Andres and his approach toward food and breaking down the structure of food to reinvent each part into a culinary experience.

Although I am quite far from being able to say I can cook well (or at all unless you count using the microwave for many things), my Dad was outstanding as a cook. Being a PhD with a background in chemistry, every food preparation was basically a scientific experiment and he would vary ingredients and presentation.

My Mom was also great at cooking, so perhaps there's still an opportunity to see if this culinary expertise runs in the family.

Mixer | Lights, Camera, AC/DC and IronMan2

Apple CEO Steve Jobs Thoughts on Flash and Why Not on iPhones, iPads, etc...

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Conclusions.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs

CEO of Apple

April 2010

State of the Internet 2009

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.

It's Time for a Revolution...

One of the things Nike does best in their commercials is to get the viewer to "feel" something with their ads.  The above Revolution commercial clearly does that from the start.

B. B. King | Blues Legend

This weekend, B.B. King, one of the blues legends of all-time, will be in Chicago at the House of Blues. I haven't had a chance to see Mr. King in person, but hopefully one of these days I'll change that :)

Below is B.B. King with Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy and Jim Vaughan...

Changing the World | Nobel Prize Nominated Three Cups of Tea Author Greg Mortenson

Earlier this April, I had the honor of being part of a fantastic group to help plan, coordinate and host a gala fundraiser for about 1,500 people at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare for Nobel Prize nominated, Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson and his Central Asia Institute.

More on the event in a future post, but in the meantime, here's a video shared via Chicago Metro Sports, which gives a glimpse into what Greg's efforts have been about and why it matters:

Bill Gates College Tour at Berkeley

Google Places

Future of Desktops | Merging Pen + Touch

Baby Nephew | Talking Volcanos and Airplanes

This weekend, I went to a brunch where there was a very high-level discussion about the world's important issues, met some fascinating people and had a great time, but then checked my iPhone on the way out and realized there was a text message reminding me about a BBQ I was supposed to attend, which of course, meant a chance to see my baby nephew (Rayyan).

Usually, I don't get a chance to chat with the little guy too much because he sleeps a LOT, but this time, he not only stayed awake, but as I sat next to him, he just kept looking at me and trying to have a conversation of some type, so being the good uncle, I told him about lots of stuff going on...tried to explain what volcanos were about and why airplanes in Europe were affected by the eruption in Iceland.

I know...he's a baby, he's not going to remember all this until he reads this blog post a few years from now, but when he does, just want to let him know that of all the interesting conversations I had that day, his was the best and I appreciate his genuine interest and undivided attention :)

Meteor Flashes of Light in the Sky, Earthquakes and Volcano Dust in the Wind | Help Is On the Way...Superman Returns

The other night a meteor flew across the Midwestern United States sky, there are earthquakes in various parts of the world and an Iceland volcano's dust in the wind has disrupted the global aviation system.

But, nothing to fear, help is on the way...this calls for a superhero to save the world...I nominate Superman :)

Biz Stone Explains Twitter Biz Plan, Promoted Tweets, Google Replay, Resonance, Library of Congress and the Future of Twitter

Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games Opening Ceremonies Opening Intro

Andrea Bocelli at the Torino 2006 Winter Olympic Games Closing Ceremony

Vancouver 2010 | Downtown Street Celebrations Following Canada's Overtime Win in Gold Medal Hockey Final with United States (USA)

Vancouver 2010 | Medal Count

Livestream from Downtown Vancouver

bcmclivechannel on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Livestream from Downtown Vancouver

Watch live streaming video from bcmclivechannel at livestream.com

Watch live streaming video from bcmcpresstheatre at livestream.com

Future of Play | Can Children Playing Be a Source of Power?

Escape from IDEO on Vimeo.

London 2012 Olympic Games | Looking Ahead...

Google at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games | Come Ski With Me...

