Ideas Generator
Bootleg Toys Gone Wrong
You’ve got to admire the cheek of some bootleggers, but not all are as clever as they think they are. Cracked has found some corkers, such as: RobertCop SpaderMan Polystation See more here.
Mills & Boon covers inspire self-portrait project
Artist Alex Holder recreated a range of classic romance covers in photographs for International Women’s Day
Compulsory Fun at Work
Once, on the worst production I have ever worked on, the series producer spent an inordinate amount of energy organizing team drinks so that we could all have “fun”, whilst we struggled to get the actual work done. And there was no way of getting out of it: if you couldn’t make it, she merely […]
Crowdsourced Murder Hunt
The FBI were stumped for ideas after finding the body of a man in field in Missouri in 1999. The only clue to his death was contained in two notes found in the pocket of his trousers. Trouble was the notes were written in code. Baffled the police released the notes and asked people to […]
SpeedSale
Swedish retailer Papercut has added a sense of urgency to online shopping. Go to their site and you will be presented with a bargain offer, but you only have 4 seconds to decided that you want it and click to secure, before a new item appears to increasingly frantic circus clown music. Try it here. […]
Reimagining the World’s Populations
Someone has assessed the populations of all the countries in the world and reorganized the map to put the countries with the largest populations in the countries that have the largest land mass. The USA, Brazil, Yemen and Ireland all stay where they are but everyone else moves around. Pakistan moves to Australia and Canada […]
Most Innovative Countries
Judged on the number of product patents filed in relation to research and development spend, Korea is the most innovative nation, with Japan, China and Russia not far behind. See where you fit on this map.
Cat Cafes and Dog Yoga
Japanese pets are some of the most pampered on earth (second only to the USA), with yoga, tap-dancing and aromatherapy for dogs and acupuncture and cafes for cats. The Japanese pet industry rakes in more than a trillion yen a year. Read more on PSFK
Bereavement Holidays
German travel company TUI has launched a series of holidays for the bereaved aimed at helping them overcome their loss and “journey back into life”, with the aid of a special routine of reflection, sight seeing and good food and music. Holiday makers are accompanied by a grief counselor and are encouraged to travel without […]
Can’t Afford That Helicopter for Aerial Views? Try a Kite.
French photographer Nicolas Chorier specializes in aerial photography using a camera attached to a kite, which allows him to get a unique perspective on the world. An adapted camera beams photos down to a handset fashioned from a game boy. See his work on his website or watch the video:
Health Books for Kids
Medikidz has produced a series of comic books that explain serious illnesses such as breast cancer, HIV, depression and autism to children. With clearly defined facts, irreverent humor, and a comics format, the titles in the Superheroes on a Medical Mission series offer accessible, entertaining introductions to health topics from sleep issues to HIV. Every […]
Tourette’s Karaoke
Erasure’s A Little Respect as you’ve never heard it before – by a tourette’s sufferer who felt an attack coming on and decided to put it to good use:
Grandma Takes Over
According to a Pew Research Center study as many as one in ten US children live with their grandparents, a trend sparked by the recession. Children of white parents are most likely to be shipped off to the grandparents in these straitened times. Read more.
Get Laddered
Another advert featuring parkour, this one with a rousing soundtrack and ladders:
Islam Idol
4Shbab is Egypt’s answer to MTV, with music videos about Palestine, family and delivering a message of values and morals. But it doesn’t stop them having an American Idol-esque talent competition Your Voice is Heard. Read more in the New York Times. Watch the video report:
Trespass: A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art
An interesting video about a Taschen book called Tresspass, which looks at the history of street art by the Wooster Collective. See it here:
Shane Dawson TV
Shane Dawson is a 22-yr-old comedian/entertainer who has the third most subscribed YouTube channel with 2.3 million subscribers. It grew out of videos he made for school assignments and has been running for three years, and has been nominated for several awards. A TV pilot is also in development. Check him out here.
World’s Biggest Harry Potter Fan
Picture the scene: you’ve been corresponding with someone via an internet dating site and the guy says he’s a writer and an artist, and you both have a love of Harry Potter – in fact you amuse each other over several emails by trading trivia about the books and films. You’re intrigued, as this could […]
Bookshelves of Creative People
It’s Nice That is a website dedicated to all things creative. One of their regular features asks creative types what books they have on their shelves – and they range from Calvin and Hobbes Sunday Pages 1985-1995 to Book of British Birds (Readers Digest) via Roald Dahl’s Kiss Kiss .