View Larger Map

USA's Meryl Davis and Charlie White's Bollywood Ice Dance Big Hit in Vancouver

Earlier tonight at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games, USA's Meryl Davis and Charlie White, both students at the University of Michigan, were a bit hit thanks to their Bollywood Ice Dance, vaulting to 2nd place going into Monday night's free dance.

So, maybe next time, they should try Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire...same song length :)

Olympic Marketing | AT&T's Vancouver Commercial of Here's to the Possibilities

TED Talks | Tim Brown, IDEO CEO on Creativity, Play, Design Thinking and Thinking Big

From TED:

Tim Brown is the CEO of innovation and design firm IDEO, taking an approach to design that digs deeper than the surface. Having taken over from founder David E. Kelley, Tim Brown carries forward the firm's mission of fusing design, business and social studies to come up with deeply researched, deeply understood designs and ideas -- they call it "design thinking."

IDEO is the kind of firm that companies turn to when they want a top-down rethink of a business or product -- from fast food conglomerates to high-tech startups, hospitals to universities.

IDEO has designed and prototyped everything from a life-saving portable defibrillator to the defining details at the groundbreaking Prada shop in Manhattan to corporate processes. And check out the Global Chain Reaction for a sample of how seriously this firm takes play.

TED TALK (2009) By Tim Brown on Design Thinking and Thinking Big

McDonald's Remake of Michael Jordan - Larry Bird Showdown Commercial with Lebron James and Dwight Howard

TED Talks | David Cameron, Britain's Conservative Party Leader on the Next Age of Government

David Cameron, the leader of Britain's Conservative Party says we're entering a new era -- where governments themselves have less power (and less money) and people empowered by technology have more. Tapping into new ideas on behavioral economics, he explores how these trends could be turned into smarter policy.

President Barack Obama, when he was a candidate not too long ago in July 2008, chatted with David during his trip to Europe:

From TED:

David Cameron was elected leader of the Conservative Party in December 2005, and has been a Member of Parliament for the Witney constituency since 2001. Before he became an MP, he was a Special Adviser  to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and then to the Home Secretary. He took a break to work in media for seven years, then stood for election in 2001 on an agenda of tax-cutting. (During the election, he also wrote a column for the Guardian.) As a new MP, he took several controversial positions, such as coming out in favor of the "harm reduction" drug policy. He became a member of the shadow cabinet (an alternative cabinet to the party in power) in 2003, and two years later became head of the party. And last year, the Daily Mail called him the "prime minister in waiting."

Go World | Behind Visa's Olympic Marketing Campaign with Antonio Lucio

Antonio Lucio, Chief Marketing Officer of Visa, discusses their Olympic sponsorship and marketing with the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games and beyond with AdAge (via Amir Zaheer).

Here's 5 examples of Visa's current Olympic video (television and internet) spots:

Flight over Vancouver

Dutch After Sven Kramer's 5000m Gold | Partying Like It's 2010

For those who are not already aware of this, the Dutch are incredibly passionate fans of speedskating. Sven Kramer, one of their own, won the Gold for the 5000m on the first day of competition of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games and meets his fans at Holland House.

What Really Happened During My Trip to Sweden...

In September and October 2009, I visited Copenhagen, Denmark for the Olympic Congress as my dream, efforts andproject of making Chicago an Olympic Bid City and candidate for the Olympic Games had come true and was there to see if we would be selected for the 2016 Olympic Games with other great candidates from Rio, Madrid and Tokyo (Rio was selected and will make an outstanding host city for 2016).

Since I have family in Copenhagen and across the border in Sweden, it was a remarkable experience to visit, but what many of my friends back in the USA don't know is what really happened once Olympic business was complete and I had a chance to explore Sweden a bit more.  Watch and see for yourself :)

 Video Direct Link

Note:  Video is powered by Qbrick's Streaming Media Solutions.  They are also providing web and mobile video solutions for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games for Sveriges Televsion (SVT) in Sweden.

Jamie Oliver's 2010 TED Prize Wish to Reverse Childhood Obesity