Stanley Kubrick’s Chicago and Other Archive Images
In 1949 a 21-year-old Stanley Kubrick was sent on a photojournalism assignment to Chicago. The resulting photos are now in the Library of Congress, but you can see some of them on Chris Wild’s excellent website How to Be a Retronaut. As well as the Kubrick photos, the site is a veritable treasure trove of […]
Digital Map of Manchester
The tourist honchos in Manchester have put together a map of online activity in the city, including blogs and websites for tourist attractions, local interest groups and businesses. Explore digital Manchester here.
Critical Past Archive
Critical Past is a new history-focused online photo and video archive that has 57,000 royalty-free clips and 7,000,000 still photos collected from U.S. government agency sources. Footage and images are available for immediate download after payment of a license fee (by credit card or PayPal). Explore here. Hat tip to: documentarytelevision.com
Old Men in Speedos
Apologies in advance to those of a nervous disposition, but I couldn’t resist the Ronseal-titled Old Men in Speedos. Don’t pretend you don’t know what you are getting yourself into. via @ajtesler
Tweeting Animals You Should Follow
Are you on Twitter? Obviously you should be following @tvmole on there but there are a number of (funnier, if less useful in an industry intelligence context) other animals you should also be following for those moments when you need a little light relief. Top tweeters include (feel free to add your own suggestions below): […]
Need to Make a Pitch Tape on a Shoestring?
Think you need to spend a load of cash making that pitch tape? Think again. This short film was made, edited and scored using an iPhone:
Against All Odds by Paul Connolly
Paul Connolly was abandoned as a new born baby and grew up in care at the St. Leonards’ Children’s Home in London’s East End, where the children were regularly abused by their carers. Paul became a boxer and personal trainer, but six of the children he shared his 8-bed dorm with are dead. Against All […]
The Zimmers: My Generation
The Zimmers are a British rock group with a difference – it has 40+ members and a combined age of 3,000+. They were brought together for a documentary several years ago, but the band continues to tour. See them recording My Generation here.
The Zimmers: Firestarter
I had the pleasure of appearing on Danny Steele’s excellent radio show on JNET Radio with a couple of these guys. (NSFE – Not Safe For Epileptics)
Putting Social Media to Work
Fresh Networks has put together a series of ways that people have used social media to find themselves a job, including this interactive video CV by Graeme Anthony. Applying for a job just got scarier.
A Testimony of Serpent Handling
Photographer Hunter Barnes spent a month in West Virginia documenting a congregation of Serpent Handlers, an old-time religion that is dying out – only 15 members are left. They express their faith through a mixture of serpent handling, healing and drinking poison. Barnes is raising money via Kickstarter to turn his photos into a book. […]
Golden Retriever Takes Over From Tiger Mom
When a safari park tiger refused to nurse her cubs a Golden Retriever stepped in to suckle and clean them. See her in action: Golden Retriever takes on white tiger cubs from Travis Heying on Vimeo.
Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David von Drehle
In 1911, 146 mostly young Jewish and Italian women were killed in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in NYC, in what was then the worst workplace disaster in the history of America. Most of the victims were trapped behind a locked exit, in what was supposed to be a modern fireproof building, but […]
Time Magazine’s Twitter feeds to watch
TIME Magazine has chose its top 140 Top Twitter feeds as rated by their readers. Top of the list: Comedian Andy Borowitz TV sitcom writer Kelly Oxford Satirist White Girl Problems Nabraska-based ad man Tim Siedell Satirical newspaper The Onion Read the full list on Time
Civil War iPad App
History channel has launched an app to accompany its Civil War programming, which is rolling out over the next 4 years. Users can get daily real time “updates”, mirroring the actual events 150 years ago, plus read contemporary accounts in newspapers, diary excerpts, photos, maps, casualty counts and send twitter ‘telegrams’ in morse code. Find […]
Book Surgeon…
Brian Dettmer, a Chicago-based artist, specializes in making intricate sculptures out of the pages of old medical books, dictionaries and encyclopedias. He doesn’t remove the pages, preferring instead to use the constraints of the covers and the illustrations contained within the book, never adding new elements. He dissects each book using surgical tools, working one […]
Top of The Pops LPs
BBC4 has started showing vintage episodes of Top of the Pops, which used to be required viewing in TVMole’s house (along with Coronation Street, Multicoloured Swapshop, The Krypton Factor, It’s a Knockout and The Great Egg Race). However, a recent overheard twitter conversation evoked an erstwhile forgotten memory: getting on the bus from Grandma’s to […]
US Road Trip Fuelled by Social Networking
In March, 2011, Lloyd Davis, founder of the London-based social media networking group Tuttle Club is took a coast-to-coast road trip (although mostly by train) across the USA. His self-imposed challenge was to do it all fuelled by social media – via donations, places to stay, offers of food etc. He offered to wear a […]
Film Biz Recycling
Film Biz Recycling is a Brooklyn-based not-for-profit organization that aims to find temporary or permanent new home for movie set dressings and props. They’ve recently moved into a new 11,000 sq ft space so they can accommodate items large and small. To mark the move, the team put together a music video (which features rather […]
Medic Speak is C.T.D
In hospitals and doctors’ surgeries everywhere medics have always used a secret shorthand language to communicate important information quickly to their colleagues without alarming patients and relatives, such as H.I. (head injury) sustained in R.T.A (road traffic accident) no L.O.C (loss of consciousness). Or more seriously: D.O.A (dead on arrival). Or D.N.R (do not resuscitate). […]
Can You Spot a Story?
Television is all about telling stories, as is pitching TV ideas to commissioners. But do you know what a story actually looks like? Test yourself by taking this short test in which you are asked to decide whether a short piece of text constitutes a story or not. After ten examples you get your score. […]
Redneck Bank
There’s a new internet banking concept in town that claims to be “funner” than the rest: the Redneck Bank, which is based in Oklahoma. It has a Mr Ed. style laughing horse as its mascot offers a choice of pictures on its debit cards for you to choose from.
Got Nothing to Wear?
Stella Brennan (mother of two and owner of a dog and three cats who was about to start a new job) challenged herself to wear just six items of clothing for one month: “a black blazer and pants from H & M; two button-down shirts, one black and one pink; a pair of Old Navy […]
Takkoda
Looking for a gift? You could do worse than take a look at Takkoda which sells all kinds of merchandise decorated with the pictures of pets pretending to be celebrities. Choose from Audrey Hepburn, Mr T, Dame Edna Everage and Lady Gaga among others.
Dirty Girls
Here’s an article from Christwire that analyzes the trend towards a hipster-offshoot: the dirty girl. Author Stephenson Billings has clearly thought a lot about the phenomenon of girls who: “…will mimic the deadbeat celebrities she sees on programs such as Entertainment Tonight and Entourage, mocking hardworking people behind her gold sunglasses as she high heels […]
Shooting From Behind
Photographer Bridget Fleming’s Downtown From Behind project aims to capture the people living and working in the 200 streets below 14th Street in Manhattan. The twist is that everyone is on a bicycle and photographed from behind, which makes for some interesting streetscapes. Each photo also has a short accompanying bio of the subject. I […]
Historic Orchestra Faces Bankruptcy
The 111-year-old Philadelphia Orchestra is facing the possibility of bankruptcy even though it has assets that outweigh its debts. If the vote goes through it would be the first big US orchestra to take this extreme measure. They are planning to mount a campaign to raise $160 million in their biggest ever fundraising drive. But […]
Mom Caves
The next thing in home design is the ‘mom cave’, a place for the woman of the house to retreat to and find respite from the family and household chores. While man caves are full of tech gadgetry, mom caves are more likely to contain cushions and knitting supplies. Read more on Iconoculture.
2:46: Aftershocks, An Oral History of the Japanese Earthquake
2:46: Aftershocks: Stories from the Japan Earthquake is a fast response publication to Kindle that was created by a group of Twitter users to raise funds for the Japanese Red Cross. The book contains photos, artwork and essays from people around the world, including Yoko Ono, and took just over one week to assemble. 100% […]
Parkour on a Bike
Watch and learn as Danny MacAskill travels by bicycle – the hard way – from Edinburgh to Skye. Hat tip: three billion
How to Make a Viral Pop Video
British band Hadouken decided that rather than shoot a video to promote their new song Mecha Love they would edit together clips of 50 of the biggest viral, mostly sports-releated YouTube videos. Watch it here (along with other 22.5 million views): Hat tip: three billion
